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• April 30th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, Visual Studio 2010

  - by ScottGu

  Here is the latest in my link-listing series. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] ASP.NET Data Web Control Enhancements in ASP.NET 4.0: Scott Mitchell has a good article that summarizes some of the nice improvements coming to the ASP.NET 4 data controls. Refreshing an ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel with JavaScript: Scott Mitchell has another nice article in his series on using ASP.NET AJAX that demonstrates how to programmatically trigger an UpdatePanel refresh using JavaScript on the client. ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC 2: Basics and Introduction: Scott Hanselman delivers an awesome introductory talk on ASP.NET MVC.  Great for people looking to understand and learn ASP.NET MVC. ASP.NET MVC 2: Ninja Black Belt Tips: Another great talk by Scott Hanselman about how to make the most of several features of ASP.NET MVC 2. ASP.NET MVC 2 Html.Editor/Display Templates: A great blog post detailing the new Html.EditorFor() and Html.DisplayFor() helpers within ASP.NET MVC 2. MVCContrib Grid: Jeremy Skinner’s video presentation about the new Html.Grid() helper component within the (most awesome) MvcContrib project for ASP.NET MVC. Code Snippets for ASP.NET MVC 2 in VS 2010: Raj Kaimal documents some of the new code snippets for ASP.NET MVC 2 that are now built-into Visual Studio 2010.  Read this article to learn how to do common scenarios with fewer keystrokes. Turn on Compile-time View Checking for ASP.NET MVC Projects in TFS 2010 Build: Jim Lamb has a nice post that describes how to enable compile-time view checking as part of automated builds done with a TFS Build Server.  This will ensure any errors in your view templates raise build-errors (allowing you to catch them at build-time instead of runtime). Visual Studio 2010 VS 2010 Keyboard Shortcut Posters for VB, C#, F# and C++: Keyboard shortcut posters that you can download and then printout. Ideal to provide a quick reference on your desk for common keystroke actions inside VS 2010. My Favorite New Features in VS 2010: Scott Mitchell has a nice article that summarizes some of his favorite new features in VS 2010.  Check out my VS 2010 and .NET 4 blog series for more details on some of them. 6 Cool VS 2010 Quick Tips and Features: Anoop has a nice blog post describing 6 cool features of VS 2010 that you can take advantage of. SharePoint Development with VS 2010: Beth Massi links to a bunch of nice “How do I?” videos that that demonstrate how to use the SharePoint development support built-into VS 2010. How to Pin a Project to the Recent Projects List in VS 2010: A useful tip/trick that demonstrates how to “pin” a project to always show up on the “Recent Projects” list within Visual Studio 2010. Using the WPF Tree Visualizer in VS 2010: Zain blogs about the new WPF Tree Visualizer supported by the VS 2010 debugger.  This makes it easier to visualize WPF control hierarchies within the debugger. TFS 2010 Power Tools Released: Brian Harry blogs about the cool new TFS 2010 extensions released with this week’s TFS 2010 Power Tools release. What is New with T4 in VS 2010: T4 is the name of Visual Studio’s template-based code generation technology.  Lots of scenarios within VS 2010 now use T4 for code generation customization. Two examples are ASP.NET MVC Views and EF4 Model Generation.  This post describes some of the many T4 infrastructure improvements in VS 2010. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. If you haven’t already, check out this month’s "Find a Hoster” page on the www.asp.net website to learn about great (and very inexpensive) ASP.NET hosting offers.

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• SQLAuthority News – 1600 Blog Post Articles – A Milestone

  - by pinaldave

  It was really a very interesting moment for me when I was writing my 1600th milestone blog post. Now it`s a lot more exciting because this time it`s my 1600th blog post. Every time I write a milestone blog post such as this, I have the same excitement as when I was writing my very first blog post. Today I want to write about a few statistics of the blog. Statistics I am frequently asked about my blog stats, so I have already published my blog stats which are measured by WordPress.com. Currently, I have more than 22 Million+ Views on this blog from various sources. There are more than 6200+ feed subscribers in Google Reader only; I think I don`t have to count all other subscribers. My LinkedIn has 1250+ connection, while my Twitter has 2150+. Because I feel that I`m well connected with the Community, I am very thankful to you, my readers. Today I also want to say Thank You to those experts who have helped me to improve. I have maintained a list of all the articles I have written. If you go to my first articles, you will notice that they were a little different from the articles I am writing today. The reason for this is simple: I have two kinds of people helping me write all the better: readers and experts. To my Readers You read the articles and gave me feedback about what was right or wrong, what you liked or disliked. Quite often, you were helpful in writing guest posts, and I also recognize how you were a bit brutal in criticizing some articles, making me re-write them. Because of you, I was able to write better blog posts. To Experts You read the articles and helped me improve. I get inspiration from you and learned a lot from you. Just like everybody, I am a guy who is trying to learn. There are times when I had vague understanding of some subjects, and you did not hesitate to help me. Number of Posts Many ask me if the number of posts is important to me. My answer is YES. Actually, it`s just not about the number of my posts; it is about my blog, my routine, my learning experience and my journey. During the last four years, I have decided that I would be learning one thing a day. This blog has helped me accomplish this goal because in here I have been able to keep my notes and bookmarks. Whatever I learn or experience, I blog and share it with the Community. For me, the blog post number is more than just a number: it`s a summary of my experiences and memories. Once again, thanks for reading and supporting my blog! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Milestone, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – What is Spatial Database? – Developing with SQL Server Spatial and Deep Dive into Spati

  - by pinaldave

  What is Spatial Database? A spatial database is a database that is optimized to store and query data related to objects in space, including points, lines and polygons. While typical databases can understand various numeric and character types of data, additional functionality needs to be added for databases to process spatial data types. (Source: Wikipedia) Today I will be talking about the same subject at Microsoft TechEd India. If you want to learn about how to spatial aspect of data and how to integrate them with SQL Server this is the perfect session for you. Spatial is very special concept of SQL Server and I really like how it is implemented in SQL Server. In general Performance Tuning and Query Optimization is something I always have enjoyed in my professional life. Index are my best friends and many time, by implementing and many time by removing I have improved the performance of the system. In this session, I will be talking about Index along with Spatial Data. As Spatial Database is very interesting concept, I will cover super short but very interesting 10 quick slides about this subject. I will make sure in very first 20 mins, you will understand following topics Introduction to Spatial Database One line definition Understanding Spatial Indexing Index Internals Query/Performance Tuning Query Hinting/Cost Analysis Spatial Index Catalog Views Performance Troubleshooting Finding Optimal Index using Spatial Index SP Common Errors Index Maintenance This slides decks will be followed by around 30 mins demo which will have story of geometry, geography, index internals and performance tuning. If you are interested in learning how GIS works and how SQL Server out of the box supports this wonderful tools, you will really like how the story is told. I am sure all people who attend the event will know how the Bangalore is positioned on the map of India. I will take example of Bangalore and Hyderabad and demonstrate how index can improve the performance. Well there are lots of story to tell in the session, and I will be opening this session with the beautiful script of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus created by Michael J. Swart. I will also demonstrate few real life scenario where I will be talking about Spatial Database and its usage. Do not miss this session. At the end of session there will be book awarded to best participant. My session details: Session 3: Developing with SQL Server Spatial and Deep Dive into Spatial Indexing Date: April 14, 2010 Time: 5:00pm-6:00pm Microsoft SQL Server 2008 delivers new spatial data types that enable you to consume, use, and extend location-based data through spatial-enabled applications. Attend this session to learn how to use spatial functionality in next version of SQL Server to build and optimize spatial queries. This session outlines the new geography data type to store geodetic spatial data and perform operations on it, use the new geometry data type to store planar spatial data and perform operations on it, take advantage of new spatial indexes for high performance queries, use the new spatial results tab to quickly and easily view spatial query results directly from within Management Studio, extend spatial data capabilities by building or integrating location-enabled applications through support for spatial standards and specifications and much more. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Spatial Database

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• Looking into ASP.Net MVC 4.0 Mobile Development - part 1

  - by nikolaosk

  In this post I will be looking how ASP.Net MVC 4.0 helps us to create web solutions that target mobile devices.We all experience the magic that is the World Wide Web through mobile devices. Millions of people around the world, use tablets and smartphones to view the contents of websites,e-shops and portals.ASP.Net MVC 4.0 includes a new mobile project template and the ability to render a different set of views for different types of devices.There is a new feature that is called browser overriding which allows us to control exactly what a user is going to see from your web application regardless of what type of device he is using.In order to follow along this post you must have Visual Studio 2012 and .Net Framework 4.5 installed in your machine.Download and install VS 2012 using this link.My machine runs on Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 works just fine.It will work fine in Windows 7 as well so do not worry if you do not have the latest Microsoft operating system.1) Launch VS 2012 and create a new Web Forms application by going to File - >New Project - > ASP.Net MVC 4 Web Application and then click OKHave a look at the picture below  2) From the available templates select Mobile Application and then click OK.Have a look at the picture below 3) When I run the application I get the mobile view of the page. I would like to show you what a typical ASP.Net MVC 4.0 application looks like. So I will create a new simple ASP.Net MVC 4.0 Web Application. When I run the application I get the normal page view.Have a look at the picture below.On the left is the mobile view and on the right the normal view. As you can see we have more or less the same content in our mobile application (log in,register) compared with the normal ASP.Net MVC 4.0 application but it is optimised for mobile devices. 4) Let me explain how and when the mobile view is selected and finally rendered.There is a feature in MVC 4.0 that is called Display Modes and with this feature the runtime will select a view.If we have 2 views e.g contact.mobile.cshtml and contact.cshtml in our application the Controller at some point will instruct the runtime to select and render a view named contact.The runtime will look at the browser making the request and will determine if it is a mobile browser or a desktop browser. So if there is a request from my IPhone Safari browser for a particular site, if there is a mobile view the MVC 4.0 will select it and render it. If there is not a mobile view, the normal view will be rendered.5) In the  ASP.Net MVC 4.0 (Internet application) I created earlier (not the first project which was a mobile one) I can run it once more and see how it looks on the browser. If I want to view it with a mobile browser I must download one emulator like Opera Mobile.You can download Opera Mobile hereWhen I run the application I get the same view in both the desktop and the mobile browser. That was to be expected. Have a look at the picture below 6) Then I create another version of the _Layout.mobile.cshtml view in the Shared folder.I simply copy and paste the _Layout.cshtml  into the same folder and then rename it to _Layout.mobile.cshtml and then just alter the contents of the _Layout.mobile.cshtml.When I run again the application I get a different view on the desktop browser and a different one on the Opera mobile browser.Have a look at the picture below ?he Controller will instruct the ASP.Net runtime to select and render a view named _Layout.mobile.cshtml when the request will come from a mobile browser.?he runtime knows that a browser is a mobile one through the ASP.Net browser capability provider. Hope it helps!!!

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• Catch Oracle Today and Tomorrow at Forrester’s Customer Experience Forum 2012 East

  - by Christie Flanagan

  Continuing our coverage of the customer experience revolution this week, don’t miss a chance to catch up with Oracle at Forrester’s Customer Experience Forum 2012 East today and tomorrow in New York City. The theme for this year’s Forum is “Outside In: The Power Of Putting Customers At The Center Of Your Business” and will take a look at important questions surrounding how to transform your company in order to take best advantage of the customer experience revolution: Why is customer experience the greatest untapped source of cost savings and increased revenue today? What is the key to understanding and taking control of your customer experience ecosystem? What are the six essential customer experience disciplines? Which companies have adopted best-in-class customer experience practices? How do customer experience strategies drive differentiating activities and processes at top companies? Which organizations appoint a chief customer officer to lead their customer experience efforts? What is the future of customer experience? How can you design an enterprise wide customer experience? How can you measure the results of your customer experience efforts? As a gold sponsor of the event, there will be a numbers of ways to interact with Oracle while you’re attending the Forum.  Here are some of the highlights:Oracle Speaking SessionTuesday, June 26, 2:10pm – 2:40pmThe Customer And YOU — Today’s Winners Are Defined By Customer ExperienceAnthony Lye, Senior Vice President of Customer Relationship Management, OracleCome hear Anthony Lye, Senior Vice President of Customer Relationship Management at Oracle, explain how leading companies are investing in customer experience solutions to enrich all interactions between a customer and their company. He will discuss Oracle's vision for transforming your customer engagement, insight, and execution into a connected, personalized, and rewarding experience across all touchpoints and interactions. He will demonstrate how great customer experiences generate real business results by attracting more customers, retaining more customers, and generating more sales while improving operational efficiency.Solution ShowcaseTuesday, June 26th9:45am - 10:30am - Morning Networking Break in the Solutions Showcase11:45am – 1:15pm - Networking Lunch an Dessert in the Solutions Showcase2:40pm – 3:25pm - Afternoon Break in the Solutions Showcase5:30pm – 7:00pm - Networking Reception in the Solutions ShowcaseWednesday, June 27th9:45am - 10:30am - Morning Networking Break in the Solutions Showcase12:20pm -1:20pm - Networking Lunch and Dessert in the Solutions ShowcaseWe hope to see you there! Webcast: Learn How Ancestry.com Delivers Exceptional Online Customer Experience with Oracle WebCenterDate: Thursday, June 28, 2012Time: 10:00 AM PDT/ 1:00 PM EDT Ancestry.com is the world’s largest online family history resource, providing an engaging customer experience to more than 1.7 million members. With a wealth of learning resources and a worldwide community of family history enthusiasts, Ancestry.com helps people discover their roots and tell their family stories. Key to Ancestry.com’s success has been the delivery of an online customer experience that converts site visitors into paying subscribers and keeps them coming back. Register now to learn how Ancestry.com delivers an exception customer experience using Oracle WebCenter Sites. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• How to prepare for a telephone interview: ‘Develop an Interview Cheat Sheet’

  - by Maria Sandu

  At Oracle we often do telephone interviews in different stages of the process with candidates, due to the fact that we hire native speakers into other countries. On this blog we already have an article with tips and tricks for phone interviews that can help you during the telephone interviews. To help you prepare even better for a telephone interview we would like to introduce you the basics of developing a cheat sheet. The benefit of a telephone interview is that you will be sitting at home, at your table or desk, during the interview, and not in front of someone. So use this to your advantage. The Monster website has some useful and interesting tips and tricks for developing a cheat sheet. Carole Martin, who wrote this article, says that a cheat sheet will help you feel more prepared and confident when speaking to managers over the phone. Important to keep in mind is that you shouldn't memorise what's on the sheet or check it off during the interview. Only use your cheat sheet to remind you of key facts. Here are some suggestions to include on it: • Divide a piece of paper in 2 by drawing a line. Write on one side of the paper a list of requirements as mentioned in the job description. On the other side list your qualities to fulfill the requirements of the employer. This will help you in answering questions about why you are the best candidate for the job and how you fit the role. • Do research on the company, the industry sector and the competitors, so you will get a feeling for the company’s business and can ask more in-depth questions. • Be prepared for the most used introduction question: “Tell me a bit about yourself”. Prepare a 60-second personal statement or pitch in which you summarise who you are and what you can offer, so you will be able to sell yourself from on the very beginning. • Write down a minimum of 5 good examples to answer behavioral interview questions ("Tell me about a time when..." or "Give me an example of a time..." ). These questions are used by interviewers to see how you deal with similar situations as you might encounter in the job. Interviewers use this question as past behaviour is scientifically proven to be the best predictor for future behaviour. • List five questions to ask the interviewer about the job, the company and the industry to help you get a good understanding if the role and company really fit your needs and wants. To get some inspiration check this article on inc.com • Find out how much you are worth on the job market and determine your needs based on your living expenses, especially when moving abroad. • Ask for permission from the people you plan to use as a reference. Also make sure you have your CV at hand and an overview of your grades. Feel free to comment on this article and let us know what your experience is with developing a cheat sheet for a telephone interview. Good luck with the preparation of your sheet.

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• Automatic Properties, Collection Initializers, and Implicit Line Continuation support with VB 2010

  - by ScottGu

  [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] This is the eighteenth in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release. A few days ago I blogged about two new language features coming with C# 4.0: optional parameters and named arguments.  Today I’m going to post about a few of my favorite new features being added to VB with VS 2010: Auto-Implemented Properties, Collection Initializers, and Implicit Line Continuation support. Auto-Implemented Properties Prior to VB 2010, implementing properties within a class using VB required you to explicitly declare the property as well as implement a backing field variable to store its value.  For example, the code below demonstrates how to implement a “Person” class using VB 2008 that exposes two public properties - “Name” and “Age”:   While explicitly declaring properties like above provides maximum flexibility, I’ve always found writing this type of boiler-plate get/set code tedious when you are simply storing/retrieving the value from a field.  You can use VS code snippets to help automate the generation of it – but it still generates a lot of code that feels redundant.  C# 2008 introduced a cool new feature called automatic properties that helps cut down the code quite a bit for the common case where properties are simply backed by a field.  VB 2010 also now supports this same feature.  Using the auto-implemented properties feature of VB 2010 we can now implement our Person class using just the code below: When you declare an auto-implemented property, the VB compiler automatically creates a private field to store the property value as well as generates the associated Get/Set methods for you.  As you can see above – the code is much more concise and easier to read. The syntax supports optionally initializing the properties with default values as well if you want to: You can learn more about VB 2010’s automatic property support from this MSDN page. Collection Initializers VB 2010 also now supports using collection initializers to easily create a collection and populate it with an initial set of values.  You identify a collection initializer by declaring a collection variable and then use the From keyword followed by braces { } that contain the list of initial values to add to the collection.  Below is a code example where I am using the new collection initializer feature to populate a “Friends” list of Person objects with two people, and then bind it to a GridView control to display on a page: You can learn more about VB 2010’s collection initializer support from this MSDN page. Implicit Line Continuation Support Traditionally, when a statement in VB has been split up across multiple lines, you had to use a line-continuation underscore character (_) to indicate that the statement wasn’t complete.  For example, with VB 2008 the below LINQ query needs to append a “_” at the end of each line to indicate that the query is not complete yet: The VB 2010 compiler and code editor now adds support for what is called “implicit line continuation support” – which means that it is smarter about auto-detecting line continuation scenarios, and as a result no longer needs you to explicitly indicate that the statement continues in many, many scenarios.  This means that with VB 2010 we can now write the above code with no “_” at all: The implicit line continuation feature also works well when editing XML Literals within VB (which is pretty cool). You can learn more about VB 2010’s Implicit Line Continuation support and many of the scenarios it supports from this MSDN page (scroll down to the “Implicit Line Continuation” section to find details). Summary The above three VB language features are but a few of the new language and code editor features coming with VB 2010.  Visit this site to learn more about some of the other VB language features coming with the release.  Also subscribe to the VB team’s blog to learn more and stay up-to-date with the posts they the team regularly publishes. Hope this helps, Scott

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• This Week in Geek History: Gmail Goes Public, Deep Blue Wins at Chess, and the Birth of Thomas Edison

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Every week we bring you a snapshot of the week in Geek History. This week we’re taking a peek at the public release of Gmail, the first time a computer won against a chess champion, and the birth of prolific inventor Thomas Edison. Gmail Goes Public It’s hard to believe that Gmail has only been around for seven years and that for the first three years of its life it was invite only. In 2007 Gmail dropped the invite only requirement (although they would hold onto the “beta” tag for another two years) and opened its doors for anyone to grab a username @gmail. For what seemed like an entire epoch in internet history Gmail had the slickest web-based email around with constant innovations and features rolling out from Gmail Labs. Only in the last year or so have major overhauls at competitors like Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail brought other services up to speed. Can’t stand reading a Week in Geek History entry without a random fact? Here you go: gmail.com was originally owned by the Garfield franchise and ran a service that delivered Garfield comics to your email inbox. No, we’re not kidding. Deep Blue Proves Itself a Chess Master Deep Blue was a super computer constructed by IBM with the sole purpose of winning chess matches. In 2011 with the all seeing eye of Google and the amazing computational abilities of engines like Wolfram Alpha we simply take powerful computers immersed in our daily lives for granted. The 1996 match against reigning world chest champion Garry Kasparov where in Deep Blue held its own, but ultimately lost, in a  4-2 match shook a lot of people up. What did it mean if something that was considered such an elegant and quintessentially human endeavor such as chess was so easy for a machine? A series of upgrades helped Deep Blue outright win a match against Kasparov in 1997 (seen in the photo above). After the win Deep Blue was retired and disassembled. Parts of Deep Blue are housed in the National Museum of History and the Computer History Museum. Birth of Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison was one of the most prolific inventors in history and holds an astounding 1,093 US Patents. He is responsible for outright inventing or greatly refining major innovations in the history of world culture including the phonograph, the movie camera, the carbon microphone used in nearly every telephone well into the 1980s, batteries for electric cars (a notion we’d take over a century to take seriously), voting machines, and of course his enormous contribution to electric distribution systems. Despite the role of scientist and inventor being largely unglamorous, Thomas Edison and his tumultuous relationship with fellow inventor Nikola Tesla have been fodder for everything from books, to comics, to movies, and video games. Other Notable Moments from This Week in Geek History Although we only shine the spotlight on three interesting facts a week in our Geek History column, that doesn’t mean we don’t have space to highlight a few more in passing. This week in Geek History: 1971 – Apollo 14 returns to Earth after third Lunar mission. 1974 – Birth of Robot Chicken creator Seth Green. 1986 – Death of Dune creator Frank Herbert. Goodnight Dune. 1997 – Simpsons becomes longest running animated show on television. Have an interesting bit of geek trivia to share? Shoot us an email to [email protected] with “history” in the subject line and we’ll be sure to add it to our list of trivia. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines RGB? CMYK? Alpha? What Are Image Channels and What Do They Mean? Clean Up Google Calendar’s Interface in Chrome and Iron The Rise and Fall of Kramerica? [Seinfeld Video] GNOME Shell 3 Live CDs for OpenSUSE and Fedora Available for Testing Picplz Offers Special FX, Sharing, and Backup of Your Smartphone Pics BUILD! An Epic LEGO Stop Motion Film [VIDEO] The Lingering Glow of Sunset over a Winter Landscape Wallpaper

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• GPU Debugging with VS 11

  - by Daniel Moth

  With VS 11 Developer Preview we have invested tremendously in parallel debugging for both CPU (managed and native) and GPU debugging. I'll be doing a whole bunch of blog posts on those topics, and in this post I just wanted to get people started with GPU debugging, i.e. with debugging C++ AMP code. First I invite you to watch 6 minutes of a glimpse of the C++ AMP debugging experience though this video (ffw to minute 51:54, up until minute 59:16). Don't read the rest of this post, just go watch that video, ideally download the High Quality WMV. Summary GPU debugging essentially means debugging the lambda that you pass to the parallel_for_each call (plus any functions you call from the lambda, of course). CPU debugging means debugging all the code above and below the parallel_for_each call, i.e. all the code except the restrict(direct3d) lambda and the functions that it calls. With VS 11 you have to choose what debugger you want to use for a particular debugging session, CPU or GPU. So you can place breakpoints all over your code, then choose what debugger you want (CPU or GPU), and you'll only be able to hit breakpoints for the code type that the debugger engine understands – the remaining breakpoints will appear as unbound. If you want to hit the unbound breakpoints, you'd have to stop debugging, and start again with the other debugger. Sorry. We suck. We know. But once you are past that limitation, I think you'll find the experience truly rewarding – seriously! Switching debugger engines With the Developer Preview bits, one way to switch the debugger engine is through the project properties – see the screenshots that follow. This one is showing the CPU option selected, which is basically the default that you are all familiar with: This screenshot is showing the GPU option selected, by changing the debugger launcher (notice that this applies for both the local and remote case): You actually do not have to open the project properties just for switching the debugger engine, you can switch the selection from the toolbar in VS 11 Developer Preview too – see following screenshot (the effect is the same as if you opened the project properties and switched there) Breakpoint behavior Here are two screenshots, one showing a debugging session for CPU and the other a debugging session for GPU (notice the unbound breakpoints in each case) …and here is the GPU case (where we cannot bind the CPU breakpoints but can the GPU breakpoint, which is actually hit) Give C++ AMP debugging a try So to debug your C++ AMP code, pull down the drop down under the 'play' button to select the 'GPU C++ Direct3D Compute Debugger' menu option, then hit F5 (or the 'play' button itself). Then you can explore debugging by exploring the menus under the Debug and under the Debug->Windows menus. One way to do that exploration is through the C++ AMP debugging walkthrough on MSDN. Another way to explore the C++ AMP debugging experience, you can use the moth.cpp code file, which is what I used in my BUILD session debugger demo. Note that for my demo I was using the latest internal VS11 bits, so your experience with the Developer Preview bits won't be identical to what you saw me demonstrate, but it shouldn't be far off. Stay tuned for a lot more content on the parallel debugger in VS 11, both CPU and GPU, both managed and native. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Automating XNA Performance Testing?

  - by Grofit

  I was wondering what peoples approaches or thoughts were on automating performance testing in XNA. Currently I am looking at only working in 2d, but that poses many areas where performance can be improved with different implementations. An example would be if you had 2 different implementations of spatial partitioning, one may be faster than another but without doing some actual performance testing you wouldn't be able to tell which one for sure (unless you saw the code was blatantly slow in certain parts). You could write a unit test which for a given time frame kept adding/updating/removing entities for both implementations and see how many were made in each timeframe and the higher one would be the faster one (in this given example). Another higher level example would be if you wanted to see how many entities you can have on the screen roughly without going beneath 60fps. The problem with this is to automate it you would need to use the hidden form trick or some other thing to kick off a mock game and purely test which parts you care about and disable everything else. I know that this isnt a simple affair really as even if you can automate the tests, really it is up to a human to interpret if the results are performant enough, but as part of a build step you could have it run these tests and publish the results somewhere for comparison. This way if you go from version 1.1 to 1.2 but have changed a few underlying algorithms you may notice that generally the performance score would have gone up, meaning you have improved your overall performance of the application, and then from 1.2 to 1.3 you may notice that you have then dropped overall performance a bit. So has anyone automated this sort of thing in their projects, and if so how do you measure your performance comparisons at a high level and what frameworks do you use to test? As providing you have written your code so its testable/mockable for most parts you can just use your tests as a mechanism for getting some performance results... === Edit === Just for clarity, I am more interested in the best way to make use of automated tests within XNA to track your performance, not play testing or guessing by manually running your game on a machine. This is completely different to seeing if your game is playable on X hardware, it is more about tracking the change in performance as your game engine/framework changes. As mentioned in one of the comments you could easily test "how many nodes can I insert/remove/update within QuadTreeA within 2 seconds", but you have to physically look at these results every time to see if it has changed, which may be fine and is still better than just relying on playing it to see if you notice any difference between version. However if you were to put an Assert in to notify you of a fail if it goes lower than lets say 5000 in 2 seconds you have a brittle test as it is then contextual to the hardware, not just the implementation. Although that being said these sort of automated tests are only really any use if you are running your tests as some sort of build pipeline i.e: Checkout - Run Unit Tests - Run Integration Tests - Run Performance Tests - Package So then you can easily compare the stats from one build to another on the CI server as a report of some sort, and again this may not mean much to anyone if you are not used to Continuous Integration. The main crux of this question is to see how people manage this between builds and how they find it best to report upon. As I said it can be subjective but as knowledge will be gained from the answers it seems a worthwhile question.

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• 'Make' command compiling errors

  - by G_T

  Im trying to locally install a program which is written in C++. I have downloaded the program and am attempting to use the "make" command to compile the program as the programs instructions dictate. However when I do I get this error: /usr/include/stdc-predef.h:30:26: fatal error: bits/predefs.h: No such file or directory compilation terminated. Looking around on the internet some people seem to address this problem by sudo apt-get install libc6-dev-i386 I checked to see if this package was installed and it was not. When I try to install it I get E: Unable to locate package libc6-dev-i386 I have already run sudo apt get update Im sure this is a rookie question but any help is appreciated, I'm running 13.10 32-bit. UPDATE: I've tried other suggestions I've found on similar error. All I have managed is a different but similar error. Here is what I get. Geoffrey@Geoffrey-Latitude-E6400:/usr/local/src/trinityrnaseq_r2013_08_14$ make Using gnu compiler for Inchworm and Chrysalis cd Inchworm && (test -e configure || autoreconf) \ && ./configure --prefix=`pwd` && make install checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c checking whether build environment is sane... yes checking for gawk... no checking for mawk... mawk checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes checking for g++... g++ checking for C++ compiler default output file name... a.out checking whether the C++ compiler works... yes checking whether we are cross compiling... no checking for suffix of executables... checking for suffix of object files... o checking whether we are using the GNU C++ compiler... yes checking whether g++ accepts -g... yes checking for style of include used by make... GNU checking dependency style of g++... gcc3 checking for library containing cos... none required configure: creating ./config.status config.status: creating Makefile config.status: creating src/Makefile config.status: creating config.h config.status: config.h is unchanged config.status: executing depfiles commands make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/local/src/trinityrnaseq_r2013_08_14/Inchworm' Making install in src make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/local/src/trinityrnaseq_r2013_08_14/Inchworm/src' if g++ -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I.. -pedantic -fopenmp -Wall -Wextra -Wno-long-long -Wno-deprecated -m64 -g -O2 -MT Fasta_entry.o -MD -MP -MF ".deps/Fasta_entry.Tpo" -c -o Fasta_entry.o Fasta_entry.cpp; \ then mv -f ".deps/Fasta_entry.Tpo" ".deps/Fasta_entry.Po"; else rm -f ".deps/Fasta_entry.Tpo"; exit 1; fi In file included from Fasta_entry.hpp:4:0, from Fasta_entry.cpp:1: /usr/include/c++/4.8/string:38:28: fatal error: bits/c++config.h: No such file or directory #include <bits/c++config.h> ^ compilation terminated. make[2]: *** [Fasta_entry.o] Error 1 make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/trinityrnaseq_r2013_08_14/Inchworm/src' make[1]: *** [install-recursive] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/trinityrnaseq_r2013_08_14/Inchworm' make: *** [inchworm] Error 2

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• SQL SERVER – Error: Fix – Msg 208 – Invalid object name ‘dbo.backupset’ – Invalid object name ‘dbo.backupfile’

  - by pinaldave

  Just a day before I got a very interesting email. Here is the email (modified a bit to make it relevant to this blog post). “Pinal, We are facing a very strange issue. One of our query  related to backup files and backup set has stopped working suddenly in SSMS. It works fine in application where we have and in the stored procedure but when we have it in our SSMS it gives following error. Msg 208, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Invalid object name ‘dbo.backupfile’. Here are our queries which we are trying to execute. SELECT name, database_name, backup_size, TYPE, compatibility_level, backup_set_id FROM dbo.backupset; SELECT logical_name, backup_size, file_type FROM dbo.backupfile; This query gives us details related to backupset and backup files when the backup was taken.” When I receive this kind of email, usually I have no answers directly. The claim that it works in stored procedure and in application but not in SSMS gives me no real data. I have requested him to very first check following two things: If he is connected to correct server? His answer was yes. If he has enough permissions? His answer was he was logged in as an admin. This means there was something more to it and I requested him to send me a screenshot of the his SSMS. He promptly sends that to me and as soon as I receive the screen shot I knew what was going on. Before I say anything take a look at the screenshot yourself and see if you can figure out why his queries are not working in SSMS. Just to make your life a bit easy, I have already given a hint in the image. The answer is very simple, the context of the database is master database. To execute above two queries the context of the database has to be msdb. Tables backupset and backupfile belong to the database msdb only. Here are two workaround or solution to above problem: 1) Change context to MSDB Above two queries when they will run as following they will not error out and will give the accurate desired result. USE msdb GO SELECT name, database_name, backup_size, TYPE, compatibility_level, backup_set_id FROM dbo.backupset; SELECT logical_name, backup_size, file_type FROM dbo.backupfile; 2) Prefix the query with msdb There are cases above script used in stored procedure or part of big query, it is not possible to change the context of the whole query to any specific database. Use three part naming convention and prefix them with msdb. SELECT name, database_name, backup_size, TYPE, compatibility_level, backup_set_id FROM msdb.dbo.backupset; SELECT logical_name, backup_size, file_type FROM msdb.dbo.backupfile; Very simple solution but sometime keeps people wondering for an answer. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Error Messages, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Google Chrome OS

  - by Piet

  It’s about time someone took this initiative: Google Chrome OS I especially like the following: Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work. I recently had the ‘pleasure’ witnessing several 60+ yr old friends and family (all respect for everyone in their 2nd or 3rd youth) buying their first pc, taking their first steps using a pc and the net. Have you ever seen the gazillions of little ‘useful’ tools that are installed on a new standard Vista pc or laptop ? This is like learning to drive a new car and being placed in an airplane cockpit. And all the messages one gets about virus/security checks, fingerprint nog being enrolled, trial period expiring (because half those really useful tools come with a trial period), … If I was in their shoes, being confronted with this as a total newbie, I guess I’d just give up pretty soon. As a matter of fact, I actually gave up on Vista on my work-laptop, it was driving me crazy. Thank god I was allowed to install XP. I’m a Linux user at home, and Vista was such a frustrating experience that Windows XP actually felt like breath of fresh air. And what are those people using? Email, browsing…. and maybe writing a little letter now and then or storing their photo’s if they have a digital camera. Actually (side note), I get the impression that hearing about facebook is a major motivator for the digital newbies to finally take the plunge, buy a pc and get on-line. And OK, we’ve seen initiatives like this before, but Google is a brand everyone knows… unlike Ubuntu, Debain or Mandriva. Google = God. If I was Microsoft I’d be wetting my pants knowing Google was about to release their own OS, without a doubt fully optimized to use their own on-line office suit. On the other hand, the old adage ‘no one ever got fired for choosing Microsoft’ still holds a lot of truth. I hope I’ll be able to give it a big thumbs up if a would-be pc-user asks me what kind of pc/OS they should go for in the near future. On the other hand, if I’d do that, I’m pretty sure a couple of weeks later I’d get a call asking how to install this game or photo editing tool they got from one of their Windows using friends… or that nifty photo-printer they just bought. But then, I also get those questions now from newbie Windows users. It takes a couple of years before Newbie pc users understand that some things just don’t work and aren’t worth the time trying to fix them. I’d just wish they’d go back to the shop when something doesn’t work. You also don’t let you mechanic friend try to fix a problem with your brand new car. But that’s another story… Wait and see…

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• default xna 4.0 gametime don´t works well for 2D physics

  - by EusKoder

  I am developing a game using Visual Studio 2010 and XNA 4.0, after advancing to some extent with the project (a platform based 2d platformer msdn starter kit) I got to test it on different computers with different hardware (CPU, graphics, etc.) and I found that the speed of movement object of the game is quite different, I implemented the PSK physics msdn that are based on time, /// <summary> /// Updates the player's velocity and position based on input, gravity, etc. /// </summary> public void ApplyPhysics(GameTime gameTime) { float elapsed = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; Vector2 previousPosition = Position; // Base velocity is a combination of horizontal movement control and // acceleration downward due to gravity. velocity.X += movement * MoveAcceleration * elapsed; velocity.Y = MathHelper.Clamp(velocity.Y + GravityAcceleration * elapsed, -MaxFallSpeed, MaxFallSpeed); velocity.Y = DoJump(velocity.Y, gameTime); // Apply pseudo-drag horizontally. if (IsOnGround) velocity.X *= GroundDragFactor; else velocity.X *= GroundDragFactor; //velocity.X *= AirDragFactor; // Prevent the player from running faster than his top speed. velocity.X = MathHelper.Clamp(velocity.X, -MaxMoveSpeed, MaxMoveSpeed); // Apply velocity. Position += velocity *elapsed; Position = new Vector2((float)Math.Round(Position.X), (float)Math.Round(Position.Y)); // If the player is now colliding with the level, separate them. HandleCollisions(gameTime); // If the collision stopped us from moving, reset the velocity to zero. if (Position.X == previousPosition.X) velocity.X = 0; if (Position.Y == previousPosition.Y) { velocity.Y = 0; jumpTime = 0.0f; } } tested eg with a PC (PC1) 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 6400 / ATI Radeon HD 4670 and another one: (pc2) 3.00GHz Intel Pentium D / Intel 82945G Express Chipset Family by displacement difference (moving x axis at supossed (position = velocity * gametime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds) constant velocity, for example) is 3 seconds in a total of 20 (example: moving pc1 player sprite 6000 pixels in the x-axis at 20 seconds and pc 2 runs the same distance in 17 ). Tested on a 3rd PC: i72700k / Gigabyte GTX 560 TI the results are even worse, after some time after starting the game gets like 3 times slower and showing the number of pixels in each frame moved in a debug window in the game (counting updatespersecond with counter variable for updates cuantity and gametime for counting a second show 63fps), it appears as if the number is always constant ( refreshments lose the Update method?). In this pc if I put the game in fullscreen during the course of the game, the effect of "go slow" is immediate and restore window mode sometimes yield returns to "normal" and sometimes not. Eventually I began to try a new project to test whether the movement is constant in different pc loading only one sprite and its position value in screen printing. Occur The same. I even tried moving a constant amount of pixels explicitly (position + = 5) and different speeds in different pc quantities of pixels moved in x time. I have the game loop as the default (fixedTimeStep=true;SynchronizeWithVerticalRetrace=true;). I've also tried turning off and creating another timestep as discussed in different post (eg http://gafferongames.com/game-physics/fix-your-timestep/ but i can´t achieve the desired result, move the same number of pixels in X seconds on different computers with windows. All pc used for tests use windows 7 enterprise pc1 == x86 the others are x64. The weirdest thing is that I find information about people describing the same problem and that I wear long nights of searches. Thanks for your help.

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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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• ASP.NET Server-side comments

  - by nmarun

  I believe a good number of you know about Server-side commenting. This blog is just like a revival to refresh your memories. When you write comments in your .aspx/.ascx files, people usually write them as: 1: <!-- This is a comment. --> To show that it actually makes a difference for using the server-side commenting technique, I’ve started a web application project and my default.aspx page looks like this: 1: <%@ Page Title="Home Page" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Site.master" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="ServerSideComment._Default" %> 2: <asp:Content ID="HeaderContent" runat="server" ContentPlaceHolderID="HeadContent"> 3: </asp:Content> 4: <asp:Content ID="BodyContent" runat="server" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent"> 5: <h2> 6: <!-- This is a comment --> 7: Welcome to ASP.NET! 8: </h2> 9: <p> 10: To learn more about ASP.NET visit <a href="http://www.asp.net" title="ASP.NET Website">www.asp.net</a>. 11: </p> 12: <p> 13: You can also find <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=152368&amp;clcid=0x409" 14: title="MSDN ASP.NET Docs">documentation on ASP.NET at MSDN</a>. 15: </p> 16: </asp:Content> See the comment in line 6 and when I run the app, I can do a view source on the browser which shows up as: 1: <h2> 2: <!-- This is a comment --> 3: Welcome to ASP.NET! 4: </h2> Using Fiddler shows the page size as: Let’s change the comment style and use server-side commenting technique. 1: <h2> 2: <%-- This is a comment --%> 3: Welcome to ASP.NET! 4: </h2> Upon rendering, the view source looks like: 1: <h2> 2: 3: Welcome to ASP.NET! 4: </h2> Fiddler now shows the page size as: The difference is that client-side comments are ignored by the browser, but they are still sent down the pipe. With server-side comments, the compiler ignores everything inside this block. Visual Studio’s Text Editor toolbar also puts comments as server-side ones. If you want to give it a shot, go to your design page and press Ctrl+K, Ctrl+C on some selected text and you’ll see it commented in the server-side commenting style.

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• Data Quality and Master Data Management Resources

  - by Dejan Sarka

  Many companies or organizations do regular data cleansing. When you cleanse the data, the data quality goes up to some higher level. The data quality level is determined by the amount of work invested in the cleansing. As time passes, the data quality deteriorates, and you need to repeat the cleansing process. If you spend an equal amount of effort as you did with the previous cleansing, you can expect the same level of data quality as you had after the previous cleansing. And then the data quality deteriorates over time again, and the cleansing process starts over and over again. The idea of Data Quality Services is to mitigate the cleansing process. While the amount of time you need to spend on cleansing decreases, you will achieve higher and higher levels of data quality. While cleansing, you learn what types of errors to expect, discover error patterns, find domains of correct values, etc. You don’t throw away this knowledge. You store it and use it to find and correct the same issues automatically during your next cleansing process. The following figure shows this graphically. The idea of master data management, which you can perform with Master Data Services (MDS), is to prevent data quality from deteriorating. Once you reach a particular quality level, the MDS application—together with the defined policies, people, and master data management processes—allow you to maintain this level permanently. This idea is shown in the following picture. OK, now you know what DQS and MDS are about. You can imagine the importance on maintaining the data quality. Here are some resources that help you preparing and executing the data quality (DQ) and master data management (MDM) activities. Books Dejan Sarka and Davide Mauri: Data Quality and Master Data Management with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 – a general introduction to MDM, MDS, and data profiling. Matching explained in depth. Dejan Sarka, Matija Lah and Grega Jerkic: MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-463): Building Data Warehouses with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 – I wrote quite a few chapters about DQ and MDM, and introduced also SQL Server 2012 DQS. Thomas Redman: Data Quality: The Field Guide – you should start with this book. Thomas Redman is the father of DQ and MDM. Tyler Graham: Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Master Data Services – MDS in depth from a product team mate. Arkady Maydanchik: Data Quality Assessment – data profiling in depth. Tamraparni Dasu, Theodore Johnson: Exploratory Data Mining and Data Cleaning – advanced data profiling with data mining. Forthcoming presentations I am presenting a DQS and MDM seminar at PASS SQL Rally Amsterdam 2013: Wednesday, November 6th, 2013: Enterprise Information Management with SQL Server 2012 – a good kick start to your first DQ and / or MDM project. Courses Data Quality and Master Data Management with SQL Server 2012 – I wrote a 2-day course for SolidQ. If you are interested in this course, which I could also deliver in a shorter seminar way, you can contact your closes SolidQ subsidiary, or, of course, me directly on addresses [email protected] or [email protected]. This course could also complement the existing courseware portfolio of training providers, which are welcome to contact me as well. Start improving the quality of your data now!

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• 11 Types of Developers

  - by Lee Brandt

  Jack Dawson Jack Dawson is the homeless drifter in Titanic. At one point in the movie he says, “I figure life’s a gift, and I don’t intend on wasting it.” He is happy to wander wherever life takes him. He works himself from place to place, making just enough money to make it to his next adventure. The “Jack Dawson” developer clings on to any new technology as the ‘next big thing’, and will find ways to shoe-horn it in to places where it is not a fit. He is very appealing to the other developers because they want to try the newest techniques and tools too, He will only stay until the new technology either bores him or becomes problematic. Jack will also be hard to find once the technology has been implemented, because he will be on to the next shiny thing. However, having a Jack Dawson on your team can be beneficial. Jack can be a great ally when attempting to convince a stodgy, corporate entity to upgrade. Jack usually has an encyclopedic recall of all the new features of the technology upgrade and is more than happy to interject them in any conversation. Tom Smykowski Tom is the neurotic employee in Office Space, and is deathly afraid of being fired. He will do only what is necessary to keep the status quo. He believes as long as nothing changes, his job is safe. He will scoff at anything new and be the naysayer during any change initiative. Tom can be useful in off-setting Jack Dawson. Jack will constantly be pushing for change and Tom will constantly be fighting it. When you see that Jack is getting kind of bored with a new technology and Tom has finally stopped wetting himself at the mere mention of it, then it is probably the sweet spot of beginning to implement that new technology (providing it is the right tool for the job). Ray Consella Ray is the guy who built the Field of Dreams. He took a risk. Sometimes he screwed it up, but he knew he didn’t want to end up regretting not attempting it. He constantly doubted himself, but he knew he had to keep going. Granted, he was doing what the voices in his head were telling him to do, but my point is he was driven to do something that most people considered crazy. Even when his friends, his wife and even he told himself he was crazy, somewhere inside himself, he knew it was the right thing to do. These are the innovators. These are the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of the world. The take risks, they fail, they learn and the get better. Obviously, this kind of person thrives in start-ups and smaller companies, but that is due to their natural aversion to bureaucracy. They want to see their ideas put into motion quickly, and withdrawn quickly if it doesn’t work. Short feedback cycles are essential to Ray. He wants to know if his idea is working or not. He wants to modify or reverse his idea if it is not working or makes things worse. These are the agilistas. May I always be one.

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• POP Forums v9 Beta 1 for ASP.NET MVC 3 posted to CodePlex!

  - by Jeff

  As promised, I posted a beta build of my forum app for ASP.NET MVC 3. Get the new goodies here: http://popforums.codeplex.com/releases/view/58228 This is the first beta for the ASP.NET MVC 3 version of POP Forums. It is nearly feature complete, and ready for testing and feedback. For previous release notes, look here, here and here.Check out the live preview: http://preview.popforums.com/ForumsSetup instructions are on the home page of this project. The new hotness in the beta, or what has been done since the last preview: All views converted to use Razor E-mail subscription/notification of new posts New post indicators/mark read buttons Permalinks to posts Jump to newest post (from new post indicators) Recent topics Favorite topics Moderator functions for topics (pin/close/delete, plus move and rename) Search, ported from v8. Not a ton of optimization here, or new unit testing, but the old version worked pretty well User posts (topics the user posted in) Forgot password Vanity items (signatures and avatars) Hide vanity items per user preference Some minor data caching where appropriate A little bit of UI refinement Lots-o-bug fixes Lots-o-unit tests What's next? The plan between now and the next beta is as follows: Continue working through features/tasks, and fix bugs as they're reported Integrate the forum into a real, production site Refine the UI Refactor as much as possible... the code organization is not entirely logical in some places After the second beta, a release candidate will follow, with a real "final" release after that. Subsequent releases should come relatively frequently and without a lot of risk. The trick in building this thing has been that it mostly tossed the previous WebForms version, which was all full of crusties. The time table for this is a little harder to pin down, as day jobs and families will have their effect. Other notes Refactoring will be a priority. As the features of MVC have evolved, so have my desires to use it in a fashion that makes things clear and easy to follow. I don't even know if anyone will ever start mucking around in the code, but on the off chance they do, I'd like what they find to not suck. Other nice-to-haves are builds to target Windows Azure and SQL CE. A nice setup UI would be super too. I think the ASP.NET MVC world has gone long enough without a decent forum.The biggest challenge that I've found is making the forum something that can be dropped in any app. While it does rope its views into an area, areas are mostly just routing details. I haven't thought of a clever way yet to limit dependency injection, for example, to just the forum bits. I mean, everyone should be using Ninject, but how realistic is that? ;)How much time and effort should you spend on POP Forums in its current state? Change is inevitable, but at this point I'm reasonably committed to not changing the database schema. I really think it will stay as-is. All bets are off for the various interfaces throughout the app, but the data should generally resist change. It's not even that different from v8, which was one of the original goals because I didn't want to rewrite SQL or introduce a new ORM or whatever. My point is that if you wanted to build a site around this today, even though it's not entirely functional, I think it's low risk in terms of data loss. I can't vouch for whether or not you know what you're doing.I've been having some chats with people lately about quoting posts, and honestly there has to be something better and straight forward. That continues to be a holy grail of mine, and some day, I hope to find it.Enjoy... it's starting to feel more real every day!

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• SQL SERVER – A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words – A Collection of Inspiring and Funny Posts by Vinod Kumar

  - by pinaldave

  One of the most popular quotes is: A picture is worth a thousand words. Working on this concept I started a series over my blog called the “Picture Post”. Rather than rambling over tons of material over text, we are trying to give you a capsule mode of the blog in a quick glance. Some of the picture posts already available over my blog are: Correlation of Ego and Work: Ego and Pride most of the times become a hindrance when we work inside a team. Take this cue, the first ever Picture post was published. Simple and easy to understand concept. Would want to say, Ego is the biggest enemy to humans. Read Original Post. Success (Perception Vs Reality): Personally, have always thought success is not something the talented achieve with the opportunity presented to them, but success is developed using the opportunity in hand now. In this fast paced world where success is pre-defined and convoluted by metrics it is hard to understand how complex it can sometimes be. So I took a stab at this concept in a simple way. Read Original Post. Doing Vs Saying: As Einstein would describe, Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Given the amount of information we get, it is difficult to keep track, learn and implement the same. If you were ever reminded of your college days, there will always be 5-6 people doing different things and we naturally try to emulate what they are doing. This could be from competitive exams GMAT, GRE, CAT, Higher-Ed, B-School hunting etc. Rather than saying you are going to do, it is best to do and then say!!! Read Original Picture Post. Your View Vs Management View: Being in the corporate world can be really demanding and we keep asking this question – “Why me?” when the performance appraisal process ends. In this post I just want to ask you one frank opinion – “Are you really self-critical in your assessments?”. If that is the case there shouldn’t be any heartburns or surprises. If you had just one thing to take back, well forget what others are getting but invest time in making yourself better because that is going to take you longer and further in your career. Read Picture Post. Blogging lifecycle for majority: I am happy and fortunate to be in this blog post because this picture post surely doesn’t apply to SQLAuthority where consistency and persistence have been the hallmark of the blog. For the majority others, who have a tendency to start a blog, get into slumber for a while and write saying they want to get back to blogging, the picture post was specifically done for them. Paradox of being someone else: It is always a dream that we want to become somebody and in this process of doing so, we become nobody. In this constant tussle of lost identity we forget to enjoy the moment that is in front of us. I just depicted this using a simple analogy of our constant struggle to get to the other side, just to realize we missed the wonderful moments. Grass is not greener on the other side, but grass is greener where we water the surface. Read Picture Post. And on the lighter side… Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Databases in Source Control

  - by Grant Fritchey

  I’ve been working as a database professional for quite a long time. But originally, I was a developer. And I loved being a developer. There was this constant feedback loop of a job well done, your code compiled and it ran. Every time this happened successfully, you’d check it into source control. These days you have to add another step; the code passed all the tests, unit, line, regression, qa, whatever, then into source control it goes. As a matter of fact, when I first made the jump from developer to DBA/database developer/database professional, source control was the one thing I couldn’t believe was missing from the DBA toolbox. Come to find out, source control was only the beginning of what was missing from your standard DBAs set of skills. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not disrespecting the DBA. They’re focused where they should be, on your production data. But there has to be a method for developing applications that include databases and the database side of that development and deployment process has long been lacking. This lack of development and deployment methodologies is a part of what has given rise to some of the wackier implementations of Object Relational Mapping tools, the NoSQL movement, and some of the other foul cursing that is directed towards databases, DBAs, and database development by application developers. Some of that is well earned. A lot isn’t. But it is a fact that database professionals, in general, do not have as sophisticated a model for managing development and deployment as application developers do. We could charge out and start trying to come up with our own standards and methods. I’m sure people have done exactly that. However, I’m lazy, and not terribly bright. Rather than try to invent a whole new process, I’m going to look to my developer roots and choose instead to emulate the developers. They’re sitting over there across the hall from me working with SCRUM/Agile/Waterfall/Object Driven/Feature Driven/Test Driven development processes that they’ve been polishing for years. What if I just started working on database development the same way they work on code development? Win! Ah, but now I have to have a mechanism for treating my database like application code. First, I need a method for getting it into source control. That’s where Red Gate’s SQL Source Control comes into the picture. SQL Source Control works within SQL Server Management Studio to connect your database objects up to the source control system of your choice. Right out of the box SQL Source Control can link to TFS, SVN or Vault. With a little work you can connect it to Git or just about any other source control system. With the ability to get my database into source control, a lot of possibilities for more direct integration with the application development teams open up.

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• Java Spotlight Episode 57: Live From #Devoxx - Ben Evans and Martijn Verburg of the London JUG with Yara Senger of SouJava

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Tweet Live from Devoxx 11,  an interview with Ben Evans and Martijn Verburg from the London JUG along with  Yara Senger from the SouJava JUG on the JCP Executive Committee Elections, JSR 248, and Adopt-a-JSR program. Both the London JUG and SouJava JUG are JCP Standard Edition Executive Committee Members. Joining us this week on the Java All Star Developer Panel are Geertjan Wielenga, Principal Product Manger in Oracle Developer Tools; Stephen Chin, Java Champion and Java FX expert; and Antonio Goncalves, Paris JUG leader. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link: Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News Netbeans 7.1 JDK 7 upgrade tools Netbeans First Patch Program OpenJFX approved as an OpenJDK project Devoxx France April 18-20, 2012 Events Nov 22-25, OTN Developer Days in the Nordics Nov 22-23, Goto Conference, Prague Dec 6-8, Java One Brazil, Sao Paulo Feature interview Ben Evans has lived in "Interesting Times" in technology - he was the lead performance testing engineer for the Google IPO, worked on the initial UK trials of 3G networks with BT, built award-winning websites for some of Hollywood's biggest hits of the 90s, rearchitected and reimagined technology helping some of the most vulnerable people in the UK and has worked on everything from some of the UKs very first ecommerce sites, through to multi-billion dollar currency trading systems. He helps to run the London Java Community, and represents the JUG on the Java SE/EE Executive Committee. His first book "The Well-Grounded Java Developer" (with Martijn Verburg) has just been published by Manning. Martijn Verburg (aka 'the Diabolical Developer') herds Cats in the Java/open source communities and is constantly humbled by the creative power to be found there. Currently he resides in London where he co-leads the London JUG (a JCP EC member), runs a couple of open source projects & drinks too much beer at his local pub. You can find him online moderating at the Javaranch or discussing (ranting?) subjects on the Prgorammers Stack Exchange site. Most recently he's become a regular speaker at conferences on Java, open source and software development and has recently wrapped up his first Manning title - "The Well-Grounded Java Developer" with his co-author Ben Evans. Yara Senger is the partner and director of teacher education and Globalcode, graduated from the University of Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos, has significant experience in Brazil and abroad in developing solutions to critical Java. She is the co-creator of Java programs Academy and Academy of Web Developer, accumulating over 1000 hours in the classroom teaching Java. She currently serves as the President of Sou Java. In this interview Ben, Martijn, and Yara talk about the JCP Executive Committee Elections, JSR 348, and the Adopt-a-JSR program. Mail Bag What's Cool Show Transcripts Transcript for this show is available here when available.

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• Introducing .NET 4.0 with Visual Studio 2010 by Alex Mackey - Book review

  - by Malisa L. Ncube

  Alex (http://simpleisbest.co.uk/) does a very good job in covering the new features of .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010. His focus is on the developers that have experience in development using previous versions of Visual Studio, more specifically Visual Studio 2008.     The following are my views towards his book. 1. Scope / Coverage Even as the book is labeled as introduction, it is covers a broad spectrum of technologies, features and references that are focused into helping a developer quickly decide what to use in the new .NET framework. a. Content The content included covers as much as possible the new additions that are included in the new .NET version 4.0. He shows the Visual Studio 2010 new features and quickly shows how to extend it using Managed Extensibility Framework. Some of my favorites are parallel debugging enhancements. The author delves into JQuery, which Microsoft has decided to support. Some of the very interesting content is on the out-of-band releases including ASP.NET MVC, Windows Azure Silverlight 3 and WCF Data Services. b. What is not included? Windows Phone 7 Series. This was only talked about in the MIX10. The data may not have been available at the time of writing. Microsoft Pinpoint (Microsoft code name "Dallas") Windows Embedded development. c. Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Visual Studio IDE and MEF Chapter 3: Language and Dynamic Changes Chapter 4: CLR and BCL Changes Chapter 5: Parallelization and Threading Enhancements Chapter 6: Windows Workflow Foundation 4 Chapter 7: Windows Communication Foundation Chapter 8: Entity Framework Chapter 9: WCF Data Services Chapter 10: ASPNET Chapter 11: Microsoft AJAX Library Chapter 12: jQuery Chapter 13: ASPNET MVC Chapter 14: Silverlight Introduction Chapter 15: WPF 4.0 and Silverlight 3.0 Chapter 16: Windows Azure 2. Depth Avoids getting into depth on the topics presented, to present the new concepts in assumption of the developer’s existing knowledge. Code samples are on book and exist mostly as snippets and very easy to follow. There are no downloadable examples. 3. Complexity The book is written in a very simple way and easy to follow. There are no irrelevant intimidating details. So it’s a book that you can grab and never put down until you’ve finished reading the entire book. 4. References The author includes reference links to blogs, Wikis and a lot of online resources including the MSDN documentation, which is a very convenient strategy to avoid flooding the reader with details which may not be of interest to them. Most sites do not use url routing and that is really not nice. There are notes from interviews between the author and people behind the new technologies, in which they explain what some specific areas that need clarifications and what their future views are in relation to the features they are working on. 5. Target The author targets experts that want to make a transition from .NET 3.5 to 4.0. Some obvious 3.5 features have been purposely excluded from the text 6. Overrall It is evident that the author has made extensive research into the breadth of what MS is working on, in relation to .NET and Visual Studio and has also been watching the online community. What I would like to see in the next edition are some details on OData protocol, Expression Blend 4 and Embedded development and Windows Phone development. I should say I’m one of the beneficiaries of this book. Excellent work Alex.   Technorati Tags: .NET,Book-Review,Visual Studio

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• Expression Studio 4 - without SketchFlow&hellip;

  - by mbcrump

  is kinda like an explosion with no “Ka-Boom”… I was excited to hear the news yesterday at Microsoft Teched that Expression Studio 4 had officially launched. MSDN subscribers could log in and download the full release. So, I logged into my MSDN account and started downloading Expression Studio 4 Premium thinking that I was only minutes away from trying out SketchFlow 4. To my dismay, I launched Blend 4 and noticed it did not say SketchFlow on the splash screen. So, I went to New Project and the template was not available. After some digging around on the net, I learned my premium MSDN subscription did not include SketchFlow and I would need to purchase the Ultimate Edition. Below is a excerpt directly from Microsoft: Q: What products are included in the Microsoft Expression Studio 4 Ultimate? A: Expression Studio 4 Ultimate is comprised of 4 products, Expression Web 4, Microsoft Expression Blend® 4 + SketchFlow, Expression Encoder 4 Pro and Expression Design 4. Expression Blend 4 includes SketchFlow in Expression Studio 4 Ultimate product only. Q: What products are included in the Microsoft Expression Studio 4 Premium? A: Expression Studio 4 Premium is comprised of 4 products, Expression Web 4, Microsoft Expression Blend 4, Expression Encoder 4 and Expression Design 4. Expression Studio 4 Premium is not available for retail purchase. Q: What products are included in the Microsoft Expression Studio 4 Web Professional? A: Expression Studio 4 Web Professional is comprised of 3 products, Expression Web 4, Expression Encoder 4 and Expression Design 4. As you can see, we got screwed on this deal and plenty of people are complaining: Kiran Says: 6.07.2010 at 5:07 PM No SketchFlow for Expression Studio 4 Premium? What a bumper for Microsoft Partners!! Martin Says: 6.07.2010 at 6:18 PM Why does Expression Professional Subscription not include upgrades and new releases of Expression Studio. Good question hey. I bought my subscription 5 days ago thinking I would get what i purchased but no Expression upgrades or new releases for me, what a waste of money. I think I am not the only long term user of this software that feels disgruntled. Sorry john just had to tell someone. shaggygi Says: 6.07.2010 at 7:31 PM SketchFlow NOT included in Studio 4? WTF! I repeat.... WT...Freaking.... F! This is totally unacceptable. My development team purchased VS 2010 Premium w/ MSDN with the impression by Adam Kinney, Scott Guthrie, etc. that this would be included in the Premium package or some sort of free upgrade. I understand this is a Marketing thing, but come on! I believe, at very least, this should have been explained in detail before this release. John Papa... as a rep to give feedback to the team... Please please and please.... tell powers-at-be to fix this problem. Sorry for the rant. Besides this issue, I believe it is a very good product:) Thanks Vaclav Elias Says: 6.08.2010 at 4:30 AM Well, I am also not happy that SketchFlow is only for the chosen ones :-) It is very nice product. Actually, kind of foundation for web development so they could really support any MSDN subscribers.. :-( I am hoping that Microsoft will make this right for all of us with MSDN premier subscriptions. In the meantime,  you can check out the 5 day training series available here.

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• “I could use a little help here” or “I can do it myself, thank you” for Cloud Projects

  - by BuckWoody

  Windows Azure allows you to write code in languages within the .NET stack, you can use Java, C++, PHP, NodeJS and others. Code is code - other than keeping things stateless, using a Web or Worker Role in Azure is not all that different from working with an on-premises system. However…. Working in a scalable, component-based stateless architecture that can use federated security is not all that common for many developers. Some are used to owning the server, scaling up, and state-full paradigms that have a single security domain. Making the transition whilst trying to create a new software application or even port a previous one can be daunting. Sure, we have absolutely tons of free training, kits, videos, online books and more to learn on your own, but some things like architecture can be pivotal as you move along. So the question is, should you just strike out on your own for a Cloud project, or get Microsoft Consulting Services or another partner to work with you on your first one? I use a few decision points to help guide the projects I assist in. Note: I’m a huge fan of having help that ends up giving you training and leaves you in charge. If you do engage with someone to help you, make sure you keep this clear and take more and more ownership yourself as the project progresses. How much time do you have? Usually the first thing I ask is about the timeline for the project. It doesn’t matter how skilled you are, if you have a short window to get things done it’s better to get help - especially if this is your first cloud project. Having someone that knows the platform well can save you amazing amounts of time. If you have longer, then start with the training in the link above and once you feel confident, jump in. How complex is the project? If there are a lot of moving parts, it’s best to engage a partner. The reason is that certain interactions - particularly things like Service Bus or Data Integration  - can be quite different than what you may have encountered before. How many people do you have? I have a “pizza rule” about projects I’ve used in my career - if it takes over two pizzas to feed everyone on the project, it’s too big and will fail. That being said, one developer and a one-week deadline does not a good project make, usually. It’s best to have at least one architect (or someone in that role) guiding the project along, and at least two developers to work on a cloud project. That’s a generalization of course, since I’ve seen great software on Azure with one developer writing code all by herself, but for more complex projects, more (to a point) is better. The nice thing about bringing on a partner is that you don’t have to hire them full time - they help you and then they go away. How critical is the project? There’s no shame in using some help. If the platform is new, if the project is large and complex, and if it is critical to the business, you should engage a partner. That’s regardless of Cloud or anything else - get some help. You don’t want to hit your company’s bottom line in a negative way, but you have to innovate and get them a competitive advantage. Do your research, make sure the partner is qualified to help you, and get it done. Don’t let these questions scare you off. There are lots of projects you can implement on Windows and SQL Azure with nothing other than the Software Development Kit (SDK) that you get for free with Windows Azure. And assistance comes in many forms - sometimes just phone support, a friend you can ask. Microsoft Consulting Services or any of our great partners. You can get help on just the architecture piece or have them show you how to write the code. They’ll get involved as little or as much as you like.

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