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• Linking LLVM JIT Code to Static LLVM Libraries?

  - by inflector

  I'm in the process of implementing a cross-platform (Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux) application which will do lots of CPU intensive analysis of financial data. The bulk of the analysis engine will be written in C++ for speed reasons, with a user-accessible scripting engine interfacing with the C++ testing engine. I want to write several scripting front-ends over time to emulate other popular software with existing large user bases. The first front will be a VisualBasic-like scripting language. I'm thinking that LLVM would be perfect for my needs. Performance is very important because of the sheer amount of data; it can take hours or days to run a single run of tests to get an answer. I believe that using LLVM will also allow me to use a single back-end solution while I implement different front-ends for different flavors of the scripting language over time. The testing engine itself will be separated from the interface and testing will even take place in a separate process with progress and results being reported to the testing management interface. Tests will consist of scripting code integrated with the testing engine code. In a previous implementation of a similar commercial testing system I wrote, I built a fast interpreter which easily interfaced with the testing library because it was written in C++ and linked directly to the testing engine library. Callbacks from scripting code to testing library objects involved translating between the formats with significant overhead. I'm imagining that with LLVM, I could implement the callbacks into C++ directly so that I could make the scripting code work almost as if it had been written in C++. Likewise, if all the code was compiled to LLVM byte-code format, it seems like the LLVM optimizers could optimize across the boundaries between the scripting language and the testing engine code that was written in C++. I don't want to have to compile the testing engine every time. Ideally, I'd like to JIT compile only the scripting code. For small tests, I'd skip some optimization passes, while for large tests, I'd perform full optimizations during the link. So is this possible? Can I precompile the testing engine to a .o object file or .a library file and then link in the scripting code using the JIT? Finally, ideally, I'd like to have the scripting code implement specific methods as subclasses for a specific C++ class. So the C++ testing engine would only see C++ objects while the JIT setup code compiled scripting code that implemented some of the methods for the objects. It seems that if I used the right name mangling algorithm it would be relatively easy to set up the LLVM generation for the scripting language to look like a C++ method call which could then be linked into the testing engine. Thus the linking stage would go in two directions, calls from the scripting language into the testing engine objects to retrieve pricing information and test state information and calls from the testing engine of methods of some particular C++ objects where the code was supplied not from C++ but from the scripting language. In summary: 1) Can I link in precompiled (either .bc, .o, or .a) files as part of the JIT compilation, code-generation process? 2) Can I link in code using that the process in 1) above in such a way that I am able to create code that acts as if it was all written in C++?

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• What precautions should you take when a senior employee leaves?

  - by Mahin

  EDIT : I agree one should check the reasons, why a senior level employee is leaving. But I am interested in knowing the official/management/technical/legal steps one should take after its decided that he is leaving, so that the life after him is smooth. What are the steps management should take when a senior programmer/team lead leaves your company. Some of them which I have thought about are : 1) If He used to manage hosting and domains stuff, change passwords of domain control panels and hosting panels. 2) If your published web sites have maintenance account and he is aware of credentials of that account then change this details also. 3) Suspend mail account for some time and forward all eMails of that account to some ex-employee account. After some time close that account. What are the other things one should check. I am expecting the answer to be a general check list one should follow. It should include both technical scenarios and management scenarios. Notable Suggestions so far : Effectively transfer the responsibilities of that employee to another one without causing any potential delay in your work. Protect your source code. If possible Make them to sign something to say that they don't have copies of source code.. You can also consider NDA here. Use the Notice Period to train his replacement. Now any new code to the project will be done by replacement with the help of Guy who is leaving. Ask him to create a document of things he thinks you should know. Make sure he checks everything in now and then any checkout will only be done by the replacement. Emails, copy off his email account to a pst.file (this assumes Outlook), Make this file available to his replacement. the employee should probably be given a chance to scrub the email. if you are going to keep his account open for whatever reason, check that no rules are created that forward incoming emails to an alternate address. Copy the hard drive of his computer to a network location and have someone senior go through and see if there are any files (drafts of performance reviews or other sensitive issues ) on it that someone else might need. Clearance from Accounts,Finance,Security,Library etc departments.Obtain all company property, laptops, keys, etc. If there is no reason not to, you should reward a departing person for their many years of service. Write them letters of recommendation (even if they already have a new job lined up).Say goodbye, and keep the door open. Make sure any outside clients know that the departing employee is not their main contact anymore. Never neglect the exit interview/debriefing. Confirm the last day of employment so that there is no misunderstanding Inform H/R if the employee is on H1B status, there is paperwork required to notify the government when an H1B employee leaves. Depending on how senior / what position, you might spend some time convincing him not to take the rest of the engineering staff with him. Make sure he spends his last days on a good note, because if he is not leaving on a good note, he can easily pollute the mind of his colleagues. Best Regards, Mahin Gupta EDIT : Now offered a bounty on it to get more detailed responses and practical suggestions.

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• Oracle data warehouse design - fact table acting as a dimension?

  - by Elizabeth

  THANKS: Both answers here are very helpful, but I could only pick one. I really appreciate the advice! our datawarehouse will be used more for workflow reports than traditional analytical reports. Our users care about "current picture" far more than history. (though history matters, too.) We are a government entity that does not have costs or related calculations. Mostly just counts of people within given locations and with related history. We are using Oracle, and I have found distinct advantage in using the star join whenever possible and would like to rearchitect everything to as closely resemble the star schema as is reasonable for our business uses. Speed in this DW is vital, and a number of tests have already proven the star schema approach to me. Our "person" table is key - it contains over 4 million records and will be the most frequently used source in queries. It can be seen at the center of a star with multiple dimensions (like age, gender, affiliation, location, etc.). It is a very LONG table, particularly when I join it to the address and contact information. However, it is more like a dimension table when we start looking at history. For example, there are two different history tables that have a person key pointing to the person table. One has over 20 million records and the other has almost 50 million and grows daily. Is this table a fact table or a dimension table? Can one work as both? If so, is that going to be a big performance problem? Is it common to query more off of a dimension than a fact? What happens if a DIFFERENT fact table that uses the person table as a dimension is actually only 60,000 records (much smaller.). I think my problem is that our data and use of it does not fit with the commonly use examples of star schemas. CLARIFICATION: Some good thoughts have been added below, but perhaps I left too much out to really explain well. Here's some more info: We handle a voter database. We don't have any measures except voter counts by various groups: voter counts by party, by age, by location; voter counts by ballot type and election, by ballot status and election, etc. We do have a "voting history" log as well as an activity audit log (change of address, party, etc.). We have information on which voters are election workers and all that related information. I figure I'll get to the peripheral stuff later. For now I'm focusing on our two major "business processes": voter registration(which IS a voter.) and election turnout. In the first, voter is a fact. In the second, voter is a dimension, along with party, election, and type of ballot. (and in case anyone is worried - no we don't know HOW people vote. Just that they do. LOL ) I hope that clarifies things a bit.

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• Get User SID From Logon ID (Windows XP and Up)

  - by Dave Ruske

  I have a Windows service that needs to access registry hives under HKEY_USERS when users log on, either locally or via Terminal Server. I'm using a WMI query on win32_logonsession to receive events when users log on, and one of the properties I get from that query is a LogonId. To figure out which registry hive I need to access, now, I need the users's SID, which is used as a registry key name beneath HKEY_USERS. In most cases, I can get this by doing a RelatedObjectQuery like so (in C#): RelatedObjectQuery relatedQuery = new RelatedObjectQuery( "associators of {Win32_LogonSession.LogonId='" + logonID + "'} WHERE AssocClass=Win32_LoggedOnUser Role=Dependent" ); where "logonID" is the logon session ID from the session query. Running the RelatedObjectQuery will generally give me a SID property that contains exactly what I need. There are two issues I have with this. First and most importantly, the RelatedObjectQuery will not return any results for a domain user that logs in with cached credentials, disconnected from the domain. Second, I'm not pleased with the performance of this RelatedObjectQuery --- it can take up to several seconds to execute. Here's a quick and dirty command line program I threw together to experiment with the queries. Rather than setting up to receive events, this just enumerates the users on the local machine: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using System.Management; namespace EnumUsersTest { class Program { static void Main( string[] args ) { ManagementScope scope = new ManagementScope( "\\\\.\\root\\cimv2" ); string queryString = "select * from win32_logonsession"; // for all sessions //string queryString = "select * from win32_logonsession where logontype = 2"; // for local interactive sessions only ManagementObjectSearcher sessionQuery = new ManagementObjectSearcher( scope, new SelectQuery( queryString ) ); ManagementObjectCollection logonSessions = sessionQuery.Get(); foreach ( ManagementObject logonSession in logonSessions ) { string logonID = logonSession["LogonId"].ToString(); Console.WriteLine( "=== {0}, type {1} ===", logonID, logonSession["LogonType"].ToString() ); RelatedObjectQuery relatedQuery = new RelatedObjectQuery( "associators of {Win32_LogonSession.LogonId='" + logonID + "'} WHERE AssocClass=Win32_LoggedOnUser Role=Dependent" ); ManagementObjectSearcher userQuery = new ManagementObjectSearcher( scope, relatedQuery ); ManagementObjectCollection users = userQuery.Get(); foreach ( ManagementObject user in users ) { PrintProperties( user.Properties ); } } Console.WriteLine( "\nDone! Press a key to exit..." ); Console.ReadKey( true ); } private static void PrintProperty( PropertyData pd ) { string value = "null"; string valueType = "n/a"; if ( null == pd.Value ) value = "null"; if ( pd.Value != null ) { value = pd.Value.ToString(); valueType = pd.Value.GetType().ToString(); } Console.WriteLine( " \"{0}\" = ({1}) \"{2}\"", pd.Name, valueType, value ); } private static void PrintProperties( PropertyDataCollection properties ) { foreach ( PropertyData pd in properties ) { PrintProperty( pd ); } } } } So... is there way to quickly and reliably obtain the user SID given the information I retrieve from WMI, or should I be looking at using something like SENS instead?

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• Changing html <-> ajax <-> php/mysql to threaded approach

  - by Saif Bechan

  I have an application that needs to be updated real-time. There are various counters and other information that have to come from the database and the system needs to be up to date for the user. My approach now is just a normal ajax request every second to get the new values from the database. There is a JavaScript which loops every second getting the values trough ajax. This works fine but I think its very inefficient. The problem There is an ajax script that loops every second requesting data from php # On the server it has to load the PHP interpeter The PHP file has to get the data and format it correctly # PHP has to make a connection with the mysql database Work with the database(reads,never writes) Format the data so it can be send Send the data back to the browser # Close the database connection, and close the php interpeter Last the browser has to read these values and update the various html parts Now with this approach it has to load the interpreter and make a db connection every second. I was thinking of a way to make this more efficient, and maybe use a threaded approach to this. Threaded aprouch Do a post to the PHP when you enter the page and keep the connection alive In PHP only load the interpreter once, and make a connection to the DB ones Every second send an ajax response to the javascript listener The javascript listener than just changes values as the response from php arrives. I think this approach will be a great optimization to the server load and overall performance. But I can spot some weak point in the system and i need some help with these. Problems with the approach PHP execution time limit I don't think PHP is designed for such a setup. I know there is a time limit on php script execution. I don't know if an everlasting loop in PHP will cause any serious cpu/memory problems. Sending ajax request without breaking I don't know if it is possible to have just one ajax post action and have open and accepting data. user exists the page What will happen when the user exists the page and the PHP script is still going. Will it go on forever. security issues so far i can't think of any security issues. Almost every setup you use have some security issues. Maybe there are some with this solution I do not know of. Open to other solution I really want to change the setup as it is now and move to a threaded approach or better. If someone has a better approach to tackle this I definitely want to hear that. Maybe the usage of some other scripts is better suited for having an ongoing runtime. I only know php and java so any suggestions are welcome and I am willing to dig trough. I know there are things like perl, python etcetera that are used for this type of threaded but i don't know which one is best suited. When using other script If the best way is to go with other type of script like perl,python etcetera I do have some critera. The script has to be accessible via ajax post If it accepts some kind of json encode/decode it would be nice The script has to be able to access the session file This is essential because I need to know if the user is logged in The script has to be able to easily talk to MySQL All comments are welcome, and I hope this question is helpful to other also. Cheers!

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• How should I clean up hung grandchild processes when an alarm trips in Perl?

  - by brian d foy

  I have a parallelized automation script which needs to call many other scripts, some of which hang because they (incorrectly) wait for standard input. That's not a big deal because I catch those with alarm. The trick is to shut down those hung grandchild processes when the child shuts down. I thought various incantations of SIGCHLD, waiting, and process groups could do the trick, but they all block and the grandchildren aren't reaped. My solution, which works, just doesn't seem like it is the right solution. I'm not especially interested in the Windows solution just yet, but I'll eventually need that too. Mine only works for Unix, which is fine for now. I wrote a small script that takes the number of simultaneous parallel children to run and the total number of forks: $ fork_bomb <parallel jobs> <number of forks> $ fork_bomb 8 500 This will probably hit the per-user process limit within a couple of minutes. Many solutions I've found just tell you to increase the per-user process limit, but I need this to run about 300,000 times, so that isn't going to work. Similarly, suggestions to re-exec and so on to clear the process table aren't what I need. I'd like to actually fix the problem instead of slapping duct tape over it. I crawl the process table looking for the child processes and shut down the hung processes individually in the SIGALRM handler, which needs to die because the rest of real code has no hope of success after that. The kludgey crawl through the process table doesn't bother me from a performance perspective, but I wouldn't mind not doing it: use Parallel::ForkManager; use Proc::ProcessTable; my $pm = Parallel::ForkManager->new( $ARGV[0] ); my $alarm_sub = sub { kill 9, map { $_->{pid} } grep { $_->{ppid} == $$ } @{ Proc::ProcessTable->new->table }; die "Alarm rang for $$!\n"; }; foreach ( 0 .. $ARGV[1] ) { print "."; print "\n" unless $count++ % 50; my $pid = $pm->start and next; local $SIG{ALRM} = $alarm_sub; eval { alarm( 2 ); system "$^X -le '<STDIN>'"; # this will hang alarm( 0 ); }; $pm->finish; } If you want to run out of processes, take out the kill. I thought that setting a process group would work so I could kill everything together, but that blocks: my $alarm_sub = sub { kill 9, -$$; # blocks here die "Alarm rang for $$!\n"; }; foreach ( 0 .. $ARGV[1] ) { print "."; print "\n" unless $count++ % 50; my $pid = $pm->start and next; setpgrp(0, 0); local $SIG{ALRM} = $alarm_sub; eval { alarm( 2 ); system "$^X -le '<STDIN>'"; # this will hang alarm( 0 ); }; $pm->finish; } The same thing with POSIX's setsid didn't work either, and I think that actually broke things in a different way since I'm not really daemonizing this. Curiously, Parallel::ForkManager's run_on_finish happens too late for the same clean-up code: the grandchildren are apparently already disassociated from the child processes at that point.

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• Thread Synchronisation 101

  - by taspeotis

  Previously I've written some very simple multithreaded code, and I've always been aware that at any time there could be a context switch right in the middle of what I'm doing, so I've always guarded access the shared variables through a CCriticalSection class that enters the critical section on construction and leaves it on destruction. I know this is fairly aggressive and I enter and leave critical sections quite frequently and sometimes egregiously (e.g. at the start of a function when I could put the CCriticalSection inside a tighter code block) but my code doesn't crash and it runs fast enough. At work my multithreaded code needs to be a tighter, only locking/synchronising at the lowest level needed. At work I was trying to debug some multithreaded code, and I came across this: EnterCriticalSection(&m_Crit4); m_bSomeVariable = true; LeaveCriticalSection(&m_Crit4); Now, m_bSomeVariable is a Win32 BOOL (not volatile), which as far as I know is defined to be an int, and on x86 reading and writing these values is a single instruction, and since context switches occur on an instruction boundary then there's no need for synchronising this operation with a critical section. I did some more research online to see whether this operation did not need synchronisation, and I came up with two scenarios it did: The CPU implements out of order execution or the second thread is running on a different core and the updated value is not written into RAM for the other core to see; and The int is not 4-byte aligned. I believe number 1 can be solved using the "volatile" keyword. In VS2005 and later the C++ compiler surrounds access to this variable using memory barriers, ensuring that the variable is always completely written/read to the main system memory before using it. Number 2 I cannot verify, I don't know why the byte alignment would make a difference. I don't know the x86 instruction set, but does mov need to be given a 4-byte aligned address? If not do you need to use a combination of instructions? That would introduce the problem. So... QUESTION 1: Does using the "volatile" keyword (implicity using memory barriers and hinting to the compiler not to optimise this code) absolve a programmer from the need to synchronise a 4-byte/8-byte on x86/x64 variable between read/write operations? QUESTION 2: Is there the explicit requirement that the variable be 4-byte/8-byte aligned? I did some more digging into our code and the variables defined in the class: class CExample { private: CRITICAL_SECTION m_Crit1; // Protects variable a CRITICAL_SECTION m_Crit2; // Protects variable b CRITICAL_SECTION m_Crit3; // Protects variable c CRITICAL_SECTION m_Crit4; // Protects variable d // ... }; Now, to me this seems excessive. I thought critical sections synchronised threads between a process, so if you've got one you can enter it and no other thread in that process can execute. There is no need for a critical section for each variable you want to protect, if you're in a critical section then nothing else can interrupt you. I think the only thing that can change the variables from outside a critical section is if the process shares a memory page with another process (can you do that?) and the other process starts to change the values. Mutexes would also help here, named mutexes are shared across processes, or only processes of the same name? QUESTION 3: Is my analysis of critical sections correct, and should this code be rewritten to use mutexes? I have had a look at other synchronisation objects (semaphores and spinlocks), are they better suited here? QUESTION 4: Where are critical sections/mutexes/semaphores/spinlocks best suited? That is, which synchronisation problem should they be applied to. Is there a vast performance penalty for choosing one over the other? And while we're on it, I read that spinlocks should not be used in a single-core multithreaded environment, only a multi-core multithreaded environment. So, QUESTION 5: Is this wrong, or if not, why is it right? Thanks in advance for any responses :)

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• Can the STREAM and GUPS (single CPU) benchmark use non-local memory in NUMA machine

  - by osgx

  Hello I want to run some tests from HPCC, STREAM and GUPS. They will test memory bandwidth, latency, and throughput (in term of random accesses). Can I start Single CPU test STREAM or Single CPU GUPS on NUMA node with memory interleaving enabled? (Is it allowed by the rules of HPCC - High Performance Computing Challenge?) Usage of non-local memory can increase GUPS results, because it will increase 2- or 4- fold the number of memory banks, available for random accesses. (GUPS typically limited by nonideal memory-subsystem and by slow memory bank opening/closing. With more banks it can do update to one bank, while the other banks are opening/closing.) Thanks. UPDATE: (you may nor reorder the memory accesses that the program makes). But can compiler reorder loops nesting? E.g. hpcc/RandomAccess.c /* Perform updates to main table. The scalar equivalent is: * * u64Int ran; * ran = 1; * for (i=0; i<NUPDATE; i++) { * ran = (ran << 1) ^ (((s64Int) ran < 0) ? POLY : 0); * table[ran & (TableSize-1)] ^= stable[ran >> (64-LSTSIZE)]; * } */ for (j=0; j<128; j++) ran[j] = starts ((NUPDATE/128) * j); for (i=0; i<NUPDATE/128; i++) { /* #pragma ivdep */ for (j=0; j<128; j++) { ran[j] = (ran[j] << 1) ^ ((s64Int) ran[j] < 0 ? POLY : 0); Table[ran[j] & (TableSize-1)] ^= stable[ran[j] >> (64-LSTSIZE)]; } } The main loop here is for (i=0; i<NUPDATE/128; i++) { and the nested loop is for (j=0; j<128; j++) {. Using 'loop interchange' optimization, compiler can convert this code to for (j=0; j<128; j++) { for (i=0; i<NUPDATE/128; i++) { ran[j] = (ran[j] << 1) ^ ((s64Int) ran[j] < 0 ? POLY : 0); Table[ran[j] & (TableSize-1)] ^= stable[ran[j] >> (64-LSTSIZE)]; } } It can be done because this loop nest is perfect loop nest. Is such optimization prohibited by rules of HPCC?

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• Win32 window capture with BitBlt not displaying border

  - by user292533

  I have written some c++ code to capture a window to a .bmp file. BITMAPFILEHEADER get_bitmap_file_header(int width, int height) { BITMAPFILEHEADER hdr; memset(&hdr, 0, sizeof(BITMAPFILEHEADER)); hdr.bfType = ((WORD) ('M' << 8) | 'B'); // is always "BM" hdr.bfSize = 0;//sizeof(BITMAPFILEHEADER) + sizeof(BITMAPINFOHEADER) + (width * height * sizeof(int)); hdr.bfReserved1 = 0; hdr.bfReserved2 = 0; hdr.bfOffBits = (DWORD)(sizeof(BITMAPFILEHEADER) + sizeof(BITMAPINFOHEADER)); return hdr; } BITMAPINFO get_bitmap_info(int width, int height) { BITMAPINFO bmi; memset(&bmi.bmiHeader, 0, sizeof(BITMAPINFOHEADER)); //initialize bitmap header bmi.bmiHeader.biSize = sizeof(BITMAPINFOHEADER); bmi.bmiHeader.biWidth = width; bmi.bmiHeader.biHeight = height; bmi.bmiHeader.biPlanes = 1; bmi.bmiHeader.biBitCount = 4 * 8; bmi.bmiHeader.biCompression = BI_RGB; bmi.bmiHeader.biSizeImage = width * height * 4; return bmi; } void get_bitmap_from_window(HWND hWnd, int * imageBuff) { HDC hDC = GetWindowDC(hWnd); SIZE size = get_window_size(hWnd); HDC hMemDC = CreateCompatibleDC(hDC); RECT r; HBITMAP hBitmap = CreateCompatibleBitmap(hDC, size.cx, size.cy); HBITMAP hOld = (HBITMAP)SelectObject(hMemDC, hBitmap); BitBlt(hMemDC, 0, 0, size.cx, size.cy, hDC, 0, 0, SRCCOPY); //PrintWindow(hWnd, hMemDC, 0); BITMAPINFO bmi = get_bitmap_info(size.cx, size.cy); GetDIBits(hMemDC, hBitmap, 0, size.cy, imageBuff, &bmi, DIB_RGB_COLORS); SelectObject(hMemDC, hOld); DeleteDC(hMemDC); ReleaseDC(NULL, hDC); } void save_image(HWND hWnd, char * name) { int * buff; RECT r; SIZE size; GetWindowRect(hWnd, &r); size.cx = r.right-r.left; size.cy = r.bottom-r.top; buff = (int*)malloc(size.cx * size.cy * sizeof(int)); get_bitmap_from_window(hWnd, buff); BITMAPINFO bmi = get_bitmap_info(size.cx, size.cy); BITMAPFILEHEADER hdr = get_bitmap_file_header(size.cx, size.cy); FILE * fout = fopen(name, "w"); fwrite(&hdr, 1, sizeof(BITMAPFILEHEADER), fout); fwrite(&bmi.bmiHeader, 1, sizeof(BITMAPINFOHEADER), fout); fwrite(buff, 1, size.cx * size.cy * sizeof(int), fout); fflush(fout); fclose(fout); free(buff); } It works find under XP, but under Vista the border of the window is transparent. Using PrintWindow solves the problem, but is unacceptable for performance reasons. Is there a performant code change, or a setting that can be changed to make the border non-transparent?

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• Overriding Object.Equals() instance method in C#; now Code Analysis / FxCop warning CA2218: "should

  - by Chris W. Rea

  I've got a complex class in my C# project on which I want to be able to do equality tests. It is not a trivial class; it contains a variety of scalar properties as well as references to other objects and collections (e.g. IDictionary). For what it's worth, my class is sealed. To enable a performance optimization elsewhere in my system (an optimization that avoids a costly network round-trip), I need to be able to compare instances of these objects to each other for equality – other than the built-in reference equality – and so I'm overriding the Object.Equals() instance method. However, now that I've done that, Visual Studio 2008's Code Analysis a.k.a. FxCop, which I keep enabled by default, is raising the following warning: warning : CA2218 : Microsoft.Usage : Since 'MySuperDuperClass' redefines Equals, it should also redefine GetHashCode. I think I understand the rationale for this warning: If I am going to be using such objects as the key in a collection, the hash code is important. i.e. see this question. However, I am not going to be using these objects as the key in a collection. Ever. Feeling justified to suppress the warning, I looked up code CA2218 in the MSDN documentation to get the full name of the warning so I could apply a SuppressMessage attribute to my class as follows: [SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Naming", "CA2218:OverrideGetHashCodeOnOverridingEquals", Justification="This class is not to be used as key in a hashtable.")] However, while reading further, I noticed the following: How to Fix Violations To fix a violation of this rule, provide an implementation of GetHashCode. For a pair of objects of the same type, you must ensure that the implementation returns the same value if your implementation of Equals returns true for the pair. When to Suppress Warnings ----- Do not suppress a warning from this rule. [arrow & emphasis mine] So, I'd like to know: Why shouldn't I suppress this warning as I was planning to? Doesn't my case warrant suppression? I don't want to code up an implementation of GetHashCode() for this object that will never get called, since my object will never be the key in a collection. If I wanted to be pedantic, instead of suppressing, would it be more reasonable for me to override GetHashCode() with an implementation that throws a NotImplementedException? Update: I just looked this subject up again in Bill Wagner's good book Effective C#, and he states in "Item 10: Understand the Pitfalls of GetHashCode()": If you're defining a type that won't ever be used as the key in a container, this won't matter. Types that represent window controls, web page controls, or database connections are unlikely to be used as keys in a collection. In those cases, do nothing. All reference types will have a hash code that is correct, even if it is very inefficient. [...] In most types that you create, the best approach is to avoid the existence of GetHashCode() entirely. ... that's where I originally got this idea that I need not be concerned about GetHashCode() always.

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• calling concurrently Graphics.Draw and new Bitmap from memory in thread take long time

  - by Abdul jalil

  Example1 public partial class Form1 : Form { public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); pro = new Thread(new ThreadStart(Producer)); con = new Thread(new ThreadStart(Consumer)); } private AutoResetEvent m_DataAvailableEvent = new AutoResetEvent(false); Queue<Bitmap> queue = new Queue<Bitmap>(); Thread pro; Thread con ; public void Producer() { MemoryStream[] ms = new MemoryStream[3]; for (int y = 0; y < 3; y++) { StreamReader reader = new StreamReader("image"+(y+1)+".JPG"); BinaryReader breader = new BinaryReader(reader.BaseStream); byte[] buffer=new byte[reader.BaseStream.Length]; breader.Read(buffer,0,buffer.Length); ms[y] = new MemoryStream(buffer); } while (true) { for (int x = 0; x < 3; x++) { Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(ms[x]); queue.Enqueue(bmp); m_DataAvailableEvent.Set(); Thread.Sleep(6); } } } public void Consumer() { Graphics g= pictureBox1.CreateGraphics(); while (true) { m_DataAvailableEvent.WaitOne(); Bitmap bmp = queue.Dequeue(); if (bmp != null) { // Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(ms); g.DrawImage(bmp,new Point(0,0)); bmp.Dispose(); } } } private void pictureBox1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { con.Start(); pro.Start(); } } when Creating bitmap and Drawing to picture box are in seperate thread then Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(ms[x]) take 45.591 millisecond and g.DrawImage(bmp,new Point(0,0)) take 41.430 milisecond when i make bitmap from memoryStream and draw it to picture box in one thread then Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(ms[x]) take 29.619 and g.DrawImage(bmp,new Point(0,0)) take 35.540 the code is for Example 2 is why it take more time to draw and bitmap take time in seperate thread and how to reduce the time when processing in seperate thread. i am using ANTS performance profiler 4.3 public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); pro = new Thread(new ThreadStart(Producer)); con = new Thread(new ThreadStart(Consumer)); } private AutoResetEvent m_DataAvailableEvent = new AutoResetEvent(false); Queue<MemoryStream> queue = new Queue<MemoryStream>(); Thread pro; Thread con ; public void Producer() { MemoryStream[] ms = new MemoryStream[3]; for (int y = 0; y < 3; y++) { StreamReader reader = new StreamReader("image"+(y+1)+".JPG"); BinaryReader breader = new BinaryReader(reader.BaseStream); byte[] buffer=new byte[reader.BaseStream.Length]; breader.Read(buffer,0,buffer.Length); ms[y] = new MemoryStream(buffer); } while (true) { for (int x = 0; x < 3; x++) { // Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(ms[x]); queue.Enqueue(ms[x]); m_DataAvailableEvent.Set(); Thread.Sleep(6); } } } public void Consumer() { Graphics g= pictureBox1.CreateGraphics(); while (true) { m_DataAvailableEvent.WaitOne(); //Bitmap bmp = queue.Dequeue(); MemoryStream ms= queue.Dequeue(); if (ms != null) { Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(ms); g.DrawImage(bmp,new Point(0,0)); bmp.Dispose(); } } } private void pictureBox1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { con.Start(); pro.Start(); }

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• Looking for a better design: A readonly in-memory cache mechanism

  - by Dylan Lin

  Hi all, I have a Category entity (class), which has zero or one parent Category and many child Categories -- it's a tree structure. The Category data is stored in a RDBMS, so for better performance, I want to load all categories and cache them in memory while launching the applicaiton. Our system can have plugins, and we allow the plugin authors to access the Category Tree, but they should not modify the cached items and the tree(I think a non-readonly design might cause some subtle bugs in this senario), only the system knows when and how to refresh the tree. Here are some demo codes: public interface ITreeNode<T> where T : ITreeNode<T> { // No setter T Parent { get; } IEnumerable<T> ChildNodes { get; } } // This class is generated by O/R Mapping tool (e.g. Entity Framework) public class Category : EntityObject { public string Name { get; set; } } // Because Category is not stateless, so I create a cleaner view class for Category. // And this class is the Node Type of the Category Tree public class CategoryView : ITreeNode<CategoryView> { public string Name { get; private set; } #region ITreeNode Memebers public CategoryView Parent { get; private set; } private List<CategoryView> _childNodes; public IEnumerable<CategoryView> ChildNodes { return _childNodes; } #endregion public static CategoryView CreateFrom(Category category) { // here I can set the CategoryView.Name property } } So far so good. However, I want to make ITreeNode interface reuseable, and for some other types, the tree should not be readonly. We are not able to do this with the above readonly ITreeNode, so I want the ITreeNode to be like this: public interface ITreeNode<T> { // has setter T Parent { get; set; } // use ICollection<T> instead of IEnumerable<T> ICollection<T> ChildNodes { get; } } But if we make the ITreeNode writable, then we cannot make the Category Tree readonly, it's not good. So I think if we can do like this: public interface ITreeNode<T> { T Parent { get; } IEnumerable<T> ChildNodes { get; } } public interface IWritableTreeNode<T> : ITreeNode<T> { new T Parent { get; set; } new ICollection<T> ChildNodes { get; } } Is this good or bad? Are there some better designs? Thanks a lot! :)

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• Select number of rows for each group where two column values makes one group

  - by Fábio Antunes

  I have a two select statements joined by UNION ALL. In the first statement a where clause gathers only rows that have been shown previously to the user. The second statement gathers all rows that haven't been shown to the user, therefore I end up with the viewed results first and non-viewed results after. Of course this could simply be achieved with the same select statement using a simple ORDER BY, however the reason for two separate selects is simple after you realize what I hope to accomplish. Consider the following structure and data. +----+------+-----+--------+------+ | id | from | to | viewed | data | +----+------+-----+--------+------+ | 1 | 1 | 10 | true | .... | | 2 | 10 | 1 | true | .... | | 3 | 1 | 10 | true | .... | | 4 | 6 | 8 | true | .... | | 5 | 1 | 10 | true | .... | | 6 | 10 | 1 | true | .... | | 7 | 8 | 6 | true | .... | | 8 | 10 | 1 | true | .... | | 9 | 6 | 8 | true | .... | | 10 | 2 | 3 | true | .... | | 11 | 1 | 10 | true | .... | | 12 | 8 | 6 | true | .... | | 13 | 10 | 1 | false | .... | | 14 | 1 | 10 | false | .... | | 15 | 6 | 8 | false | .... | | 16 | 10 | 1 | false | .... | | 17 | 8 | 6 | false | .... | | 18 | 3 | 2 | false | .... | +----+------+-----+--------+------+ Basically I wish all non viewed rows to be selected by the statement, that is accomplished by checking weather the viewed column is true or false, pretty simple and straightforward, nothing to worry here. However when it comes to the rows already viewed, meaning the column viewed is TRUE, for those records I only want 3 rows to be returned for each group. The appropriate result in this instance should be the 3 most recent rows of each group. +----+------+-----+--------+------+ | id | from | to | viewed | data | +----+------+-----+--------+------+ | 6 | 10 | 1 | true | .... | | 7 | 8 | 6 | true | .... | | 8 | 10 | 1 | true | .... | | 9 | 6 | 8 | true | .... | | 10 | 2 | 3 | true | .... | | 11 | 1 | 10 | true | .... | | 12 | 8 | 6 | true | .... | +----+------+-----+--------+------+ As you see from the ideal result set we have three groups. Therefore the desired query for the viewed results should show a maximum of 3 rows for each grouping it finds. In this case these groupings were 10 with 1 and 8 with 6, both which had three rows to be shown, while the other group 2 with 3 only had one row to be shown. Please note that where from = x and to = y, makes the same grouping as if it was from = y and to = x. Therefore considering the first grouping (10 with 1), from = 10 and to = 1 is the same group if it was from = 1 and to = 10. However there are plenty of groups in the whole table that I only wish the 3 most recent of each to be returned in the select statement, and thats my problem, I not sure how that can be accomplished in the most efficient way possible considering the table will have hundreds if not thousands of records at some point. Thanks for your help. Note: The columns id, from, to and viewed are indexed, that should help with performance. PS: I'm unsure on how to name this question exactly, if you have a better idea, be my guest and edit the title.

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• "Row not found or changed" Problem

  - by winston schröder

  Hi there, I'm working on a SQL CE Database and get into the "Row nor found or changed" exception. The exception only occurs when I try to update. On the first Run after the insert it shows up a MemberChangeConflict which says, that my Column Created_at has in all three values (current, original, database) the same. But in a second attempt it doesn't appear anymore. The DataContext is instanciated on Startup and freed on Exit of my Local(!) Application. I use a sqlmetal generated mapping and code file. In the map I added some Associations and set the timemstamp columns UpdateCheck property to Always while all other have the setting never. The Timestamp Column is marked as isVersion="true", the Id Column as Primary Key. Since I don't dispose the datacontext I expected to be using implicit transaction. When I run the SubmitChanges Method within a TransactionScope. Can anyone tell me how I can update the timestamp within the code ? I know about the Problems one has to deal with if you dispose the datacontext. So I decided not to do this since I use a Single User Local DB Cache File. (I did already use a version where I disposed the datacontext after every usage, but this version had a real bad performance and error rate, so I decided to choose the other variant.) LibDB.Client.Vehicles tmp = null; try { tmp = e.Parameter as LibDB.Client.Vehicles; if (tmp == null) return; if (!this._dc.Vehicles.Contains(tmp)) { this._dc.Vehicles.Attach(tmp); } this.ShowChangesReport(this._dc.GetChangeSet()); using (TransactionScope ts = new TransactionScope()) { try { this._dc.SubmitChanges(); ts.Complete(); } catch (ChangeConflictException cce) { Console.WriteLine("Optimistic concurrency error."); Console.WriteLine(cce.Message); Console.ReadLine(); foreach (ObjectChangeConflict occ in this._dc.ChangeConflicts) { MetaTable metatable = this._dc.Mapping.GetTable(occ.Object.GetType()); LibDB.Client.Vehicles entityInConflict = (LibDB.Client.Vehicles)occ.Object; Console.WriteLine("Table name: {0}", metatable.TableName); Console.Write("Vin: "); Console.WriteLine(entityInConflict.Vin); foreach (MemberChangeConflict mcc in occ.MemberConflicts) { object currVal = mcc.CurrentValue; object origVal = mcc.OriginalValue; object databaseVal = mcc.DatabaseValue; MemberInfo mi = mcc.Member; Console.WriteLine("Member: {0}", mi.Name); Console.WriteLine("current value: {0}", currVal); Console.WriteLine("original value: {0}", origVal); Console.WriteLine("database value: {0}", databaseVal); } throw cce; } } catch (Exception ex) { this.ShowChangeConflicts(this._dc.ChangeConflicts); Console.WriteLine(ex.Message); } } this.ShowChangesReport(this._dc.GetChangeSet());

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• How do you stop scripters from slamming your website hundreds of times a second?

  - by davebug

  [update] I've accepted an answer, as lc deserves the bounty due to the well thought-out answer, but sadly, I believe we're stuck with our original worst case scenario: CAPTCHA everyone on purchase attempts of the crap. Short explanation: caching / web farms make it impossible for us to actually track hits, and any workaround (sending a non-cached web-beacon, writing to a unified table, etc.) slows the site down worse than the bots would. There is likely some pricey bit of hardware from Cisco or the like that can help at a high level, but it's hard to justify the cost if CAPTCHAing everyone is an alternative. I'll attempt to do a more full explanation in here later, as well as cleaning this up for future searchers (though others are welcome to try, as it's community wiki). I've added bounty to this question and attempted to explain why the current answers don't fit our needs. First, though, thanks to all of you who have thought about this, it's amazing to have this collective intelligence to help work through seemingly impossible problems. I'll be a little more clear than I was before: This is about the bag o' crap sales on woot.com. I'm the president of Woot Workshop, the subsidiary of Woot that does the design, writes the product descriptions, podcasts, blog posts, and moderates the forums. I work in the css/html world and am only barely familiar with the rest of the developer world. I work closely with the developers and have talked through all of the answers here (and many other ideas we've had). Usability of the site is a massive part of my job, and making the site exciting and fun is most of the rest of it. That's where the three goals below derive. CAPTCHA harms usability, and bots steal the fun and excitement out of our crap sales. To set up the scenario a little more, bots are slamming our front page tens of times a second screenscraping (and/or scanning our rss) for the Random Crap sale. The moment they see that, it triggers a second stage of the program that logs in, clicks I want One, fills out the form, and buys the crap. In current (2/6/2009) order of votes: lc: On stackoverflow and other sites that use this method, they're almost always dealing with authenticated (logged in) users, because the task being attempted requires that. On Woot, anonymous (non-logged) users can view our home page. In other words, the slamming bots can be non-authenticated (and essentially non-trackable except by IP address). So we're back to scanning for IPs, which a) is fairly useless in this age of cloud networking and spambot zombies and b) catches too many innocents given the number of businesses that come from one IP address (not to mention the issues with non-static IP ISPs and potential performance hits to trying to track this). Oh, and having people call us would be the worst possible scenario. Can we have them call you? BradC Ned Batchelder's methods look pretty cool, but they're pretty firmly designed to defeat bots built for a network of sites. Our problem is bots are built specifically to defeat our site. Some of these methods could likely work for a short time until the scripters evolved their bots to ignore the honeypot, screenscrape for nearby label names instead of form ids, and use a javascript-capable browser control. lc again "Unless, of course, the hype is part of you

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• packet mmap send packet format

  - by SeregASM

  I want to improve packet transmitting performance. Before that I used raw sockets and now I study packet_mmap. I have packets(frames) which I already captured from kernel module from another PC, put to current PC and now I want to retransmit them to local interface with following forwarding. I have got example of packet_mmap, integrated it to my project, but I send fd_socket = socket(PF_PACKET, SOCK_RAW, htons(ETH_P_ALL)); memset(&my_addr, 0, sizeof(struct sockaddr_ll)); my_addr.sll_family = PF_PACKET; my_addr.sll_protocol = htons(ETH_P_ALL); strcpy(str_devname, "eth0"); strncpy(s_ifr.ifr_name, str_devname, sizeof(s_ifr.ifr_name)); ec = ioctl(fd_socket, SIOCGIFINDEX, &s_ifr); i_ifindex = s_ifr.ifr_ifindex; memset(&my_addr, 0, sizeof(struct sockaddr_ll)); my_addr.sll_family = AF_PACKET; my_addr.sll_protocol = ETH_P_ALL; my_addr.sll_ifindex = i_ifindex; bind(fd_socket, (struct sockaddr *) &my_addr, sizeof(struct sockaddr_ll) s_packet_req.tp_block_size = c_buffer_sz; s_packet_req.tp_frame_size = c_buffer_sz; s_packet_req.tp_block_nr = c_buffer_nb; s_packet_req.tp_frame_nr = c_buffer_nb; size = s_packet_req.tp_block_size * s_packet_req.tp_block_nr; if (setsockopt(fd_socket, SOL_PACKET, PACKET_TX_RING, (char *) &s_packet_req, sizeof(s_packet_req)) < 0) { perror("setsockopt: PACKET_TX_RING"); return; } if (c_sndbuf_sz) { printf("send buff size = %d\n", c_sndbuf_sz); if (setsockopt(fd_socket, SOL_SOCKET, SO_SNDBUF, &c_sndbuf_sz, sizeof(c_sndbuf_sz)) < 0){ perror("getsockopt: SO_SNDBUF"); exit(1); } } data_offset = TPACKET_HDRLEN - sizeof(struct sockaddr_ll); printf("data offset = %d bytes\n", data_offset); ps_header_start = (tpacket_hdr *) mmap(0, size, PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, fd_socket, 0); if (ps_header_start == (void*) -1) { perror("mmap"); exit(1); } Then I fill data ps_header = ((struct tpacket_hdr *) ((char *) ps_header_start + (c_buffer_sz * i_index))); if (!ps_header) { perror("ps_header") ; return NULL; } data = ((char*) ps_header) + data_offset; switch ((volatile uint32_t) ps_header->tp_status) { case TP_STATUS_AVAILABLE: printf("TP_STATUS_AVAILABLE, index=%d\n",i_index) ; memcpy(data, packet_data, size); pthread_mutex_lock(&index_locker) ; i_index++; pthread_mutex_unlock(&index_locker) ; if (i_index >= c_buffer_nb) { i_index = 0; first_loop = 0; } /* update packet len */ ps_header->tp_len = size; /* set header flag to USER (trigs xmit)*/ ps_header->tp_status = TP_STATUS_SEND_REQUEST; then I send ec_send = sendto(fd_socket, NULL, 0, 0, (struct sockaddr *) ps_sockaddr, sizeof(struct sockaddr_ll)); I have got no errors, ec_send=not null size of sended data. But there are no data routed to destination host. So, I ask - what data I should pass to ring buffer, now I include headers ip,tcp, should I include MAC header? - May be I have to set additional flags to route my packets.

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• Openfire and LDAP issues

  - by clsmith

  Thanks in advance for the help. Has anyone see this issue with openfire? Currently I use Openfire Fedora with Auth using windows 2003 and also use mysql for the database. When I bring up two clients and talk to each other the time is slow between messages. Sometimes it can take between 5-15 minutes for something sent to get to the person (this is with only two people on the openfire server). I ran a tcp dump using port 389 and see that the machine is running thousands of queries against ldap. When i plug it into wireshark I notice that it is transferring the entire contact list or checking on the status of the entire contact list ? When I run debug on openfire itself I am presented with only this small message in the log: 2010.06.08 07:01:17 LdapManager: Starting LDAP search... 2010.06.08 07:01:17 LdapManager: ... search finished 2010.06.08 07:01:17 LdapManager: Creating a DirContext in LdapManager.getContext()... 2010.06.08 07:01:17 LdapManager: Created hashtable with context values, attempting to create context... 2010.06.08 07:01:17 LdapManager: ... context created successfully, returning. 2010.06.08 07:01:17 LdapManager: Trying to find a groups's DN based on it's groupname. cn: Spark agents CLT, Base DN: OU="Hidden",DC="Hidden",DC="net"... 2010.06.08 07:01:17 LdapManager: Creating a DirContext in LdapManager.getContext()... 2010.06.08 07:01:17 LdapManager: Created hashtable with context values, attempting to create context... 2010.06.08 07:01:17 LdapManager: ... context created successfully, returning. 2010.06.08 07:01:17 LdapManager: Starting LDAP search... 2010.06.08 07:01:17 LdapManager: ... search finished 2010.06.08 07:01:17 LdapManager: Trying to find a groups's DN based on it's groupname. cn: Spark agents CLT, Base DN: OU="Hidden",DC="Hidden",DC="net"... 2010.06.08 07:01:17 LdapManager: Creating a DirContext in LdapManager.getContext()... 2010.06.08 07:01:17 LdapManager: Created hashtable with context values, attempting to create context... 2010.06.08 07:01:17 LdapManager: ... context created successfully, returning. 2010.06.08 07:01:17 LdapManager: Starting LDAP search... 2010.06.08 07:01:17 LdapManager: ... search finished I thought this was a configuration on my end and started to look into the cache settings on the openfire webpages. I tweaked the settings as recommend by the pages and still get the same issues. I doesnt seem to cache the contact list or this might be a feature never fixed or implemented. Has anyone gone through this before ? I have searched online and I see others have great experience with openfire with no issues like I have, or is it because noone checked the queries ? For the time being I created a new Domain Controller and moved openfire to that computer so it can run local queries. This seems to help reduce the speed alot, but when I run the server performance manager tool I see that with two people only using that openfire server I run 593.7 request per second. Thanks for your help, if I didnt provide enough data please let me know what you need and I can find it.

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• Paging, sorting and filtering in a stored procedure (SQL Server)

  - by Fruitbat

  I was looking at different ways of writing a stored procedure to return a "page" of data. This was for use with the asp ObjectDataSource, but it could be considered a more general problem. The requirement is to return a subset of the data based on the usual paging paremeters, startPageIndex and maximumRows, but also a sortBy parameter to allow the data to be sorted. Also there are some parameters passed in to filter the data on various conditions. One common way to do this seems to be something like this: [Method 1] ;WITH stuff AS ( SELECT CASE WHEN @SortBy = 'Name' THEN ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY Name) WHEN @SortBy = 'Name DESC' THEN ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY Name DESC) WHEN @SortBy = ... ELSE ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY whatever) END AS Row, ., ., ., FROM Table1 INNER JOIN Table2 ... LEFT JOIN Table3 ... WHERE ... (lots of things to check) ) SELECT * FROM stuff WHERE (Row > @startRowIndex) AND (Row <= @startRowIndex + @maximumRows OR @maximumRows <= 0) ORDER BY Row One problem with this is that it doesn't give the total count and generally we need another stored procedure for that. This second stored procedure has to replicate the parameter list and the complex WHERE clause. Not nice. One solution is to append an extra column to the final select list, (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM stuff) AS TotalRows. This gives us the total but repeats it for every row in the result set, which is not ideal. [Method 2] An interesting alternative is given here (http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/032206-1.aspx) using dynamic SQL. He reckons that the performance is better because the CASE statement in the first solution drags things down. Fair enough, and this solution makes it easy to get the totalRows and slap it into an output parameter. But I hate coding dynamic SQL. All that 'bit of SQL ' + STR(@parm1) +' bit more SQL' gubbins. [Method 3] The only way I can find to get what I want, without repeating code which would have to be synchronised, and keeping things reasonably readable is to go back to the "old way" of using a table variable: DECLARE @stuff TABLE (Row INT, ...) INSERT INTO @stuff SELECT CASE WHEN @SortBy = 'Name' THEN ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY Name) WHEN @SortBy = 'Name DESC' THEN ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY Name DESC) WHEN @SortBy = ... ELSE ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY whatever) END AS Row, ., ., ., FROM Table1 INNER JOIN Table2 ... LEFT JOIN Table3 ... WHERE ... (lots of things to check) SELECT * FROM stuff WHERE (Row > @startRowIndex) AND (Row <= @startRowIndex + @maximumRows OR @maximumRows <= 0) ORDER BY Row (Or a similar method using an IDENTITY column on the table variable). Here I can just add a SELECT COUNT on the table variable to get the totalRows and put it into an output parameter. I did some tests and with a fairly simple version of the query (no sortBy and no filter), method 1 seems to come up on top (almost twice as quick as the other 2). Then I decided to test probably I needed the complexity and I needed the SQL to be in stored procedures. With this I get method 1 taking nearly twice as long as the other 2 methods. Which seems strange. Is there any good reason why I shouldn't spurn CTEs and stick with method 3? UPDATE - 15 March 2012 I tried adapting Method 1 to dump the page from the CTE into a temporary table so that I could extract the TotalRows and then select just the relevant columns for the resultset. This seemed to add significantly to the time (more than I expected). I should add that I'm running this on a laptop with SQL Server Express 2008 (all that I have available) but still the comparison should be valid. I looked again at the dynamic SQL method. It turns out I wasn't really doing it properly (just concatenating strings together). I set it up as in the documentation for sp_executesql (with a parameter description string and parameter list) and it's much more readable. Also this method runs fastest in my environment. Why that should be still baffles me, but I guess the answer is hinted at in Hogan's comment.

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• Javascript Closures - What are the negatives?

  - by vol7ron

  Question: There seem to be many benefits to Closures, but what are the negatives (memory leakage? obfuscation problems? bandwidth increasage?)? Additionally, is my understanding of Closures correct? Finally, once closures are created, can they be destroyed? I've been reading a little bit about Javascript Closures. I hope someone a little more knowledgeable will guide my assertions, correcting me where wrong. Benefits of Closures: Encapsulate the variables to a local scope, by using an internal function. The anonymity of the function is insignificant. What I've found helpful is to do some basic testing, regarding local/global scope: <script type="text/javascript"> var global_text = ""; var global_count = 0; var global_num1 = 10; var global_num2 = 20; var global_num3 = 30; function outerFunc() { var local_count = local_count || 0; alert("global_num1: " + global_num1); // global_num1: undefined var global_num1 = global_num1 || 0; alert("global_num1: " + global_num1); // global_num1: 0 alert("global_num2: " + global_num2); // global_num2: 20 global_num2 = global_num2 || 0; // (notice) no definition with 'var' alert("global_num2: " + global_num2); // global_num2: 20 global_num2 = 0; alert("local_count: " + local_count); // local_count: 0 function output() { global_num3++; alert("local_count: " + local_count + "\n" + "global_count: " + global_count + "\n" + "global_text: " + global_text ); local_count++; } local_count++; global_count++; return output; } var myFunc = outerFunc(); myFunc(); /* Outputs: ********************** * local_count: 1 * global_count: 1 * global_text: **********************/ global_text = "global"; myFunc(); /* Outputs: ********************** * local_count: 2 * global_count: 1 * global_text: global **********************/ var local_count = 100; myFunc(); /* Outputs: ********************** * local_count: 3 * global_count: 1 * global_text: global **********************/ alert("global_num1: " + global_num1); // global_num1: 10 alert("global_num2: " + global_num2); // global_num2: 0 alert("global_num3: " + global_num3); // global_num3: 33 </script> Interesting things I took out of it: The alerts in outerFunc are only called once, which is when the outerFunc call is assigned to myFunc (myFunc = outerFunc()). This assignment seems to keep the outerFunc open, in what I would like to call a persistent state. Everytime myFunc is called, the return is executed. In this case, the return is the internal function. Something really interesting is the localization that occurs when defining local variables. Notice the difference in the first alert between global_num1 and global_num2, even before the variable is trying to be created, global_num1 is considered undefined because the 'var' was used to signify a local variable to that function. -- This has been talked about before, in the order of operation for the Javascript engine, it's just nice to see this put to work. Globals can still be used, but local variables will override them. Notice before the third myFunc call, a global variable called local_count is created, but it as no effect on the internal function, which has a variable that goes by the same name. Conversely, each function call has the ability to modify global variables, as noticed by global_var3. Post Thoughts: Even though the code is straightforward, it is cluttered by alerts for you guys, so you can plug and play. I know there are other examples of closures, many of which use anonymous functions in combination with looping structures, but I think this is good for a 101-starter course to see the effects. The one thing I'm concerned with is the negative impact closures will have on memory. Because it keeps the function environment open, it is also keeping those variables stored in memory, which may/may not have performance implications, especially regarding DOM traversals and garbage collection. I'm also not sure what kind of role this will play in terms of memory leakage and I'm not sure if the closure can be removed from memory by a simple "delete myFunc;." Hope this helps someone, vol7ron

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• Performing Aggregate Functions on Multi-Million Row Tables

  - by Daniel Short

  I'm having some serious performance issues with a multi-million row table that I feel I should be able to get results from fairly quick. Here's a run down of what I have, how I'm querying it, and how long it's taking: I'm running SQL Server 2008 Standard, so Partitioning isn't currently an option I'm attempting to aggregate all views for all inventory for a specific account over the last 30 days. All views are stored in the following table: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[LogInvSearches_Daily]( [ID] [bigint] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, [Inv_ID] [int] NOT NULL, [Site_ID] [int] NOT NULL, [LogCount] [int] NOT NULL, [LogDay] [smalldatetime] NOT NULL, CONSTRAINT [PK_LogInvSearches_Daily] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( [ID] ASC )WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON, FILLFACTOR = 90) ON [PRIMARY] ) ON [PRIMARY] This table has 132,000,000 records, and is over 4 gigs. A sample of 10 rows from the table: ID Inv_ID Site_ID LogCount LogDay -------------------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------------------- 1 486752 48 14 2009-07-21 00:00:00 2 119314 51 16 2009-07-21 00:00:00 3 313678 48 25 2009-07-21 00:00:00 4 298863 0 1 2009-07-21 00:00:00 5 119996 0 2 2009-07-21 00:00:00 6 463777 534 7 2009-07-21 00:00:00 7 339976 503 2 2009-07-21 00:00:00 8 333501 570 4 2009-07-21 00:00:00 9 453955 0 12 2009-07-21 00:00:00 10 443291 0 4 2009-07-21 00:00:00 (10 row(s) affected) I have the following index on LogInvSearches_Daily: /****** Object: Index [IX_LogInvSearches_Daily_LogDay] Script Date: 05/12/2010 11:08:22 ******/ CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [IX_LogInvSearches_Daily_LogDay] ON [dbo].[LogInvSearches_Daily] ( [LogDay] ASC ) INCLUDE ( [Inv_ID], [LogCount]) WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, SORT_IN_TEMPDB = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, DROP_EXISTING = OFF, ONLINE = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY] I need to pull inventory only from the Inventory for a specific account id. I have an index on the Inventory as well. I'm using the following query to aggregate the data and give me the top 5 records. This query is currently taking 24 seconds to return the 5 rows: StmtText ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SELECT TOP 5 Sum(LogCount) AS Views , DENSE_RANK() OVER(ORDER BY Sum(LogCount) DESC, Inv_ID DESC) AS Rank , Inv_ID FROM LogInvSearches_Daily D (NOLOCK) WHERE LogDay DateAdd(d, -30, getdate()) AND EXISTS( SELECT NULL FROM propertyControlCenter.dbo.Inventory (NOLOCK) WHERE Acct_ID = 18731 AND Inv_ID = D.Inv_ID ) GROUP BY Inv_ID (1 row(s) affected) StmtText ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |--Top(TOP EXPRESSION:((5))) |--Sequence Project(DEFINE:([Expr1007]=dense_rank)) |--Segment |--Segment |--Sort(ORDER BY:([Expr1006] DESC, [D].[Inv_ID] DESC)) |--Stream Aggregate(GROUP BY:([D].[Inv_ID]) DEFINE:([Expr1006]=SUM([LOALogs].[dbo].[LogInvSearches_Daily].[LogCount] as [D].[LogCount]))) |--Sort(ORDER BY:([D].[Inv_ID] ASC)) |--Nested Loops(Inner Join, OUTER REFERENCES:([D].[Inv_ID])) |--Nested Loops(Inner Join, OUTER REFERENCES:([Expr1011], [Expr1012], [Expr1010])) | |--Compute Scalar(DEFINE:(([Expr1011],[Expr1012],[Expr1010])=GetRangeWithMismatchedTypes(dateadd(day,(-30),getdate()),NULL,(6)))) | | |--Constant Scan | |--Index Seek(OBJECT:([LOALogs].[dbo].[LogInvSearches_Daily].[IX_LogInvSearches_Daily_LogDay] AS [D]), SEEK:([D].[LogDay] > [Expr1011] AND [D].[LogDay] < [Expr1012]) ORDERED FORWARD) |--Index Seek(OBJECT:([propertyControlCenter].[dbo].[Inventory].[IX_Inventory_Acct_ID]), SEEK:([propertyControlCenter].[dbo].[Inventory].[Acct_ID]=(18731) AND [propertyControlCenter].[dbo].[Inventory].[Inv_ID]=[LOA (13 row(s) affected) I tried using a CTE to pick up the rows first and aggregate them, but that didn't run any faster, and gives me essentially the same execution plan. (1 row(s) affected) StmtText ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --SET SHOWPLAN_TEXT ON; WITH getSearches AS ( SELECT LogCount -- , DENSE_RANK() OVER(ORDER BY Sum(LogCount) DESC, Inv_ID DESC) AS Rank , D.Inv_ID FROM LogInvSearches_Daily D (NOLOCK) INNER JOIN propertyControlCenter.dbo.Inventory I (NOLOCK) ON Acct_ID = 18731 AND I.Inv_ID = D.Inv_ID WHERE LogDay DateAdd(d, -30, getdate()) -- GROUP BY Inv_ID ) SELECT Sum(LogCount) AS Views, Inv_ID FROM getSearches GROUP BY Inv_ID (1 row(s) affected) StmtText ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |--Stream Aggregate(GROUP BY:([D].[Inv_ID]) DEFINE:([Expr1004]=SUM([LOALogs].[dbo].[LogInvSearches_Daily].[LogCount] as [D].[LogCount]))) |--Sort(ORDER BY:([D].[Inv_ID] ASC)) |--Nested Loops(Inner Join, OUTER REFERENCES:([D].[Inv_ID])) |--Nested Loops(Inner Join, OUTER REFERENCES:([Expr1008], [Expr1009], [Expr1007])) | |--Compute Scalar(DEFINE:(([Expr1008],[Expr1009],[Expr1007])=GetRangeWithMismatchedTypes(dateadd(day,(-30),getdate()),NULL,(6)))) | | |--Constant Scan | |--Index Seek(OBJECT:([LOALogs].[dbo].[LogInvSearches_Daily].[IX_LogInvSearches_Daily_LogDay] AS [D]), SEEK:([D].[LogDay] > [Expr1008] AND [D].[LogDay] < [Expr1009]) ORDERED FORWARD) |--Index Seek(OBJECT:([propertyControlCenter].[dbo].[Inventory].[IX_Inventory_Acct_ID] AS [I]), SEEK:([I].[Acct_ID]=(18731) AND [I].[Inv_ID]=[LOALogs].[dbo].[LogInvSearches_Daily].[Inv_ID] as [D].[Inv_ID]) ORDERED FORWARD) (8 row(s) affected) (1 row(s) affected) So given that I'm getting good Index Seeks in my execution plan, what can I do to get this running faster? Thanks, Dan

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• When should I use indexed arrays of OpenGL vertices?

  - by Tartley

  I'm trying to get a clear idea of when I should be using indexed arrays of OpenGL vertices, drawn with gl[Multi]DrawElements and the like, versus when I should simply use contiguous arrays of vertices, drawn with gl[Multi]DrawArrays. (Update: The consensus in the replies I got is that one should always be using indexed vertices.) I have gone back and forth on this issue several times, so I'm going to outline my current understanding, in the hopes someone can either tell me I'm now finally more or less correct, or else point out where my remaining misunderstandings are. Specifically, I have three conclusions, in bold. Please correct them if they are wrong. One simple case is if my geometry consists of meshes to form curved surfaces. In this case, the vertices in the middle of the mesh will have identical attributes (position, normal, color, texture coord, etc) for every triangle which uses the vertex. This leads me to conclude that: 1. For geometry with few seams, indexed arrays are a big win. Follow rule 1 always, except: For geometry that is very 'blocky', in which every edge represents a seam, the benefit of indexed arrays is less obvious. To take a simple cube as an example, although each vertex is used in three different faces, we can't share vertices between them, because for a single vertex, the surface normals (and possible other things, like color and texture co-ord) will differ on each face. Hence we need to explicitly introduce redundant vertex positions into our array, so that the same position can be used several times with different normals, etc. This means that indexed arrays are of less use. e.g. When rendering a single face of a cube: 0 1 o---o |\ | | \ | | \| o---o 3 2 (this can be considered in isolation, because the seams between this face and all adjacent faces mean than none of these vertices can be shared between faces) if rendering using GL_TRIANGLE_FAN (or _STRIP), then each face of the cube can be rendered thus: verts = [v0, v1, v2, v3] colors = [c0, c0, c0, c0] normal = [n0, n0, n0, n0] Adding indices does not allow us to simplify this. From this I conclude that: 2. When rendering geometry which is all seams or mostly seams, when using GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP or _FAN, then I should never use indexed arrays, and should instead always use gl[Multi]DrawArrays. (Update: Replies indicate that this conclusion is wrong. Even though indices don't allow us to reduce the size of the arrays here, they should still be used because of other performance benefits, as discussed in the comments) The only exception to rule 2 is: When using GL_TRIANGLES (instead of strips or fans), then half of the vertices can still be re-used twice, with identical normals and colors, etc, because each cube face is rendered as two separate triangles. Again, for the same single cube face: 0 1 o---o |\ | | \ | | \| o---o 3 2 Without indices, using GL_TRIANGLES, the arrays would be something like: verts = [v0, v1, v2, v2, v3, v0] normals = [n0, n0, n0, n0, n0, n0] colors = [c0, c0, c0, c0, c0, c0] Since a vertex and a normal are often 3 floats each, and a color is often 3 bytes, that gives, for each cube face, about: verts = 6 * 3 floats = 18 floats normals = 6 * 3 floats = 18 floats colors = 6 * 3 bytes = 18 bytes = 36 floats and 18 bytes per cube face. (I understand the number of bytes might change if different types are used, the exact figures are just for illustration.) With indices, we can simplify this a little, giving: verts = [v0, v1, v2, v3] (4 * 3 = 12 floats) normals = [n0, n0, n0, n0] (4 * 3 = 12 floats) colors = [c0, c0, c0, c0] (4 * 3 = 12 bytes) indices = [0, 1, 2, 2, 3, 0] (6 shorts) = 24 floats + 12 bytes, and maybe 6 shorts, per cube face. See how in the latter case, vertices 0 and 2 are used twice, but only represented once in each of the verts, normals and colors arrays. This sounds like a small win for using indices, even in the extreme case of every single geometry edge being a seam. This leads me to conclude that: 3. When using GL_TRIANGLES, one should always use indexed arrays, even for geometry which is all seams. Please correct my conclusions in bold if they are wrong.

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• Win32 -- Object cleanup and global variables

  - by KaiserJohaan

  Hello, I've got a question about global variables and object cleanup in c++. For example, look at the code here; case WM_PAINT: paintText(&hWnd); break; void paintText(HWND* hWnd) { PAINTSTRUCT ps; HBRUSH hbruzh = CreateSolidBrush(RGB(0,0,0)); HDC hdz = BeginPaint(*hWnd,&ps); char s1[] = "Name"; char s2[] = "IP"; SelectBrush(hdz,hbruzh); SelectFont(hdz,hFont); SetBkMode(hdz,TRANSPARENT); TextOut(hdz,3,23,s1,sizeof(s1)); TextOut(hdz,10,53,s2,sizeof(s2)); EndPaint(*hWnd,&ps); DeleteObject(hdz); DeleteObject(hbruzh); // bad? DeleteObject(ps); // bad? } 1)First of all; which objects are good to delete and which ones are NOT good to delete and why? Not 100% sure of this. 2)Since WM_PAINT is called everytime the window is redrawn, would it be better to simply store ps, hdz and hbruzh as global variables instead of re-initializing them everytime? The downside I guess would be tons of global variables in the end _ but performance-wise would it not be less CPU-consuming? I know it won't matter prolly but I'm just aiming for minimalistic as possible for educational purposes. 3) What about libraries that are loaded in? For example: // // Main // int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow) { // initialize vars HWND hWnd; WNDCLASSEX wc; HINSTANCE hlib = LoadLibrary("Riched20.dll"); ThishInstance = hInstance; ZeroMemory(&wc,sizeof(wc)); // set WNDCLASSEX props wc.cbSize = sizeof(WNDCLASSEX); wc.lpfnWndProc = WindowProc; wc.hInstance = ThishInstance; wc.hIcon = LoadIcon(hInstance,MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDI_MYICON)); wc.lpszMenuName = MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDR_MENU1); wc.hCursor = LoadCursor(NULL, IDC_ARROW); wc.hbrBackground = (HBRUSH)COLOR_WINDOW; wc.lpszClassName = TEXT("PimpClient"); RegisterClassEx(&wc); // create main window and display it hWnd = CreateWindowEx(NULL, wc.lpszClassName, TEXT("PimpClient"), 0, 300, 200, 450, 395, NULL, NULL, hInstance, NULL); createWindows(&hWnd); ShowWindow(hWnd,nCmdShow); // loop message queue MSG msg; while (GetMessage(&msg, NULL,0,0)) { TranslateMessage(&msg); DispatchMessage(&msg); } // cleanup? FreeLibrary(hlib); return msg.wParam; } 3cont) is there a reason to FreeLibrary at the end? I mean when the process terminates all resources are freed anyway? And since the library is used to paint text throughout the program, why would I want to free before that? Cheers

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• What are good CLI tools for JSON?

  - by jasonmp85

  General Problem Though I may be diagnosing the root cause of an event, determining how many users it affected, or distilling timing logs in order to assess the performance and throughput impact of a recent code change, my tools stay the same: grep, awk, sed, tr, uniq, sort, zcat, tail, head, join, and split. To glue them all together, Unix gives us pipes, and for fancier filtering we have xargs. If these fail me, there's always perl -e. These tools are perfect for processing CSV files, tab-delimited files, log files with a predictable line format, or files with comma-separated key-value pairs. In other words, files where each line has next to no context. XML Analogues I recently needed to trawl through Gigabytes of XML to build a histogram of usage by user. This was easy enough with the tools I had, but for more complicated queries the normal approaches break down. Say I have files with items like this: <foo user="me"> <baz key="zoidberg" value="squid" /> <baz key="leela" value="cyclops" /> <baz key="fry" value="rube" /> </foo> And let's say I want to produce a mapping from user to average number of <baz>s per <foo>. Processing line-by-line is no longer an option: I need to know which user's <foo> I'm currently inspecting so I know whose average to update. Any sort of Unix one liner that accomplishes this task is likely to be inscrutable. Fortunately in XML-land, we have wonderful technologies like XPath, XQuery, and XSLT to help us. Previously, I had gotten accustomed to using the wonderful XML::XPath Perl module to accomplish queries like the one above, but after finding a TextMate Plugin that could run an XPath expression against my current window, I stopped writing one-off Perl scripts to query XML. And I just found out about XMLStarlet which is installing as I type this and which I look forward to using in the future. JSON Solutions? So this leads me to my question: are there any tools like this for JSON? It's only a matter of time before some investigation task requires me to do similar queries on JSON files, and without tools like XPath and XSLT, such a task will be a lot harder. If I had a bunch of JSON that looked like this: { "firstName": "Bender", "lastName": "Robot", "age": 200, "address": { "streetAddress": "123", "city": "New York", "state": "NY", "postalCode": "1729" }, "phoneNumber": [ { "type": "home", "number": "666 555-1234" }, { "type": "fax", "number": "666 555-4567" } ] } And wanted to find the average number of phone numbers each person had, I could do something like this with XPath: fn:avg(/fn:count(phoneNumber)) Questions Are there any command-line tools that can "query" JSON files in this way? If you have to process a bunch of JSON files on a Unix command line, what tools do you use? Heck, is there even work being done to make a query language like this for JSON? If you do use tools like this in your day-to-day work, what do you like/dislike about them? Are there any gotchas? I'm noticing more and more data serialization is being done using JSON, so processing tools like this will be crucial when analyzing large data dumps in the future. Language libraries for JSON are very strong and it's easy enough to write scripts to do this sort of processing, but to really let people play around with the data shell tools are needed. Related Questions Grep and Sed Equivalent for XML Command Line Processing Is there a query language for JSON? JSONPath or other XPath like utility for JSON/Javascript; or Jquery JSON

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• How do I use constructor dependency injection to supply Models from a collection to their ViewModels

  - by GraemeF

  I'm using constructor dependency injection in my WPF application and I keep running into the following pattern, so would like to get other people's opinion on it and hear about alternative solutions. The goal is to wire up a hierarchy of ViewModels to a similar hierarchy of Models, so that the responsibility for presenting the information in each model lies with its own ViewModel implementation. (The pattern also crops up under other circumstances but MVVM should make for a good example.) Here's a simplified example. Given that I have a model that has a collection of further models: public interface IPerson { IEnumerable<IAddress> Addresses { get; } } public interface IAddress { } I would like to mirror this hierarchy in the ViewModels so that I can bind a ListBox (or whatever) to a collection in the Person ViewModel: public interface IPersonViewModel { ObservableCollection<IAddressViewModel> Addresses { get; } void Initialize(); } public interface IAddressViewModel { } The child ViewModel needs to present the information from the child Model, so it's injected via the constructor: public class AddressViewModel : IAddressViewModel { private readonly IAddress _address; public AddressViewModel(IAddress address) { _address = address; } } The question is, what is the best way to supply the child Model to the corresponding child ViewModel? The example is trivial, but in a typical real case the ViewModels have more dependencies - each of which has its own dependencies (and so on). I'm using Unity 1.2 (although I think the question is relevant across the other IoC containers), and I am using Caliburn's view strategies to automatically find and wire up the appropriate View to a ViewModel. Here is my current solution: The parent ViewModel needs to create a child ViewModel for each child Model, so it has a factory method added to its constructor which it uses during initialization: public class PersonViewModel : IPersonViewModel { private readonly Func<IAddress, IAddressViewModel> _addressViewModelFactory; private readonly IPerson _person; public PersonViewModel(IPerson person, Func<IAddress, IAddressViewModel> addressViewModelFactory) { _addressViewModelFactory = addressViewModelFactory; _person = person; Addresses = new ObservableCollection<IAddressViewModel>(); } public ObservableCollection<IAddressViewModel> Addresses { get; private set; } public void Initialize() { foreach (IAddress address in _person.Addresses) Addresses.Add(_addressViewModelFactory(address)); } } A factory method that satisfies the Func<IAddress, IAddressViewModel> interface is registered with the main UnityContainer. The factory method uses a child container to register the IAddress dependency that is required by the ViewModel and then resolves the child ViewModel: public class Factory { private readonly IUnityContainer _container; public Factory(IUnityContainer container) { _container = container; } public void RegisterStuff() { _container.RegisterInstance<Func<IAddress, IAddressViewModel>>(CreateAddressViewModel); } private IAddressViewModel CreateAddressViewModel(IAddress model) { IUnityContainer childContainer = _container.CreateChildContainer(); childContainer.RegisterInstance(model); return childContainer.Resolve<IAddressViewModel>(); } } Now, when the PersonViewModel is initialized, it loops through each Address in the Model and calls CreateAddressViewModel() (which was injected via the Func<IAddress, IAddressViewModel> argument). CreateAddressViewModel() creates a temporary child container and registers the IAddress model so that when it resolves the IAddressViewModel from the child container the AddressViewModel gets the correct instance injected via its constructor. This seems to be a good solution to me as the dependencies of the ViewModels are very clear and they are easily testable and unaware of the IoC container. On the other hand, performance is OK but not great as a lot of temporary child containers can be created. Also I end up with a lot of very similar factory methods. Is this the best way to inject the child Models into the child ViewModels with Unity? Is there a better (or faster) way to do it in other IoC containers, e.g. Autofac? How would this problem be tackled with MEF, given that it is not a traditional IoC container but is still used to compose objects?

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• Rendering a Long Document on iPad

  - by benjismith

  I'm implementing a document viewer with highlighting/annotation capabilities for a custom document format on iPad. The documents are kind of long (100 to 200 pages, if printed on paper) and I've had a hard time finding the right approach. Here are the requirments: 1) Basic rich-text styling: control of left/right margins. Control of font name, size, foreground/background color, and line spacing. Bold, italics, underline, etc. 2) Selection and highlighting of arbitrary text regions (not limited to paragraph boundaries, like in Safari/UIWebView). 3) Customization of the Cut/Copy/Paste popup (what is that thing called anyhow? UIActionBar?) This is one of the essential requirements of the app. My first implementation was based on UIWebView. I just rendered the document as HTML with CSS for text styling. But I couldn't get the kind of text selection behavior I wanted (across paragraph boundaries) and the UIActionBar can't be customized from within UIWebView. So I started working on a javascript approach, faking the device text-selection behavior using JQuery to trap touch events and dynamically modifying the DOM to change the background color of selected regions of text. I built a fake UIActionBar control as a hidden DIV, positioning it and unhiding it whenever there was an active selection region. Not too shabby. The main problem is that it's SLOOOOOOOW. Scrolling through the document is nice and quick, but dynamically changing the DOM is not very snappy. Plus, I couldn't figure out how to recreate the magnifier loupe, so my fake text-selection GUI doesn't look quite the same as the native implementation. Also, I haven't yet implemented the communication bridge between the javascript layer and the objective-c layer (where the rest of the app lives), but it was shaping up to be a huge hassle. So I've been looking at CoreText, but there are precious few examples on the web. I spent a little time with this simple little demo: http://github.com/jonasschnelli/I7CoreTextExample/ It shows how to use CoreText to draw an NSAttributedText string into a UIView. But it has its own problems: It doesn't implement text-selection behavior, and it doesn't present a UIActionBar, so I don't have any idea how to make that happen. And, more importantly, it tries to draw the entire document all at once, with significant performance degradations for long documents. My documents can have thousands of paragraphs, and less than 1% of the document is ever on screen at a time. On the plus side, these documents already contain precise formatting information. I know the exact page-position of every line of text, so I don't need a layout engine. Does anyone know how to implement this sort of view using CoreText? I understand that a full-fledged implementation is overkill for a question like this, but I'm looking for a good CoreText example with a few basic requirements: 1) Precise layout & formatting control (using the formatting metrics and text styles I've already calculated). 2) Arbitrary selection of text. 3) Customization of the UIActionBar. 4) Efficient recycling of resources for off-screen objects. I'd be happy to implement my own recycling when text elements scroll off-screen, but wouldn't that require re-implementing UIScrollView? I'm brand-new to iPhone development, and still getting used to Objective-C, but I've been working in other languages (Java, C#, flex/actionscript, etc) for more than ten years, so I feel confident in my ability to get the work done, if only I had a better feel for the iPhone SDK and the common coding patterns for stuff like this. Is it just me, or does the SDK documentation really suck? Anyhow, thanks for your help!

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