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  • How is covariance cooler than polymorphism...and not redundant?

    - by P.Brian.Mackey
    .NET 4 introduces covariance. I guess it is useful. After all, MS went through all the trouble of adding it to the C# language. But, why is Covariance more useful than good old polymorphism? I wrote this example to understand why I should implement Covariance, but I still don't get it. Please enlighten me. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; namespace Sample { class Demo { public delegate void ContraAction<in T>(T a); public interface IContainer<out T> { T GetItem(); void Do(ContraAction<T> action); } public class Container<T> : IContainer<T> { private T item; public Container(T item) { this.item = item; } public T GetItem() { return item; } public void Do(ContraAction<T> action) { action(item); } } public class Shape { public void Draw() { Console.WriteLine("Shape Drawn"); } } public class Circle:Shape { public void DrawCircle() { Console.WriteLine("Circle Drawn"); } } public static void Main() { Circle circle = new Circle(); IContainer<Shape> container = new Container<Circle>(circle); container.Do(s => s.Draw());//calls shape //Old school polymorphism...how is this not the same thing? Shape shape = new Circle(); shape.Draw(); } } }

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  • How can I avoid garbage collection delays in Java games? (Best Practices)

    - by Brian
    I'm performance tuning interactive games in Java for the Android platform. Once in a while there is a hiccup in drawing and interaction for garbage collection. Usually it's less than one tenth of a second, but sometimes it can be as large as 200ms on very slow devices. I am using the ddms profiler (part of the Android SDK) to search out where my memory allocations come from and excise them from my inner drawing and logic loops. The worst offender had been short loops done like, for(GameObject gob : interactiveObjects) gob.onDraw(canvas); where every single time the loop was executed there was an iterator allocated. I'm using arrays (ArrayList) for my objects now. If I ever want trees or hashes in an inner loop I know that I need to be careful or even reimplement them instead of using the Java Collections framework since I can't afford the extra garbage collection. That may come up when I'm looking at priority queues. I also have trouble where I want to display scores and progress using Canvas.drawText. This is bad, canvas.drawText("Your score is: " + Score.points, x, y, paint); because Strings, char arrays and StringBuffers will be allocated all over to make it work. If you have a few text display items and run the frame 60 times a second that begins to add up and will increase your garbage collection hiccups. I think the best choice here is to keep char[] arrays and decode your int or double manually into it and concatenate strings onto the beginning and end. I'd like to hear if there's something cleaner. I know there must be others out there dealing with this. How do you handle it and what are the pitfalls and best practices you've discovered to run interactively on Java or Android? These gc issues are enough to make me miss manual memory management, but not very much.

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  • generating an objectForKey from an array

    - by Brian
    I'm having success when I use this code to get a string from an array of file names called "fileList": cell.timeBeganLabel.text = [[[self.fileList objectAtIndex:[indexPath row]] lastPathComponent] stringByDeletingPathExtension]; so I expected the same code to generate the same string as a key for me in this: NSDictionary *stats = [thisRecordingsStats objectForKey:[[[self.fileList objectAtIndex:[indexPath row]] lastPathComponent] stringByDeletingPathExtension]]; cell.durationLabel.text = [stats objectForKey:@"duration"]; or this: NSDictionary *stats = [thisRecordingsStats objectForKey:@"%@",[[[self.fileList objectAtIndex:[indexPath row]] lastPathComponent] stringByDeletingPathExtension]]; Both build without error, and the log shows my data is there: but I'm getting a blank UILabel. Have I not written the dynamic key generator correctly?

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  • Pass entire $_POST variable to popup

    - by Brian
    I have a PHP webpage that takes which accepts a rather large POST array. I have a button on the page that opens a PHP popup window. Is there a convenient way to pass the entire $_POST array to the popup? Edit: It is an entirely different page. I open it with JavaScript: window.open

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  • Problem building relationships between models

    - by Brian Roisentul
    Until now, I've been using acts_as_taggable_on plugin for tagging announcements. That plugin creates the following tables: taggings: relates tags and announcements table(for the tagged item, it has a field called taggable_id, which I rename to "announcement_id" for what I'll explain below). tags: has the tag ids and names. The other day, I discovered that I had no way of getting the announcements tagged with a certain tag, but doing Announcement.tagged_with(tag_name), and I don't want to search by name, but for id. So, as I'm using almost nothing of the functionality in that plugin, I decided to create the models for taggings and tags tables, to accomplish this: Announcement.tags. The models' relationships look as following: class Tagging < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :announcement belongs_to :tag end class Tag < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :announcements, :through => :taggings end class Announcement < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :tags, :through => :taggings Why can't I execute the command Announcement.tags? Because when I try, I get undefined method `tags'

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  • JQUERY - how to get updated value after ajax removes data from within it?

    - by Brian
    I have a an element with thumbnails. I allow users to sort their display order (which fires off an update to the DB via ajax). I also allow them to delete images (which, after deletion, fires off a request to update the display order for all remaining images). My problem is with binding or live I think, but I don't know where to apply it. The array fired off upon delete contains ALL the ids for the images that were there on page load. The issue is that after they delete an image the array STILL contains the original ids (including the one that was deleted) so it is obviously not refreshing the value of the element after ajax has removed things from inside it. I need to tell it to go get the refreshed contents... From what I have been reading, this is normal but I don't understand how to tie it into my routine. I need to trigger the mass re-ordering after any deletion. Any ideas gurus? $('a.delimg').click(function(){ var parent = $(this).parent().parent(); var id = $(this).attr('id'); $.ajax({ type: "POST", url: "../updateImages.php", data: "action=delete&id=" + id, beforeSend: function() { parent.animate({'backgroundColor':'#fb6c6c'},300); $.jnotify("<strong>Deleting This Image & Updating The Image Order</strong>", 5000); }, success: function(data) { parent.slideUp(300,function() { parent.remove(); $("#images ul").sortable(function() { //NEEDS TO GET THE UPDATED CONTENT var order = $(this).sortable("serialize") + '&action=updateRecordsListings'; $.post("../updateImages.php", order, function(theResponse){ $.jnotify("<strong>" + theResponse + "</strong>", 2000); }); }); }); } }); return false; }); Thanks for any help you can be.

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  • Feed char array into stdin

    - by Brian Lindsey
    I am writing a parser for a mini scripting language. Some of my grammar rules require jumping to a different location in the file to obtain information. There doesn't seem to be a straightforward way to accomplish this. So, I was thinking about loading my data files into a char array array and parsing line by line. This will allow me to jump all over the array with ease. My question is, is it possible to feed char arrays (i.e. char *) into stdin, so I can easily invoke the yyparse() function as needed.

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  • geb StaleElementReferenceException

    - by Brian Mortenson
    I have just started using geb with webdriver for automating testing. As I understand it, when I define content on a page, the page element should be looked up each time I invoke a content definition. //In the content block of SomeModule, which is part of a moduleList on the page: itemLoaded { waitFor{ !loading.displayed } } loading { $('.loading') } //in the page definition moduleItems {index -> moduleList SomeModule, $("#module-list > .item"), index} //in a test on this page def item = moduleItems(someIndex) assert item.itemLoaded So in this code, I think $('.loading') should be called repeatedly, to find the element on the page by its selector, within the context of the module's base element. Yet I sometimes get a StaleElementReference exception at this point. As far as I can tell, the element does not get removed from the page, but even if it does, that should not produce this exception unless $ is doing some caching behind the scenes, but if that were the case it would cause all sorts of other problems. Can someone help me understand what's happening here? Why is it possible to get a StaleElementReferenceException while looking up an element? A pointer to relevant documentation or geb source code would be useful as well.

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  • C Struct as an argument

    - by Brian
    I'm wondering what's the difference between sample1 and sample2. Why sometimes I have to pass the struct as an argument and sometimes I can do it without passing it in the function? and how would it be if samplex function needs several structs to work with? would you pass several structs as an argument? struct x { int a; int b; char *c; }; void sample1(struct x **z;){ printf(" first member is %d \n", z[0]->a); } void sample2(){ struct x **z; printf(" first member is %d \n", z[0]->a); // seg fault } int main(void) { struct x **z; sample1(z); sample2(); return 0; }

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  • Which of these queries is more efficient?

    - by Brian
    Which of these queries are more efficient? select 1 as newAndClosed from sysibm.sysdummy1 where exists ( select 1 from items where new = 1 ) and not exists ( select 1 from status where open = 1 ) select 1 as newAndClosed from items where new = 1 and not exists ( select 1 from status where open = 1 )

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  • Why is this removing all elements from my LinkedList?

    - by Brian
    Why is my remove method removing every element from my Doubly Linked List? If I take out that if/else statements then I can successfully remove middle elements, but elements at the head or tail of the list still remain. However, I added the if/else statements to take care of elements at the head and tail, unfortunately this method now removes every element in my list. What am I do wrong? public void remove(int n) { LinkEntry<E> remove_this = new LinkEntry<E>(); //if nothing comes before remove_this, set the head to equal the element after remove_this if (remove_this.previous == null) head = remove_this.next; //otherwise set the element before remove_this equal to the element after remove_this else remove_this.previous.next = remove_this.next; //if nothing comes after remove_this, set the tail equal to the element before remove_this if (remove_this.next == null) tail = remove_this.previous; //otherwise set the next element's previous pointer to the element before remove_this else remove_this.next.previous = remove_this.previous; //if remove_this is located in the middle of the list, enter this loop until it is //found, then remove it, closing the gap afterwards. int i = 0; for (remove_this = head; remove_this != null; remove_this = remove_this.next) { //if i == n, stop and delete 'remove_this' from the list if (i == n) { //set the previous element's next to the element that comes after remove_this remove_this.previous.next = remove_this.next; //set the element after remove_this' previous pointer to the element before remove_this remove_this.next.previous = remove_this.previous; break; } //if i != n, keep iterating through the list i++; } }

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  • Pin Control in HCS12

    - by Brian Lindsey
    A HCS12 microcontroller I had to buy for a class I had recently taken has 40 pins on the back side of it. The class was merely about computer organization, and so unfortunately, we never had a chance to cover all the capabilities of the chip itself. Now that the class is over, I have been thinking about using the to familiarize myself with the assembly language. I haven't found any sources that cover pin control and was wondering if anyone could possibly provide me with a hands-on pin tutorial.

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  • Missing the Rails gem. Please `gem install -v=2.3.4 rails`

    - by Brian Roisentul
    I was trying to fix this error and I ended up with a new one. I have installed ruby 1.8.6, but using Built-in JRuby 1.4.0 for my app. Everything was working fine until I updated every gem(as specified by the answer I got from that link) and everything crashed: ever since I tried to start the app I received the following error message: Missing the Rails 2.3.4 gem. Please gem install -v=2.3.4 rails, update your RAILS_GEM_VERSION setting in config/environment.rb for the Rails version you do have installed, or comment out RAILS_GEM_VERSION to use the latest version installed. Then, I tried to uninstall the updates(to v2.3.8, most of them), so the last version is 2.3.4. In my config/environment.rb file I have this: RAILS_GEM_VERSION = '2.3.4' unless defined? RAILS_GEM_VERSION so I guess everything is as I left it before the update. The question is....why do I keep getting the error and I can't start the app?

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  • AsyncTask not do onPostExecute()

    - by brian
    I write a AsyncTask as below: class Load extends AsyncTask<String, String, String> { @Override protected void onPreExecute() { super.onPreExecute(); } @Override protected String doInBackground(String... aurl) { //do job seconds //stop at here, and does not run onPostExecute } @Override protected void onPostExecute(String unused) { super.onPostExecute(unused); wait = false; new Load().execute(); } } And the other method as below: public void click() { new Load().execute(); while(wait) { ; } } The wait is a global boolean value.

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  • Activity Indicator not displaying based on whether the UIWebView is loading or not...

    - by Jack W-H
    Hi folks Sorry if this is an easy one. Basically, here is my code: MainViewController.h: // // MainViewController.h // Site // // Created by Jack Webb-Heller on 19/03/2010. // Copyright __MyCompanyName__ 2010. All rights reserved. // #import "FlipsideViewController.h" @interface MainViewController : UIViewController <UIWebViewDelegate, FlipsideViewControllerDelegate> { IBOutlet UIWebView *webView; IBOutlet UIActivityIndicatorView *spinner; } - (IBAction)showInfo; @property(nonatomic,retain) UIWebView *webView; @property(nonatomic,retain) UIActivityIndicatorView *spinner; @end MainViewController.m: // // MainViewController.m // Site // // Created by Jack Webb-Heller on 19/03/2010. // Copyright __MyCompanyName__ 2010. All rights reserved. // #import "MainViewController.h" #import "MainView.h" @implementation MainViewController @synthesize webView; @synthesize spinner; - (id)initWithNibName:(NSString *)nibNameOrNil bundle:(NSBundle *)nibBundleOrNil { if (self = [super initWithNibName:nibNameOrNil bundle:nibBundleOrNil]) { // Custom initialization } return self; } // Implement viewDidLoad to do additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib. - (void)viewDidLoad { NSURL *siteURL; NSString *siteURLString; siteURLString=[[NSString alloc] initWithString:@"http://www.site.com"]; siteURL=[[NSURL alloc] initWithString:siteURLString]; [webView loadRequest:[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:siteURL]]; [siteURL release]; [siteURLString release]; [super viewDidLoad]; } - (void)flipsideViewControllerDidFinish:(FlipsideViewController *)controller { [self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES]; } - (void)webViewDidFinishLoad:(UIWebView *)webView { [spinner stopAnimating]; spinner.hidden=FALSE; NSLog(@"viewDidFinishLoad went through nicely"); } - (void)webViewDidStartLoad:(UIWebView *)webView { [spinner startAnimating]; spinner.hidden=FALSE; NSLog(@"viewDidStartLoad seems to be working"); } - (IBAction)showInfo { FlipsideViewController *controller = [[FlipsideViewController alloc] initWithNibName:@"FlipsideView" bundle:nil]; controller.delegate = self; controller.modalTransitionStyle = UIModalTransitionStyleFlipHorizontal; [self presentModalViewController:controller animated:YES]; [controller release]; } - (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning { // Releases the view if it doesn't have a superview. [super didReceiveMemoryWarning]; // Release any cached data, images, etc that aren't in use. } - (void)viewDidUnload { // Release any retained subviews of the main view. // e.g. self.myOutlet = nil; } - (void)dealloc { [spinner release]; [webView release]; [super dealloc]; } @end Unfortunately nothing is ever written to my log, and for some reason the Activity Indicator never seems to appear. What's going wrong here? Thanks folks Jack

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  • How to setup assembly for WebApplication ?

    - by nCdy
    I need to use App_Code or have an assembly for my application to setup my custom section type in Web.config. I worked with Web Site and there it was configured by default and now I want to transfer project to Webb Application project. so How to setup assembly for WebApplication ? thank you.

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  • how to send sms from web app with twilio in java

    - by user2614804
    Hi I'm new to Twilio and want to know how How to send an SMS from a GAE web app with Twilio using JAVA ? I've executed the example on their website as Java app and it works. https://www.twilio.com/docs/quickstart/java/sms/sending-via-rest When I want to make the same in a Java Google App Engine app, it don't and it display a message ("The method GET is not supported") Can someone share a step by step tutorial on how to make my Java GAE webb app to send SMSes please ? Thanks

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  • The Internet of Things & Commerce: Part 3 -- Interview with Kristen J. Flanagan, Commerce Product Management

    - by Katrina Gosek, Director | Commerce Product Strategy-Oracle
    Internet of Things & Commerce Series: Part 3 (of 3) And now for the final installment my three part series on the Internet of Things & Commerce. Post one, “The Next 7,000 Days”, introduced the idea of the Internet of Things, followed by a second post interviewing one of our chief commerce innovation strategists, Brian Celenza.  This final post in the series is an interview with Kristen J. Flanagan, lead product manager for Oracle Commerce omnichannel strategy. She takes us through the past, present, and future of how our Commerce Solution is re-imagining the way physical and digital shopping come together. ------- QUESTION: It’s your job to stay on top of what our customers’ need to not only run their online businesses effectively, but also to make sure they have product capabilities they can innovate and grow on. What key trend has been top-of-mind for you and our customers around this collision of physical and digital shopping? Kristen: I’ll agree with Brian Celenza that hands down mobile has forced a major disruption in shopping and selling behavior. A few years ago, mobile exploded at a pace I don't think anyone was expecting. Early on, we saw our customers scrambling to establish a mobile presence---mostly through "screen scraping" technologies. As smartphones continued to advance (at lightening speed!), our customers started to investigate ways to truly tap in to their eCommerce capabilities to deliver the mobile experience. They started looking to us for a means of using the eCommerce services and capabilities to deliver a mobile experience that is tailored for mobile rather than the desktop experience on a smaller screen. In the future, I think we'll see customers starting to really understand what their shoppers need and expect from a mobile offering and how they can adapt their content and delivery of that content to meet those needs. And, mobile shopping doesn’t stop at the consumer / buyer. Because the in-store experience is compelling and has advantages that digital just can't offer, we're also starting to see the eCommerce services being leveraged for mobile for in-store sales associates. Brick-and-mortar retailers are interested in putting the omnichannel product catalog, promotions, and cart into the hands of knowledgeable associates. Retailers are now looking to connect and harness the eCommerce data in-store so that shoppers have a reason to walk-in. I think we'll be seeing a lot more customers thinking about melding the in-store and digital experiences to present a richer offering for shoppers.    QUESTION: What are some examples of what our customers are doing currently to bring these concepts to reality? Kristen: Well, without question, connecting digital and brick-and-mortar worlds is becoming tablestakes for selling experiences. If a brand has a foot in both worlds (i.e., isn’t a pureplay online retailer), they have to connect the dots because shoppers – whether consumers or B2B buyers –don't think in clearly defined channels anymore. The expectation is connectedness – for on- and offline experiences, promotions, products, and customer data. What does this mean practically for businesses selling goods on- and offline? It touches a lot of systems: inventory info on the eCommerce site, fulfillment options across channels (buy online/pickup in store), order information (representing various channels for a cohesive view of shopper order history), promotions across digital and store, etc.  A few years ago, the main link between store and digital was the smartphone. We all remember when “apps” became a thing and many of our customers were scrambling to get a native app out there. Now we're seeing more strategic thinking around the benefits of mobile web vs. native and how that ties in to the purpose and role of mobile within the digital channel. Put it more broadly, how these pieces fit together in the overall brand puzzle.  The same could be said for “showrooming.” Where it was a major concern (i.e., shoppers using stores to look at merchandise and then order online from Amazon), in recent months, it’s emerged that the inverse is now becoming a a reality as well. "Webrooming" (using digital sites to do research before making a purchase in the store) is a new behavior pure play retailers are challenged with. There are many technologies, behaviors, and information that need to tie together to offer a holistic omnichannel shopping experience. As a result, brands are looking for ways to connect the digital and in-store experiences to bridge the gaps: shared assortments across channels, assisted selling apps that arm associates with information about shoppers, shared promotions, inventory, etc. QUESTION: How has Oracle Commerce been built to help brands make the link between in-store and digital over the last few years? Kristen: Over the last seven years, the product has been in step with the changes in industry needs. Here is a brief history of the evolution: Prior to Oracle’s acquisition of ATG and Endeca, key investments were made to cross-channel functionality that we are still building on today. Commerce Service Center (v2007.1) ATG introduced the Commerce Service Center in 2007.1 and marked the first entry into what was then called “cross-channel.” The Commerce Service Center is a call-center-agent-facing application that enables agents to see shopper orders, online catalog, promotions, and pricing. It is tightly integrated with the eCommerce capabilities of the platform and commerce engine and provided a means of connecting data from the call center and online channels.  REST services framework (v9.1)  In v9.1 we introduced the REST services framework and interface in the Platform that enabled customers to use ATG web services in other applications. This framework has become the basis for our subsequent omni-channel features and functionality. Multisite Architecture (v10) With the v10 release, we introduced the Multisite Architecture, which enabled customers to manage multiple sites (and channels) within a single instance of the BCC. Customers could create site- and channel-specific catalogs, promotions, targeters, and scenarios. Endeca Page Builder (2.x) / Experience Manager (3.x) With the introduction of Endeca for Mobile (now part of the core platform, available through the reference store – see blow) on top of Page Builder (and then eventually Experience Manager), Endeca gave business users the tools to create and manage native and mobile web applications. And since the acquisition of both ATG (2011) and Endeca (2012), Oracle Commerce has leveraged the best of each leading technology’s capabilities for omnichannel commerce to continue to drive innovation for our customers. Service enablement of core Oracle Commerce capabilities (v10.1.1, 10.2, & 11) After the establishment of the REST services framework and interface, we followed up in subsequent releases with service enablement of core Oracle Commerce capabilities throughout the iOS native app and the enablement of the core Commerce Service Center features. The result is that customers can leverage these services for their integrations with other systems, as well as their omnichannel initiatives.  Mobile web reference application (v10.1) In 10.1 we introduced the shopper-facing mobile reference application that showed how to use Oracle Commerce to deliver a mobile web experience for shoppers. This included the use of Experience Manager and cartridges to drive those experiences on select pages.  Native (iOS) reference application (v10.1.1)  We came out with the 10.1.1 shopper-facing native iOS ref app that illustrated how to use the Commerce REST services to deliver an iOS app. Also included Experience Manager-driven pages.   Assisted Selling reference application (v10.2.1)  The Assisted Selling reference application is our first reference application designed for the in-store associate. This iOS app shows customers how they can use Oracle Commerce data and information to provide a high-touch, consultative sales environment as well as to put the endless aisle into hands of their associates. Shoppers can start a cart online, and in-store associates can access that cart via the application to provide more information or add products and then transact using the ATG engine. Support for Retail promotions (v11) As part of the v11 release, we worked with teams in the Oracle Retail Global Business Unit (RGBU) to assess which promotion types and capabilities are supported across our products. Those products included Oracle Commerce, Oracle Point of Service (ORPOS), and Oracle Retail Price Management (RPM). The result is that customers can now more easily support omnichannel use cases between the store and digital.  Making sure Oracle Commerce can help support the omnichannel needs of our customers is core to our product strategy. With 89% of consumers now use two or more channels to make a single purchase, ensuring that cross-channel interactions are linked is critical to a great customer experience – and to sales. As Oracle Commerce evolves, we want to make it simple for organizations to create, deliver, and scale experiences across touchpoints with our create once, deploy commerce anywhere framework. We have a flexible, services-oriented architecture that allows data, content, catalogs, cart, experiences, personalization, and merchandising to be shared across touchpoints and easily extended in to new environments like mobile, social, in-store, Call Center, and new Websites. [For the latest downloads and Oracle Commerce documentation, please visit the Oracle Technical Network.] ------ Thank you to both Brian and Kristen for their contributions and to this blog series and their continued thought leadership for Oracle Commerce. We are all looking forward to the coming years of months of new shopping behaviors and opportunities to innovate. Because – if the digital fabric of our everyday lives continues to change at the same pace – the next five years (that just under 2,000 days), will be dramatic. ---------- THIS DOCUMENT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND MAY NOT BE INCORPORATED INTO A CONTRACT OR AGREEMENT

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  • Exploring the Excel Services REST API

    - by jamiet
    Over the last few years Analysis Services guru Chris Webb and I have been on something of a crusade to enable better access to data that is locked up in countless Excel workbooks that litter the hard drives of enterprise PCs. The most prominent manifestation of that crusade up to now has been a forum thread that Chris began on Microsoft Answers entitled Excel Web App API? Chris began that thread with: I was wondering whether there was an API for the Excel Web App? Specifically, I was wondering if it was possible (or if it will be possible in the future) to expose data in a spreadsheet in the Excel Web App as an OData feed, in the way that it is possible with Excel Services? Up to recently the last 10 words of that paragraph "in the way that it is possible with Excel Services" had completely washed over me however a comment on my recent blog post Thoughts on ExcelMashup.com (and a rant) by Josh Booker in which Josh said: Excel Services is a service application built for sharepoint 2010 which exposes a REST API for excel documents. We're looking forward to pros like you giving it a try now that Office365 makes sharepoint more easily accessible.  Can't wait for your future blog about using REST API to load data from Excel on Offce 365 in SSIS. made me think that perhaps the Excel Services REST API is something I should be looking into and indeed that is what I have been doing over the past few days. And you know what? I'm rather impressed with some of what Excel Services' REST API has to offer. Unfortunately Excel Services' REST API also has one debilitating aspect that renders this blog post much less useful than it otherwise would be; namely that it is not publicly available from the Excel Web App on SkyDrive. Therefore all I can do in this blog post is show you screenshots of what the REST API provides in Sharepoint rather than linking you directly to those REST resources; that's a great shame because one of the benefits of a REST API is that it is easily and ubiquitously demonstrable from a web browser. Instead I am hosting a workbook on Sharepoint in Office 365 because that does include Excel Services' REST API but, again, all I can do is show you screenshots. N.B. If anyone out there knows how to make Office-365-hosted spreadsheets publicly-accessible (i.e. without requiring a username/password) please do let me know (because knowing which forum on which to ask the question is an exercise in futility). In order to demonstrate Excel Services' REST API I needed some decent data and for that I used the World Tourism Organization Statistics Database and Yearbook - United Nations World Tourism Organization dataset hosted on Azure Datamarket (its free, by the way); this dataset "provides comprehensive information on international tourism worldwide and offers a selection of the latest available statistics on international tourist arrivals, tourism receipts and expenditure" and you can explore the data for yourself here. If you want to play along at home by viewing the data as it exists in Excel then it can be viewed here. Let's dive in.   The root of Excel Services' REST API is the model resource which resides at: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model Note that this is true for every workbook hosted in a Sharepoint document library - each Excel workbook is a RESTful resource. (Update: Mark Stacey on Twitter tells me that "It's turned off by default in onpremise Sharepoint (1 tickbox to turn on though)". Thanks Mark!) The data is provided as an ATOM feed but I have Firefox's feed reading ability turned on so you don't see the underlying XML goo. As you can see there are four top level resources, Ranges, Charts, Tables and PivotTables; exploring one of those resources is where things get interesting. Let's take a look at the Tables Resource: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables Our workbook contains only one table, called ‘Table1’ (to reiterate, you can explore this table yourself here). Viewing that table via the REST API is pretty easy, we simply append the name of the table onto our previous URI: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables('Table1') As you can see, that quite simply gives us a representation of the data in that table. What you cannot see from this screenshot is that this is pure HTML that is being served up; that is all well and good but actually we can do more interesting things. If we specify that the data should be returned not as HTML but as: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables('Table1')?$format=image then that data comes back as a pure image and can be used in any web page where you would ordinarily use images. This is the thing that I really like about Excel Services’ REST API – we can embed an image in any web page but instead of being a copy of the data, that image is actually live – if the underlying data in the workbook were to change then hitting refresh will show a new image. Pretty cool, no? The same is true of any Charts or Pivot Tables in your workbook - those can be embedded as images too and if the underlying data changes, boom, the image in your web page changes too. There is a lot of data in the workbook so the image returned by that previous URI is too large to show here so instead let’s take a look at a different resource, this time a range: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Ranges('Data!A1|C15') That URI returns cells A1 to C15 from a worksheet called “Data”: And if we ask for that as an image again: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Ranges('Data!A1|C15')?$format=image Were this image resource not behind a username/password then this would be a live image of the data in the workbook as opposed to one that I had to copy and upload elsewhere. Nonetheless I hope this little wrinkle doesn't detract from the inate value of what I am trying to articulate here; that an existing image in a web page can be changed on-the-fly simply by inserting some data into an Excel workbook. I for one think that that is very cool indeed! I think that's enough in the way of demo for now as this shows what is possible using Excel Services' REST API. Of course, not all features work quite how I would like and here is a bulleted list of some of my more negative feedback: The URIs are pig-ugly. Are "_vti_bin" & "ExcelRest.aspx" really necessary as part of the URI? Would this not be better: http://server/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/Model/Tables(‘Table1’) That URI provides the necessary addressability and is a lot easier to remember. Discoverability of these resources is not easy, we essentially have to handcrank a URI ourselves. Take the example of embedding a chart into a blog post - would it not be better if I could browse first through the document library to an Excel workbook and THEN through the workbook to the chart/range/table that I am interested in? Call it a wizard if you like. That would be really cool and would, I am sure, promote this feature and cut down on the copy-and-paste disease that the REST API is meant to alleviate. The resources that I demonstrated can be returned as feeds as well as images or HTML simply by changing the format parameter to ?$format=atom however for some inexplicable reason they don't return OData and no-one on the Excel Services team can tell me why (believe me, I have asked). $format is an OData parameter however other useful parameters such as $top and $filter are not supported. It would be nice if they were. Although I haven't demonstrated it here Excel Services' REST API does provide a makeshift way of altering the data by changing the value of specific cells however what it does not allow you to do is add new data into the workbook. Google Docs allows this and was one of the motivating factors for Chris Webb's forum post that I linked to above. None of this works for Excel workbooks hosted on SkyDrive This blog post is as long as it needs to be for a short introduction so I'll stop now. If you want to know more than I recommend checking out a few links: Excel Services REST API documentation on MSDNSo what does REST on Excel Services look like??? by Shahar PrishExcel Services in SharePoint 2010 REST API Syntax by Christian Stich. Any thoughts? Let's hear them in the comments section below! @Jamiet 

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  • Exploring the Excel Services REST API

    - by jamiet
    Over the last few years Analysis Services guru Chris Webb and I have been on something of a crusade to enable better access to data that is locked up in countless Excel workbooks that litter the hard drives of enterprise PCs. The most prominent manifestation of that crusade up to now has been a forum thread that Chris began on Microsoft Answers entitled Excel Web App API? Chris began that thread with: I was wondering whether there was an API for the Excel Web App? Specifically, I was wondering if it was possible (or if it will be possible in the future) to expose data in a spreadsheet in the Excel Web App as an OData feed, in the way that it is possible with Excel Services? Up to recently the last 10 words of that paragraph "in the way that it is possible with Excel Services" had completely washed over me however a comment on my recent blog post Thoughts on ExcelMashup.com (and a rant) by Josh Booker in which Josh said: Excel Services is a service application built for sharepoint 2010 which exposes a REST API for excel documents. We're looking forward to pros like you giving it a try now that Office365 makes sharepoint more easily accessible.  Can't wait for your future blog about using REST API to load data from Excel on Offce 365 in SSIS. made me think that perhaps the Excel Services REST API is something I should be looking into and indeed that is what I have been doing over the past few days. And you know what? I'm rather impressed with some of what Excel Services' REST API has to offer. Unfortunately Excel Services' REST API also has one debilitating aspect that renders this blog post much less useful than it otherwise would be; namely that it is not publicly available from the Excel Web App on SkyDrive. Therefore all I can do in this blog post is show you screenshots of what the REST API provides in Sharepoint rather than linking you directly to those REST resources; that's a great shame because one of the benefits of a REST API is that it is easily and ubiquitously demonstrable from a web browser. Instead I am hosting a workbook on Sharepoint in Office 365 because that does include Excel Services' REST API but, again, all I can do is show you screenshots. N.B. If anyone out there knows how to make Office-365-hosted spreadsheets publicly-accessible (i.e. without requiring a username/password) please do let me know (because knowing which forum on which to ask the question is an exercise in futility). In order to demonstrate Excel Services' REST API I needed some decent data and for that I used the World Tourism Organization Statistics Database and Yearbook - United Nations World Tourism Organization dataset hosted on Azure Datamarket (its free, by the way); this dataset "provides comprehensive information on international tourism worldwide and offers a selection of the latest available statistics on international tourist arrivals, tourism receipts and expenditure" and you can explore the data for yourself here. If you want to play along at home by viewing the data as it exists in Excel then it can be viewed here. Let's dive in.   The root of Excel Services' REST API is the model resource which resides at: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model Note that this is true for every workbook hosted in a Sharepoint document library - each Excel workbook is a RESTful resource. (Update: Mark Stacey on Twitter tells me that "It's turned off by default in onpremise Sharepoint (1 tickbox to turn on though)". Thanks Mark!) The data is provided as an ATOM feed but I have Firefox's feed reading ability turned on so you don't see the underlying XML goo. As you can see there are four top level resources, Ranges, Charts, Tables and PivotTables; exploring one of those resources is where things get interesting. Let's take a look at the Tables Resource: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables Our workbook contains only one table, called ‘Table1’ (to reiterate, you can explore this table yourself here). Viewing that table via the REST API is pretty easy, we simply append the name of the table onto our previous URI: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables('Table1') As you can see, that quite simply gives us a representation of the data in that table. What you cannot see from this screenshot is that this is pure HTML that is being served up; that is all well and good but actually we can do more interesting things. If we specify that the data should be returned not as HTML but as: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables('Table1')?$format=image then that data comes back as a pure image and can be used in any web page where you would ordinarily use images. This is the thing that I really like about Excel Services’ REST API – we can embed an image in any web page but instead of being a copy of the data, that image is actually live – if the underlying data in the workbook were to change then hitting refresh will show a new image. Pretty cool, no? The same is true of any Charts or Pivot Tables in your workbook - those can be embedded as images too and if the underlying data changes, boom, the image in your web page changes too. There is a lot of data in the workbook so the image returned by that previous URI is too large to show here so instead let’s take a look at a different resource, this time a range: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Ranges('Data!A1|C15') That URI returns cells A1 to C15 from a worksheet called “Data”: And if we ask for that as an image again: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Ranges('Data!A1|C15')?$format=image Were this image resource not behind a username/password then this would be a live image of the data in the workbook as opposed to one that I had to copy and upload elsewhere. Nonetheless I hope this little wrinkle doesn't detract from the inate value of what I am trying to articulate here; that an existing image in a web page can be changed on-the-fly simply by inserting some data into an Excel workbook. I for one think that that is very cool indeed! I think that's enough in the way of demo for now as this shows what is possible using Excel Services' REST API. Of course, not all features work quite how I would like and here is a bulleted list of some of my more negative feedback: The URIs are pig-ugly. Are "_vti_bin" & "ExcelRest.aspx" really necessary as part of the URI? Would this not be better: http://server/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/Model/Tables(‘Table1’) That URI provides the necessary addressability and is a lot easier to remember. Discoverability of these resources is not easy, we essentially have to handcrank a URI ourselves. Take the example of embedding a chart into a blog post - would it not be better if I could browse first through the document library to an Excel workbook and THEN through the workbook to the chart/range/table that I am interested in? Call it a wizard if you like. That would be really cool and would, I am sure, promote this feature and cut down on the copy-and-paste disease that the REST API is meant to alleviate. The resources that I demonstrated can be returned as feeds as well as images or HTML simply by changing the format parameter to ?$format=atom however for some inexplicable reason they don't return OData and no-one on the Excel Services team can tell me why (believe me, I have asked). $format is an OData parameter however other useful parameters such as $top and $filter are not supported. It would be nice if they were. Although I haven't demonstrated it here Excel Services' REST API does provide a makeshift way of altering the data by changing the value of specific cells however what it does not allow you to do is add new data into the workbook. Google Docs allows this and was one of the motivating factors for Chris Webb's forum post that I linked to above. None of this works for Excel workbooks hosted on SkyDrive This blog post is as long as it needs to be for a short introduction so I'll stop now. If you want to know more than I recommend checking out a few links: Excel Services REST API documentation on MSDNSo what does REST on Excel Services look like??? by Shahar PrishExcel Services in SharePoint 2010 REST API Syntax by Christian Stich. Any thoughts? Let's hear them in the comments section below! @Jamiet 

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  • The dislikes of TDD

    - by andrewstopford
    I enjoy debates about TDD and Brian Harrys blog post is no exception. Brian sounds out what he likes and dislikes about TDD and it's the dislikes I'll focus on. The idea of having unit tests that cover virtually every line of code that I’ve written that I have to refactor every time I refactor my code makes me shudder.  Doing this way makes me take nearly twice as long as it would otherwise take and I don’t feel like I get sufficient benefits from it. Refactoring your tests to match your refactored code sounds like the tests are suffering. Too many hard dependencies with no SOLID concerns are a sure fire reason you would do this. Maybe at the start of a TDD cycle you would need to do this as your design evolves and you remove these dependencies but this should quickly be resolved as you refactor. If you find your self still doing it then stop and look back at your design. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of unit tests.  I just prefer to write them after the code has stopped shaking a bit.  In fact most of my early testing is “manual”.  Either I write a small UI on top of my service that allows me to plug in values and try it or write some quick API tests that I throw away as soon as I have validated them. The problem with this is that a UI can make assumptions on your code that then just unit test around and very quickly the design becomes bad and you technical debt sweeps in. If you want to blackbox test your code with a UI then do so after your TDD cycles not before. This is probably by biggest issue with a literal TDD interpretation.  TDD says you never write a line of code without a failing test to show you need it.  I find it leads developers down a dangerous path.  Without any help from a methodology, I have met way too many developers in my life that “back into a solution”.  By this, I mean they write something, it mostly works and they discover a new requirement so they tack it on, and another and another and when they are done, they’ve got a monstrosity of special cases each designed to handle one specific scenario.  There’s way more code than there should be and it’s way too complicated to understand. I believe in finding general solutions to problems from which all the special cases naturally derive rather than building a solution of special cases.  In my mind, to do this, you have to start by conceptualizing and coding the framework of the general algorithm.  For me, that’s a relatively monolithic exercise. TDD is an development pratice not a methodology, the danger is that the solution becomes a mass of different things that violate DRY. TDD won't solve these problems, only good communication and practices like pairing will help. Above all else an assumption that TDD replaces a methodology is a mistake, combine it with what ever works for your team\business but only good communication will help. A good naming scheme\structure for folders, files and tests can help you and your team isolate what tests are for what.

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  • Silverlight Cream for May 15, 2010 -- #862

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Victor Gaudioso, Antoni Dol(-2-), Brian Genisio, Shawn Wildermuth, Mike Snow, Phil Middlemiss, Pete Brown, Kirupa, Dan Wahlin, Glenn Block, Jeff Prosise, Anoop Madhusudanan, and Adam Kinney. Shoutouts: Victor Gaudioso would like you to Checkout my Interview with Microsoft’s Murray Gordon at MIX 10 Pete Brown announced: Connected Show Podcast #29 With … Me! From SilverlightCream.com: New Silverlight Video Tutorial: How to Create Fast Forward for the MediaElement Victor Gaudioso's latest video tutorial is on creating the ability to fast-forward a MediaElement... check it out in the tutorial player itself! Overlapping TabItems with the Silverlight Toolkit TabControl Antoni Dol has a very cool tutorial up on the Toolkit TabItems control... not only is he overlapping them quite nicely but this is a very cool tutorial... QuoteFloat: Animating TextBlock PlaneProjections for a spiraling effect in Silverlight Antoni Dol also has a Blend tutorial up on animating TextBlock items... run the demo and you'll want to read the rest :) Adventures in MVVM – My ViewModel Base – Silverlight Support! Brian Genisio continues his MVVM tutorials with this update on his ViewModel base using some new C# 4.0 features, and fully supports Silverlight and WPF My Thoughts on the Windows Phone 7 Shawn Wildermuth gives his take on WP7. He included a port of his XBoxGames app to WP7 ... thanks Shawn! Silverlight Tip of the Day #20 – Using Tooltips in Silverlight I figured Mike Snow was going to overrun me with tips since I have missed a couple days, but there's only one! ... and it's on Tooltips. Animating the Silverlight opacity mask Phil Middlemiss has an article at SilverZine describing a Behavior he wrote (and is sharing) that turns a FrameworkElement into an opacity mask for it's parent container... cool demo on the page too. Breaking Apart the Margin Property in Xaml for better Binding Pete Brown dug in on a Twitter message and put some thoughts down about breaking a Margin apart to see about binding to the individual elements. Building a Simple Windows Phone App Kirupa has a 6-part tutorial up on building not-your-typical first WP7 application... all good stuff! Integrating HTML into Silverlight Applications Dan Wahlin has a post up discussing three ways to display HTML inside a Silverlight app. Hello MEF in Silverlight 4 and VB! (with an MVVM Light cameo) Glenn Block has a post up discussing MEF, MVVM, and it's in VB this time... and it's actually a great tutorial top to bottom... all source included of course :) Understanding Input Scope in Silverlight for Windows Phone Jeff Prosise has a good post up on the WP7 SIP and how to set the proper InputScope to get the SIP you want. Thinking about Silverlight ‘desktop’ apps – Creating a Standalone Installer for offline installation (no browser) Anoop Madhusudanan is discussing something that's been floating around for a while... installing Silverlight from, say, a CD or DVD when someone installs your app. He's got some good code, but be sure to read Tim Heuer and Scott Guthrie's comments, and consider digging deeper into that part. Using FluidMoveBehavior to animate grid coordinates in Silverlight Adam Kinney has a cool post up on animating an object using the FluidMotionBehavior of Blend 4... looks great moving across a checkerboard... check out the demo, then grab the code. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Travelling MVP #4: DevReach 2012

    - by DigiMortal
    Our next stop after Varna was Sofia where DevReach happens. DevReach is one of my favorite conferences in Europe because of sensible prices and strong speakers line-up. Also they have VIP-party after conference and this is good event to meet people you don’t see every day, have some discussion with speakers and find new friends. Our trip from Varna to Sofia took about 6.5 hours on bus. As I was tired from last evening it wasn’t problem for me as I slept half the trip. After smoking pause in Velike Tarnovo I watched movies from bus TV. We had supper later in city center Happy’s – place with good meat dishes and nice service. And next day it begun…. :) DevReach 2012 DevReach is held usually in Arena Mladost. It’s near airport and Telerik office. The event is organized by local MVP Martin Kulov together with Telerik. Two days of sessions with strong speakers is good reason enough for me to go to visit some event. Some topics covered by sessions: Windows 8 development web development SharePoint Windows Azure Windows Phone architecture Visual Studio Practically everybody can find some interesting session in every time slot. As the Arena is not huge it is very easy to go from one sessions to another if selected session for time slot is not what you expected. On the second floor of Arena there are many places where you can eat. There are simple chunk-food places like Burger King and also some restaurants. If you are hungry you will find something for your taste for sure. Also you can buy beer if it is too hot outside :) Weather was very good for October – practically Estonian summer – 25C and over. Sessions I visited Here is the list of sessions I visited at DevReach 2012: DevReach 2012 Opening & Welcome Messsage with Martin Kulov and Stephen Forte Principled N-Tier Solution Design with Steve Smith Data Patterns for the Cloud with Brian Randell .NET Garbage Collection Performance Tips with Sasha Goldshtein Building Secured, Scalable, Low-latency Web Applications with the Windows Azure Platform with Ido Flatow It’s a Knockout! MVVM Style Web Applications with Charles Nurse Web Application Architecture – Lessons Learned from Adobe Brackets with Brian Rinaldi Demystifying Visual Studio 2012 Performance Tools with Martin Kulov SPvNext – A Look At All the Exciting And New Features In SharePoint with Sahil Malik Portable Libraries – Why You Should Care with Lino Tadros I missed some sessions because of some death march projects that are going and that I have to coordinate but it was not big loss as I had time to walk around in session venue neighborhood and see Sofia Business Park. Next year again! I will be there again next year and hopefully more guys from Estonia will join me. I think it’s good idea to take short vacation for DevReach time and do things like we did this time – Bucharest, Varna, Sofia. It’s only good idea to plan some more free time so we are not very much in hurry and also we have no work stuff to do on the trip. This far this trip has been one of best trips I have organized and I will go and meet all those guys in this region again! :)

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