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• Using Lambda Expressions trees with IEnumerable

  - by Loathian

  I've been trying to learn more about using Lamba expression trees and so I created a simple example. Here is the code, this works in LINQPad if pasted in as a C# program. void Main() { IEnumerable<User> list = GetUsers().Where(NameContains("a")); list.Dump("Users"); } // Methods public IEnumerable<User> GetUsers() { yield return new User{Name = "andrew"}; yield return new User{Name = "rob"}; yield return new User{Name = "chris"}; yield return new User{Name = "ryan"}; } public Expression<Func<User, bool>> NameContains(string namePart) { return u => u.Name.Contains(namePart); } // Classes public class User { public string Name { get; set; } } This results in the following error: The type arguments for method 'System.Linq.Enumerable.Where(System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable, System.Func)' cannot be inferred from the usage. Try specifying the type arguments explicitly. However if I just substitute the first line in main with this: IEnumerable<User> list = GetUsers().Where(u => u.Name.Contains("a")); It works fine. Can tell me what I'm doing wrong, please?

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• PCA extended face recognition

  - by cMinor

  The state of the art says that we can use PCA to perform face recognition. like this, this or this I am working with a project that involves training a classifier to detect a person who is wearing glasess or hats or even a mustache. The purpose of doing this is to detect when a person that has robbed a bank, store, or have commeted some sort of crime(s) (we have their image in a database), enters a certain place ( historically we know these guys have robbed, so we should take care to avoid problems). We came first to have a distributed database with all images of criminals, then I thought to have a layer of them clasifying these criminals using accesories like hats, mustache or anything that hides their face etc... Then, to apply that knowledge to detect when a particular or a suspect person enters a comercial place. ( In practice when someone is going to rob not all the times they are using an accesorie...) What do you think about this idea of doing PCA to first detect principal components of the face and then the components of an accesory. I was thinking that maybe a probabilistic approach is better so we can compute the probability the criminal is the person that entered a place and call the respective authorities.

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• Subsonic 3 ActiveRecord nested select for NotIn bug?

  - by Junto

  I have the following Subsonic 3.0 query, which contains a nested NotIn query: public List<Order> GetRandomOrdersForNoReason(int shopId, int typeId) { // build query var q = new SubSonic.Query.Select().Top("1") .From("Order") .Where("ShopId") .IsEqualTo(shopId) .And(OrderTable.CustomerId).NotIn( new Subsonic.Query.Select("CustomerId") .From("Customer") .Where("TypeId") .IsNotEqualTo(typeId)) .OrderDesc("NewId()"); // Output query Debug.WriteLine(q.ToString()); // returned typed list return q.ExecuteTypedList<Order>(); } The internal query appears to be incorrect: SELECT TOP 1 * FROM [Order] WHERE ShopId = @0 AND CustomerId NOT IN (SELECT CustomerId FROM [Customer] WHERE TypeId = @0) ORDER BY NewId() ASC You'll notice that both parameters are @0. I'm assuming that the parameters are enumerated (starting at zero), for each "new" Select query. However, in this case where the two Select queries are nested, I would have expected the output to have two parameters named @0 and @1. My query is based on one that Rob Conery gave on his blog as a preview of the "Pakala" query tool that became Subsonic 3. His example was: int records = new Select(Northwind.Product.Schema) .Where("productid") .In( new Select("productid").From(Northwind.Product.Schema) .Where("categoryid").IsEqualTo(5) ) .GetRecordCount(); Has anyone else seen this behavior? Is it a bug, or is this an error or my part? Since I'm new to Subsonic I'm guessing that this probably programmer error on my part but I'd like confirmation if possible.

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• Weird URL parse issue. (Android)

  - by Tarmon

  I am attempting to parse in a URL to a KML file from maps.google.com. When I try and use this link: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=112748174025829638330.000483ad6315714cc941d&z=13&output=kml` I am unable to overlay this KML file on my MapView. If I were to take the KML file that I get from following this link and upload it to my Dropbox it will work just fine. I think there may be something about the URL from Google that it doesn't like? Link from dropbox: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1037184/Blue_original.kml Also it would be better if we could just save these KML files locally and pass them in the same way but I can't figure out a way to do this. Here is the code I am using: Intent mapIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW); Uri uri1 = Uri.parse("geo:0,0?q=http://code.google.com/apis/kml/ documentation/KML_Samples.kml"); mapIntent.setData(uri1); startActivity(Intent.createChooser(mapIntent, "Test")); The URL used in this example also works. So to recap: I am curious as to why some URLs work and others don't. Is there a way to place this KML file locally on the device and pass it to a Uri object? Any other suggestions? Thanks, Rob

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• Multi-tenant Access Control: Repository or Service layer?

  - by FreshCode

  In a multi-tenant ASP.NET MVC application based on Rob Conery's MVC Storefront, should I be filtering the tenant's data in the repository or the service layer? 1. Filter tenant's data in the repository: public interface IJobRepository { IQueryable<Job> GetJobs(short tenantId); } 2. Let the service filter the repository data by tenant: public interface IJobService { IList<Job> GetJobs(short tenantId); } My gut-feeling says to do it in the service layer (option 2), but it could be argued that each tenant should in essence have their own "virtual repository," (option 1) where this responsibility lies with the repository. Which is the most elegant approach: option 1, option 2 or is there a better way? Update: I tried the proposed idea of filtering at the repository, but the problem is that my application provides the tenant context (via sub-domain) and only interacts with the service layer. Passing the context all the way to the repository layer is a mission. So instead I have opted to filter my data at the service layer. I feel that the repository should represent all data physically available in the repository with appropriate filters for retrieving tenant-specific data, to be used by the service layer. Final Update: I ended up abandoning this approach due to the unnecessary complexities. See my answer below.

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• What permissions do I need to grant to run RavenDB in Server mode?

  - by dalesmithtx

  I'm reading through Rob Ashton's excellent blog post on RavenDB: http://codeofrob.com/archive/2010/05/09/ravendb-an-introduction.aspx and I'm working through the code as I read. But when I try to add an index, I get a 401 error. Here's the code: class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { using (var documentStore = new DocumentStore() { Url = "http://localhost:8080" }) { documentStore.Initialise(); documentStore.DatabaseCommands.PutIndex( "BasicEntityBySomeData", new IndexDefinition<BasicEntity, BasicEntity>() { Map = docs => from doc in docs where doc.SomeData != null select new { SomeData = doc.SomeData }, }); string entityId; using (var documentSession = documentStore.OpenSession()) { var entity = new BasicEntity() { SomeData = "Hello, World!", SomeOtherData = "This is just another property", }; documentSession.Store(entity); documentSession.SaveChanges(); entityId = entity.Id; var loadedEntity = documentSession.Load<BasicEntity>(entityId); Console.WriteLine(loadedEntity.SomeData); var docs = documentSession.Query<BasicEntity>("BasicEntityBySomeData") .Where("SomeData:Hello~") .WaitForNonStaleResults() .ToArray(); docs.ToList().ForEach(doc => Console.WriteLine(doc.SomeData)); Console.Read(); } } } It throws the 401 error when on the line that makes the PutIndex() call. Any ideas what permissions I need to apply? And where I need to apply them?

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• How to move a symlink to the trash?

  - by neoneye

  I don't see any options for the FSPathMoveObjectToTrashSync() function for not following links. Here is what I have tried Create a link and a file [ 21:32:41 /tmp ] $ touch my_file [ 21:32:45 /tmp ] $ ln -s my_file my_link [ 21:32:52 /tmp ] $ la total 8 drwxrwxrwt 12 root wheel 408 17 Maj 21:32 . drwxr-xr-x@ 6 root wheel 204 9 Sep 2009 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 neoneye wheel 0 17 Maj 21:32 my_file lrwxr-xr-x 1 neoneye wheel 7 17 Maj 21:32 my_link -> my_file Move the link to the trash OSStatus status = FSPathMoveObjectToTrashSync( "/tmp/my_link", NULL, kFSFileOperationDefaultOptions ); NSLog(@"status: %i", (int)status); Output is status: 0 However the file got removed and not the link [ 21:32:55 /tmp ] $ la total 8 drwxrwxrwt 11 root wheel 374 17 Maj 21:33 . drwxr-xr-x@ 6 root wheel 204 9 Sep 2009 .. lrwxr-xr-x 1 neoneye wheel 7 17 Maj 21:32 my_link -> my_file [ 21:33:05 /tmp ] $ How can I move move symlinks to the trash? The Solution.. thanks to Rob Napier NSString* path = @"/tmp/my_link"; OSStatus status = 0; FSRef ref; status = FSPathMakeRefWithOptions( (const UInt8 *)[path fileSystemRepresentation], kFSPathMakeRefDoNotFollowLeafSymlink, &ref, NULL ); NSAssert((status == 0), @"failed to make FSRef"); status = FSMoveObjectToTrashSync( &ref, NULL, kFSFileOperationDefaultOptions ); NSLog(@"status: %i", (int)status);

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• Linq causes collection to disappear when trying to use OrderByDescending

  - by Jeremy B.

  For background, I am using MongoDB and Rob Conery's linq driver. The code I am attempting is thus: using (var session = new Session<ContentItem>()) { var contentCollection = session.QueryCollection.Where(x => x.CreatedOn < DateTime.Now).OrderByDescending(y => y.CreatedOn).ToList(); ViewData.Model = contentCollection; } this will work on one machine, but on another machine I get back no results. To get results i have to do using (var session = new Session<ContentItem>()) { var contentCollection = session.QueryCollection.Where(x => x.CreatedOn < DateTime.Now).ToList(); ViewData.Model = contentCollection.OrderByDescending(y => y.CreatedOn).ToList(); } I have to do ToList() on both lines, or no results. If I try to chain anything it breaks. This is the same project, all dll's are locally loaded. Both machines have the same framework, versions of Visual studio and addons. the only difference is one has VisualSVN the other AnkhSVN. I can't see those causing the problem. Also, while debugging, on the machine that does not work you can see the items in the collection, and if you remove ordering all together it will work. This has got me completely stumped.

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• Cursor returns zero rows from query to table

  - by brockoli

  I've created an SQLiteDatabase in my app and populated it with some data. I can connect to my AVD with a terminal and when I issue select * from articles; I get a list of all the rows in my table and everything looks fine. However, in my code when I query my table, I get a cursor back that has my tables columns, but zero rows of data. Here is my code.. mDbHelper.open(); Cursor articles = mDbHelper.fetchAllArticles(); startManagingCursor(articles); Cursor feeds = mDbHelper.fetchAllFeeds(); startManagingCursor(feeds); mDbHelper.close(); int titleColumn = articles.getColumnIndex("title"); int feedIdColumn = articles.getColumnIndex("feed_id"); int feedTitleColumn = feeds.getColumnIndex("title"); /* Check if our result was valid. */ if (articles != null) { int count = articles.getCount(); /* Check if at least one Result was returned. */ if (articles.moveToFirst()) { In the above code, my Cursor articles returns with my 4 columns, but when I call getCount() it returns zero, even though I can see hundreds of rows of data in that table from command line. Any idea what I might be doing wrong here? Also.. here is my code for fetchAllArticles.. public Cursor fetchAllArticles() { return mDb.query(ARTICLES_TABLE, new String[] {ARTICLE_KEY_ROWID, ARTICLE_KEY_FEED_ID, ARTICLE_KEY_TITLE, ARTICLE_KEY_URL}, null, null, null, null, null); } Rob W.

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• UIBezierPath too many paths = too slow?

  - by HHHH

  I have a loop in which I'm adding many (10000+) lines to a UIBezierPath. This seems to be fine, but once I try and render the bezierpath, my device becomes extremely slow and jerky. Is this because I've added too many lines to my path? Adding lines to UIBezierPath - simplified: (this seems fine) [path moveToPoint:CGPointZero]; for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++ ) { [path addLineToPoint:CGPointMake(i, i)]; } Rendering BeizerPath (Suggested by Rob) - this seems slow. - (void)drawBezierAnimate:(BOOL)animate { UIBezierPath *bezierPath = path; CAShapeLayer *bezier = [[CAShapeLayer alloc] init]; bezier.path = bezierPath.CGPath; bezier.strokeColor = [UIColor blueColor].CGColor; bezier.fillColor = [UIColor clearColor].CGColor; bezier.lineWidth = 2.0; bezier.strokeStart = 0.0; bezier.strokeEnd = 1.0; [self.layer addSublayer:bezier]; if (animate) { CABasicAnimation *animateStrokeEnd = [CABasicAnimation animationWithKeyPath:@"strokeEnd"]; animateStrokeEnd.duration = 100.0; animateStrokeEnd.fromValue = [NSNumber numberWithFloat:0.0f]; animateStrokeEnd.toValue = [NSNumber numberWithFloat:1.0f]; [bezier addAnimation:animateStrokeEnd forKey:@"strokeEndAnimation"]; } } Qs: 1) Is this because I'm adding too many paths too quickly? 2) I want to eventually draw many different lines of different colors, so I assume I would need to create multiple (10000+) UIBezierPaths - would this help or greatly slow the device as well? 3) How would I get around this? Thanks in advance for your help.

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• git contributors not showing up properly in github/etc.

  - by RobH

  I'm working in a team on a big project, but when I'm doing the merges I'd like the developers name to appear in github as the author -- currently, I'm the only one showing up since I'm merging. Context: There are 4 developers, and we're using the "integration manager" workflow using GitHub. Our "blessed" repo is under the organization, and each developer manages their pub/private repo. I've been tasked with being the integration manager, so I'm doing the merges, etc. Where I could be messing up is that I'm basically working out of my rob/project.git instead of the org/project.git -- so when I do local merges I operate on my repo then I push to both my public and the org public. (Make sense?) When I push to the blessed repo nobody else shows up as an author, since all commits are coming from me -- how can I get around this? -- Also, we all forked org/project.git, yet in the network graph nobody is showing up -- did we mess this up too? I'm used to working with git solo and don't have too much experience with handling a team of devs. Merging seems like the right thing to do, but I'm being thrown off since GitHub is kind of ignoring the other contributors. If this makes no sense at all, how do you use GitHub to manage a single project across 4 developers? (preferably the integration mgr workflow, branching i think would solve the problem) Thanks for any help

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• How can I define an irregular area of the screen and find the closest point to the mouse in that area?

  - by JonathonG

  I'm looking for a method to define an area of the screen that the mouse cannot leave. I have been directed by rob mayoff, the answerer of this question, that I can use a Quartz Event Tap to detect mouse events. This puts me part of the way to the solution to THIS question. I need to define an irregular area of the screen, not just a rectangle, that the mouse cannot leave. I have been researching this and the only idea I can come up with is using a bitmap to define the irregular area, as it will be very oddly shaped. However, I am open to solutions other than using a bitmap. Since this must be done on a Mac, I've determined that I will have to use objective C / Cocoa . I need to know how to define the area and, equally importantly, how to find the closest point in the area to the mouse (so that I can move the mouse to it if the mouse tries to move outside of the area). This is similar to what the restricted area will look like: [edit:] Okay, I've come up with part of the answer to this. If I can do a basic (light-weight) point collision detection on the image mask, I can use a simple algorithm to detect the closest point to the mouse on the black area of the image. I could do this by calculating distance between a pre-defined point (P) inside the black area of the image and the target mouse position (T), taking the midpoint (M), then checking if the midpoint is inside or outside of the shape (black or white, respectively). If M is inside the shape, then move the P to M, otherwise move T to the M, continuously recalculate this until the distance between T and P is 1 pixel or less, then move the mouse to the final calculated position. All of that being said, I still need some way to test the position of the mouse against that same position on the bitmap (assume the bitmap is the same resolution as the monitor), and check if that point is black or white. All of this needs to be done in the background, without this application actually having focus, or the bitmap being visible... is this possible?

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• How do I compare 2 fields and return the lowest value of each record?

  - by BigRob

  I'm slowly learning access to make a database of products and suppliers for my parents' business. What i've got is a table of products indexed by our product reference and 2 more tables for 2 different suppliers that contains the suppliers product reference and price that links with our reference. I've made a query that performs a left outer join such that it returns a table of our products with each supplier's reference and price, i.e: Ref | Product Name | Supplier 1 Ref | Supplier 1 Price | Supplier 2 Ref | Supplier 2 Price Here's the query I used: SELECT Catalog.Ref, Catalog.[Product Name], Catalog.Price, [D Products].[Supplier Ref], [D Products].Cost, [GS Products].[Supplier Ref], [GS Products].Cost FROM ([Catalog] LEFT JOIN [D Products] ON Catalog.Ref = [D Products].Ref) LEFT JOIN [GS Products] ON Catalog.Ref = [GS Products].Ref; Not all products are available from both suppliers, hence the outer join. What I want to do (with a query?) is to take the table produced by the query above and simply show the product reference, cheapest supplier reference and cheapest supplier price, i.e: Ref | Cheapest Suppplier Ref | Cheapest Supplier Price Unfortunately my SQL knowledge isn't quite good enough to figure this out, but if anyone can help i'd really appreciate it. Thanks, Rob

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• Feb 2nd Links: Visual Studio, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, JQuery, Windows Phone

  - by ScottGu

  Here is the latest in my link-listing series.  Also check out my Best of 2010 Summary for links to 100+ other posts I’ve done in the last year. [I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Community News MVCConf Conference Next Wednesday: Attend the free, online ASP.NET MVC Conference being organized by the community next Wednesday.  Here is a list of some of the talks you can watch live. Visual Studio HTML5 and CSS3 in VS 2010 SP1: Good post from the Visual Studio web tools team that talks about the new support coming in VS 2010 SP1 for HTML5 and CSS3. Database Deployment with the VS 2010 Package/Publish Database Tool: Rachel Appel has a nice post that covers how to enable database deployment using the built-in VS 2010 web deployment support.  Also check out her ASP.NET web deployment post from last month. VsVim Update Released: Jared posts about the latest update of his VsVim extension for Visual Studio 2010.  This free extension enables VIM based key-bindings within VS. ASP.NET How to Add Mobile Pages to your ASP.NET Web Forms / MVC Apps: Great whitepaper by Steve Sanderson that covers how to mobile-enable your ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC based applications. New Entity Framework Tutorials for ASP.NET Developers: The ASP.NET and EF teams have put together a bunch of nice tutorials on using the Entity Framework data library with ASP.NET Web Forms. Using ASP.NET Dynamic Data with EF Code First (via NuGet): Nice post from David Ebbo that talks about how to use the new EF Code First Library with ASP.NET Dynamic Data. Common Performance Issues with ASP.NET Web Sites: Good post with lots of performance tuning suggestions (mostly deployment settings) for ASP.NET apps. ASP.NET MVC Razor View Converter: Free, automated tool from Terlik that can convert existing .aspx view templates to Razor view templates. ASP.NET MVC 3 Internationalization: Nadeem has a great post that talks about a variety of techniques you can use to enable Globalization and Localization within your ASP.NET MVC 3 applications. ASP.NET MVC 3 Tutorials by David Hayden: Great set of tutorials and posts by David Hayden on some of the new ASP.NET MVC 3 features. EF Fixed Concurrency Mode and MVC: Chris Sells has a nice post that talks about how to handle concurrency with updates done with EF using ASP.NET MVC. ASP.NET and jQuery jQuery Performance Tips and Tricks: A free 30 minute video that covers some great tips and tricks to keep in mind when using jQuery. jQuery 1.5’s AJAX rewrite and ASP.NET services - All is well: Nice post by Dave Ward that talks about using the new jQuery 1.5 to call ASP.NET ASMX Services. Good news according to Dave is that all is well :-) jQuery UI Modal Dialogs for ASP.NET MVC: Nice post by Rob Regan that talks about a few approaches you can use to implement dialogs with jQuery UI and ASP.NET MVC.  Windows Phone 7 Free PDF eBook on Building Windows Phone 7 Applications with Silverlight: Free book that walksthrough how to use Silverlight and Visual Studio to build Windows Phone 7 applications. Hope this helps, Scott

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• Silverlight Cream for March 25, 2010 -- #820

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: René Schulte, Jeremy Likness, Hassan, Victor Gaudioso, SilverLaw, Mike Taulty, Phani Raj, Tim Heuer, Christian Schormann, Brad Abrams, David Anson, Diptimaya Patra, and Daniel Vaughan. Shoutouts: Last week, Koen Zwikstra announced Silverlight Spy at MIX10 Anand Iyer announced this for students on the Windows Team Blog: Be a Windows Phone 7 “Rockstar” Justin Angel blogged that Silverlight Isn't Fully Cross-Platform ... let him know if you think it's a yawn or important. On behalf of SilverlightShow, Cigdem Patlak posted MIX10: Laurent Bugnion on Silverlight adoption, WP7 and the EcoContest From SilverlightCream.com: Coding4Fun - Silverlight Real Time Face Detection René Schulte has a Coding 4 Fun article posted on facial recognition. Who better to be manipulating graphics like this than René? Sequential Asynchronous Workflows Part 2: Simplified Jeremy Likness follows up his previous post with another one that is 'simplified'. Remember his previous post began with a post on the Silverlight.net forum and Rob Eisenburg's MVVM presentation from MIX10 Windows Phone 7 Video Tutorial Hassan has a new video up on his AfricanGeek site, and that's a continuation of his previous WP7 video tutorial, adding a listbox and databinding it to the selected index of another listbox. The Los Angeles Silverlight Usergorup will be Streaming its March Meeting LIVE in Silverlight – Tonight! Victor Gaudioso used his Live Streaming knowledge to stream his User Group meeting last night from LA where Michael Washington presented on MVVM followed by Victor himself. That was last night. Today he has a couple of the videos up to view. Shining 3D Font Design - Silverlight 3 SilverLaw has a "Shining 3D Font" tutorial up, and a video on it here: New Video: How to create a 3D effect on a Silverlight 3 Textblock ... this is also available in the Expression Gallery. Silverlight 4 RC – Signing trusted apps with home made certificates Mike Taulty has a post up about building a hand-rolled cert to test out the XAP signing features, and then gives a nod to John Papa with a link to the Silverlight White Paper I've posted about before, because this info is in there as well. Developing a Windows Phone 7 Application that consumes OData Phani Raj has a tutorial up on consuming the NetFlix OData catalog on the WP7 emulator ... now *that* is cool! Make your Silverlight applications Speak to you with Microsoft Translator Tim Heuer used Silverlight to demonstrate Microsoft Translator as a speech synthesis tool using the Speak API included ... pretty cool, Tim ... lots of external links and code. Blend 4: About Path Layout, Sidebar – More About ListBox Than You Ever Wanted To Know Christian Schormann has another outstanding tutorial up on the ListBox and PathLayout in Expression Blend ... just check out the screen shots and you'll wanna read it! Silverlight 4 + RIA Services: Ready for Business: Updating Data in the Client This is the continuation of Brad Abrams' series on WCF RIA Services and is a tutorial on setting up to deal with updating the data. Tip: The CLR wrapper for a DependencyProperty should do its job and nothing more David Anson is posting some "Development Tips", and this is the first ... discussing making sure your DependencyProperty CLR wrapper stays on point... Create and Apply Theme Silverlight Application Diptimaya Patra has a tutorial up on creating and using themes. He states that "Themes are nothing but some predefined styles" ... check it out and see if it's really that easy :) Building a Windows Phone 7 Puzzle Game Daniel Vaughan has a great post up starting with installing all the tools and ending with a maze game for WP7 using XNA for sound... this is the first I've seen that integrates XNA (I think). 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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• Today's Links (6/29/2011)

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Event-Driven SOA: Events meet Services | Guido Schmutz Oracle ACE Director Guido Schmutz shows you how to achieve extreme loose coupling within a Service-Oriented Architecture by using event-driven interactions. Misconceptions About Software Architecture | Sanjeev Kumar A concise, to-the-point, and informative article by Sanjeev Kumar. Good Leaders Acknowledge What Can't Be Done - Jeffrey Pfeffer - Harvard Business Review "None of us likes to admit to bad decisions," says Jeffrey Pfeffer. "But imagine how much harder that is for someone who has been chosen to lead a large organization precisely because he or she is thought to have the power to see the future more clearly and chart a wise course." Suboptimal Thinking within Enterprise Architecture | James McGovern McGovern says: "We need to remember that enterprises live and thrive beyond just the current person at the helm." Boundaryless Information Flow | Richard Veryard "If all the boundaries are removed or porous, then the (extended) enterprise or ecosystem becomes like a giant sponge, in which all information permeates the whole," Veryard says. "Some people may think that's a good idea, but it's not what I'd call loose coupling." Coming to a City Near You: Oracle Business Analytics Summits | Rob Reynolds This series of events includes a Technology and Architecture track. New Date for Implementation of Sun Hands-On Course Requirement (Oracle Certification) As announced on the Oracle Certification website, Java Architect, Java Developer, Solaris System Administrator and Solaris Security Administrator certification tracks will include a new mandatory course attendance requirement. VirtualBox 4.0.10 is now available for download | Bob Netherton Netherton shares information on the new release. Updated Technical Best Practices whitepaper | Anthony Shorten The Technical Best Practices whitepaper has been updated with the latest advice. "New advice includes new installation advice, advanced settings, new security settings and advice for both Oracle WebLogic and IBM WebSphere installations," says Shorten. Kscope 11 ADF, AIA and Business Rules | Peter Paul van de Beek Whitehorses Solution Architect Peter Paul van de Beek shares his impressions of KScope11 presentations by Markus Eisele, Sten Vesterli, and Edwin Biemond. Amazon AWS for the learning experience | Andrej Koelewijn "Using AWS changes your expectations how your internal data center should operate," says Koelewijn. BPMN is dead, long live BPEL! (SOA Partner Community Blog) Jürgen Kress shares information -- including a long list of speakers -- for the SOA & BPM Integration Days 2011 conference, October 12th & 13th 2011 in Düsseldorf. InfoQ: HTML5 and the Dawn of Rich Mobile Web Applications James Pearce introduces cross-platform web apps development using HTML5 and web frameworks, such as jQTouch, jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, PhoneGap, outlining what makes a good framework. InfoQ: Interview and Book Excerpt: CMMI for Development "Frameworks like TOGAF are used to define an architecture that aligns IT assets and resources to support key business needs and processes of key stakeholders," says SEI's Mike Konrad. "But the individual application systems, capabilities, services, networks, and other IT assets and infrastructure still need to be acquired, developed, or sustained." InfoQ: Architecting a Cloud-Scale Identity Fabric | Eric Olden "The most cited reason for not moving to the cloud is concern about security," says Olden. "In particular, managing user identity and access in the cloud is a tough problem to solve and a big security concern for organizations."

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• Silverlight Cream for March 23, 2010 -- #818

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Max Paulousky, Jeremy Likness, Mark Tucker, Christian Schormann, Page Brooks, Brad Abrams(-2-), Jeff Wilcox, Unnir, Bea Stollnitz, John Papa and Adam Kinney, and Bill Reiss(-2-). Shoutouts: Ashish Shetty posted his material from his MIX10 presentation: Stepping outside the browser with Silverlight 4 Not Silverlight, but dang useful, Karl Shifflett posted a Visual Studio 2010 XAML Editor IntelliSense Presenter Extension Yavor Georgiev posted his MIX10 material: Two samples from today's MIX talk From SilverlightCream.com: GroupBox Sketching Control for WPF applications Using Blend Max Paulousky creates a GroupBox control for SketchFlow for WPF. He includes a link to an example of doing the same for Silverlight. Sequential Asynchronous Workflows in Silverlight using Coroutines Jeremy Likness' latest post begann with a post on the Silverlight.net forum and Rob Eisenburg's MVVM presentation from MIX10 resulting in the use of Wintellect's PowerThreading library (downloadable), and Coroutines. Windows Phone 7 UI Templates Mark Tucker has been putting a lot of thought into WP7 apps and produced 5 templates for building apps, downloadable in PowerPoint format. He's also looking to discuss this concept. Blend 4: About Path Layout, Part I Christian Schormann has a great tutorial up about Expression Blend 4 and path layout ... this is lots of great info, and it's only part 1! Custom Splash Screen for Windows Phone Page Brooks makes very quick work of showing how to add a splash screen to your WP7 app... very nice, Page! Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Exposing Data from Entity Framework Brad Abrams next post in the series is is on pulling your data from wherever it lives, and uses a DomainService to shape it for your Silverlight app. Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Consuming Data in the Silverlight Client Brad Abrams then discusses consuming that data in a Silverlight app. Not much code involvement at all.. great ROI :) Building Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4 applications on a .NET 3.5 build machine Jeff Wilcox talks about building Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4B both on a .NET 3.5 machine. He then adds in the Toolkit, and even WCF RIA Services. Expression Blend 4 - XAML generation tweaks Unnir demonstrates a few changes to Expression Blend 4 that produce more compact XAML. He's also asking for other examples you'd like to see tightened up. How can I sort a hierarchy? Bea Stollnitz posts plausible solutions to sorting data items at each level of a hierarchical UI, with descriptions of why they don't work, followed by the real deal... Silverlight and WPF. Silverlight Training Course (Silverlight 4) John Papa and Adam Kinney have posted a huge body of work to get us up-to-speed on Silverlight 4 -- a WhitePaper, hands-on labs, and an 8-unit course with 25 accompanying videos... geez... Silverlight game development on Windows Phone 7 Bill Reiss has a post up discussing game development on WP7 in general and then discusses his SilverSprite library, with a link to it. XNA or Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 game development? Bill Reiss next discusses the advantage of using Silverlight or XNA for your WP7 game development, and who better to discuss both? 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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• links for 2011-01-13

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Webcast: Oracle WebCenter Suite: Giving Users a Modern Experience Speakers: Vince Casarez (VP Enterprise 2.0 Product Management, Oracle),  Erin Smith (Consulting Practice Manager – Portals, Oracle), Robert Wessa (Consulting Technical Director – Enterprise 2.0 Infrastructure, Oracle)  (tags: oracle otn webcenter webcast enterprise2.0) Oracle & StickyMinds.com Webcast: Load Testing Techniques for Enterprise Applications Mughees Minhas, Senior Director of Product Management, Oracle Server Technologies, answers your questions about the latest techniques for effectively and efficiently testing enterprise application performance. Thursday, January 20, 2011. 10am PT / 1pm ET. (tags: oracle otn stickymings webcast) Bay Area Coherence Special Interest Group (BACSIG) Jan 20, 5:30pm - 8:00pm PT. Presentations: Coherence 3.6 Clustering Features (Rob Lee), Efficient Management and Update of Coherence Clusters to Reduce Down Time ( Rao Bhethanabotla), How To Build a Coherence Practice (Christer Fahlgren). (tags: oracle, otn coherence bacsig) Podcast Show Notes: William Ulrich and Neal McWhorter on Business Architecture (ArchBeat) A four-part interview with the authors of  "Business Architecture: The Art and Practice of Business Transformation"  (tags: oracle otn podcast businessarchitecture) John Brunswick: Overlapping Social Networks in your Enterprise? Strategies to Understand and Govern "Overall it is important to consider if tacit knowledge being captured by the social systems is able to be retained and somehow summarized into an overall organizational directory." - John Brunswick (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 socialnetworking) Coherence - How to develop a custom push replication publisher (Middlewarepedia) Cosmin Todur describes "a way of developing a custom push replication publisher that publishes data to a database via JDBC."  (tags: oracle coherence grid) Aino Andriessen: Oracle Diagnostics Logging (ODL) for application development "Logging is a very important aspect of application development as it offers run-time access to the behaviour and data of the application. It’s important for debugging purposes but also to investigate exception situations on production." -- Aino Andriessen (tags: oracle odl java jdeveloper weblogic) Security issues when upgrading a Web Catalog from 10g to 11g Oracle BI By Bakboord "I blogged about upgrading from Oracle BI EE 10g to Oracle BI EE 11g R1 earlier. Although this is a very straight forward process, you could end up with some security issues." -- Daan Bakboord (tags: oracle businessintelligence obiee) Angelo Santagata: SOA Composite Sensors : Good Practice "A good best practice is that for any composites you create, consider publishing a composite sensor value using a primary key of some sort , e.g. orderId, that way if you need to manipulate/query composites you can easily look up the instanceId using the sensorid." - Angelo Santagata (tags: oracle soa sca) Javier Ductor: WebCenter Spaces 11g PS2 Task Flow Customization "Previously, I wrote about Spaces Template Customization. In order to adapt Spaces to customers prototype, it was necessary to change template and skin, as well as the members task flow. In this entry, I describe how to customize this task flow." - Javier Ductor (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 webcenter) RonBatra's blog: Cloud Computing Series: VI: Industry Directions "When someone says their 'Product/Solution is in the Cloud,' ask them basic questions to seperate the spin from the reality. I would start with 'tell me what that means' and see which way the conversation goes." - Oracle ACE Director Ron Batra (tags: oracle otn oracleace cloud) First JSRs Proposed for Java EE 7 (The Java Source) With the approval of Java SE 7 and Java SE 8 JSRs last month, attention is now shifting towards the Java EE platform. (tags: oracle java jsr javaee)

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• The Oracle Retail Week Awards - most exciting awards yet?

  - by sarah.taylor(at)oracle.com

  Last night's annual Oracle Retail Week Awards saw the UK's top retailers come together to celebrate the very best of our industry over the last year.  The Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane in London was the setting for an exciting ceremony which this year marked several significant milestones in British - and global - retail.  Check out our videos about the event at our Oracle Retail YouTube channel, and see if you were snapped by our photographer on our Oracle Retail Facebook page. There were some extremely hot contests for many of this year's awards - and all very deserving winners.  The entries have demonstrated beyond doubt that retailers have striven to push their standards up yet again in all areas over the past year.  The judging panel includes some of the most prestigious names in the retail industry - to impress the panel enough to win an award is a substantial achievement.  This year the panel included the likes of Andy Clarke - Chief Executive of ASDA Group; Mark Newton Jones - CEO of Shop Direct Group; Richard Pennycook - the finance director at Morrisons; Rob Templeman - Chief Executive of Debenhams; and Stephen Sunnucks - the president of Gap Europe.  These are retail veterans  who have each helped to shape the British High Street over the last decade.  It was great to chat with many of them in the Oracle VIP area last night.  For me, last night's highlight was honouring both Sir Stuart Rose and Sir Terry Leahy for their contributions to the retail industry.  Both have set the standards in retailing over the last twenty years and taken their respective businesses from strength to strength, demonstrating that there is always a need for innovation even in larger businesses, and that a business has to adapt quickly to new technology in order to stay competitive.  Sir Terry Leahy's retirement this year marks the end of an era of global expansion for the Tesco group and a milestone in the progression of British retail.  Sir Terry has helped steer Tesco through nearly 20 years of change, with 14 years as Chief Executive.  During this time he led the drive for international expansion and an aggressive campaign to increase market share.  He has led the way for High Street retailers in adapting to the rise of internet retailing and nurtured a very successful home delivery service.  More recently he has pioneered the notion of cross-channel retailing with the introduction of Tesco apps for the iPhone and Android mobile phones allowing customers to scan barcodes of items to add to a shopping list which they can then either refer to in store or order for delivery.  John Lewis Partnership was a very deserving winner of The Oracle Retailer of the Year award for their overall dedication to excellent retailing practices.  The business was also named the American Express Marketing/Advertising Campaign of the Year award for their memorable 'Never Knowingly Undersold' advert series, which included a very successful viral video and radio campaign with Fyfe Dangerfield's cover of Billy Joel's 'She's Always a Woman' used for the adverts.  Store Design of the Year was another exciting category with Topshop taking the accolade for its flagship Oxford Street store in London, which combines boutique concession-style stalls with high fashion displays and exclusive collections from leading designers.  The store even has its own hairdressers and food hall, making it a truly all-inclusive fashion retail experience and a global landmark for any self-respecting international fashion shopper. Over the next few weeks we'll be exploring some of the winning entries in more detail here on the blog, so keep an eye out for some unique insights into how the winning retailers have made such remarkable achievements. 

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• Unleash the Power of Cryptography on SPARC T4

  - by B.Koch

  by Rob Ludeman Oracle’s SPARC T4 systems are architected to deliver enhanced value for customer via the inclusion of many integrated features.  One of the best examples of this approach is demonstrated in the on-chip cryptographic support that delivers wire speed encryption capabilities without any impact to application performance.  The Evolution of SPARC Encryption SPARC T-Series systems have a long history of providing this capability, dating back to the release of the first T2000 systems that featured support for on-chip RSA encryption directly in the UltraSPARC T1 processor.  Successive generations have built on this approach by support for additional encryption ciphers that are tightly coupled with the Oracle Solaris 10 and Solaris 11 encryption framework.  While earlier versions of this technology were implemented using co-processors, the SPARC T4 was redesigned with new crypto instructions to eliminate some of the performance overhead associated with the former approach, resulting in much higher performance for encrypted workloads. The Superiority of the SPARC T4 Approach to Crypto As companies continue to engage in more and more e-commerce, the need to provide greater degrees of security for these transactions is more critical than ever before.  Traditional methods of securing data in transit by applications have a number of drawbacks that are addressed by the SPARC T4 cryptographic approach. 1. Performance degradation – cryptography is highly compute intensive and therefore, there is a significant cost when using other architectures without embedded crypto functionality.  This performance penalty impacts the entire system, slowing down performance of web servers (SSL), for example, and potentially bogging down the speed of other business applications.  The SPARC T4 processor enables customers to deliver high levels of security to internal and external customers while not incurring an impact to overall SLAs in their IT environment. 2. Added cost – one of the methods to avoid performance degradation is the addition of add-in cryptographic accelerator cards or external offload engines in other systems.  While these solutions provide a brute force mechanism to avoid the problem of slower system performance, it usually comes at an added cost.  Customers looking to encrypt datacenter traffic without the overhead and expenditure of extra hardware can rely on SPARC T4 systems to deliver the performance necessary without the need to purchase other hardware or add-on cards. 3. Higher complexity – the addition of cryptographic cards or leveraging load balancers to perform encryption tasks results in added complexity from a management standpoint.  With SPARC T4, encryption keys and the framework built into Solaris 10 and 11 means that administrators generally don’t need to spend extra cycles determining how to perform cryptographic functions.  In fact, many of the instructions are built-in and require no user intervention to be utilized.  For example, For OpenSSL on Solaris 11, SPARC T4 crypto is available directly with a new built-in OpenSSL 1.0 engine, called the "t4 engine."  For a deeper technical dive into the new instructions included in SPARC T4, consult Dan Anderson’s blog. Conclusion In summary, SPARC T4 systems offer customers much more value for applications than just increased performance. The integration of key virtualization technologies, embedded encryption, and a true Enterprise Operating System, Oracle Solaris, provides direct business benefits that supersedes the commodity approach to data center computing.   SPARC T4 removes the roadblocks to secure computing by offering integrated crypto accelerators that can save IT organizations in operating cost while delivering higher levels of performance and meeting objectives around compliance. For more on the SPARC T4 family of products, go to here.

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• GRUB 2 problem after Mac OS X update

  - by vallllll

  I have a MacBook Pro in dual boot Mac OS X / Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin). When I boot it I have a rEFIt menu, and I can chose between Mac OS X and Linux. A few days ago I have updated Mac OS X from 10.7 (Lion) to 10.8 (Mountain Lion) using a .dmg image provided by my company. Since then when I select Linux in rEFIt it says: No bootable device --insert boot disk and press any key I have tried going to rEFIt partitioning tool. This is what I got: As suggested in Mac OSX Mavericks update rEFIT broken I wanted to fix the issue the same way as AndrewM, but I don't have the option "MBR table must be updated". Then I booted on Ubuntu 12.04 CD, chose repair broken system, chose root patition /dev/sda6 as this is where my Ubuntu file system is. I got a shell, but I don't really know how to repair the poblem since if it was just Windows dual boot. A GRUB update would solve the issue, but here I don't know where the GRUB 2 is installed. Here are results from Parted, and it is a bit confusing for me as the Mac partition is the one with boot: As you can see the entry 1 is an EFI system partition and is the boot partition, so I wonder if I should install GRUB there or in sda6, which is the Ubuntu filesystem. I am not sure should I work on rEFIt shell or Ubuntu. Unfortunately, I don't remember where GRUB was before update. UPDATE: using same link above I have tried RoundSparrow hilltx answer and installed rEFInd, but the result is same.... still no bootable device when I select Linux. UPDATE 2: just used alternate CD again, mounted on /dev/sda6 and the ran update-grub. It seemed to wok and started listing all my kernels. But after rebooting several times still no bootable device when I select Linux in rEFInd. UDATE 3: Have tried to boot from Ubuntu cd and select "boot from first available filesystem. I got error and dropped to grub rescue shell. I even followed the indications on this link but was unable to boot as I tried to use sdb6 but no luck UPDATE 4 as per Rob Smith request here is out put from ls -l $(find /EFI -iname "*.efi") *MACOSX -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 55048 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/btrfs_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 38888 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/ext2_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 39304 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/ext4_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 43432 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/hfs_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 38984 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/iso9660_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 43656 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/reiserfs_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 175016 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/refind_x64.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 73232 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/dbounce.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 763248 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/dhclient.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 67024 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/drawbox.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 71312 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/dumpfv.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 84848 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/dumpprot.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 472912 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/ed.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 143856 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/edit.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 1801008 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/ftp.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 47848 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/tools/gptsync_x64.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 320560 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/hexdump.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 286384 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/hostname.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 534416 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/ifconfig.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 395344 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/loadarg.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 587408 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/ping.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 730416 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/pppd.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 561360 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/route.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 1961712 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/shell.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 750224 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/tcpipv4.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 4048 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/textmode.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 320656 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/which.efi *LINUX

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• Old School Wizardry Tip: Batch File Comments

  - by jkauffman

  Johnny, the Endangered Keyboard-Driven Windows User Some of my proudest, obscure Windows tricks are losing their relevance. I know I’m not alone. Keyboard shortcuts are going the way of the dodo. I used to induce fearful awe by slapping Ctrl+Shift+Esc in front of the lowly, pedestrian Windows users. No windows key on the keyboard? No problem: Ctrl+Esc. No menu key on the keyboard: Shift+F10. I am also firmly planted in the habit of closing windows with the Alt+Space menu (Alt+Space, C); and I harbor a brooding, slow=growing list of programs that fail to support this correctly (that means you, Paint.NET). Every time a new version of windows comes out, the support for some of these minor time-saving habits get pared out. Will I complain publicly? Nope, I know my old ways should be axed to conserve precious design energy. In fact, I disapprove of fierce un-intuitiveness for the sake of alleged productivity. Like vim, for example. If you approach a program after being away for 5 years, having to recall encyclopedic knowledge is a flaw. The RTFM disciples have lost. Anyway, some of the items in my arsenal of goofy time-saving tricks are still relevant today. I wanted to draw attention to one that’s stood the test of time. Remember Batch Files? Yes, it’s true, batch files are fading faster than the world of print. But they're not dead yet. I still run into some situations where I opt to use batch files. They are still relevant for build processes, or just various development workflow tools. Sure, there’s powershell, but there’s that stupid Set-ExecutionPolicy speed bump standing in your way; can you really spare the time to A) hunt down that setting on all machines affected and/or B) make futile efforts to convince your coworkers/boss that the hassle was worth it? When possible, I prefer the batch file wild card. And whenever I return to batch files, I end up researching some of the unintuitive aspects such as parameters, quote handling, and ERRORLEVEL. But I never have to remember to use “REM” for comment lines, because there’s a cleaner way to do them! Double Colon For Eye-Friendly Comments Here is a very simple batch file, with pretty much minimal content: @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL REM This is a comment ECHO This batch file doesn’t do much If you code on a daily basis, this may be more suitable to your eyes: @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL :: This is a comment ECHO This batch file doesn’t do much Works great! I imagine I find it preferable due to the similarity to comments in other situations: // or ;  or # I’ve often make visual pseudo-line breaks in my code, and this colon-based syntax works wonders: @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL :: Do stuff ECHO Doing Stuff :::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :: Do more stuff ECHO This batch file doesn’t do much Not only is it more readable, but there’s a slight performance benefit. The batch file engine sees this as an invalid line label and immediately reads the following line. Use that fact to your advantage if this trick leads you into heated nerd debate. Two Pitfalls to Avoid Be aware of that there are a couple situations where this hack will fail you. It most likely won’t be a problem unless you’re getting really sophisticated with your batch files. Pitfall #1: Inline comments @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL IF EXIST C:\SomeFile.txt GOTO END ::This will fail :END Unfortunately, this fails. You can only have whitespace to the left of your comments. Pitfall #2: Code Blocks @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL IF EXIST C:\SomeFile.txt (         :: This will fail         ECHO HELLO ) Code blocks, such as if statements and for loops, cannot contain these comments. This is ultimately due to the fact that entire code blocks are processed as a single line. I originally learned this from Rob van der Woude’s site. He goes into more depth about the behavior of the pitfalls as well, if you are interested in further details. I hope this trick earns you serious geek rep!

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• PASS: International Travels

  - by Bill Graziano

  Nihao!  One of the largest changes PASS is going through is the the expansion outside the US and Canada.  We’ve had international chapters and events in Europe since the early 2000’s.  But nothing on the scale we’re seeing now.  Since January 1st there have been 18 SQL Saturday events outside North America and 19 events in North America.  We hope to have three international SQLRally events outside the US in FY13 (budget willing).  I don’t know the exact percentage of chapters outside the US but it’s got be 50% or higher. We recently started an effort to remake the Board to better reflect the growing global face of PASS.  This involves assigning some Board seats to geographic regions.  You can ask questions about this in our feedback forum, participate in a Twitter chat or ask questions directly of Board members.  You can email me at if you’d like to ask a question directly.  We’re doing this very slowly and deliberately in hopes that a long communication cycle gives us a chance to address all the issues that our members will raise. After the Summit we passed a budget exception allocating an extra $20,000 for Board members to travel to local events.  I think it’s important for Board members to visit new areas and talk to more of our members.  I sent out an email asking where people had attended events outside their home city.  Here’s the list I got back: Albuquerque, Amsterdam, Boston, Brisbane, Chicago, Colorado Springs, Columbus, Dallas, Houston, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, London, Louisville, Minneapolis, New York City, Orange County, Orlando, Pensacola, Perth, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Redmond, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Sydney, Tampa Bay, Vancouver, Washington DC and Wellington.  (Disclaimer: Some of this travel was paid for by employers or Board members themselves.  Some of this travel may have been completed before the Summit.  That’s still one heck of a list!) The last SQL Saturday event this fiscal year is SQL Saturday Shanghai.  And that’s one I’m attending.  This is our first event in China and is being put on in cooperation with the local Microsoft office.  Hopefully this event will be the start of a growing community in China that includes chapters, SQL Saturdays and maybe a SQLRally or two in the future.  I’m excited to speak with people that are just starting down this path and watching this community grow. I encourage you to visit the PASS Global Growth site and read through the material there.  This is the biggest change we’ve made to our governance since I’ve been on the Board.  You need to understand how it affects you and how it affects the organization. And wish me luck on the 15 hour flight to Shanghai on Friday afternoon.  Rob Farley flies from Australia to the US for PASS events multiple times per year and I don’t know how he does it so often.  I think one of these is going to wipe me out.  (And Nihao (knee-how) is Chinese for Hello.)

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• PASS summit 2013. We do not remember days. We remember moments.

  - by Maria Zakourdaev

    "Business or pleasure?" barked the security officer in the Charlotte International Airport. "I’m not sure, sir," I whimpered, immediately losing all courage. "I'm here for the database technologies summit called PASS”. "Sounds boring. Definitely a business trip." Boring?! He couldn’t have been more wrong. If he only knew about the countless meetings throughout the year where I waved my hands at my great boss and explained again and again how fantastic this summit is and how much I learned last year. One by one, the drops of water began eating away at the stone. He finally approved of my trip just to stop me from torturing him. Time moves as slow as a turtle when you are waiting for something. Time runs as fast as a cheetah when you are there. PASS has come...and passed. It’s been an amazing week. Enormous sqlenergy has filled the city, filled the convention center and the surrounding pubs and restaurants. There were awesome speakers, great content, and the chance to meet most inspiring database professionals from all over the world. Some sessions were unforgettable. Imagine a fully packed room with more than 500 people in awed silence, catching each and every one of Paul Randall's words. His tremendous energy and deep knowledge were truly thrilling. No words can describe Rob Farley's unique presentation style, captivating and engaging the audience. When the precious session minutes were over, I could tell that the many random puzzle pieces of information that his listeners knew had been suddenly combined into a clear, cohesive picture. I was amazed as always by Paul White's great sense of humor and his phenomenal ability to explain complicated concepts in a simple way. The keynote by the brilliant Dr. DeWitt from Microsoft in front of the full summit audience of 5000 deeply listening people was genuinely breathtaking. The entire conference throughout offered excellent speakers who inspired me to absorb the knowledge and use it when I got home. To my great surprise, I found that there are other people in this world who like replication as much I do. During the Birds of a Feather Luncheon, SQL Server MVP Ted Krueger was writing a script for replicating the food to other tables. I learned many things at PASS, and not all of them were about SQL. After three summits, this time I finally got the knack of networking. I actually went up and spoke to people, and believe me, that was not easy for an introvert. But this is what the summit is all about. Sqlpeople. They are the ones who make it such an exciting experience. I will be looking forward to the next year. Till then I have my notes and new ideas. How long was the summit? Thousands of unforgettable moments.

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• WiX, MSDeploy and an appealing configuration/deployment paradigm

  - by alexhildyard

  I do a lot of application and server configuration; I've done this for many years and have tended to view the complexity of this strictly in terms of the complexity of the ultimate configuration to be deployed. For example, specific APIs aside, I would tend to regard installing a server certificate as a more complex activity than, say, copying a file or adding a Registry entry.My prejudice revolved around the idea of a sequential deployment script that not only had the explicit prescription to apply a specific server configuration, but also made the implicit presumption that the server in question was in a good known state. Scripts like this fail for hundreds of reasons -- the Default Website didn't exist; the application had already been deployed; the application had already been partially deployed and failed to rollback fully, and so on. And so the problem is that the more complex the configuration activity, the more scope for error in any individual part of that activity, and therefore the greater the chance the server in question will not end up at exactly the desired configuration level.Recently I was introduced to a completely different mindset, which, for want of a better turn of phrase, I will call the "make it so" mindset. It's extremely simple both to explain and to implement. In place of the head-down, imperative script you used to use, you substitute a set of checks -- much like exception handlers -- around each configuration activity, starting with a check of the current system state. Thus the configuration logic becomes: "IF these services aren't started then start them, and IF XYZ website doesn't exist then create it, and IF these shares don't exist then create them, and IF these shares aren't permissioned in some particular way, then permission them so." This works. Really well, in my experience. Scenario 1: You want to get a system into a good known state; it's already in a good known state; you quickly realise there is nothing to do.Scenario 2: You want to get the system into a good known state; your script is flawed or the system is bust; it cannot be put into that state. You know exactly where (at least part of) the problem is and why.Scenario 3: You want to get the system into a good known state; people are fiddling around with the system just now. That's fine. You do what you can, and later you come back and try it againScenario 4: No one wants to deploy anything; they want you to prove that the previous deployment was successful. So you re-run the deployment script with the "-WhatIf" flag. It reports that there was nothing to change. There's your proof.I mentioned two technologies in the title -- MSI and MSDeploy. I am thinking specifically of the conversation that took place here. Having worked with both technologies, I think Rob Mensching's response is appropriately nuanced, and in essence the difference is this: sometimes your target is either to achieve a specific new server state, or to rollback to a known good one. Then again, your target may be to configure what you can, and to understand what you can't. Implicitly MSDeploy's "rollback" is simply to redeploy the previous version, whereas a well-crafted MSI will actively put your system into that state without further intervention. Either way, if all goes well it will leave you with a system in one of two states, whereas MSDeploy could leave your system in one of many states. The key is that MSDeploy and MSI are complementary technologies; which suits you best depends as much on Operational guidance as your Configuration remit.What I wanted to say was that I have always been for atomic, transactional-based configuration, but having worked with the "make it so" paradigm, I have been favourably impressed by the actual results. I'm tempted to put a more technical post up on this in due course.

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