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• Software engineering project idea feedback [on hold]

  - by Chris Sewell

  I'm a third year student currently undergoing my project/dissertation section of my degree. I have drafted a proposal for my final year project and would appreciate any feedback. The feedback can be anything constructive either specific to this proposal, the area that I will be working and researching in or my ideas. I will accept all input. Aims My aim is to attempt a proof of concept and prototype a runtime-as-a-service (RaaS). This cloud based runtime will allow clients to dynamically offload tasks or create cloud applications. Currently software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud applications are purpose built and have a predefined scope in which they can assist or serve the client; this scope cannot be changed without physical alteration to the client and server software. With RaaS the client potentially could define any task it wanted at any time depending on its environment variables, the client and server would then communicate parameters and returns for that task. For the client to utilize a RaaS it must be able to conceive and then define a task using an appropriate XML vocabulary. As the scope of the cloud solution is defined by the client at its runtime, the cloud solution only has to exist for as long as the client requires it to as opposed to a client using a dedicated service. Deliverables The crux of the project will require an XML vocabulary in which the client and server will communicate. I’ll prototype the server application that will dynamically create and manage cloud solutions. The solution will be coded using an interpreted language, such as python or javascript, which can evaluate expressions in runtime or a language that can dynamically compile such as C# or Java. As a further proof of concept I will also produce a mock client that offloads tasks to the server. The report will attempt to explain the different flavours of cloud computing solutions including infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and SaaS including real world examples and where the use of a RaaS could have improved the overall example solution. Disclaimer: I'm not requesting stakeholders in my project nor am I delegating work. Any materials other than feedback, advice or directions will not be utilized.

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• Does it make the game more fun when the user is forced to progress thru the levels sequentially rather than letting them pick and play?

  - by BeachRunnerJoe

  Hello. For the first time in my game, I'm stuck with a real design dilemma. I guess that's a good thing ;) I'm building a word puzzle game that has five levels, each with 30 puzzles. Currently, the user has to solve one puzzle at a time before moving to the next. However, I'm finding the user occasionally gets stuck on a puzzle, at which point they can no longer play until they solve it. This is obviously bad because many people will just quit playing the game and delete the app since they get frustrated and can't play any other puzzles until the current puzzle is solved. The only elegant solution I can find to helping the player get unstuck is changing the design of the game to allow the users to pick any puzzle to play at any time. This way, if they get stuck, they can come back to it later and at least they have other puzzles to play in the meantime. It's my opinion, however, that this new flow design doesn't make the game as fun as the original flow design where the player has to complete a puzzle before moving to the next. To me, it's like anything else, when you only have one of something, it's more enjoyable, but when you have 30 of something, it's far less enjoyable. In fact, when I present the user with 30 puzzles to choose from that they need to solve before unlocking the next level, it almost seems as tho I'm making them feel like it's work they have to do. I even had a tester voluntarily tell me that being forced to complete a puzzle before moving to the next is more motivating. My questions are... Do you agree/disagree? Do you have any suggestions for how I can help the player get unstuck? Thanks so much in advance for your thoughts! EDIT: I should mention that I've already considered a few other solutions to helping the user get unstuck, but none of them seem like good ideas. They are... Add more hints: Currently, the user gets two hints per puzzle. If I increase the hint count, it only makes the game more easy and still leaves the possibility of the user getting stuck. Add a "Show Solution" button: This seems like a bad idea because it's my opinion this takes the fun out of the game for many people who would probably otherwise solve the puzzle if they didn't have the quick option to see the solution.

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• SQL 2014 does data the way developers want

  - by Rob Farley

  A post I’ve been meaning to write for a while, good that it fits with this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Joey D’Antoni (@jdanton) Ever since I got into databases, I’ve been a fan. I studied Pure Maths at university (as well as Computer Science), and am very comfortable with Set Theory, which undergirds relational database concepts. But I’ve also spent a long time as a developer, and appreciate that that databases don’t exactly fit within the stuff I learned in my first year of uni, particularly the “Algorithms and Data Structures” subject, in which we studied concepts like linked lists. Writing in languages like C, we used pointers to quickly move around data, without a database in sight. Of course, if we had a power failure all this data was lost, as it was only persisted in RAM. Perhaps it’s why I’m a fan of database internals, of indexes, latches, execution plans, and so on – the developer in me wants to be reassured that we’re getting to the data as efficiently as possible. Back when SQL Server 2005 was approaching, one of the big stories was around CLR. Many were saying that T-SQL stored procedures would be a thing of the past because we now had CLR, and that obviously going to be much faster than using the abstracted T-SQL. Around the same time, we were seeing technologies like Linq-to-SQL produce poor T-SQL equivalents, and developers had had a gutful. They wanted to move away from T-SQL, having lost trust in it. I was never one of those developers, because I’d looked under the covers and knew that despite being abstracted, T-SQL was still a good way of getting to data. It worked for me, appealing to both my Set Theory side and my Developer side. CLR hasn’t exactly become the default option for stored procedures, although there are plenty of situations where it can be useful for getting faster performance. SQL Server 2014 is different though, through Hekaton – its In-Memory OLTP environment. When you create a table using Hekaton (that is, a memory-optimized one), the table you create is the kind of thing you’d’ve made as a developer. It creates code in C leveraging structs and pointers and arrays, which it compiles into fast code. When you insert data into it, it creates a new instance of a struct in memory, and adds it to an array. When the insert is committed, a small write is made to the transaction to make sure it’s durable, but none of the locking and latching behaviour that typifies transactional systems is needed. Indexes are done using hashes and using bw-trees (which avoid locking through the use of pointers) and by handling each updates as a delete-and-insert. This is data the way that developers do it when they’re coding for performance – the way I was taught at university before I learned about databases. Being done in C, it compiles to very quick code, and although these tables don’t support every feature that regular SQL tables do, this is still an excellent direction that has been taken. @rob_farley

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• Per-pixel collision detection - why does XNA transform matrix return NaN when adding scaling?

  - by JasperS

  I looked at the TransformCollision sample on MSDN and added the Matrix.CreateTranslation part to a property in my collision detection code but I wanted to add scaling. The code works fine when I leave scaling commented out but when I add it and then do a Matrix.Invert() on the created translation matrix the result is NaN ({NaN,NaN,NaN},{NaN,NaN,NaN},...) Can anyone tell me why this is happening please? Here's the code from the sample: // Build the block's transform Matrix blockTransform = Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(-blockOrigin, 0.0f)) * // Matrix.CreateScale(block.Scale) * would go here Matrix.CreateRotationZ(blocks[i].Rotation) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(blocks[i].Position, 0.0f)); public static bool IntersectPixels( Matrix transformA, int widthA, int heightA, Color[] dataA, Matrix transformB, int widthB, int heightB, Color[] dataB) { // Calculate a matrix which transforms from A's local space into // world space and then into B's local space Matrix transformAToB = transformA * Matrix.Invert(transformB); // When a point moves in A's local space, it moves in B's local space with a // fixed direction and distance proportional to the movement in A. // This algorithm steps through A one pixel at a time along A's X and Y axes // Calculate the analogous steps in B: Vector2 stepX = Vector2.TransformNormal(Vector2.UnitX, transformAToB); Vector2 stepY = Vector2.TransformNormal(Vector2.UnitY, transformAToB); // Calculate the top left corner of A in B's local space // This variable will be reused to keep track of the start of each row Vector2 yPosInB = Vector2.Transform(Vector2.Zero, transformAToB); // For each row of pixels in A for (int yA = 0; yA < heightA; yA++) { // Start at the beginning of the row Vector2 posInB = yPosInB; // For each pixel in this row for (int xA = 0; xA < widthA; xA++) { // Round to the nearest pixel int xB = (int)Math.Round(posInB.X); int yB = (int)Math.Round(posInB.Y); // If the pixel lies within the bounds of B if (0 <= xB && xB < widthB && 0 <= yB && yB < heightB) { // Get the colors of the overlapping pixels Color colorA = dataA[xA + yA * widthA]; Color colorB = dataB[xB + yB * widthB]; // If both pixels are not completely transparent, if (colorA.A != 0 && colorB.A != 0) { // then an intersection has been found return true; } } // Move to the next pixel in the row posInB += stepX; } // Move to the next row yPosInB += stepY; } // No intersection found return false; }

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• Profiling Startup Of VS2012 &ndash; Ants Profiler

  - by Alois Kraus

  I just downloaded ANTS Profiler 7.4 to check how fast it is and how deep I can analyze the startup of Visual Studio 2012. The Pro version which is useful does cost 445€ which is ok. To measure a complex system I decided to simply profile VS2012 (Update 1) on my older Intel 6600 2,4GHz with 3 GB RAM and a 32 bit Windows 7. Ants Profiler is really easy to use. So lets try it out. The Ants Profiler does want to start the profiled application by its own which seems to be rather common. I did choose Method Level timing of all managed methods. In the configuration menu I did want to get all call stacks to get full details. Once this is configured you are ready to go.   After that you can select the Method Grid to view Wall Clock Time in ms. I hate percentages which are on by default because I do want to look where absolute time is spent and not something else.   From the Method Grid I can drill down to see where time is spent in a nice and I can look at the decompiled methods where the time is spent. This does really look nice. But did you see the size of the scroll bar in the method grid? Although I wanted all call stacks I do get only about 4 pages of methods to drill down. From the scroll bar count I would guess that the profiler does show me about 150 methods for the complete VS startup. This is nonsense. I will never find a bottleneck in VS when I am presented only a fraction of the methods that were actually executed. I have also tried in the configuration window to also profile the extremely trivial functions but there was no noticeable difference. It seems that the Ants Profiler does filter away way too many details to be useful for bigger systems. If you want to optimize a CPU bound operation inside NUnit then Ants Profiler is with its line level timings a very nice tool to work with. But for bigger stuff it is certainly not usable. I also do not like that I must start the profiled application from the profiler UI. This makes it hard to profile processes which are started by some other process. Next: JetBrains dotTrace

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• Creating Corporate Windows Phone Applications

  - by Tim Murphy

  Most developers write Windows Phone applications for their own gratification and their own wallets.  While most of the time I would put myself in the same camp, I am also a consultant.  This means that I have corporate clients who want corporate solutions.  I recently got a request for a system rebuild that includes a Windows Phone component.  This brought up the questions of what are the important aspects to consider when building for this situation. Let’s break it down in to the points that are important to a company using a mobile application.  The company want to make sure that their proprietary software is safe from use by unauthorized users.  They also want to make sure that the data is secure on the device. The first point is a challenge.  There is no such thing as true private distribution in the Windows Phone ecosystem at this time.  What is available is the ability to specify you application for targeted distribution.  Even with targeted distribution you can’t ensure that only individuals within your organization will be able to load you application.  Because of this I am taking two additional steps.  The first is to register the phone’s DeviceUniqueId within your system.  Add a system sign-in and that should cover access to your application. The second half of the problem is securing the data on the phone.  This is where the ProtectedData API within the System.Security.Cryptography namespace comes in.  It allows you to encrypt your data before pushing it to isolated storage on the device. With the announcement of Windows Phone 8 coming this fall, many of these points will have different solutions.  Private signing and distribution of applications will be available.  We will also have native access to BitLocker.  When you combine these capabilities enterprise application development for Windows Phone will be much simpler.  Until then work with the above suggestions to develop your enterprise solutions. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone 7,Windows Phone,Corporate Deployment,Software Design,Mango,Targeted Applications,ProtectedData API,Windows Phone 8

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• Switch from back-end to front-end programming: I'm out of my comfort zone, should I switch back?

  - by ripper234

  I've been a backend developer for a long time, and I really swim in that field. C++/C#/Java, databases, NoSql, caching - I feel very much at ease around these platforms/concepts. In the past few years, I started to taste end-to-end web programming, and recently I decided to take a job offer in a front end team developing a large, complex product. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and become more of an "all around developer". Problem is, I'm getting more and more convinced I don't like it. Things I like about backend programming, and missing in frontend stuff: More interesting problems - When I compare designing a server that handle massive data, to adding another form to a page or changing the validation logic, I find the former a lot more interesting. Refactoring refactoring refactoring - I am addicted to Visual Studio with Resharper, or IntelliJ. I feel very comfortable writing code as it goes without investing too much thought, because I know that with a few clicks I can refactor it into beautiful code. To my knowledge, this doesn't exist at all in javascript. Intellisense and navigation - I hate looking at a bunch of JS code without instantly being able to know what it does. In VS/IntelliJ I can summon the documentation, navigate to the code, climb up inheritance hiererchies ... life is sweet. Auto-completion - Just hit Ctrl-Space on an object to see what you can do with it. Easier to test - With almost any backend feature, I can use TDD to capture the requirements, see a bunch of failing tests, then implement, knowing that if the tests pass I did my job well. With frontend, while tests can help a bit, I find that most of the testing is still manual - fire up that browser and verify the site didn't break. I miss that feeling of "A green CI means everything is well with the world." Now, I've only seriously practiced frontend development for about two months now, so this might seem premature ... but I'm getting a nagging feeling that I should abandon this quest and return to my comfort zone, because, well, it's so comfy and fun. Another point worth mentioning in this context is that while I am learning some frontend tools, a lot of what I'm learning is our company's specific infrastructure, which I'm not sure will be very useful later on in my career. Any suggestions or tips? Do you think I should give frontend programming "a proper chance" of at least six to twelve months before calling it quits? Could all my pains be growing pains, and will they magically disappear as I get more experienced? Or is gaining this perspective is valuable enough, even if plan to do more "backend stuff" later on, that it's worth grinding my teeth and continuing with my learning?

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• JavaOne 2012: Camel, Twitter, Coherence, Wicket and GlassFish

  - by Bruno.Borges

  Before joining Oracle as Product Manager for WebLogic and GlassFish for Latin America, at the beggining of this year I proposed two talks to JavaOne USA that I had been presenting in Brazil for quite a while. One of them I presented last year at ApacheCon in Vancouver, Canada as well in JavaOne Brazil. In June I got the news that they were accepted as Alternate Sessions. Surprisingly enough, few weeks later and at the same time I joined Oracle, I received the news that they were officially accepted and put on schedule. Tomorrow I'll be flying to San Francisco, to my first JavaOne in the United States, and I wanted to share with you what I'm going to present there. My two sessions are these ones: Wed, 10/03, 4:30pm - CON2989 Leverage Enterprise Integration Patterns with Apache Camel and TwitterOn this one, you will be introducted to the Apache Camel framework that I had been talking about in Brazil at conferences, before joining Oracle, and to a component I contributed to integrate with Twitter. Also, you will have a preview of a new component I've been working on to integrate Camel with the Oracle Coherence distributed cache. Thu, 10/04, 3:30pm - CON3395 How Scala, Wicket, and Java EE Can Improve Web DevelopmentThis one I've been working on for quite a while. It was based on an idea to have an architecture that could be as agile as frameworks and technologies such as Ruby on Rails, PHP or Python, for rapid web development. You will be introduced to the Apache Wicket framework, another Apache project I enjoy working with and gave lots of talks at Brazilian conferences, including JavaOne Brazil, JustJava, QCon SP, and The Developers Conference. You will also be introduced to the Scala language and how to create nice DSLs to boost productiveness. And last but not least, the Java EE 6 platform, that offers an awesome improvement from previous versions with its CDI, JPA, EJB3 and JAX-RS features for web development. Other events I will be participating during my stay in SF: Geeks Bike Ride GlassFish Community Event GlassFish and Friends Party    If you have any other event to suggest, please do suggest! It's my first JavaOne and I'm really looking forward to enjoying everything. See you guys in a few days!!

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• Nautilus ignores / misinterprets view size

  - by BlueZero4

  I noticed that a lot of my folders had suddenly switched to higher view sizes than I had specificied. I was assuming that somehow nautilus had suddenly decided to create per-folder entries for said folders with incorrect view sizes. So I found this question: How to reset all per-folder view settings in nautilus? I found the folder specified in the answer (~/.local/share/gvfs-metadata) and found that it was actually important to delete the files INSIDE the folder, because for some reason deleting the folder itself didn't work for some reason. After doing that, I discovered that the odd setting was for the default view settings, not for a handful of files. Nautilus actually handles the per-folder settings like it should, but it ignores the global folder settings. I want Nautilus to, by default, display all non-specified folders as compact view, 50%. My folders are using the compact setting like I want, but they are not down to 50%. At a guess, they are at 100%. Altering the view size of the icon view can set the compact view to 33%, but I'm not sure by what mechanism this functions. I haven't extensively tested the other view sizes because I don't plan on using them much at all. Next I looked up questions like How do I reset nautilus to the default configuration? I'm expecting the problem to be a corrupted config file or something of the sort, so I hunted down directories like ~/.nautilus, ~/.gconf/apps/nautilus, and ~/.gnome2/nautilus. (I don't have a ~/.nautilus directory, so I'm assuming that's only for older versions.) I attempted to remove the contents of each, but I can't seem to force Nautilus back to default configuration settings. Actually viewing Nautilus's preferences in GConf made the settings look like they were what I wanted them to be, which is odd. I'd like to force Nautilus to default settings, basically. Though if something else will fix it, I'll take it too. I'm not interested in doing a full uninstall, reinstall of Nautilus if I don't have to. ==EDIT1== Turns out that Nautilus just writes the settings in GConf for the heck of it. Nautilus only really uses the settings that it stores in DConf. I did gsettings reset-recursively org.gnome.nautilus, which actually did reset Nautilus to default, but it still doesn't like my view size settings.

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• New computer hangs on shutdown/reboot, how to troubleshoot?

  - by Torben Gundtofte-Bruun

  My system is working perfectly but it freezes during shutdown/reboot/suspend/hibernate: All windows and the menu bar disappear but the desktop wallpaper remains. It doesn't even show the shutdown screen (the one with the animated dots) where I could hit ESC and watch the shutdown console text. The system is brand-new and fully updated using Update Manager. How can I determine what is causing the freeze? Is there a log I can investigate? How can I fix this? I see no obvious cause of the freeze. The only USB attachment is a mouse/keyboard; I don't have any external storage attached; and I don't have any programs running (the machine freezes even when doing shutdown right from the login screen). What I've tried so far: Based on other questions (this, this, and this) that suggest some ACPI settings, I've tried sudo shutdown -h now to see whether the shutdown console text display offers any hints, but the system doesn't even get that far - it still freezes while the screen shown the desktop background image, without any toolbars. Only sudo shutdown --force works, but that's not a solution. Editing the grub menu to add acpi=off to the kernel didn't help. I guess there's not much point in trying the other (lesser) ACPI suggestions? Adding noapic to the grub entry had no discernible effect. Adding nolapic instead did something (I had removed the quiet option) - the system managed to continue further with the shutdown, right until the line Checking for running unattended-upgrades: which were the last characters on the screen. I've also checked the system BIOS, especially regarding power options, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Switching the BIOS standby setting from S3 to S1 didn't help. The standby setting can't be disabled, and there are no other ACPI-related settings AFAIK. BIOS reset didn't help. Not surprised; hadn't changed anything. I tried going to a virtual console (CtrlAltF1) as suggested by djeikyb and from there did a shutdown -h now and it froze there too, after this console output. I didn't try killing processes one at a time because I'm still too newbie to figure out how to do that. Booting with kernel 2.6.35.22 rather than 2.6.35.25 didn't help. Disabling the Nvidia drivers didn't help. Booting from Live CD (USB stick in fact) didn't help; it freezes the same way. Booting from Live CD, with acpi=off noapic nolapic didn't help either. Neither did just nolapic. So evidently this is not some custom setting in my install, but some sort of basic issue. MemTest competed in 1 hour without errors.

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• Managing accounts on a private website for a real-life community

  - by Smudge

  I'm looking at setting-up a walled-in website for a real-life community of people, and I was wondering if anyone has any experience with managing member accounts for this kind of thing. Some conditions that must be met: This community has a set list of real-life members, each of whom would be eligible for one account on the website. We don't expect or require that they all sign-up. It is purely opt-in, but we anticipate that many of them would be interested in the services we are setting up. Some of the community members emails are known, but some of them have fallen off the grid over the years, so ideally there would be a way for them to get back in touch with us through the public-facing side of the site. (And we'd want to manually verify the identity of anyone who does so). Their names are known, and for similar projects in the past we have assigned usernames derived from their real-life names. This time, however, we are open to other approaches, such as letting them specify their own username or getting rid of usernames entirely. The specific web technology we will use (e.g. Drupal, Joomla, etc) is not really our concern right now -- I am more interested in how this can be approached in the abstract. Our database already includes the full member roster, so we can email many of them generated links to a page where they can create an account. (And internally we can require that these accounts be paired with a known member). Should we have them specify their own usernames, or are we fine letting them use their registered email address to log-in? Are there any paradigms for walled-in community portals that help address security issues if, for example, one of their email accounts is compromised? We don't anticipate attempted break-ins being much of a threat, because nothing about this community is high-profile, but we do want to address security concerns. In addition, we want to make the sign-up process as painless for the members as possible, especially given the fact that we can't just make sign-ups open to anyone. I'm interested to hear your thoughts and suggestions! Thanks!

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• Top down space game control problem

  - by Phil

  As the title suggests I'm developing a top down space game. I'm not looking to use newtonian physics with the player controlled ship. I'm trying to achieve a control scheme somewhat similar to that of FlatSpace 2 (awesome game). I can't figure out how to achieve this feeling with keyboard controls as opposed to mouse controls though. Any suggestions? I'm using Unity3d and C# or javaScript (unityScript or whatever is the correct term) works fine if you want to drop some code examples. Edit: Of course I should describe FlatSpace 2's control scheme, sorry. You hold the mouse button down and move the mouse in the direction you want the ship to move in. But it's not the controls I don't know how to do but rather the feeling of a mix of driving a car and flying an aircraft. It's really well made. Youtube link: FlatSpace2 on iPhone I'm not developing an iPhone game but the video shows the principle of the movement style. Edit 2 As there seems to be a slight interest, I'll post the version of the code I've used to continue. It works good enough. Sometimes good enough is sufficient! using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class ShipMovement : MonoBehaviour { public float directionModifier; float shipRotationAngle; public float shipRotationSpeed = 0; public double thrustModifier; public double accelerationModifier; public double shipBaseAcceleration = 0; public Vector2 directionVector; public Vector2 accelerationVector = new Vector2(0,0); public Vector2 frictionVector = new Vector2(0,0); public int shipFriction = 0; public Vector2 shipSpeedVector; public Vector2 shipPositionVector; public Vector2 speedCap = new Vector2(0,0); void Update() { directionModifier = -Input.GetAxis("Horizontal"); shipRotationAngle += ( shipRotationSpeed * directionModifier ) * Time.deltaTime; thrustModifier = Input.GetAxis("Vertical"); accelerationModifier = ( ( shipBaseAcceleration * thrustModifier ) ) * Time.deltaTime; directionVector = new Vector2( Mathf.Cos(shipRotationAngle ), Mathf.Sin(shipRotationAngle) ); //accelerationVector = Vector2(directionVector.x * System.Convert.ToDouble(accelerationModifier), directionVector.y * System.Convert.ToDouble(accelerationModifier)); accelerationVector.x = directionVector.x * (float)accelerationModifier; accelerationVector.y = directionVector.y * (float)accelerationModifier; // Set friction based on how "floaty" controls you want shipSpeedVector.x *= 0.9f; //Use a variable here shipSpeedVector.y *= 0.9f; //<-- as well shipSpeedVector += accelerationVector; shipPositionVector += shipSpeedVector; gameObject.transform.position = new Vector3(shipPositionVector.x, 0, shipPositionVector.y); } }

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• SEO effects of intermix of WP blog, custom PHP site and FB app game

  - by melbournetechlover

  We're a melbourne tech company in the process of building a custom site in PHP. We plan to launch a "pre-launch" page which is also custom coded (CSS3 on twitter bootstrap framework + HTML5 front end and PHP back end). On that site will be a link to a blog - the idea behind this is to build up ranking for a variety of relevant keywords prior to the full site going live (given the majority of the site is a member only community anyway so the blog is really the main way we'll be able to execute on-site SEO. Ideally, we would like to install wordpress in a subdirectory on our servers and just customise the header to look the same as the landing page of the website. But some questions and concerns... Is there any detrimental effect on SEO efforts in having two separate systems (one custom PHP, the other an installation of wordpress) to manage the blog vs the rest of the site? Are there any benefits or detriments to installing on a sub domain such as blog.sitename.com vs. sitename.com/blog. My preference would be sitename.com/blog as it feels neater - but open to suggestions based on knowledge of Google preferences. Separately, we are building a Facebook app which is under another site name. Again because we are launching this app first, from an SEO perspective, would it actually be better to run it from a sub domain on the main site - e.g. gamename.mainsitename.com instead of on app.gamename.com? Currently we have it on app.gamename.com, but if there are SEO benefits to moving it to the other domain and server then we'll do it. Basically we don't want to have our SEO efforts divided - will Google algorithms prefer two sites heavily referring traffic, or is it better to focus our efforts on one. I guess that's the crux of the issue. But the other one is - does Google care about traffic accessing a page built for the Facebook app iFrame - does that count toward rankings? Sorry I hope these questions aren't too complex - but we're in the tech world every day and still can't seem to find a good answer to these ones...hence I'm taking to the forums!! Free beer for whoever can give me a solid answer!

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• Dual booting windows 8/ubuntu 12.04.2, Grub doesn't appear and machine never boot in ubuntu

  - by black sensei

  i got a new ACER predator AG3620-UR308 which came with windows 8, so i wanted to run ubuntu 12.04.2 on it as a dual booting. To be honest, i've been doing dual booting for a while now so, i did the right thing. the box came with 2TB HDD. so i made 4 partitions with a raw partition just after the windows installation partition I always do manual installation so even if ubuntu didn't detect windows 8, it was ok for me. So i created swap area and finished the installation etc....Grub was install on the only drive there which is sda. After reboot, grub doesn't even come up.So it always boot in windows 8. I did repeat the installation process twice and yield same result. which is weird because this method always works for me so far.Even the laptop am using to write this post is a dual booting windows 7/ mint nadia installed the same way. Is there anything new in windows 8 that i didn't make provision for? Before starting the installation, all i read about was that , windows 8 should be installed first and ubuntu after. I went ahead and disable secure boot from the BIOS and enabled CSM (don't even know what it means) according to Acer custhelp site . I boot from USB and did fdisk -l bellow is the result: ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted. Disk /dev/sda: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x8c361cb5 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 3907029167 1953514583+ ee GPT Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary. Disk /dev/sdb: 8178 MB, 8178892800 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 994 cylinders, total 15974400 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0006a87e Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 2048 15972351 7985152 b W95 FAT32 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ Can anybody shed some light? thank you in advance EDIT Hey, i just did another trial with 13.04 this time and still no luck. bios: secure-boot: disabled enable CSM : always 1-delete previous ubuntu partition and swap area partition.now having free space 2- used usb installer to prepare usb with ubuntu-13.04-desktop-amd64.iso 3- rebooted : liveusb didnt detect windows 8, used something else 4-created partition ext4 for / 5-created partition for swap-area 6- default grub path is /dev/sda and clicked install Acer always boots into windows.

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• Dual booting windows 8/ubuntu 12.04. Grub doesn't appear and machine never boot in ubuntu

  - by black sensei

  i got a new ACER predator AG3620-UR308 which came with windows 8, so i wanted to run ubuntu 12.04.2 on it as a dual booting. To be honest, i've been doing dual booting for a while now so, i did the right thing. the box came with 2TB HDD. so i made 4 partitions with a raw partition just after the windows installation partition I always do manual installation so even if ubuntu didn't detect windows 8, it was ok for me. So i created swap area and finished the installation etc....Grub was install on the only drive there which is sda. After reboot, grub doesn't even come up.So it always boot in windows 8. I did repeat the installation process twice and yield same result. which is weird because this method always works for me so far.Even the laptop am using to write this post is a dual booting windows 7/ mint nadia installed the same way. Is there anything new in windows 8 that i didn't make provision for? Before starting the installation, all i read about was that , windows 8 should be installed first and ubuntu after. I went ahead and disable secure boot from the BIOS and enabled CSM (don't even know what it means) according to Acer custhelp site . I boot from USB and did fdisk -l bellow is the result: ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted. Disk /dev/sda: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x8c361cb5 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 3907029167 1953514583+ ee GPT Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary. Disk /dev/sdb: 8178 MB, 8178892800 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 994 cylinders, total 15974400 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0006a87e Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 2048 15972351 7985152 b W95 FAT32 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ Can anybody shed some light? thank you in advance

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• Fuji camera "mounts" but folder not in Dolphin After Kubuntu 13.10 upgrade

  - by user207207

  Fuji camera mount reported in attached devices but not visible in Dolphin After Kubuntu 13.10 upgrade Have reinstalled the driver, and a few other suggestions, for other cameras mounts failing on previous Ubuntu upgrades. I have already spent a couple of hours trying to get my photo's off the camera, very annoying. Worked perfectly in 11.04, 11.10, 12.04, 12.10 and 13.04. dmesg | tail; lsusb; lsb_release -a [ 6181.858786] CPUM: APIC 03 at 00000000fee00000 (mapped at ffffc90009400000) - ver 0x80050010, lint0=0x10700 lint1=0x10400 pc=0x00400 thmr=0x10000 [17261.396236] CPUM: APIC 00 at 00000000fee00000 (mapped at ffffc90000c6a000) - ver 0x80050010, lint0=0x10700 lint1=0x00400 pc=0x00400 thmr=0x10000 [17261.396239] CPUM: APIC 03 at 00000000fee00000 (mapped at ffffc90000c72000) - ver 0x80050010, lint0=0x10700 lint1=0x10400 pc=0x00400 thmr=0x10000 [17261.396241] CPUM: APIC 02 at 00000000fee00000 (mapped at ffffc90000c70000) - ver 0x80050010, lint0=0x10700 lint1=0x10400 pc=0x00400 thmr=0x10000 [17261.396255] CPUM: APIC 01 at 00000000fee00000 (mapped at ffffc90000c6e000) - ver 0x80050010, lint0=0x10700 lint1=0x10400 pc=0x00400 thmr=0x10000 [32456.884907] usb 2-5: new high-speed USB device number 2 using ehci-pci [32457.654046] usb 2-5: New USB device found, idVendor=04cb, idProduct=01e8 [32457.654050] usb 2-5: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 [32457.654052] usb 2-5: Product: Digital Camera [32457.654053] usb 2-5: SerialNumber: 4C3230302020091117CAA59WP18548 Bus 002 Device 002: ID 04cb:01e8 Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 2013:024f PCTV Systems nanoStick T2 290e Bus 001 Device 002: ID 046d:082d Logitech, Inc. HD Pro Webcam C920 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu vissibleDescription: Ubuntu 13.10 Release: 13.10 Codename: saucy sudo apt-get install gvfs-bin gvfs-mount gphoto2://[usb:002,002] Error mounting location: Error initializing camera: -108: No such file or directory ...... I have reported a bug in Dolphin, which has been transferred to Solid. Further information : I ran solid-hardware list details udi = '/org/kde/solid/udev/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:04.1/usb2/2-5' parent = '/org/kde/solid/udev' (string) vendor = '04cb' (string) product = 'Digital Camera' (string) description = 'Camera' (string) Block.major = 189 (0xbd) (int) Block.minor = 137 (0x89) (int) Block.device = '/dev/bus/usb/002/010' (string) Camera.supportedProtocols = {'ptp'} (string list) Camera.supportedDrivers = {'gphoto'} (string list) I still can't get my photo's off, I can see the folders using the Gimp menu. If anyone has got any ideas, I'm willing to try them.

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• Documenting sp_ssiscatalog

  - by jamiet

  What is the best way to document an API? Moreover, what is the best way to document a T-SQL API? Before I try to answer those questions I should explain what I mean by “a T-SQL API”. I think of an API as being a collection of well-defined, known, code modules that provide some notion of a service to whomever uses it; in T-SQL terms I tend to think of a collection of stored procedures and functions as a form of API. Its a loose definition, I admit, and in SQL Server circles we don’t tend to think of stored procedures collectively as an API but if you think about it that’s exactly what they are. The question of how to document a T-SQL API came to my mind as I worked on sp_ssiscatalog. How could I make it easy for people to learn about the capabilities of sp_ssiscatalog without forcing them to dig through the code and find out for themselves? My opening gambit was to write documentation pages on the wiki at http://ssisreportingpack.codeplex.com. That’s kinda useful but it does suffer the disadvantage that someone using sp_ssiscatalog needs to go visit a webpage to read it – I want the documentation to be available wherever the user is using sp_ssiscatalog. Moreover, maintaining the wiki is a real PITA. Intellisense works up to a point, I guess: but that only shows whatever SQL Server knows about the various parameters, which isn’t all that much! I wanted a better way for my API users to learn about its capabilities and so I hit upon the idea of simply using PRINT statements within the code itself to inform the user what options are available; hence I added such PRINT statements in the latest check-in. Now when you execute (for example): EXEC sp_ssiscatalog @operation_type='execs' you can hit F6 a few times to view the messages pane and you shall see something like this: Notice that I’m returning information about all the parameters that can be used to affect the results that just got returned. I really do think this will be very useful to anyone using sp_ssiscatalog; I myself am always forgetting what the parameters are and I wrote the damn thing so I can’t really expect anyone else to remember them. I have not yet made available a release that has these changes in it but when I do I’ll blog about it right here. At the time of writing the latest available release of sp_ssiscatalog is DB v1.0.1.0 but if you want to the latest and greatest simply download it straight from source. Feedback is welcome as always. @Jamiet

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• What Is .recently-used.xbel and How Do I Delete It for Good?

  - by The Geek

  If you’re reading this article, you’ve probably noticed the .recently-used.xbel file in the root of your User folder, and you’re wondering why it keeps constantly coming back even though you repeatedly delete it. So What Is It? The quick answer is that it’s part of the GTK+ library used by a number of cross-platform applications, perhaps the most well-known of which is the Pidgin instant messenger client. As the name implies, the file is used to store a list of the most recently used files. In the case of Pidgin, this comes into play when you are transferring files over IM, and that’s when the file will appear again. Note: this is actually a known and reported bug in Pidgin, but sadly the developers aren’t terribly responsive when it comes to annoyances. Pidgin seems to go for long periods of time without any updates, but we still use it because it’s open-source, cross-platform, and works well. How Do I Get Rid of It? Unfortunately, there’s no way to easily get rid of it, apart from using a different application. If you need to transfer files over Pidgin, the file is going to re-appear… but there’s a quick workaround! The general idea is to set the file properties to Hidden and Read-only. You’d think you could just set it to Hidden and be done with it, but Pidgin will re-create the file every time, so instead we’re leaving the file there and preventing it from being accessed. You could also totally remove access through the Security tab if you wanted to, but this worked fine for me… as you can see, no more file in the folder. Of course, you can’t have the show hidden files and folders option turned on, or the file will continue to show up. Want to get really geeky? You can toggle hidden files with a shortcut key. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Hide Recently Used Documents/Programs From the Windows Vista Start MenuQuick Tip: Windows Vista Temp Files DirectoryDelete Wrong AutoComplete Entries in Windows Vista MailDisable Delete Confirmation Dialog in Windows 7 or VistaHow to Delete a System File in Windows 7 or Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily

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• TransportWithMessageCredential & Service Bus – Introduction

  - by Michael Stephenson

  Recently we have been working on a project using the Windows Azure Service Bus to expose line of business applications. One of the topics we discussed a lot was around the security aspects of the solution. Most of the samples you see for Windows Azure Service Bus often use the shared secret with the Access Control Service to protect the service bus endpoint but one of the problems we found was that with this scenario any claims resulting from credentials supplied by the client are not passed through to the service listening to the service bus endpoint. As an example of this we originally were hoping that we could give two different clients their own shared secret key and the issuer for each would indicate which client it was. If the claims had flown to the listening service then we could check that the message sent by client one was a type they are allowed to send. Unfortunately this claim isn't flown to the listening service so we were unable to implement this scenario. We had also seen samples that talk about changing the relayClientAuthenticationType attribute would allow you to authenticate the client within the service itself rather than with ACS. While this was interesting it wasn't exactly what we wanted. By removing the step where access to the Relay endpoint is protected by authentication against ACS it means that anyone could send messages via the service bus to the on-premise listening service which would then authenticate clients. In our scenario we certainly didn't want to allow clients to skip the ACS authentication step because this could open up two attack opportunities for an attacker. The first of these would allow an attacker to send messages through to our on-premise servers and potentially cause a denial of service situation. The second case would be with the same kind of attack by running lots of messages through service bus which were then rejected the attacker would be causing us to incur charges per message on our Windows Azure account. The correct way to implement our desired scenario is to combine one of the common options for authenticating against ACS so the service bus endpoint cannot be accessed by an unauthenticated caller with the normal WCF security features using the TransportWithMessageCredential security option. Looking around I could not find any guidance on how to implement this correctly so on the back of setting this up I decided to write a couple of articles to walk through a couple of the common scenarios you may be interested in. These are available on the following links: Walkthrough - Combining shared secret and username token Walkthrough – Combining shared secret and certificates

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• Weird appearance for a 3D XNA ground

  - by Belos

  I wanted to add a ground so I can know the position of a helicopter in the world. But the ground appeared in a weird way: http://i.stack.imgur.com/yTSuW.jpg The ground had the following texture: http://i.stack.imgur.com/pdpxB.png EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to post the code: public class ImportModel { public Vector3 Position { get; set; } public Vector3 Rotation { get; set; } public Vector3 Scale { get; set; } Model Model; Matrix[] modeltransforms; GraphicsDevice GraphicDevice; ContentManager Content; BoundingSphere sphere; bool boundingimplemented = false; public ImportModel(string model, GraphicsDevice gd, ContentManager cm, Vector3 position, Vector3 rot, Vector3 sca) { GraphicDevice = gd; Content = cm; Position = position; Rotation = rot; Scale = sca; Model = Content.Load<Model>(model); modeltransforms = new Matrix[Model.Bones.Count]; Model.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(modeltransforms); } public void Draw(Camera camera) { Matrix baseworld = Matrix.CreateScale(Scale) * Matrix.CreateFromYawPitchRoll(Rotation.Y, Rotation.X, Rotation.Z) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(Position); foreach (ModelMesh mesh in Model.Meshes) { Matrix localworld = modeltransforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index] * baseworld; foreach (ModelMeshPart meshpart in mesh.MeshParts) { BasicEffect effect = (BasicEffect)meshpart.Effect; effect.World = localworld; effect.View = camera.View; effect.Projection = camera.Projection; effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); } mesh.Draw(); } } public BoundingSphere BoundingSphere { get { if (!boundingimplemented) { foreach (ModelMesh mesh in Model.Meshes) { BoundingSphere transformed = mesh.BoundingSphere.Transform( modeltransforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index]); sphere = BoundingSphere.CreateMerged(sphere, transformed); } Matrix worldTransform = Matrix.CreateScale(Scale) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(Position); BoundingSphere transforme = sphere; transforme = transforme.Transform(worldTransform); return transforme; } else { Matrix worldTransform = Matrix.CreateScale(Scale) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(Position); BoundingSphere transformed = sphere; transformed = transformed.Transform(worldTransform); return transformed; } } } } Then I call the class from the Game1 class: ImportModel ground = new ImportModel("ground", GraphicsDevice, Content, Vector3.Zero, Vector3.Zero, new Vector3(20f)); EDIT2:This is how the scene looks from top: i.stack.imgur.com/Hs983.jpg

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• Rendering Texture Quad to Screen or FBO (OpenGL ES)

  - by Usman.3D

  I need to render the texture on the iOS device's screen or a render-to-texture frame buffer object. But it does not show any texture. It's all black. (I am loading texture with image myself for testing purpose) //Load texture data UIImage *image=[UIImage imageNamed:@"textureImage.png"]; GLuint width = FRAME_WIDTH; GLuint height = FRAME_HEIGHT; //Create context void *imageData = malloc(height * width * 4); CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB(); CGContextRef context = CGBitmapContextCreate(imageData, width, height, 8, 4 * width, colorSpace, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast | kCGBitmapByteOrder32Big); CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace); //Prepare image CGContextClearRect(context, CGRectMake(0, 0, width, height)); CGContextDrawImage(context, CGRectMake(0, 0, width, height), image.CGImage); glGenTextures(1, &texture); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGBA, width, height, 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, imageData); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); Simple Texture Quad drawing code mentioned here //Bind Texture, Bind render-to-texture FBO and then draw the quad const float quadPositions[] = { 1.0, 1.0, 0.0, -1.0, 1.0, 0.0, -1.0, -1.0, 0.0, -1.0, -1.0, 0.0, 1.0, -1.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0 }; const float quadTexcoords[] = { 1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0 }; // stop using VBO glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, 0); // setup buffer offsets glVertexAttribPointer(ATTRIB_VERTEX, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 3*sizeof(float), quadPositions); glVertexAttribPointer(ATTRIB_TEXCOORD0, 2, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 2*sizeof(float), quadTexcoords); // ensure the proper arrays are enabled glEnableVertexAttribArray(ATTRIB_VERTEX); glEnableVertexAttribArray(ATTRIB_TEXCOORD0); //Bind Texture and render-to-texture FBO. glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GLid); //Actually wanted to render it to render-to-texture FBO, but now testing directly on default FBO. //glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, textureFBO[pixelBuffernum]); // draw glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, 0, 2*3); What am I doing wrong in this code? P.S. I'm not familiar with shaders yet, so it is difficult for me to make use of them right now.

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• All hail the Excel Queen

  - by Tim Dexter

  An excellent question this past week from dear ol Blighty; actually from Brian at Nextgen Clearing Ltd in the big smoke (London). Brian was developing an excel template and wanted to be able to reference the data fields multiple times inside the Excel template. Damn good question and I of course has some wacky solutions, from macros and cell referencing in Excel to pre-processing the data with an XSL stylesheet to copy the data multiple times so it could be referenced multiple times. All completely outlandish, enter our Queen of Excel, Shirley from the development team. Shirley is singlehandedly responsible for the Excel templates, I put her through six months of hell a few years back, with a host of Excel template requirements. She was more than up to the challenge and has developed some great features. One of those, is the ability to use the hidden XDO_METADATA sheet to map the data to custom named fields so they can be used multiple times in the template. So simple and very neat! Excel template and regular Excel users will know that you can only use the naming function once ie the names have to be unique across the workbook so you can not reuse a cell/group name. To get around this you can just come up with as many cell names as you want and map them in the XDO_METADATA sheet to the data columns/fields in your XML data set:. For example: XDO_?DEPTNO_SUMMARY?  <?DEPTNO?> XDO_?DNAME_SUMMARY?  <?DNAME?> XDO_GROUP_?G_D_DETAIL? <xsl:for-each-group select=".//G_D" group-by="./DEPTNO"> XDO_?DEPTNO_DETAIL? <?DEPTNO?> As you can see DEPTNO has been referenced twice and mapped to different named values in the left hand column. These values can then be used to name individual cells in the Excel template. You'll also notice a mix of Publisher <? ...?> and native XSL commands. So the world is your oyster on the mapping and the complexity you might need for calculations or string manipulation. Shirley has kindly built out a sample Excel template, data and result here so you can see how it all hangs together. the XDO_METADATA sheet is hidden, just right click on the sheet names and use the Unhide command to show it.

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• TechEd 2010 Day Three: The Database Designer (Isn't)

  - by BuckWoody

  Yesterday at TechEd 2010 here in New Orleans I worked the front-booth, answering general SQL Server questions for the masses. I was actually a little surprised to find most of the questions I got were from folks that wanted to know more about Stream Insight and Master Data Services. In past conferences I've been asked a lot of "free consulting" questions, about problems folks have had from older products. I don't mind that a bit - in fact, I'm always happy to help in any way I can. But this time people are really interested in the new features in the product, and I like that they are thinking ahead, not just having to solve problems in production. My presentation was on "Database Design in an Hour". We had the usual fun, and SideShow Bob made an appearance - I kid you not. The guy in the back of the room looked just like Sideshow Bob, so I quickly held a "bes thair" contest, and he won. Duing the presentation, I explain the tools you can use to design databases. I also explain that the "Database Designer" tool in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) isn't truly a desinger - it uses non-standard notation, doesn't have a meta-data dictionary, and worst of all, it works at the physical level. In other words, whatever you do in SSMS will automatically change the field/table/relationship structures in the database. We fixed this in SSMS 2008 and higher by adding an option to block that, but the tool is not a good design function nonetheless. To be fair, no one I know of at Microsoft recommends that it is - but I was shocked to hear so many developers in the room defending it as a good tool. I think the main issue for someone who doesn't have to work with Relational Systems a great deal is that it can be difficult to figure out Foreign Keys. The syntax makes them look "backwards", so it's just easier to grab a field and place it on the table you want to point to. There are options. You can download a couple of free tools (CA has a community edition of ER-WIN, Quest has one, and Embarcadero also has one) and if you design more than one or two databases a year, it may be worth buying a true design tool. For years I used Visio, but we changed it so that it doesn't forward-engineer (create the DDL) any more, so it isn't a true design tool either. So investigate those free and not-so-free tools. You'll find they help you in your job - but stay away from the Database Designer in SSMS. Or I'll send Sideshow Bob over there to straighten you out. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• How do you conquer the challenge of designing for large screen real-estate?

  - by Berin Loritsch

  This question is a bit more subjective, but I'm hoping to get some new perspective. I'm so used to designing for a certain screen size (typically 1024x768) that I find that size to not be a problem. Expanding the size to 1280x1024 doesn't buy you enough screen real estate to make an appreciable difference, but will give me a little more breathing room. Basically, I just expand my "grid size" and the same basic design for the slightly smaller screen still works. However, in the last couple of projects my clients were all using 1080p (1920x1080) screens and they wanted solutions to use as much of that real estate as possible. 1920 pixels across provides just under twice the width I am used to, and the wide screen makes some of my old go to design approaches not to work as well. The problem I'm running into is that when presented with so much space, I'm confronted with some major problems. How many columns should I use? The wide format lends itself to a 3 column split with a 2:1:1 split (i.e. the content column bigger than the other two). However, if I go with three columns what do I do with that extra column? How do I make efficient use of the screen real estate? There's a temptation to put everything on the screen at once, but too much information actually makes the application harder to use. White space is important to help make sense of complex information, but too much makes related concepts look too separate. I'm usually working with web applications that have complex data, and visualization and presentation is key to making sense of the raw data. When your user also has a large screen (at least 24"), some information is out of eye sight and you need to move the pointer a long distance. How do you make sure everything that's needed stays within the visual hot points? Simple sites like blogs actually do better when the width is constrained, which results in a lot of wasted real estate. I kind of wonder if having the text box and the text preview side by side would be a big benefit for the admin side of that type of screen? (1:1 two column split). For your answers, I know almost everything in design is "it depends". What I'm looking for is: General principles you use How your approach to design has changed I'm finding that i have to retrain myself how to work with this different format. Every bump in resolution I've worked through to date has been about 25%: 640 to 800 (25% increase), 800 to 1024 (28% increase), and 1024 to 1280 (25% increase). However, the jump from 1280 to 1920 is a good 50% increase in space--the equivalent from jumping from 640 straight to 1024. There was no commonly used middle size to help learn lessons more gradually.

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• June 2013 release of SSDT contains a minor bug that you should be aware of

  - by jamiet

  I have discovered what seems, to me, like a bug in the June 2013 release of SSDT and given the problems that it created yesterday on my current gig I thought it prudent to write this blog post to inform people of it. I’ve built a very simple SSDT project to reproduce the problem that has just two tables, [Table1] and [Table2], and also a procedure [Procedure1]: The two tables have exactly the same definition, both a have a single column called [Id] of type integer. CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Table1] (     [Id] INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY ) My stored procedure simply joins the two together, orders them by the column used in the join predicate, and returns the results: CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[Procedure1] AS     SELECT t1.*     FROM    Table1 t1     INNER JOIN Table2 t2         ON    t1.Id = t2.Id     ORDER BY Id Now if I create those three objects manually and then execute the stored procedure, it works fine: So we know that the code works. Unfortunately, SSDT thinks that there is an error here: The text of that error is: Procedure: [dbo].[Procedure1] contains an unresolved reference to an object. Either the object does not exist or the reference is ambiguous because it could refer to any of the following objects: [dbo].[Table1].[Id] or [dbo].[Table2].[Id]. Its complaining that the [Id] field in the ORDER BY clause is ambiguous. Now you may well be thinking at this point “OK, just stick a table alias into the ORDER BY predicate and everything will be fine!” Well that’s true, but there’s a bigger problem here. One of the developers at my current client installed this drop of SSDT and all of a sudden all the builds started failing on his machine – he had errors left right and centre because, as it transpires, we have a fair bit of code that exhibits this scenario.  Worse, previous installations of SSDT do not flag this code as erroneous and therein lies the rub. We immediately had a mass panic where we had to run around the department to our developers (of which there are many) ensuring that none of them should upgrade their SSDT installation if they wanted to carry on being productive for the rest of the day. Also bear in mind that as soon as a new drop of SSDT comes out then the previous version is instantly unavailable so rolling back is going to be impossible unless you have created an administrative install of SSDT for that previous version. Just thought you should know! In the grand schema of things this isn’t a big deal as the bug can be worked around with a simple code modification but forewarned is forearmed so they say! Last thing to say, if you want to know which version of SSDT you are running check my blog post Which version of SSDT Database Projects do I have installed? @Jamiet

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