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• 5 reason why you should upgrade to new iPad (3rd generation)

  - by Gopinath

  Apple released the new iPad, 3rd generation, couple of days ago and they will be available in stores from March 16 onwards.  It’s the best tablet available in the market and for first time buyers it’s a no brainer to choose it. What about the iPad owners? Should they upgrade their iPad 2 to the new iPad? This is the question on the lips of most of the iPad owners. In this post we will provide you 5 reasons why you should upgrade your iPad, if more than two reasons are convincing then you should upgrade to the new iPad. Retina display – The best display ever made for mobile device, a game changer The new iPad comes with Retina display with screen resolution of 2048 x 1536, which is twice the resolution of iPad 2. Undoubtedly the iPad 3’s display is the best display ever made for a mobile device and it’s a game changer. With better resolution on iPad 3 eBook reading is going to be a pleasure with clear and crisp text Watching HD movies on iPad is going to be unbelievably good The new Games targeted for Retina display are going to be more realistic and needless to explain the pleasure of playing such games Graphic artists and photo editors get a professional on screen rendering support to create beautiful graphics 2x Faster & 2x Memory – Better Games and powerful Apps The new iPad is more powerful with 2x faster graphics and 2x more memory. Apple claims that the A5x processor of new iPad is 2x faster than iPad 2 and 4x faster than the best graphic chips available from other vendors. The RAM of  new iPad  is upgraded to 1 GB compared from 512 MB of iPad 2. With the fast processor and more memory, Apps and games are going to be blazing fast. 4G Internet – Browse the web at the speeds of 42 MB/sec Half of the iPad owners are frequent commuters who access internet over cellular networks, the new iPad’s 4G LTE is going to be a big boom for their  high data access needs. With the new iPad’s 4G LTE connectivity you can browse the web at 42 MB/sec and it mean you can watch a HD video without buffering issues. iPad 2 comes with 3G network support and it’s browsing speeds are way less than the new iPad. 5MP Camera – HD Movie Recording & gorgeous Photography iPad 2 has a 0.7 mega pixel camera and the new iPad comes with 5 megapixels camera. That is a huge boost for hobbyist  photographers and videographers. With the new iPad you can shoot gorgeous photos and 1080p HD video. The iSight camera of new iPad uses advanced optics with features like auto exposure, auto focus and face detection up to 10 faces. Amazon Pays up to $300 for old iPad 2 16 GB Wifi and more for other models Do you know that you can trade in your iPad 2 16 GB Wifi for upto $300? Amazon has an excellent trade in program for selling your used iPad 2s. Depending on the condition of the iPad 2  Amazon offers $234, $270, $300.00 for 16 GB Wifi versions that in Acceptable, Good and Like New conditions respectively.  The higher models of iPad 2s fetch you more money. With this great deal from Amazon the amount of extra money you need to spend for new iPad is almost half of their price. Visit Amazon Trade In’s website or read Amazon’s brilliant plan to pay you crazy money for your iPad 2 for more details. Related: New IPad Vs. IPad 2–Side By Side Comparison Of Hardware Specification [Infographic]

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• Redaction in AutoVue

  - by [email protected]

  As the trend to digitize all paper assets continues, so does the push to digitize all the processes around these assets. One such process is redaction - removing sensitive or classified information from documents. While for some this may conjure up thoughts of old CIA documents filled with nothing but blacked out pages, there are actually many uses for redaction today beyond military and government. Many companies have a need to remove names, phone numbers, social security numbers, credit card numbers, etc. from documents that are being scanned in and/or released to the public or less privileged users - insurance companies, banks and legal firms are a few examples. The process of digital redaction actually isn't that far from the old paper method: Step 1. Find a folder with a big red stamp on it labeled "TOP SECRET" Step 2. Make a copy of that document, since some folks still need to access the original contents Step 3. Black out the text or pages you want to hide Step 4. Release or distribute this new 'redacted' copy So where does a solution like AutoVue come in? Well, we've really been doing all of these things for years! 1. With AutoVue's VueLink integration and iSDK, we can integrate to virtually any content management system and view documents of almost any format with a single click. Finding the document and opening it in AutoVue: CHECK! 2. With AutoVue's markup capabilities, adding filled boxes (or other shapes) around certain text is a no-brainer. You can even leverage AutoVue's powerful APIs to automate the addition of markups over certain text or pre-defined regions using our APIs. Black out the text you want to hide: CHECK! 3. With AutoVue's conversion capabilities, you can 'burn-in' the comments into a new file, either as a TIFF, JPEG or PDF document. Burning-in the redactions avoids slip-ups like the recent (well-publicized) TSA one. Through our tight integrations, the newly created copies can be directly checked into the content management system with no manual intervention. Make a copy of that document: CHECK! 4. Again, leveraging AutoVue's integrations, we can now define rules in the system based on a user's privileges. An 'authorized' user wishing to view the document from the repository will get exactly that - no redactions. An 'unauthorized' user, when requesting to view that same document, can get redirected to open the redacted copy of the same document. Release or distribute the new 'redacted' copy: CHECK! See this movie (WMV format, 2mins, 20secs, no audio) for a quick illustration of AutoVue's redaction capabilities. It shows how redactions can be added based on text searches, manual input or pre-defined templates/regions. Let us know what you think in the comments. And remember - this is all in our flagship AutoVue product - no additional software required!

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• Asp.NET ReportViewer “report execution has expired or cannot be found” error when using session state service or SQL Server session state

  - by dotneteer

  We encountered an error like: ReportServerException: The report execution x5pl2245iwvvq055khsxzlj5 has expired or cannot be found. (rsExecutionNotFound)]    Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ServerReportSoapProxy.OnSoapException(SoapException e) +72    Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.Internal.Soap.ReportingServices2005.Execution.ProxyMethodInvocation.Execute(RSExecutionConnection connection, ProxyMethod`1 initialMethod, ProxyMethod`1 retryMethod) +428    Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.Internal.Soap.ReportingServices2005.Execution.RSExecutionConnection.GetExecutionInfo() +133    Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ServerReport.EnsureExecutionSession() +197    Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ServerReport.LoadViewState(Object viewStateObj) +256    Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ServerReport..ctor(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context) +355 [TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.]    System.RuntimeMethodHandle._SerializationInvoke(Object target, SignatureStruct&amp; declaringTypeSig, SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context) +0    System.Reflection.RuntimeConstructorInfo.SerializationInvoke(Object target, SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context) +108    System.Runtime.Serialization.ObjectManager.CompleteISerializableObject(Object obj, SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context) +273    System.Runtime.Serialization.ObjectManager.FixupSpecialObject(ObjectHolder holder) +49    System.Runtime.Serialization.ObjectManager.DoFixups() +223    System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.ObjectReader.Deserialize(HeaderHandler handler, __BinaryParser serParser, Boolean fCheck, Boolean isCrossAppDomain, IMethodCallMessage methodCallMessage) +188    System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryFormatter.Deserialize(Stream serializationStream, HeaderHandler handler, Boolean fCheck, Boolean isCrossAppDomain, IMethodCallMessage methodCallMessage) +203    System.Web.Util.AltSerialization.ReadValueFromStream(BinaryReader reader) +788    System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateItemCollection.ReadValueFromStreamWithAssert() +55    System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateItemCollection.DeserializeItem(String name, Boolean check) +281    System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateItemCollection.DeserializeItem(Int32 index) +110    System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateItemCollection.get_Item(Int32 index) +17    System.Web.SessionState.HttpSessionStateContainer.get_Item(Int32 index) +13    System.Web.Util.AspCompatApplicationStep.OnPageStartSessionObjects() +71    System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +2065 This error occurs long after the report viewer page has closed. It occurs to any asp.net page in the application, rendering the entire application unusable until the user gets a new session. The cause of the problem is that the ReportViewer uses session state. When a page retrieves session from any out-of-state session, the session variable of type Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ReportHierarchy is deserialized from the session storage. The deserialization could cause the object to connect to the report server when the report is no longer available. The solution is simple but not pretty. We need to clean up the session variable when the report viewer page is closed. One way is to add some Javascript to the page to handle the window.onunload event. In the event handler, call a web service to clean up the session variable. The name of the session variable appears to be randomly generated. So we need to loop through the session variable to find a variable of the type Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ReportHierarchy. Microsoft has implemented pinging between the report viewer and the report server to keep the report alive on the server when the report viewer is up; I hope they will go one step further to take care of this problem.

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• MSMQ messages using HTTP just won't get delivered

  - by John Breakwell

  I'm starting off the blog with a discussion of an unusual problem that has hit a couple of my customers this month. It's not a problem you'd expect to bump into and the solution is potentially painful. Scenario You want to make use of the HTTP protocol to send MSMQ messages from one machine to another. You have installed HTTP support for MSMQ and have addressed your messages correctly but they will not leave the outgoing queue. There is no configuration for HTTP support - setup has already done all that for you (although you may want to check the most recent "Installation of the MSMQ HTTP Support Subcomponent" section of MSMQINST.LOG to see if anything DID go wrong) - so you can't tweak anything. Restarting services and servers makes no difference - the messages just will not get delivered. The problem is documented and resolved by Knowledgebase article 916699 "The message may not be delivered when you use the HTTP protocol to send a message to a server that is running Message Queuing 3.0". It is unlikely that you would be able to resolve the problem without the assistance of PSS because there are no messages that can be seen to assist you and only access to the source code exposes the root cause. As this communication is over HTTP, the IIS logs would be a good place to start. POST entries are logged which show that connectivity is working and message delivery is being attempted: #Software: Microsoft Internet Information Services 6.0 #Version: 1.0 #Date: 2006-09-12 12:11:29 #Fields: date time s-sitename s-ip cs-method cs-uri-stem cs-uri-query s-port cs-username c-ip cs(User-Agent) sc-status sc-substatus sc-win32-status 2006-09-12 12:12:12 W3SVC1 10.1.17.219 POST /msmq/private$/test - 80 - 10.2.200.3 - 200 0 0 If you capture the traffic with Network Monitor you can see the POST being sent to the server but you also see a response being returned to the client: HTTP: Response to Client; HTTP/1.1; Status Code = 500 - Internal Server Error "Internal Server Error" means we can probably stop looking at IIS and instead focus on the Message Queuing ISAPI extension (Mqise.dll). MSMQ 3.0 (Windows XP and Windows Server 2003) comes with error logging enabled by default but the log files are in binary format - MSMQ 2.0 generated logging in plain text. The symbolic information needed for formatting the files is not currently publicly available so log files have to be sent in to Microsoft PSS.  Although this does mean raising a support case, formatting the log files to text and returning them to the customer shouldn't take long. Obviously the engineer analyses them for you - I just want to point out that you can see the logging output in text format if you want it. The important entries in the log for this problem are: [7]b48.928 09/12/2006-13:20:44.552 [mqise GetNetBiosNameFromIPAddr] ERROR:Failed to get the NetBios name from the DNS name, error = 0xea [7]b48.928 09/12/2006-13:20:44.552 [mqise RPCToServer] ERROR:RPC call R_ProcessHTTPRequest failed, error code = 1702(RPC_S_INVALID_BINDING) which allow a Microsoft escalation engineer to check the MQISE source code to see what is going wrong. This problem according to the article occurs when the extension tries to bind to the local MSMQ service after the extension receives a POST request that contains an MSMQ message. MSMQ resolves the server name by using the DNS host name but the extension cannot bind to the service because the buffer that MSMQ uses to resolve the server name is too small - server names that are exactly 15 characters long will not fit. RPC exception 0x6a6 (RPC_S_INVALID_BINDING) occurs in the W3wp.exe process but the exception is handled and so you do not receive an error message. The workaround is to rename the MSMQ server to something less than 15 characters. If the problem has only just been noticed in a production environment - an application may have been modified to get through a newly-implemented firewall, for example - then renaming is going to be an issue. Other applications may need to be reinstalled or modified if server names are hard-coded or stored in the registry. The renaming may also break a company naming convention where the name is built up from something like location+department+number. If you want to learn more about MSMQ logging then check out Chapter 15 of the MSMQ FAQ. In fact, even if you DON'T want to learn anything about MSMQ logging you should read the FAQ anyway as there is a huge amount of useful information on known issues and the like.

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• Silverlight Cream for March 24, 2010 -- #819

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Nokola, Tim Heuer, Christian Schormann, Brad Abrams, David Kelley, Phil Middlemiss, Michael Klucher, Brandon Watson, Kunal Chowdhury, Jacek Ciereszko, and Unni. Shoutouts: Michael Klucher has a short post up For Love of the Game (Development)…, where he's looking for some input from the developer community. Shawn Hargreaves has a link post up of all the Windows Phone MIX10 presentations Chris Cavanagh has a Soft-Body Physics for Windows Phone 7 post up that goes along with one he did 1-1/2 years ago! Jeff Weber posted An Open Letter To Microsoft Regarding The Silverlight Game Development Community Pete Brown posted his MIX10 Recap ... lots of information, and discussion of what he was up to ... I liked the Trivia app Pete... glad to hear that was yours :) I've changed my mind and added a WP7 tag to SilverlightCream. I'll straighten out all the Mobile plus Silverlight links to point at the WP7 tab hopefully tonight. From SilverlightCream.com: EasyPainter Source Pack 3: Adorners, Mouse Cursors and Frames Nokola has been busy with EasyPainter adding in Custom, Extensible Mouse Cursors and Customizable Adorners with extensible adorner frames, and best of all... all with source code! Simulate Geo Location in Silverlight Windows Phone 7 emulator Among the things we don't have in our WP7 emulators is Geo Location... Tim Heuer comes to the rescue with a simulator for it... too cool, Tim! Blend 4: About Path Layout, Part II Christian Schormann is back with Part 2 of his tutorial sequence on the new Path Layout. Really good info and definitely cool presentations of the control. Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Exposing OData Services Brad Abrams continues his series with a post on exposing OData services. This looks like a great tutorial on the topic... will probably resolve some questions I've been having :) No Silverlight and Preloader Experience(ish) - in 10 seconds... David Kelley exposes the code he uses on his site, designed to be friendly to Silverlight and non-Silverlight users alike. Merged Dictionaries of Style Resources and Blend Phil Middlemiss has a nice article up on Merged Dictionaries and using multiple resource dictionaries that the app chooses, but also be compatible with Prism and Blend while not eating your system resources out of house and home. XNA Game Studio and Windows Phone Emulator Compatibility Michael Klucher has a definitive post up about getting your XNA and system up-to-speed for WP7... a must-read if you've been running any of the other XNA drops. Windows Phone 7 301 Redirect Bug Brandon Watson reports a 301 Redirect bug on WP7 ... see the code and how he got it, then follow along as he explains all the debug paths he took and what the resolution (?) really is :) Silverlight 4: How to use the new Printing API? Kunal Chowdhury has a tutorial up on printing with Silverlight 4 RC... from the project layout to printing and then printing a smaller section... all good Printing problem in Silverlight 4.0 RC - loading images in code behind Jacek Ciereszko also is writing about printing, and in his case he had problems with loading an image dynamically and printing it... plus he provides a solution to the 'blank page' problem. ToolboxExampleAttribute - a new extension point in Blend 4 (and a few other extensibility related changes) Unni has an article up about Expression Blend 4's new ToolboxExampleAttribute which allow you to have multiple examples of the same type resulting in different XAML produced. 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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• GPGPU

  WhatGPU obviously stands for Graphics Processing Unit (the silicon powering the display you are using to read this blog post). The extra GP in front of that stands for General Purpose computing.So, altogether GPGPU refers to computing we can perform on GPU for purposes beyond just drawing on the screen. In effect, we can use a GPGPU a bit like we already use a CPU: to perform some calculation (that doesn’t have to have any visual element to it). The attraction is that a GPGPU can be orders of magnitude faster than a CPU.WhyWhen I was at the SuperComputing conference in Portland last November, GPGPUs were all the rage. A quick online search reveals many articles introducing the GPGPU topic. I'll just share 3 here: pcper (ignoring all pages except the first, it is a good consumer perspective), gizmodo (nice take using mostly layman terms) and vizworld (answering the question on "what's the big deal").The GPGPU programming paradigm (from a high level) is simple: in your CPU program you define functions (aka kernels) that take some input, can perform the costly operation and return the output. The kernels are the things that execute on the GPGPU leveraging its power (and hence execute faster than what they could on the CPU) while the host CPU program waits for the results or asynchronously performs other tasks.However, GPGPUs have different characteristics to CPUs which means they are suitable only for certain classes of problem (i.e. data parallel algorithms) and not for others (e.g. algorithms with branching or recursion or other complex flow control). You also pay a high cost for transferring the input data from the CPU to the GPU (and vice versa the results back to the CPU), so the computation itself has to be long enough to justify the overhead transfer costs. If your problem space fits the criteria then you probably want to check out this technology.HowSo where can you get a graphics card to start playing with all this? At the time of writing, the two main vendors ATI (owned by AMD) and NVIDIA are the obvious players in this industry. You can read about GPGPU on this AMD page and also on this NVIDIA page. NVIDIA's website also has a free chapter on the topic from the "GPU Gems" book: A Toolkit for Computation on GPUs.If you followed the links above, then you've already come across some of the choices of programming models that are available today. Essentially, AMD is offering their ATI Stream technology accessible via a language they call Brook+; NVIDIA offers their CUDA platform which is accessible from CUDA C. Choosing either of those locks you into the GPU vendor and hence your code cannot run on systems with cards from the other vendor (e.g. imagine if your CPU code would run on Intel chips but not AMD chips). Having said that, both vendors plan to support a new emerging standard called OpenCL, which theoretically means your kernels can execute on any GPU that supports it. To learn more about all of these there is a website: gpgpu.org. The caveat about that site is that (currently) it completely ignores the Microsoft approach, which I touch on next.On Windows, there is already a cross-GPU-vendor way of programming GPUs and that is the DirectX API. Specifically, on Windows Vista and Windows 7, the DirectX 11 API offers a dedicated subset of the API for GPGPU programming: DirectCompute. You use this API on the CPU side, to set up and execute the kernels that run on the GPU. The kernels are written in a language called HLSL (High Level Shader Language). You can use DirectCompute with HLSL to write a "compute shader", which is the term DirectX uses for what I've been referring to in this post as a "kernel". For a comprehensive collection of links about this (including tutorials, videos and samples) please see my blog post: DirectCompute.Note that there are many efforts to build even higher level languages on top of DirectX that aim to expose GPGPU programming to a wider audience by making it as easy as today's mainstream programming models. I'll mention here just two of those efforts: Accelerator from MSR and Brahma by Ananth. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• RegexClean Transformation

  Use the power of regular expressions to cleanse your data right there inside the Data Flow. This transformation includes a full user interface for simple configuration, as well as advanced features such as error output configuration. Two regular expressions are used, a match expression and a replace expression. The transformation is designed around the named capture groups or match groups, and even supports multiple expressions. This allows for rich and complex expressions to be built, all through an easy to reuse transformation where a bespoke Script Component was previously the only alternative. Some simple properties are available for each column selected – Behaviour The two behaviour modes offer similar functionality but with a difference. Replace, replaces tokens with the input, and Emit overwrites the whole string. Cascade Cascade allows you to define multiple expressions, each on a new line. The match expression will be processed into one operation per line, which are then processed in order at run-time. Multiple replace expressions can also be specified, again each on a new line. If there is no corresponding replace expression for a match expression line, then the last replace expression will be used instead. It is common to have multiple match expressions, but only a single replace expression. Match Expression The expression used to define the named capture groups. This is where you can analyse the data, and tag or name elements within it as found by the match expression. Replace Expression The replace determines the final output. It will reference the named groups from the match expression and assembles them into the final output. If you want to use regular expressions to validate data then try the Regular Expression Transformation. Quick Start Guide Select a column. A new output column is created for each selected column; there is no option for in-place replacement of column values. One input column can be used to populate multiple output columns, just select the column again in the lower grid, using the Input Columns drop-down selector. Amend the output column name and size as required. They default to the same as the input column selected. Amend the behaviour as required, the default is Replace. Amend the cascade option as required, the default is true. Finally enter your match and replace regular expressions Quick Sample #1 Parse an email address and extract the user and domain portions. Format as a web address passing the user portion as a URL parameter. This uses two match groups, user and host, which correspond to the text before the @ and after it respectively. Behaviour is Emit, and cascade of false, we only have a single match expression. Match Expression ^(?<user>[^@]+)@(?<host>.+)$ Replace Expression - http://www.${host}?user=${user} Results Sample Input Sample Output [email protected] http://www.adventure-works.com?user=zheng0 The component is provided as an MSI file, however to complete the installation, you will have to add the transformation to the Visual Studio toolbox manually. Right-click the toolbox, and select Choose Items.... Select the SSIS Data Flow Items tab, and then check the RegexClean Transformation from the list. Downloads The RegexClean Transformation is available for both SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008. Please choose the version to match your SQL Server version, or you can install both versions and use them side by side if you have both SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 installed. RegexClean Transformation for SQL Server 2005 RegexClean Transformation for SQL Server 2008 Version History SQL Server 2005 Version 1.0.0.105 - Public Release (28 Jan 2008) SQL Server 2005 Version 1.0.0.105 - Public Release (28 Jan 2008) Screenshot

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• Add Microsoft Core Fonts to Ubuntu

  - by Matthew Guay

  Have you ever needed the standard Microsoft fonts such as Times New Roman on your Ubuntu computer?  Here’s how you can easily add the core Microsoft fonts to Ubuntu. Times New Roman, Arial, and other core Microsoft fonts are still some of the most commonly used fonts in documents and websites.  Times New Roman especially is often required for college essays, legal docs, and other critical documents that you may need to write or edit.  Ubuntu includes the Liberation alternate fonts that include similar alternates to Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New, but these may not be accepted by professors and others when a certain font is required.  But, don’t worry; it only takes a couple clicks to add these fonts to Ubuntu for free. Installing the Core Microsoft Fonts Microsoft has released their core fonts, including Times New Roman and Arial, for free, and you can easily download these from the Software Center.  Open your Applications menu, and select Ubuntu Software Center.   In the search box enter the following: ttf-mscorefonts Click Install on the “Installer for Microsoft TrueType core fonts” directly in the search results. Enter your password when requested, and click Authenticate. The fonts will then automatically download and install in a couple minutes depending on your internet connection speed. Once the install is finished, you can launch OpenOffice Writer to try out the new fonts.  Here’s a preview of all the fonts included in this pack.  And, yes, this does included the infamous Comic Sans and Webdings fonts as well as the all-important Times New Roman. Please Note:  By default in Ubuntu, OpenOffice uses Liberation Serif as the default font, but after installing this font pack, the default font will switch to Times New Roman. Adding Other Fonts In addition to the Microsoft Core Fonts, the Ubuntu Software Center has hundreds of free fonts available.  Click the Fonts link on the front page to explore these, and install the same as above. If you’ve downloaded another font individually, you can also install it easily in Ubuntu.  Just double-click it, and then click Install in the preview window. Conclusion Although you may prefer the fonts that are included with Ubuntu, there are many reasons why having the Microsoft core fonts can be helpful.  Thankfully it’s easy in Ubuntu to install them, so you’ll never have to worry about not having them when you need to edit an important document. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Enable Smooth fonts on Ubuntu LinuxEmbed True Type Fonts in Word and PowerPoint 2007 DocumentsNew Vista Syntax for Opening Control Panel Items from the Command-lineStupid Geek Tricks: Enable More Fonts for the Windows Command PromptAdding extra Repositories on Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites Restore Hidden Updates in Windows 7 & Vista Iceland an Insurance Job? Find Downloads and Add-ins for Outlook Recycle !

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• SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles–building WCM sites

  - by svdoever

  One of the use cases where we use the SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles tooling is in building SharePoint Publishing (WCM) solutions for SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 and Office365. Publishing solutions are often solutions that have one instance, the publishing site (possibly with subsites), that in most cases need to go through DTAP. If you dissect a publishing site, in most case you have the following findings: The publishing site spans a site collection The branding of the site is specified in the root site, because: Master pages live in the root site (/_catalogs/masterpage) Page layouts live in the root site (/_catalogs/masterpage) The style library lives in the root site ( /Style Library) and contains images, css, javascript, xslt transformations for your CQWP’s, … Preconfigured web parts live in the root site (/_catalogs/wp) The root site and subsites contains a document library called Pages (or your language-specific version of it) containing publishing pages using the page layouts and master pages The site collection contains content types, fields and lists When using the SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles tooling it is very easy to create, test, package and deploy the artifacts that can be uploaded to the SharePoint content database. This can be done in a fast and simple way without the need to create and deploy WSP packages. If we look at the above list of artifacts we can use SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles for master pages, page layouts, the style library, web part configurations, and initial publishing pages (these are normally made through the SharePoint web UI). Some artifacts like content types, fields and lists in the above list can NOT be handled by SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles, because they can’t be uploaded to the SharePoint content database. The good thing is that these artifacts are the artifacts that don’t change that much in the development of a SharePoint Publishing solution. There are however multiple ways to create these artifacts: Use paper script: create them manually in each of the environments based on documentation Automate the creation of the artifacts using (PowerShell) script Develop a WSP package to create these artifacts I’m not a big fan of the third option (see my blog post Thoughts on building deployable and updatable SharePoint solutions). It is a lot of work to create content types, fields and list definitions using all kind of XML files, and it is not allowed to modify these artifacts when in use. I know… SharePoint 2010 has some content type upgrade possibilities, but I think it is just too cumbersome. The first option has the problem that content types and fields get ID’s, and that these ID’s must be used by the metadata on for example page layouts. No problem for SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles, because it supports deploy-time resolving of these ID’s using PowerShell. For example consider the following metadata definition for the page layout contactpage-wcm.aspx.properties.ps1: Metadata page layout # This script must return a hashtable @{ name=value; ... } of field name-value pairs # for the content file that this script applies to. # On deployment to SharePoint, these values are written as fields in the corresponding list item (if any) # Note that fields must exist; they can be updated but not created or deleted. # This script is called right after the file is deployed to SharePoint.   # You can use the script parameters and arbitrary PowerShell code to interact with SharePoint. # e.g. to calculate properties and values at deployment time.   param([string]$SourcePath, [string]$RelativeUrl, $Context) @{     "ContentTypeId" = $Context.GetContentTypeID('GeneralPage');     "MasterPageDescription" = "Cloud Aviator Contact pagelayout (wcm - don't use)";     "PublishingHidden" = "1";     "PublishingAssociatedContentType" = $Context.GetAssociatedContentTypeInfo('GeneralPage') } The PowerShell functions GetContentTypeID and GetAssociatedContentTypeInfo can at deploy-time resolve the required information from the server we are deploying to. I personally prefer the second option: automate creation through PowerShell, because there are PowerShell scripts available to export content types and fields. An example project structure for a typical SharePoint WCM site looks like: Note that this project uses DualLayout. So if you build Publishing sites using SharePoint, checkout out the completely free SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles tooling and start flying!

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• JavaScript Browser Hacks

  Recently during one of my client side scripting classes, I was trying to show my students some basic examples of JavaScript as an introduction to the language.  My first basic example was to show an alert box using JavaScript via the address bar. The student’s reaction to my browser hack example really caught me off guard in a good way. After programming with a language for close to 10 years you start to lose the "Awe Cool!" effect that new learners of a language experience when writing code. New learns of JavaScript are the reason why I created this post. Please enjoy. Note: Place JavaScript in to address bar and then press the enter key. Example 1: JavaScript Alert box displaying My name: John Doe Javascript:alert('My name: \n John Doe') ; Example 2: JavaScript alert box displaying name entered by user. javascript:alert('My name: \n ' + prompt('Enter Name','Name')) ; Example 3: JavaScript alert box displaying name entered by user, and then displays the length of the name. javascript:var name= prompt('Enter Name','Name'); alert('My name: \n ' + name); alert(name.length); If you notice, the address bar will execute JavaScript on the current page loaded in the browser using the Document Object Model (DOM). Additionally, the address bar will allow multiple lines to be executed sequentially even though all of the code is contained within one line due to the fact that the JavaScript interpreter uses the “;” to indicate where a line of ends and a new one begins. After doing a little more research on the topic of JavaScript Browser Hacks I found a few other cool JavaScript hacks which I will list below. Example 4: Make any webpage editableSource: http://www.openjason.com/2008/09/02/browser-hack-make-any-web-page-editable/ javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0; Example 5: CHINESE DRAGON DANCING Source: http://nzeyi.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/dwrajaxjavascript-hacks-the-secrets-of-javascript-in-the-adress-bar/ javascript:R=0;x1=0.1;y1=0.05;x2=0.25;y2=0.24;x3=1.6; y3=0.24;x4=300;y4=200;x5=300;y5=200;DI=document.links; DIL=DI.length;A=function(){for(i=0;i-DIL;i++){DI[i].style. position='absolute';DI[i].style.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+ x5;DI[i].style.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++;}; setInterval('A()',5);void(0); Example 6: Reveal content stored in password protected fields javascript:(function(){var s,F,j,f,i; s = “”; F = document.forms; for(j=0; j Example 7: Force user to close browser windowSource: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=767053 javascript:while(1){alert('Restart your brower to close this box!')} Learn more about JavaScript Browser Hacks.

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• JMX Based Monitoring - Part Three - Web App Server Monitoring

  - by Anthony Shorten

  In the last blog entry I showed a technique for integrating a JMX console with Oracle WebLogic which is a standard feature of Oracle WebLogic 11g. Customers on other Web Application servers and other versions of Oracle WebLogic can refer to the documentation provided with the server to do a similar thing. In this blog entry I am going to discuss a new feature that is only present in Oracle Utilities Application Framework 4 and above that allows JMX to be used for management and monitoring the Oracle Utilities Web Applications. In this case JMX can be used to perform monitoring as well as provide the management of the cache. In Oracle Utilities Application Framework you can enable Web Application Server JMX monitoring that is unique to the framework by specifying a JMX port number in RMI Port number for JMX Web setting and initial credentials in the JMX Enablement System User ID and JMX Enablement System Password configuration options. These options are available using the configureEnv[.sh] -a utility. Once this is information is supplied a number of configuration files are built (by the initialSetup[.sh] utility) to configure the facility: spl.properties - contains the JMX URL, the security configuration and the mbeans that are enabled. For example, on my demonstration machine: spl.runtime.management.rmi.port=6740 spl.runtime.management.connector.url.default=service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://localhost:6740/oracle/ouaf/webAppConnector jmx.remote.x.password.file=scripts/ouaf.jmx.password.file jmx.remote.x.access.file=scripts/ouaf.jmx.access.file ouaf.jmx.com.splwg.base.support.management.mbean.JVMInfo=enabled ouaf.jmx.com.splwg.base.web.mbeans.FlushBean=enabled ouaf.jmx.* files - contain the userid and password. The default setup uses the JMX default security configuration. You can use additional security features by altering the spl.properties file manually or using a custom template. For more security options see the JMX Site. Once it has been configured and the changes reflected in the product using the initialSetup[.sh] utility the JMX facility can be used. For illustrative purposes, I will use jconsole but any JSR160 complaint browser or client can be used (with the appropriate configuration). Once you start jconsole (ensure that splenviron[.sh] is executed prior to execution to set the environment variables or for remote connection, ensure java is in your path and jconsole.jar in your classpath) you specify the URL in the spl.management.connnector.url.default entry and the credentials you specified in the jmx.remote.x.* files. Remember these are encrypted by default so if you try and view the file you may be able to decipher it visually. For example: There are three Mbeans available to you: flushBean - This is a JMX replacement for the jsp versions of the flush utilities provided in previous releases of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. You can manage the cache using the provided operations from JMX. The jsp versions of the flush utilities are still provided, for backward compatibility, but now are authorization controlled. JVMInfo - This is a JMX replacement for the jsp version of the JVMInfo screen used by support to get a handle on JVM information. This information is environmental not operational and is used for support purposes. The jsp versions of the JVMInfo utilities are still provided, for backward compatibility, but now is also authorization controlled. JVMSystem - This is an implementation of the Java system MXBeans for use in monitoring. We provide our own implementation of the base Mbeans to save on creating another JMX configuration for internal monitoring and to provide a consistent interface across platforms for the MXBeans. This Mbean is disabled by default and can be enabled using the enableJVMSystemBeans operation. This Mbean allows for the monitoring of the ClassLoading, Memory, OperatingSystem, Runtime and the Thread MX beans. Refer to the Server Administration Guides provided with your product and the Technical Best Practices Whitepaper for information about individual statistics. The Web Application Server JMX monitoring allows greater visibility for monitoring and management of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework application from jconsole or any JSR160 compliant JMX browser or JMX console.

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• BizTalk Cross Reference Data Management Strategy

  - by charlie.mott

  Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/charliemott This article describes an approach to the management of cross reference data for BizTalk.  Some articles about the BizTalk Cross Referencing features can be found here: http://home.comcast.net/~sdwoodgate/xrefseed.zip http://geekswithblogs.net/michaelstephenson/archive/2006/12/24/101995.aspx http://geekswithblogs.net/charliemott/archive/2009/04/20/value-vs.id-cross-referencing-in-biztalk.aspx Options Current options to managing this data include: Maintaining xml files in the format that can be used by the out-of-the-box BTSXRefImport.exe utility. Use of user interfaces that have been developed to manage this data: BizTalk Cross Referencing Tool XRef XML Creation Tool However, there are the following issues with the above options: The 'BizTalk Cross Referencing Tool' requires a separate database to manage.  The 'XRef XML Creation' tool has no means of persisting the data settings. The 'BizTalk Cross Referencing tool' generates integers in the common id field. I prefer to use a string (e.g. acme.country.uk). This is more readable. (see naming conventions below). Both UI tools continue to use BTSXRefImport.exe.  This utility replaces all xref data. This can be a problem in continuous integration environments that support multiple clients or BizTalk target instances.  If you upload the data for one client it would destroy the data for another client.  Yet in TFS where builds run concurrently, this would break unit tests. Alternative Approach In response to these issues, I instead use simple SQL scripts to directly populate the BizTalkMgmtDb xref tables combined with a data namepacing strategy to isolate client data. Naming Conventions All data keys use namespace prefixing.  The pattern will be <companyName>.<data Type>.  The naming conventions will be to use lower casing for all items.  The data must follow this pattern to isolate it from other company cross-reference data.  The table below shows some sample data. (Note: this data uses the 'ID' cross-reference tables.  the same principles apply for the 'value' cross-referencing tables). Table.Field Description Sample Data xref_AppType.appType Application Types acme.erp acme.portal acme.assetmanagement xref_AppInstance.appInstance Application Instances (each will have a corresponding application type). acme.dynamics.ax acme.dynamics.crm acme.sharepoint acme.maximo xref_IDXRef.idXRef Holds the cross reference data types. acme.taxcode acme.country xref_IDXRefData.CommonID Holds each cross reference type value used by the canonical schemas. acme.vatcode.exmpt acme.vatcode.std acme.country.usa acme.country.uk xref_IDXRefData.AppID This holds the value for each application instance and each xref type. GBP USD SQL Scripts The data to be stored in the BizTalkMgmtDb xref tables will be managed by SQL scripts stored in a database project in the visual studio solution. File(s) Description Build.cmd A sqlcmd script to deploy data by running the SQL scripts below.  (This can be run as part of the MSBuild process).   acme.purgexref.sql SQL script to clear acme.* data from the xref tables.  As such, this will not impact data for any other company. acme.applicationInstances.sql   SQL script to insert application type and application instance data.   acme.vatcode.sql acme.country.sql etc ...  There will be a separate SQL script to insert each cross-reference data type and application specific values for these types.

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• Make Your PC Look Like Windows Phone 7

  - by Matthew Guay

  Windows Phone 7 offers a unique and exciting UI that displays lots of information efficiently on the screen.  And with a simple Rainmeter theme, you can have the same UI and content directly on your Windows 7 desktop. Turn your Desktop into a Windows Phone 7 lookalike To give your Windows 7 desktop a Windows Phone 7 makeover, first you need to have the free Rainmeter application installed.  If you do not have it installed, download it from the link below and run the setup.  Accept the license agreement, and install it with the default settings. By default Rainmeter will automatically run when you start your computer.  If you do not want this, you can uncheck the box during the setup. Now, download the Omnimo UI theme for Rainmeter (link below).  You will need to unzip the folder first. This theme uses the Segoe UI and the Segoe UI Light font, so Windows Vista users need to install the segoeuil.ttf font first, and XP users need to install both the segoeui.ttf and the segoeuil.ttf font first.  Copy the appropriate fonts to C:\Windows\Fonts, or in Vista double-click on the font and select Install. Now, run the Rainmeter theme setup.  Double-click on the Rainstaller.exe in the Omnimo folder. Click Express install to add the theme and skin to Rainmeter. Click Finish, and by default Rainmeter will open with your new theme. When the new theme opens the first time, you will be asked to read the readme, or simply go to the gallery. When you open the gallery, you can choose from a wide variety of tiles and gadgets to place on your desktop.  You can also choose a different color scheme for your tiles. Once you’re done, click the X in the top right hand corner to close the Gallery.  Welcome to your Windows Phone 7 desktop!  Many of the gadgets are dynamic, and you can change the settings for most of them.  The only thing missing is the transition animations that Windows Phone 7 shows when you launch an application. To make it look even more like Windows Phone 7, you can change your background to black.  This makes the desktop theme really dramatic. And, if you want to add gadgets or change the color scheme, simply click on the + logo on the top. Windows Phone 7 Desktop Wallpapers If you’d prefer to simply change your background, My Microsoft Life has several very nice Windows Phone 7 wallpapers available for free.  Click the link below to download these and other Microsoft-centric wallpapers. If you can’t wait to get the new Windows phone 7, this is a great way to start experiencing the beauty of the phone UI on your desktop. Links Download Rainmeter Download the Omnimo UI Rainmeter theme Download Windows Phone 7 inspired wallpapers Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Try out Windows Phone 7 on your PC todayTest All Features of Windows Phone 7 On Your PCHow-To Geek on Lifehacker: How to Make Windows Vista Less AnnoyingCreate a Shortcut or Hotkey to Mute the System Volume in WindowsMake Ubuntu Automatically Save Changes to Your Session TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Norwegian Life If Web Browsers Were Modes of Transportation Google Translate (for animals) Roadkill’s Scan Port scans for open ports Out of 100 Tweeters Out of band Security Update for Internet Explorer

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• jQuery Templates on Microsoft Ajax CDN

  - by Stephen Walther

  The beta version of the jQuery Templates plugin is now hosted on the Microsoft Ajax CDN. You can start using the jQuery Templates plugin in your application by referencing both jQuery 1.4.2 and jQuery Templates from the CDN. Here are the two script tags that you will want to use when developing an application: <script type="text/javascript" src=”http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.4.2.js”></script> <script type="text/javascript" src=”http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery.templates/beta1/jquery.tmpl.js”></script> In addition, minified versions of both files are available from the CDN: <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.4.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery.templates/beta1/jquery.tmpl.min.js"></script> Here’s a full code sample of using jQuery Templates from the CDN to display pictures of cats from Flickr: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Cats</title> <style type="text/css"> html { background-color:Orange; } #catBox div { width:250px; height:250px; border:solid 1px black; background-color:White; margin:5px; padding:5px; float:left; } #catBox img { width:200px; height: 200px; } </style> </head> <body> <h1>Cat Photos!</h1> <div id="catBox"></div> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.4.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery.templates/beta1/jquery.tmpl.min.js"></script> <script id="catTemplate" type="text/x-jquery-tmpl"> <div> <b>${title}</b> <br /> <img src="${media.m}" /> </div> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> var url = "http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_pool.gne?id=44124373027@N01&lang=en-us&format=json&jsoncallback=?"; // Grab some flickr images of cats $.getJSON(url, function (data) { // Format the data using the catTemplate template $("#catTemplate").tmpl(data.items).appendTo("#catBox"); }); </script> </body> </html> This page displays a list of cats retrieved from Flickr: Notice that the cat pictures are retrieved and rendered with just a few lines of code: var url = "http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_pool.gne?id=44124373027@N01&lang=en-us&format=json&jsoncallback=?"; // Grab some flickr images of cats $.getJSON(url, function (data) { // Format the data using the catTemplate template $("#catTemplate").tmpl(data.items).appendTo("#catBox"); }); The final line of code, the one that calls the tmpl() method, uses the Templates plugin to render the cat photos in a template named catTemplate. The catTemplate template is contained within a SCRIPT element with type="text/x-jquery-tmpl". The jQuery Templates plugin is an “official” jQuery plugin which will be included in jQuery 1.5 (the next major release of jQuery). You can read the full documentation for the plugin at the jQuery website: http://api.jquery.com/category/plugins/templates/ The jQuery Templates plugin is still beta so we would really appreciate your feedback on the plugin. Let us know if you use the Templates plugin in your website.

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• Updated Security Baseline (7u45) impacts Java 7u40 and before with High Security settings

  - by costlow

  The Java Security Baseline has been increased from 7u25 to 7u45.  For versions of Java below 7u45, this means unsigned Java applets or Java applets that depend on Javascript LiveConnect calls will be blocked when using the High Security setting in the Java Control Panel. This issue only affects Applets and Web Start applications. It does not affect other types of Java applications. The Short Answer Users upgrading to Java 7 update 45 will automatically fix this and is strongly recommended. The More Detailed Answer There are two items involved as described on the deployment flowchart: The Security Baseline – a dynamically updated attribute that checks to see which Java version contains the most recent security patches. The Security Slider – the user-controlled setting of when to prompt/run/block applets. The Security Baseline Java clients periodically check in to understand what version contains the most recent security patches. Versions are released in-between that contain bug fixes. For example: 7u25 (July 2013) was the previous secure baseline. 7u40 contained bug fixes. Because this did not contain security patches, users were not required to upgrade and were welcome to remain on 7u25. When 7u45 was released (October, 2013), this critical patch update contained security patches and raised the secure baseline. Users are required to upgrade from earlier versions. For users that are not regularly connected to the internet, there is a built in Expiration Date. Because of the pre-established quarterly critical patch updates, we are able to determine an approximate date of the next version. A critical patch released in July will have its successor released, at latest, in July + 3 months: October. The Security Slider The security slider is located within the Java control panel and determines which Applets & Web Start applications will prompt, which will run, and which will be blocked. One of the questions used to determine prompt/run/block is, “At or Above the Security Baseline.” The Combination JavaScript calls made from LiveConnect do not reside within signed JAR files, so they are considered to be unsigned code. This is correct within networked systems even if the domain uses HTTPS because signed JAR files represent signed "data at rest" whereas TLS (often called SSL) literally stands for "Transport Level Security" and secures the communication channel, not the contents/code within the channel. The resulting flow of users who click "update later" is: Is the browser plug-in registered and allowed to run? Yes. Does a rule exist for this RIA? No rules apply. Does the RIA have a valid signature? Yes and not revoked. Which security prompt is needed? JRE is below the baseline. This is because 7u45 is the baseline and the user, clicked "upgrade later." Under the default High setting, Unsigned code is set to "Don’t Run" so users see: Additional Notes End Users can control their own security slider within the control panel. System Administrators can customize the security slider during automated installations. As a reminder, in the future, Java 7u51 (January 2014) will block unsigned and self-signed Applets & Web Start applications by default.

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• Big Data – Buzz Words: What is MapReduce – Day 7 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned what is Hadoop. In this article we will take a quick look at one of the four most important buzz words which goes around Big Data – MapReduce. What is MapReduce? MapReduce was designed by Google as a programming model for processing large data sets with a parallel, distributed algorithm on a cluster. Though, MapReduce was originally Google proprietary technology, it has been quite a generalized term in the recent time. MapReduce comprises a Map() and Reduce() procedures. Procedure Map() performance filtering and sorting operation on data where as procedure Reduce() performs a summary operation of the data. This model is based on modified concepts of the map and reduce functions commonly available in functional programing. The library where procedure Map() and Reduce() belongs is written in many different languages. The most popular free implementation of MapReduce is Apache Hadoop which we will explore tomorrow. Advantages of MapReduce Procedures The MapReduce Framework usually contains distributed servers and it runs various tasks in parallel to each other. There are various components which manages the communications between various nodes of the data and provides the high availability and fault tolerance. Programs written in MapReduce functional styles are automatically parallelized and executed on commodity machines. The MapReduce Framework takes care of the details of partitioning the data and executing the processes on distributed server on run time. During this process if there is any disaster the framework provides high availability and other available modes take care of the responsibility of the failed node. As you can clearly see more this entire MapReduce Frameworks provides much more than just Map() and Reduce() procedures; it provides scalability and fault tolerance as well. A typical implementation of the MapReduce Framework processes many petabytes of data and thousands of the processing machines. How do MapReduce Framework Works? A typical MapReduce Framework contains petabytes of the data and thousands of the nodes. Here is the basic explanation of the MapReduce Procedures which uses this massive commodity of the servers. Map() Procedure There is always a master node in this infrastructure which takes an input. Right after taking input master node divides it into smaller sub-inputs or sub-problems. These sub-problems are distributed to worker nodes. A worker node later processes them and does necessary analysis. Once the worker node completes the process with this sub-problem it returns it back to master node. Reduce() Procedure All the worker nodes return the answer to the sub-problem assigned to them to master node. The master node collects the answer and once again aggregate that in the form of the answer to the original big problem which was assigned master node. The MapReduce Framework does the above Map () and Reduce () procedure in the parallel and independent to each other. All the Map() procedures can run parallel to each other and once each worker node had completed their task they can send it back to master code to compile it with a single answer. This particular procedure can be very effective when it is implemented on a very large amount of data (Big Data). The MapReduce Framework has five different steps: Preparing Map() Input Executing User Provided Map() Code Shuffle Map Output to Reduce Processor Executing User Provided Reduce Code Producing the Final Output Here is the Dataflow of MapReduce Framework: Input Reader Map Function Partition Function Compare Function Reduce Function Output Writer In a future blog post of this 31 day series we will explore various components of MapReduce in Detail. MapReduce in a Single Statement MapReduce is equivalent to SELECT and GROUP BY of a relational database for a very large database. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss Buzz Word – HDFS. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• ASP.NET Web API - Screencast series with downloadable sample code - Part 1

  - by Jon Galloway

  There's a lot of great ASP.NET Web API content on the ASP.NET website at http://asp.net/web-api. I mentioned my screencast series in original announcement post, but we've since added the sample code so I thought it was worth pointing the series out specifically. This is an introductory screencast series that walks through from File / New Project to some more advanced scenarios like Custom Validation and Authorization. The screencast videos are all short (3-5 minutes) and the sample code for the series is both available for download and browsable online. I did the screencasts, but the samples were written by the ASP.NET Web API team. So - let's watch them together! Grab some popcorn and pay attention, because these are short. After each video, I'll talk about what I thought was important. I'm embedding the videos using HTML5 (MP4) with Silverlight fallback, but if something goes wrong or your browser / device / whatever doesn't support them, I'll include the link to where the videos are more professionally hosted on the ASP.NET site. Note also if you're following along with the samples that, since Part 1 just looks at the File / New Project step, the screencast part numbers are one ahead of the sample part numbers - so screencast 4 matches with sample code demo 3. Note: I started this as one long post for all 6 parts, but as it grew over 2000 words I figured it'd be better to break it up. Part 1: Your First Web API [Video and code on the ASP.NET site] This screencast starts with an overview of why you'd want to use ASP.NET Web API: Reach more clients (thinking beyond the browser to mobile clients, other applications, etc.) Scale (who doesn't love the cloud?!) Embrace HTTP (a focus on HTTP both on client and server really simplifies and focuses service interactions) Next, I start a new ASP.NET Web API application and show some of the basics of the ApiController. We don't write any new code in this first step, just look at the example controller that's created by File / New Project. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; namespace NewProject_Mvc4BetaWebApi.Controllers { public class ValuesController : ApiController { // GET /api/values public IEnumerable<string> Get() { return new string[] { "value1", "value2" }; } // GET /api/values/5 public string Get(int id) { return "value"; } // POST /api/values public void Post(string value) { } // PUT /api/values/5 public void Put(int id, string value) { } // DELETE /api/values/5 public void Delete(int id) { } } } Finally, we walk through testing the output of this API controller using browser tools. There are several ways you can test API output, including Fiddler (as described by Scott Hanselman in this post) and built-in developer tools available in all modern browsers. For simplicity I used Internet Explorer 9 F12 developer tools, but you're of course welcome to use whatever you'd like. A few important things to note: This class derives from an ApiController base class, not the standard ASP.NET MVC Controller base class. They're similar in places where API's and HTML returning controller uses are similar, and different where API and HTML use differ. A good example of where those things are different is in the routing conventions. In an HTTP controller, there's no need for an "action" to be specified, since the HTTP verbs are the actions. We don't need to do anything to map verbs to actions; when a request comes in to /api/values/5 with the DELETE HTTP verb, it'll automatically be handled by the Delete method in an ApiController. The comments above the API methods show sample URL's and HTTP verbs, so we can test out the first two GET methods by browsing to the site in IE9, hitting F12 to bring up the tools, and entering /api/values in the URL: That sample action returns a list of values. To get just one value back, we'd browse to /values/5: That's it for Part 1. In Part 2 we'll look at getting data (beyond hardcoded strings) and start building out a sample application.

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• Framework 4 Features: Support for Timed Jobs

  - by Anthony Shorten

  One of the new features of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4 is the ability for the batch framework to support Timed Batch. Traditionally batch is associated with set processing in the background in a fixed time frame. For example, billing customers. Over the last few versions their has been functionality required by the products required a more monitoring style batch process. The monitor is a batch process that looks for specific business events based upon record status or other pieces of data. For example, the framework contains a fact monitor (F1-FCTRN) that can be configured to look for specific status's or other conditions. The batch process then uses the instructions on the object to determine what to do. To support monitor style processing, you need to run the process regularly a number of times a day (for example, every ten minutes). Traditional batch could support this but it was not as optimal as expected (if you are a site using the old Workflow subsystem, you understand what I mean). The Batch framework was extended to add additional facilities to support times (and continuous batch which is another new feature for another blog entry). The new facilities include: The batch control now defines the job as Timed or Not Timed. Non-Timed batch are traditional batch jobs. The timer interval (the interval between executions) can be specified The timer can be made active or inactive. Only active timers are executed. Setting the Timer Active to inactive will stop the job at the next time interval. Setting the Timer Active to Active will start the execution of the timed job. You can specify the credentials, language to view the messages and an email address to send the a summary of the execution to. The email address is optional and requires an email server to be specified in the relevant feature configuration. You can specify the thread limits and commit intervals to be sued for the multiple executions. Once a timer job is defined it will be executed automatically by the Business Application Server process if the DEFAULT threadpool is active. This threadpool can be started using the online batch daemon (for non-production) or externally using the threadpoolworker utility. At that time any batch process with the Timer Active set to Active and Batch Control Type of Timed will begin executing. As Timed jobs are executed automatically then they do not appear in any external schedule or are managed by an external scheduler (except via the DEFAULT threadpool itself of course). Now, if the job has no work to do as the timer interval is being reached then that instance of the job is stopped and the next instance started at the timer interval. If there is still work to complete when the interval interval is reached, the instance will continue processing till the work is complete, then the instance will be stopped and the next instance scheduled for the next timer interval. One of the key ways of optimizing this processing is to set the timer interval correctly for the expected workload. This is an interesting new feature of the batch framework and we anticipate it will come in handy for specific business situations with the monitor processes.

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• SQL SERVER – Transcript of Learning SQL Server Performance: Indexing Basics – Interview of Vinod Kumar by Pinal Dave

  - by pinaldave

  Recently I just wrote a blog post on about Learning SQL Server Performance: Indexing Basics and I received lots of request that if we can share some insight into the course. Here is 200 seconds interview of Vinod Kumar I took right after completing the course. We have few free codes to watch the course, please your comment at http://facebook.com/SQLAuth and we will few of first ones, we will send the code. There are many people who said they would like to read the transcript of the video. Here I have generated the same. Pinal: Vinod, we recently released this course, SQL Server Indexing. It is about performance tuning. So tell me – how do indexes help performance? Vinod: I think what happens in the industry when it comes to performance is that developers and DBAs look at indexes first.  So that’s the first step for any performance tuning exercise, indexing is one of the most critical aspects and it is important to learn it the right way. Pinal: Correct. So what you mean to say is that if you know indexing you can pretty much tune any server and query. Vinod: So I might contradict my false statement now. Indexing is usually a stepping stone but it does not lead you to the end. But it’s good to start with indexing and there are lots of nuances to indexing that you need to understand, like how SQL uses indexing and how performance can improve because of the strategies that you have made. Pinal: But now I’m confused. First you said indexes are good, and then you said that indexes can degrade your performance.  So what is this course about?  I mean how does this course really make an impact? Vinod: Ok -so from the course perspective, what we are trying to do is give you a capsule which gives you a good start. Every journey needs a beginning, you need that first step.  This course is that first step in understanding. This is the most basic, fundamental course that we have tried to attack. This is the fundamentals of indexing, some of the key things that you must know about indexing.   Some of the basics of indexing are lesser known and so I think this course is geared towards each and every one of you out there who wants to understand little bit more about indexing. Pinal: So what I understand is that if I enrolled in this course I will have a minimum understanding about indexing when dealing with performance tuning.  Right? Vinod: Exactly. In this course is we have tried to give you a nice summary. We are talking about clustered indexing, non clustered indexing, too many indexes, too few indexes, over indexing, under indexing, duplicate indexing, columns tune indexing, with SQL Server 2012. There’s lot’s to learn. Pinal: You can see the URL [http://bit.ly/sql-index] of the course on the screen. Go ahead, attend, and let us know what you think about it. Thank you. Vinod: Thank you. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology, Video

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• Inequality joins, Asynchronous transformations and Lookups : SSIS

  - by jamiet

  It is pretty much accepted by SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) developers that synchronous transformations are generally quicker than asynchronous transformations (for a description of synchronous and asynchronous transformations go read Asynchronous and synchronous data flow components). Notice I said “generally” and not “always”; there are circumstances where using asynchronous transformations can be beneficial and in this blog post I’ll demonstrate such a scenario, one that is pretty common when building data warehouses. Imagine I have a [Customer] dimension table that manages information about all of my customers as a slowly-changing dimension. If that is a type 2 slowly changing dimension then you will likely have multiple rows per customer in that table. Furthermore you might also have datetime fields that indicate the effective time period of each member record. Here is such a table that contains data for four dimension members {Terry, Max, Henry, Horace}: Notice that we have multiple records per customer and that the [SCDStartDate] of a record is equivalent to the [SCDEndDate] of the record that preceded it (if there was one). (Note that I am on record as saying I am not a fan of this technique of storing an [SCDEndDate] but for the purposes of clarity I have included it here.) Anyway, the idea here is that we will have some incoming data containing [CustomerName] & [EffectiveDate] and we need to use those values to lookup [Customer].[CustomerId]. The logic will be: Lookup a [CustomerId] WHERE [CustomerName]=[CustomerName] AND [SCDStartDate] <= [EffectiveDate] AND [EffectiveDate] <= [SCDEndDate] The conventional approach to this would be to use a full cached lookup but that isn’t an option here because we are using inequality conditions. The obvious next step then is to use a non-cached lookup which enables us to change the SQL statement to use inequality operators: Let’s take a look at the dataflow: Notice these are all synchronous components. This approach works just fine however it does have the limitation that it has to issue a SQL statement against your lookup set for every row thus we can expect the execution time of our dataflow to increase linearly in line with the number of rows in our dataflow; that’s not good. OK, that’s the obvious method. Let’s now look at a different way of achieving this using an asynchronous Merge Join transform coupled with a Conditional Split. I’ve shown it post-execution so that I can include the row counts which help to illustrate what is going on here: Notice that there are more rows output from our Merge Join component than on the input. That is because we are joining on [CustomerName] and, as we know, we have multiple records per [CustomerName] in our lookup set. Notice also that there are two asynchronous components in here (the Sort and the Merge Join). I have embedded a video below that compares the execution times for each of these two methods. The video is just over 8minutes long. View on Vimeo  For those that can’t be bothered watching the video I’ll tell you the results here. The dataflow that used the Lookup transform took 36 seconds whereas the dataflow that used the Merge Join took less than two seconds. An illustration in case it is needed: Pretty conclusive proof that in some scenarios it may be quicker to use an asynchronous component than a synchronous one. Your mileage may of course vary. The scenario outlined here is analogous to performance tuning procedural SQL that uses cursors. It is common to eliminate cursors by converting them to set-based operations and that is effectively what we have done here. Our non-cached lookup is performing a discrete operation for every single row of data, exactly like a cursor does. By eliminating this cursor-in-disguise we have dramatically sped up our dataflow. I hope all of that proves useful. You can download the package that I demonstrated in the video from my SkyDrive at http://cid-550f681dad532637.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/BlogShare/20100514/20100514%20Lookups%20and%20Merge%20Joins.zip Comments are welcome as always. @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Stack Exchange Notifier Chrome Extension [v1.2.9.3 released]

  - by Vladislav Tserman

  About Stack Exchange Notifier is a handy extension for Google Chrome browser that displays your current reputation, badges on Stack Exchange sites and notifies you on reputation's changes. You will now get notified of comments on your own posts (questions and answers) and of any comments that refer to you by @username in a comment, even if you do not own the post (aka mentions). All StackExchange sites are supported. Screenshots Access Install extensions from Google Chrome Extension Gallery Platform Google Chrome browser extension Contact Created by me (Vladislav Tserman). I'm available at: vladjan (at) gmail.com Follow Stack Exchange Notifier on twitter to get notified about news and updates: http://twitter.com/se_notifier Code Written in Java, Google Web Toolkit under Eclipse Helios. Stack Exchange Notifier uses the Stack Exchange API and is powered by Google App Engine for Java. Changelog I will be porting extension to not use app engine back-end due to some limitations. New versions of the extension will be making direct calls to Stack Exchange API right from your browser. Please do not expect new versions of the extension any time soon. Sorry. Read more about limitations here http://stackapps.com/questions/1713 and here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3949815 Currently, you may sometimes experience some issues using extension, but most users will have no problems. You may notice too many errors in the logs, but there is nothing I can do with this now. Thanks for using my little app, thanks to all of you it still works in spite of many issues with API Version 1.2.9.3 - Thursday, October 14, 2010 - Bug fix release (back-end improvements) Version 1.2.9.2 - Thursday, October 07, 2010 - Bug fix release (high rate of occasional API errors were noticed so some fixes added to handle them were possible) Version 1.2.9.1 - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - Mostly bug fix release, back-end performance improvements - You will now get notified of comments on your own posts (questions and answers) that are not older than 1 year and of any comments that refer to you by @username in a comment, even if you do not own the post (aka mentions). This is experimental feature, let me know if you like/need it. - New 'All sites' view displays all websites from Stack Exchange network (part of new feature that is not finished yet) Version 1.2.9 - Saturday, September 25, 2010 - Fixes an issue when some users got empty Account view. - When hovering on @Username on account view the title now displays '@Username on @SiteName' to easily understand the site name Version 1.2.7 - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - Fixed an issue with notifications. - Minor improvements Version 1.2.5 - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - Fixed an issue where some characters in response payload raised an exception when parsing to JSON. v1.2.3 (Sunday, September 19, 2010) - Support for new OpenID providers was added (Yahoo, MyOpenID, AOL) - UI improvements - Several minor defects were fixed v1.2.2 (Thursday, September 16, 2010) - New types of notifications added. Now extension notifies you on comments that are directed to you. Comments are expandable, so clicking on comment title will expand height to accommodate all available text. - UI and error handling improvements Future Application still in beta stage. I hope you're not having any problems, but if you are, please let me know. Leave your feedback and bug reports in comments. I'm available at: vladjan (at) gmail.com. I'm working on adding new features. I want to hear from the users and incorporate as much feedback as possible into the extension. Any suggestions for improvements/features to add?

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• Ubuntu 10.04 & IBM DS3524 with FC multipath, inactive path is [failed][faulty] instead of [active][ghost]

  - by Graeme Donaldson

  OK, this is my setup: FC Switches IBM/Brocade, Switch1 and Switch2, independent fabrics. Server IBM x3650 M2, 2x QLogic QLE2460, 1 connected to each FC Switch. Storage IBM DS3524, 2x controllers with 4x FC ports each, but only 2x connected on each. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | HBA1 Server HBA2 | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | +-----------------------------+ +------------------------------+ | Switch1 | | Switch2 | +-----------------------------+ +------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+ | Contr A, port 3 | Contr A, port 4 | Contr B, port 3 | Contr B, port 4 | +-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+ | Storage | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ My /etc/multipath.conf is from the IBM redbook for the DS3500, except I use a different setting for prio_callout, IBM uses /sbin/mpath_prio_tpc, but according to http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/main/m/multipath-tools/multipath-tools_0.4.8-7ubuntu2/changelog, this was renamed to /sbin/mpath_prio_rdac, which I'm using. devices { device { #ds3500 vendor "IBM" product "1746 FAStT" hardware_handler "1 rdac" path_checker rdac failback 0 path_grouping_policy multibus prio_callout "/sbin/mpath_prio_rdac /dev/%n" } } multipaths { multipath { wwid xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx alias array07 path_grouping_policy multibus path_checker readsector0 path_selector "round-robin 0" failback "5" rr_weight priorities no_path_retry "5" } } The output of multipath -ll with controller A as the preferred path: root@db06:~# multipath -ll sdg: checker msg is "directio checker reports path is down" sdh: checker msg is "directio checker reports path is down" array07 (xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) dm-2 IBM ,1746 FASt [size=4.9T][features=1 queue_if_no_path][hwhandler=0] \_ round-robin 0 [prio=2][active] \_ 5:0:1:0 sdd 8:48 [active][ready] \_ 5:0:2:0 sde 8:64 [active][ready] \_ 6:0:1:0 sdg 8:96 [failed][faulty] \_ 6:0:2:0 sdh 8:112 [failed][faulty] If I change the preferred path using IBM DS Storage Manager to Controller B, the output swaps accordingly: root@db06:~# multipath -ll sdd: checker msg is "directio checker reports path is down" sde: checker msg is "directio checker reports path is down" array07 (xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) dm-2 IBM ,1746 FASt [size=4.9T][features=1 queue_if_no_path][hwhandler=0] \_ round-robin 0 [prio=2][active] \_ 5:0:1:0 sdd 8:48 [failed][faulty] \_ 5:0:2:0 sde 8:64 [failed][faulty] \_ 6:0:1:0 sdg 8:96 [active][ready] \_ 6:0:2:0 sdh 8:112 [active][ready] According to IBM, the inactive path should be "[active][ghost]", not "[failed][faulty]". Despite this, I don't seem to have any I/O issues, but my syslog is being spammed with this every 5 seconds: Jun 1 15:30:09 db06 multipathd: sdg: directio checker reports path is down Jun 1 15:30:09 db06 kernel: [ 2350.282065] sd 6:0:2:0: [sdh] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE Jun 1 15:30:09 db06 kernel: [ 2350.282071] sd 6:0:2:0: [sdh] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] Jun 1 15:30:09 db06 kernel: [ 2350.282076] sd 6:0:2:0: [sdh] <<vendor>> ASC=0x94 ASCQ=0x1ASC=0x94 ASCQ=0x1 Jun 1 15:30:09 db06 kernel: [ 2350.282083] sd 6:0:2:0: [sdh] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 Jun 1 15:30:09 db06 kernel: [ 2350.282092] end_request: I/O error, dev sdh, sector 0 Jun 1 15:30:10 db06 multipathd: sdh: directio checker reports path is down Jun 1 15:30:14 db06 kernel: [ 2355.312270] sd 6:0:1:0: [sdg] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE Jun 1 15:30:14 db06 kernel: [ 2355.312277] sd 6:0:1:0: [sdg] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] Jun 1 15:30:14 db06 kernel: [ 2355.312282] sd 6:0:1:0: [sdg] <<vendor>> ASC=0x94 ASCQ=0x1ASC=0x94 ASCQ=0x1 Jun 1 15:30:14 db06 kernel: [ 2355.312290] sd 6:0:1:0: [sdg] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 Jun 1 15:30:14 db06 kernel: [ 2355.312299] end_request: I/O error, dev sdg, sector 0 Does anyone know how I can get the inactive path to show "[active][ghost]" instead of "[failed][faulty]"? I assume that once I can get that right then the spam in my syslog will end as well. One final thing worth mentioning is that the IBM redbook doc targets SLES 11 so I'm assuming there's something a little different under Ubuntu that I just haven't figured out yet. Update: As suggested by Mitch, I've tried removing /etc/multipath.conf, and now the output of multipath -ll looks like this: root@db06:~# multipath -ll sdg: checker msg is "directio checker reports path is down" sdh: checker msg is "directio checker reports path is down" xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxdm-1 IBM ,1746 FASt [size=4.9T][features=0][hwhandler=0] \_ round-robin 0 [prio=1][active] \_ 5:0:2:0 sde 8:64 [active][ready] \_ round-robin 0 [prio=1][enabled] \_ 5:0:1:0 sdd 8:48 [active][ready] \_ round-robin 0 [prio=0][enabled] \_ 6:0:1:0 sdg 8:96 [failed][faulty] \_ round-robin 0 [prio=0][enabled] \_ 6:0:2:0 sdh 8:112 [failed][faulty] So its more or less the same, with the same message in the syslog every 5 minutes as before, but the grouping has changed.

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• What if &ldquo;Microsoft&rdquo; were in our shoes? About Windows Phone

  - by Vijaya Malla

  This is what I think about Microsoft Windows Phone. If Microsoft were in our shoes looking at various phones available their configurations, memory, front facing cameras etc. Microsoft disappointed the USA customer base again by not getting Nokia Lumia 800. The Past: If we talk few years ago, few business people were on their Blackberry’s and few Gadget lovers were on crappy Windows OS devices. The world was all going right till Apple came with a revolutionary device iPhone, which completely changed our perception towards phone and how great a smartphone can be. It’s not just phone but the whole technology industry. The romantic appealing of the phone and smooth touch and feel of it made everyone to get one of those bad boys. The sales went up for not just Apple for AT&T too. Even though everyone complained about the signal strength of AT&T, everyone wanted to be on it because they have iPhones. All world wanted iPhone back then except Microsoft with few comments on how it is not going to be in market. But it did great and rocked the industry. A few years later with iPhone and Android taking over the smartphone market Microsoft realized that it should be in the game too. Worked on the design of it, and gave us the best Mobile OS ever. Everyone thinks that iOS is a great OS for phones but if you have touched a Windows Phone and use it for real then you will realize the strengths of it. so last year we welcomed Windows Phone 7 The Present : Windows Phone 7 has the fastest growing market. The phones are cheap, you can buy from any carrier out there. The phone became smarter and smarter with the recent update “Mango (7.5)” and with the collaboration with Nokia, Microsoft created a new eco-system for smartphones with the best smartphone hardware and best smartphone software. Everyone in the world was excited about the collaboration. As we fly over cloud 9 imagining about Nokia made Windows Phones we all heard a good news from Nokia “Nokia World”. Nokia showed the world what a best hardware making company can do with Windows Phone 7.5 OS. Nokia Lumia 800 and 710 took the spotlight. Everyone here in USA and all over the world wanted to own a Nokia Lumia 800 because of the design, software, proprietary apps from Nokia (maps, ESPN, drive and music). If USA market had Nokia Lumia 800, then it would have been the best step Microsoft and Nokia had ever made in their history of smartphone market. With all the numbers going to Android and IPhone, its not clear on why Microsoft/Nokia did not release Lumia 800 here in USA. Its unclear if Microsoft had learnt the lesson or not. if it had learnt the lesson I guess Microsoft needs to get the Nokia Lumia 800 to the USA. The Future: This is where we hope we get the best form Microsoft. I was an iPhone user, I used 2G, 3G, 3GS, 4 and then moved to Windows Phone and never felt so happy with my iPhones’. From the day when Nokia announced the partnership with Microsoft and said that they going to come up with a new Nokia windows phone, I was dreaming for my Nokia Phone. but looks like it is not going to happen any time soon. My thoughts about the Market :  Nokia has the biggest market base in the world. Even though people moved to Android or iPhone over the years in other parts of the world like India and China, people still love to use Nokia. Everyone who uses a Windows Phone now will wait for that day when Nokia Lumia comes to the USA but what either or both of the companies should do for a better market share is to make a very aggressive move with the hardware and bet on the devices. I am pretty sure that it will work. everyone here in the USA will like to have a dual core windows phone with front facing camera and all other crazy things that android/apple phones offer. I think we just have to wait for that day and hope that day comes soon. Love Microsoft and Nokia Thank you for reading.

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• Subterranean IL: Pseudo custom attributes

  - by Simon Cooper

  Custom attributes were designed to make the .NET framework extensible; if a .NET language needs to store additional metadata on an item that isn't expressible in IL, then an attribute could be applied to the IL item to represent this metadata. For instance, the C# compiler uses DecimalConstantAttribute and DateTimeConstantAttribute to represent compile-time decimal or datetime constants, which aren't allowed in pure IL, and FixedBufferAttribute to represent fixed struct fields. How attributes are compiled Within a .NET assembly are a series of tables containing all the metadata for items within the assembly; for instance, the TypeDef table stores metadata on all the types in the assembly, and MethodDef does the same for all the methods and constructors. Custom attribute information is stored in the CustomAttribute table, which has references to the IL item the attribute is applied to, the constructor used (which implies the type of attribute applied), and a binary blob representing the arguments and name/value pairs used in the attribute application. For example, the following C# class: [Obsolete("Please use MyClass2", true)] public class MyClass { // ... } corresponds to the following IL class definition: .class public MyClass { .custom instance void [mscorlib]System.ObsoleteAttribute::.ctor(string, bool) = { string('Please use MyClass2' bool(true) } // ... } and results in the following entry in the CustomAttribute table: TypeDef(MyClass) MemberRef(ObsoleteAttribute::.ctor(string, bool)) blob -> {string('Please use MyClass2' bool(true)} However, there are some attributes that don't compile in this way. Pseudo custom attributes Just like there are some concepts in a language that can't be represented in IL, there are some concepts in IL that can't be represented in a language. This is where pseudo custom attributes come into play. The most obvious of these is SerializableAttribute. Although it looks like an attribute, it doesn't compile to a CustomAttribute table entry; it instead sets the serializable bit directly within the TypeDef entry for the type. This flag is fully expressible within IL; this C#: [Serializable] public class MySerializableClass {} compiles to this IL: .class public serializable MySerializableClass {} For those interested, a full list of pseudo custom attributes is available here. For the rest of this post, I'll be concentrating on the ones that deal with P/Invoke. P/Invoke attributes P/Invoke is built right into the CLR at quite a deep level; there are 2 metadata tables within an assembly dedicated solely to p/invoke interop, and many more that affect it. Furthermore, all the attributes used to specify p/invoke methods in C# or VB have their own keywords and syntax within IL. For example, the following C# method declaration: [DllImport("mscorsn.dll", SetLastError = true)] [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U1)] private static extern bool StrongNameSignatureVerificationEx( [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] string wszFilePath, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U1)] bool fForceVerification, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U1)] ref bool pfWasVerified); compiles to the following IL definition: .method private static pinvokeimpl("mscorsn.dll" lasterr winapi) bool marshal(unsigned int8) StrongNameSignatureVerificationEx( string marshal(lpwstr) wszFilePath, bool marshal(unsigned int8) fForceVerification, bool& marshal(unsigned int8) pfWasVerified) cil managed preservesig {} As you can see, all the p/invoke and marshal properties are specified directly in IL, rather than using attributes. And, rather than creating entries in CustomAttribute, a whole bunch of metadata is emitted to represent this information. This single method declaration results in the following metadata being output to the assembly: A MethodDef entry containing basic information on the method Four ParamDef entries for the 3 method parameters and return type An entry in ModuleRef to mscorsn.dll An entry in ImplMap linking ModuleRef and MethodDef, along with the name of the function to import and the pinvoke options (lasterr winapi) Four FieldMarshal entries containing the marshal information for each parameter. Phew! Applying attributes Most of the time, when you apply an attribute to an element, an entry in the CustomAttribute table will be created to represent that application. However, some attributes represent concepts in IL that aren't expressible in the language you're coding in, and can instead result in a single bit change (SerializableAttribute and NonSerializedAttribute), or many extra metadata table entries (the p/invoke attributes) being emitted to the output assembly.

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• ASP.NET MVC for the php/asp noob

  - by dotjosh

  I was talking to a friend today, who's foremost a php developer, about his thoughts on Umbraco and he said "Well they're apparently working feverishly on the new version of Umbraco, which will be MVC... which i still don't know what that means, but I know you like it." I ended up giving him a ground up explanation of ASP.NET MVC, so I'm posting this so he can link this to his friends and for anyone else who finds it useful.  The whole goal was to be as simple as possible, not being focused on proper syntax. Model-View-Controller (or MVC) is just a pattern that is used for handling UI interaction with your backend.  In a typical web app, you can imagine the *M*odel as your database model, the *V*iew as your HTML page, and the *C*ontroller as the class inbetween.  MVC handles your web request different than your typical php/asp app.In your php/asp app, your url maps directly to a php/asp file that contains html, mixed with database access code and redirects.In an MVC app, your url route is mapped to a method on a class (the controller).  The body of this method can do some database access and THEN decide which *V*iew (html/aspx page) should be displayed;  putting the controller in charge and not the view... a clear seperation of concerns that provides better reusibility and generally promotes cleaner code. Mysite.com, a quick example:Let's say you hit the following url in your application: http://www.mysite.com/Product/ShowItem?Id=4 To avoid tedious configuration, MVC uses a lot of conventions by default. For instance, the above url in your app would automatically make MVC search for a .net class with the name "Product" and a method named "ShowItem" based on the pattern of the url.  So if you name things properly, your method would automatically be called when you entered the above url.  Additionally, it would automatically map/hydrate the "int id" parameter that was in your querystring, matched by name.Product.cspublic class Product : Controller{    public ViewResult ShowItem(int id)    {        return View();    }} From this point you can write the code in the body of this method to do some database access and then pass a "bag" (also known as the ViewData) of data to your chosen *V*iew (html page) to use for display.  The view(html) ONLY needs to be worried about displaying the flattened data that it's been given in the best way it can;  this allows the view to be reused throughout your application as *just* a view, and not be coupled to HOW the data for that view get's loaded.. Product.cspublic class Product : Controller{    public ViewResult ShowItem(int id)    {        var database = new Database();        var item = database.GetItem(id);        ViewData["TheItem"] = item;        return View();    }} Again by convention, since the class' method name is "ShowItem", it'll search for a view named "ShowItem.aspx" by default, and pass the ViewData bag to it to use. ShowItem.aspx<html>     <body>      <%        var item =(Item)ViewData["TheItem"]       %>       <h1><%= item.FullProductName %></h1>     </body></html> BUT WAIT! WHY DOES MICROSOFT HAVE TO DO THINGS SO DIFFERENTLY!?They aren't... here are some other frameworks you may have heard of that use the same pattern in a their own way: Ruby On Rails Grails Spring MVC Struts Django    

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