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• Create Shortcuts for Your Favorite or Most Used Folders in Ubuntu

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you have certain folders that you access often each day but are only available through the Places Menu or Nautilus? See how easy it is to create shortcuts for your desktop and taskbar with our quick tutorial. To get started open Nautilus and locate the folders that you want to make new shortcuts for. For our example we chose Ubuntu One. Right click on the chosen folder and select Make Link. Your new shortcut will appear with the text Link to “Folder Name” and an Arrow Shortcut Marker attached. If you are happy with your new shortcut as is, then drag it to your desktop or taskbar as desired. We created the shortcut twice in our example…once for the desktop and once for the taskbar. For our example we decided to customize the taskbar shortcut a bit. To customize your shortcut right click on the shortcut and select Properties. Note: The desktop shortcut is limited on the amount you can customize it (name change and addition of up to four emblems to the folder). From here you can rename the shortcut and change the icon as desired. A quick name change and new icon made a huge improvement in how our taskbar shortcut looked. Note: The link for the icon we used is shown below. A little touch-up to our desktop shortcut and both are looking good. Download the Ubuntu Cloud Icon *Icon is 128*128 pixels and comes in .png format. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Macs Don’t Make You Creative! So Why Do Artists Really Love Apple? MacX DVD Ripper Pro is Free for How-To Geek Readers (Time Limited!) HTG Explains: What’s a Solid State Drive and What Do I Need to Know? How to Get Amazing Color from Photos in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Create Shortcuts for Your Favorite or Most Used Folders in Ubuntu Create Custom Sized Thumbnail Images with Simple Image Resizer [Cross-Platform] Etch a Circuit Board using a Simple Homemade Mixture Sync Blocker Stops iTunes from Automatically Syncing The Journey to the Mystical Forest [Wallpaper] Trace Your Browser’s Roots on the Browser Family Tree [Infographic]

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• Windows Phone 7 Review &ndash; Part 1: LG Quantum

  - by Nikita Polyakov

  As many of my fellow geeks, I ran out and got a retail windows Phone 7 on the first day. Just had to have it :) I’ve had the developer prototypes in my hands for previous 3 months on and off, so I finally wanted to have one I call my own. I’ve rushed the Launch   I’ve checked out both AT&T and T-Mobile offerings on day 1 and decided on a Samsung Focus. Great screen, super light and thin. If you don’t believe me that this phone can compete with the best of the non-Phone 7 offerings - get it in your hand to compare for yourself. I have to say that even though the on-screen keyboard on Windows Phone 7 is one of the best, the amount of text I write on my phone and my expectation of how long that takes for a short reply are very high. Also the phone being so slick and sexy did not feel solid or confident in my hand or pocket. As the dust settled   Arrives the LG Quantum – now on AT&T and worldwide. First impression of the softer plastic, the back battery cover is solid metal - the entire phone feels solid and indestructible! Phone fits just right in my hand, it’s almost too good. It does not feel like it will crack in your jeans. I feel safe holding it and don’t feel like if I or someone were to bump into me walking it’d fly out of my hand. I’ve dropped and had thrown the Focus a few times on accident as it’s weight is negligible. I won’t even dream of lying the first day adjusting to a 3.5’ LCD screen from the Samsung’s blistering bright and poppy AMOLED 4’ was hard. But the colors and sharpness are still very good. I find it almost easier on the eyes actually for day to day use.  I had a chance to lay the phone down in the line with the prototypes and final versions of other phones that had LCD screens – LG makes HTC looks like a budget LCD compared to a high end LCD in the home theatre department. I am consistently complemented by friends that have the HD7 or Surround on how much better my screen looks. The screen just looks like the most color correct phone out of the line up. Even next to Samsung it makes it look oversaturated, but can’t match the true blacks compensating with true white.   Day to Day Usability   What I also noticed that is a huge difference is how much I am not accidently hitting the soft keys at the bottom. I real pain on Focus since holding it in am average size hand already would accidently touch the controls at the bottom. QWERTY keyboard on this phone is great. It’s like the mission for LG is “make it solid!”. Keyboard has a very durable feel.   LG’s has a secret wild card though is the DLNA support. If you seen an ad for it, you should. Imagine this – playing a song from your phone straight to your network connected A/V receiver. Done. Pictures to TV. Done. Video. Done. DLNA works with components that advertise to as well as Windows 7, XBOX 360 and other consoles.  I will write an extensive review of that experience in near future. LG Exclusive apps – from panorama photo taker to voice to text translator and even look-n-type app that works like a backup inverse camera, there is quite a bit there that won’t be found on the other phones. I’ll review those in more detail in another segment. Conclusion So for a quick comparison: If you want a phone that is super thin, light and is core reference of a Windows Phone 7 – Samsung Focus it is. If you want a great phone with solid secure feel, real keyboard, media features - the hands down winner is LG Quantum.   You can pick up the LG Quantum at AT&T in US and worldwide as LG Optimus 7Q.   Final thought: I have not had SmartPhone that I felt was a reliable trusty primary communication device since Samsung BlackJack II, this time the LG got the crown.   [ Disclosure: Phone was provided to me free of charge. That has been the case for all of my phones for years, nothing new - I get them all. ]

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• How to handle lookup data in a C# ASP.Net MVC4 application?

  - by Jim

  I am writing an MVC4 application to track documents we have on file for our clients. I'm using code first, and have created models for my objects (Company, Document, etc...). I am now faced with the topic of document expiration. Business logic dictates certain documents will expire a set number of days past the document date. For example, Document A might expire in 180 days, Document 2 in 365 days, etc... I have a class for my documents as shown below (simplified for this example). What is the best way for me to create a lookup for expiration values? I want to specify documents of type DocumentA expire in 30 days, type DocumentB expire in 75 days, etc... I can think of a few ways to do this: Lookup table in the database I can query New property in my class (DaysValidFor) which has a custom getter that returns different values based on the DocumentType A method that takes in the document type and returns the number of days and I'm sure there are other ways I'm not even thinking of. My main concern is a) not violating any best practices and b) maintainability. Are there any pros/cons I need to be aware of for the above options, or is this a case of "just pick one and run with it"? One last thought, right now the number of days is a value that does not need to be stored anywhere on a per-document basis -- however, it is possible that business logic will change this (i.e., DocumentA's are 30 days expiration by default, but this DocumentA associated with Company XYZ will be 60 days because we like them). In that case, is a property in the Document class the best way to go, seeing as I need to add that field to the DB? namespace Models { // Types of documents to track public enum DocumentType { DocumentA, DocumentB, DocumentC // etc... } // Document model public class Document { public int DocumentID { get; set; } // Foreign key to companies public int CompanyID { get; set; } public DocumentType DocumentType { get; set; } // Helper to translate enum's value to an integer for DB storage [Column("DocumentType")] public int DocumentTypeInt { get { return (int)this.DocumentType; } set { this.DocumentType = (DocumentType)value; } } [DataType(DataType.Date)] [DisplayFormat(DataFormatString = "{0:MM-dd-yyyy}", ApplyFormatInEditMode = true)] public DateTime DocumentDate { get; set; } // Navigation properties public virtual Company Company { get; set; } } }

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• OBIEE 11.1.1.5.0 BP2 patch released

  - by THE

  Normal 0 21 false false false DE X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; 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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} We are happy to announce that: OBIEE 11.1.1.5.0 BP2 patch is released for four platforms : Win64, Linux64, AIX64, and Solaris SPARC 64 Remaining four platforms Win32, Linux32, Hp-Itanium, and Solaris x86-64 are expected in a few weeks.This is released as patch 13611078 on MOS /  http://support.oracle.comCustomers can download this patch directly, there is no password needed. Please note these points: README contains a list of all bug fixes included in this patch.(Only "new" fixes are listed in the readme of the BP2 patch. The fixes in the BP1 patch (aka PS1 - Patch 13562882 ) are included in the BP2 patch, even though they are not explicitly listed in the BP2 Readme. The readme is currently under review to reflect this.) This is a (mostly) cumulative bundle patch, and includes all fixes from PS1 (patch 13562882) which was released for Linux64 platform.Customers who have PS1 applied will get the expected OPatch conflict message.  Since BP2 is cumulative, you can safely rollback PS1.  You can do this prior to applying BP2, or you can choose to rollback at the time of applying the patch. Likewise, customers who have other one-off patches applied will get the expected OPatch conflict message.  If you have questions about this, please review the applied patches and compare them with list of bug fixes in Normal 0 21 false false false DE X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; 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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} README's of BP2 and BP1 Patch 13562882. If all thebug fixes are included, you can continue with patch installation and rollback applied patches. Please note, this is not a fully cumulative patch on 11.1.1.5.0.  This means it does not contain all one-off patches given out so far on top of 11.1.1.5.0.  There is a small number of such bug fixes remaining, which will all be included in BP3 patch. In case you encounter this, please have Support log an OOB (one-off backport) requests for missing bug fixes so they can be included in BP3 cumulative bundle patch, which is expected to be fully cumulative going forward. This BP2 includes the CPU patch fix from BUG 12830486 - OCT 2011 CPU - UPDATE FOR OBIEE 11.1.1.5.0 BP3 patch is in planning stage, no ETA is announced yet.

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• Virtual Developer Day: Oracle Fusion Developmen

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  Virtual Developer Day: Oracle Fusion Development Register now for this FREE hands-on online workshop Get up to date and learn everything you wanted to know about Oracle ADF & Fusion Development plus live Q&A chats with Oracle technical staffOracle Application Development Framework (ADF) is the standards based, strategic framework for Oracle Fusion Applications and Oracle Fusion Middleware.  Oracle ADF’s integration with the Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle WebCenter and Oracle BI creates a complete productive development platform for your custom applications. Join us at this FREE virtual event and learn the latest in Fusion Development including: Is Oracle ADF development faster and simpler than Forms, Apex or .Net? Mobile Application Development with ADF Mobile Oracle ADF development with Eclipse Oracle WebCenter Portal and ADF Development Application Lifecycle Management with ADF Building Process Centric Applications with ADF and BPM Oracle Business Intelligence and ADF Integration Live Q&A chats with Oracle technical staff Developer lead, manager or architect – this event has something for everyone. Don’t miss this opportunity.  Tuesday, July 10, 20129:00 a.m. PT. – 1:00 p.m. PT11:00 a.m. CT – 3:00 p.m. CT12:00 p.m. ET – 4:00 p.m. ET1:00 p.m. BRT – 5:00 p.m. BRT Register online now! for this FREE event Agenda 9:00 a.m. Opening 9:30 a.m. Keynote: Oracle Fusion Development Track 1Introduction to Fusion Development Track 2What's New in Fusion Development Track 3Fusion Development in the Enterprise 10:00 a.m. Is Oracle ADF Development Faster and Simpler than Oracle Forms, APEX or .Net? Mobile Application Development with ADF Mobile Oracle WebCenter Portal and ADF Development 11:00 a.m. Rich Web UI made simple – an ADF Faces Overview Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse - ADF Development Building Process Centric Applications with ADF and BPM 12:00 noon Next Generation Controller for JSF Application Lifecycle Management for ADF Oracle Business Intelligence and ADF Integration *Hands On Lab – WebCenter and ADF Lab w/ JDeveloper – Lab materials will be provided ahead of the event to give you ample time to work through the lab and increase the productivity of the live chat sessions the day of the event. Sessions abstractsRegister online now! for this FREE event Copyright © 2012, Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.All rights reserved. Contact Us | Legal Notices and Terms of Use | Privacy Statement

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• Getting away from a customized Magento 1.4 installation - Magento 1.6, OpenCart, or others?

  - by Phil

  I'm dealing with a Magento 1.4.0.0 Community Edition installation with various undocumented changes to the core (mostly integration with an ERP system), an outdated Sweet Tooth Points & Rewards module and some custom payment providers. It also doubles as a mediocre blogging/CMS system. It has one store each for 3 different languages, with about 40 product categories for a few hundred products. [rant] With no prior experience with any PHP e-commerce systems, I find it very difficult to work with. I attempted to install Magento 1.4.0.0 on my local WAMP dev machine, it installs fine, but the main page or search do not show any products no matter what I do in the backend admin panel. I don't know what's wrong with it, and whatever information I googled is either too old or too new from Magento 1.4. Later I'm given FTP access to the testing server, which neither my manager or I have permission to install XDebug on, as apparantly it runs on the same server as the production server (yikes). Trying to learn how Magento works is torture. I spent a week trying to add some fields into the Onepage Checkout before giving up and went to work on something else. The template system, just like the rest of Magento, is a bloated mishmash of overcomplicated directory structures, weird config xml files and EAV databases. I went into 6 different models and several content blocks in the backend just to change what the front page looks like. With little-to-none helpful and clear documentation (unlike CodeIgniter) and various breaking changes between minor point revisions which makes it hard to find useful information, Magento 1.4 is a developer killer. [/rant] The client is planning to redesign the site and has decided it might as well as move on from this unsustainable, hacky, upgrade-unfriendly, developer-unfriendly mess. Magento 1.4 is starting to show its age, with Magento 1.7 coming soon, the client is considering upgrading to Magento 1.6 or 1.7 if it has improved from 1.4. The customizations done to the current Magento 1.4 installation will have to be redone, and a new license for the Sweet Tooth Points & Rewards module will have to be bought. The client is also open to other e-commerce systems. I've looked at OpenCart and it seems to be quite developer friendly with a fairly simple structure. I found some complaints regarding its performance when the shop has thousands of categories or products, but this is not an issue with the current number of products my client has. It seems to be solid ground for easy customization to bring the rewards system and ERP integration over. What should the client upgrade to in this case?

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• Why learn Flash Builder 4 (Flex) when I can just use Flash Professional?

  - by Jason McKenna

  I want to learn Flash Builder 4 (Flex) because I see so many jobs requesting experience with it. I also just like knowing stuff. I am also very interested in focusing on RIA development now. BUT... can anyone tell me CLEARLY why the heck I would ever use FLEX over Flash Pro? It is a time investment, so is it worth it? All I read are misguided posts about how Flash Pro is for games and banner ads, and Flex is for programmers and RIAs blah blah... this simply isn't so from my 9 years of contracting experience. I'm 99.9% certain that I can build anything a flex developer can build, but using Flash Pro. I can build powerful AS3-driven apps for the desktop, mobile device, or browser, and I can link to databases with XML and I can import text files and communicate with ColdFusion and everything. The advantage with Flash Pro is that I can also easily and clearly animate transitions and build custom elements that look the way I want/need them to look for my specific client. Why would I want to use a bunch of pre-built components that drive my file sizes to the moon? Who is happy with a drag-n-drop button? Is Flex just a thing made for programmer people with no artistic inclination? What is the advantage of using it? It takes me back to Visual Basic class. Seems like a pain to have to use multiple tools to import crap from Flash Pro into Flex and yada yada... why when I can do it all nicely in Flash Pro to begin with. Am I clueless, or missing some major piece of the puzzle? Thanks for any clarity. PS, I couldn't care less about the code editors. It ain't that bad people. They make it out like the thing doesn't even respond to keyboard input or something. Does everything I need it do anyways. Please help out here. If I just don't need to learn it, I don't want to waste the time.

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• Xorg.conf (nvidia) Second Monitor getting settings of first

  - by HennyH

  I've been spending the weekend (and some time before that) trying to set up my Korean QHD270 and Benq G2222HDL monitors with Ubuntu 13.10. With the nouveau drivers install both monitor function perfectly fine. After installing the nvidia drivers the Benq works but the QHD270 does not. Now, after days of struggling I managed to get the QHD270 to work following a mixture of blogs, particularly; this one and learnitwithme. Now, unfortunatly my G2222HDL does not work. I fixed the QHD270 by supplying a custom EDID, my xorg.conf looks like so (excluding keyboard and mouse): Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Layout0" Screen "Default Screen" 0 0 InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "Configured Monitor" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Configured Video Device" Driver "nvidia" Option "CustomEDID" "DFP:/etc/X11/edid-shimian.bin" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Device "Configured Video Device" Monitor "Configured Monitor" EndSection Now, I tried defining a new Device,Monitor and Screen then in ServerLayout adding Screen "Second Screen" RightOf "Default Screen", but after doing so neither monitor worked. Hoping to fix the issue using a GUI based tool I opened up NVIDIA X Server Settings, which shows my current layout as: It seems that something is being output to the monitor, as suggested by my print screen: Any help would be greatly appreciated. Output of xrandr: Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 5120 x 1440, maximum 16384 x 16384 DVI-I-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DVI-I-1 connected primary 2560x1440+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 597mm x 336mm 2560x1440 60.0*+ HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DP-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DVI-D-0 connected 2560x1440+2560+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 597mm x 336mm 2560x1440 60.0*+ DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) And an extract from my log file (perhaps this is relevant?) [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): Valid display device(s) on GeForce GTX 680 at PCI:2:0:0 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): CRT-0 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): ACB QHD270 (DFP-0) (boot, connected) [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-1 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-2 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-3 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-4 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): CRT-0: 400.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): ACB QHD270 (DFP-0): 330.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): ACB QHD270 (DFP-0): Internal Dual Link TMDS [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-1: 165.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-1: Internal Single Link TMDS [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-2: 165.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-2: Internal Single Link TMDS [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-3: 330.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-3: Internal Single Link TMDS [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-4: 960.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-4: Internal DisplayPort

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Static Char Methods

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Often times in our code we deal with the bigger classes and types in the BCL, and occasionally forgot that there are some nice methods on the primitive types as well.  Today we will discuss some of the handy static methods that exist on the char (the C# alias of System.Char) type. The Background I was examining a piece of code this week where I saw the following: 1: // need to get the 5th (offset 4) character in upper case 2: var type = symbol.Substring(4, 1).ToUpper(); 3:  4: // test to see if the type is P 5: if (type == "P") 6: { 7: // ... do something with P type... 8: } Is there really any error in this code?  No, but it still struck me wrong because it is allocating two very short-lived throw-away strings, just to store and manipulate a single char: The call to Substring() generates a new string of length 1 The call to ToUpper() generates a new upper-case version of the string from Step 1. In my mind this is similar to using ToUpper() to do a case-insensitive compare: it isn’t wrong, it’s just much heavier than it needs to be (for more info on case-insensitive compares, see #2 in 5 More Little Wonders). One of my favorite books is the C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices by Sutter and Alexandrescu.  True, it’s about C++ standards, but there’s also some great general programming advice in there, including two rules I love:         8. Don’t Optimize Prematurely         9. Don’t Pessimize Prematurely We all know what #8 means: don’t optimize when there is no immediate need, especially at the expense of readability and maintainability.  I firmly believe this and in the axiom: it’s easier to make correct code fast than to make fast code correct.  Optimizing code to the point that it becomes difficult to maintain often gains little and often gives you little bang for the buck. But what about #9?  Well, for that they state: “All other things being equal, notably code complexity and readability, certain efficient design patterns and coding idioms should just flow naturally from your fingertips and are no harder to write then the pessimized alternatives. This is not premature optimization; it is avoiding gratuitous pessimization.” Or, if I may paraphrase: “where it doesn’t increase the code complexity and readability, prefer the more efficient option”. The example code above was one of those times I feel where we are violating a tacit C# coding idiom: avoid creating unnecessary temporary strings.  The code creates temporary strings to hold one char, which is just unnecessary.  I think the original coder thought he had to do this because ToUpper() is an instance method on string but not on char.  What he didn’t know, however, is that ToUpper() does exist on char, it’s just a static method instead (though you could write an extension method to make it look instance-ish). This leads me (in a long-winded way) to my Little Wonders for the day… Static Methods of System.Char So let’s look at some of these handy, and often overlooked, static methods on the char type: IsDigit(), IsLetter(), IsLetterOrDigit(), IsPunctuation(), IsWhiteSpace() Methods to tell you whether a char (or position in a string) belongs to a category of characters. IsLower(), IsUpper() Methods that check if a char (or position in a string) is lower or upper case ToLower(), ToUpper() Methods that convert a single char to the lower or upper equivalent. For example, if you wanted to see if a string contained any lower case characters, you could do the following: 1: if (symbol.Any(c => char.IsLower(c))) 2: { 3: // ... 4: } Which, incidentally, we could use a method group to shorten the expression to: 1: if (symbol.Any(char.IsLower)) 2: { 3: // ... 4: } Or, if you wanted to verify that all of the characters in a string are digits: 1: if (symbol.All(char.IsDigit)) 2: { 3: // ... 4: } Also, for the IsXxx() methods, there are overloads that take either a char, or a string and an index, this means that these two calls are logically identical: 1: // check given a character 2: if (char.IsUpper(symbol[0])) { ... } 3:  4: // check given a string and index 5: if (char.IsUpper(symbol, 0)) { ... } Obviously, if you just have a char, then you’d just use the first form.  But if you have a string you can use either form equally well. As a side note, care should be taken when examining all the available static methods on the System.Char type, as some seem to be redundant but actually have very different purposes.  For example, there are IsDigit() and IsNumeric() methods, which sound the same on the surface, but give you different results. IsDigit() returns true if it is a base-10 digit character (‘0’, ‘1’, … ‘9’) where IsNumeric() returns true if it’s any numeric character including the characters for ½, ¼, etc. Summary To come full circle back to our opening example, I would have preferred the code be written like this: 1: // grab 5th char and take upper case version of it 2: var type = char.ToUpper(symbol[4]); 3:  4: if (type == 'P') 5: { 6: // ... do something with P type... 7: } Not only is it just as readable (if not more so), but it performs over 3x faster on my machine:    1,000,000 iterations of char method took: 30 ms, 0.000050 ms/item.    1,000,000 iterations of string method took: 101 ms, 0.000101 ms/item. It’s not only immediately faster because we don’t allocate temporary strings, but as an added bonus there less garbage to collect later as well.  To me this qualifies as a case where we are using a common C# performance idiom (don’t create unnecessary temporary strings) to make our code better. Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,char,string

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• Why do some user agents have spam urls in them?

  - by Erx_VB.NExT.Coder

  If you go to (say) the last 100 entries (visits) to the botsvsbrowsers.com website (exact link, feel free to take a look: http://www.botsvsbrowsers.com/recent/listings/index.html ), you'd notice that almost every User Agent that has the keywords "Opera" and "Presto" inside them, will almost certainly have a web link (URL/Web Address) inside it, and it won't just be a normal web address, but a HTML anchor tag/link to that address. Why is this so, I could not even find a single discussion about it on the internet, nowhere, I tried varying my search terms many times. If the user agent contains the words "Opera" and "Presto" it doesnt mean it will have this weblink, but it means there is about an 80% change that it will. A typical anchor tag/link inside a user agent will look like this: Mozilla/4.0 <a href="http://osis-uk.co.uk/disabled-equipment">disability equipment</a> (Windows NT 5.1; U; en) Presto/2.10.229 Version/11.60 If you check it out at the website, http://www.botsvsbrowsers.com/recent/listings/index.html you will notice that the back and forward arrows are in there unescaped format. This isn't just true for botsvsbrowsers, but several other user agent listing sites. I'm really confused and feel line I'm in a room full of 10,000 people and am the only one seeing this ghost :). If I'm doing statistical analysis, should I include or exclude this type of user agent from my listing (ie: are these just normal users who've set their user agents to attempt to drive some traffic to their sites as they browser the web), or is there something else going on? The fact that it is so consistent in terms of its format leads me to believe that it is an automated process (the setting or alteration of the user agent) so I cannot decide or understand the process by which this change is made (I know how to change a user agent), but unsure which program or facility is doing this, especially since it is exclusive to Opera (Presto) user agents that are beyond I think an 8 or 9 point something browser version. I've run some statistical tests, parsing entries from all over the place, writing custom programs, to get a better understanding of this. Keep in mind that I see normal URL's in user agents infrequently, they are just text such as +http://www.someSite.com appended to a user agent normally, especially if its a crawler or bot it provided its service URL, this is normal and isnt done with an embedded link (A HREF=) etc, so I'm not talking about "those".

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for November 8, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Webcast: Meeting Customer Expectations in the New Age of Retail Keep your eye on this live webcast as Sanjeev Sharma (Principal Product Director, Oracle Exalogic), Kelly Goetsch (Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle Commerce), and Dan Conway (Senior Product Manager, Oracle Retail) offer real-world examples of business value derived by running customer-facing applications on Oracle Engineered Systems. Live, Thursday Nov 8, 10am PT/ 1pm ET. Solving Big Problems in Our 21st Century Information Society | Irving Wladawsky-Berger "I believe that the kind of extensive collaboration between the private sector, academia and government represented by the Internet revolution will be the way we will generally tackle big problems in the 21st century. Just as with the Internet, governments have a major role to play as the catalyst for many of the big projects that the private sector will then take forward and exploit. The need for high bandwidth, robust national broadband infrastructures is but one such example." — Irving Wladawsky-Berger SOA Still Not Dead: Ratification of Governance Standard Highlights SOA’s Continued Relevance So just about the time I dig into Google Trends to learn that the conversation about governance peaked in 2004, along comes all this InfoQ article by Richard Seroter. And of course you've already listened to the OTN Archbeat Podcast about governance, right? Right? Implications of Java 6 End of Public Updates for Oracle E-Business Suite Users | Steven Chan The short version is: "Nothing will change for EBS users after February 2013." According to Steven Chan, "EBS users will continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 6." You'll find additional information on Steven's blog. ADF Mobile Custom Javascript – iFrame Injection | John Brunswick The ADF Mobile Framework provides a range of out of the box components to add within your AMX pages, according to John Brunswick. But what happens when "an out of the box component does not directly fulfill your development need? What options are available to extend your application interface?" John has an answer. How Data and BPM are married to get the right information to the right people at the right time | Leon Smiers "Business Process Management…supports a large group of stakeholders within an organization, all with different needs," says Oracle ACE Leon Smiers. "End-to-end processes typically run across departments, stakeholders and applications, and can often have a long life-span. So how do organizations provide all stakeholders with the information they need?" Leon provides answers in this post. Thought for the Day "(When) asking skilled architects…what they do when confronted with highly complex problems…(they) would most likely answer, 'Just use Common Sense.' (A) better expression than 'common sense' is 'contextual sense' — a knowledge of what is reasonable within a given content. Practicing architects through eduction, experience and examples accumulate a considerable body of contextual sense by the time they're entrusted with solving a system-level problem…" — Eberhardt Rechtin (January 16, 1926 – April 14, 2006) Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Business Strategy - Google Case Study

  Business strategy defined by SMBTN.com is a term used in business planning that implies a careful selection and application of resources to obtain a competitive advantage in anticipation of future events or trends. In more general terms business strategy is positioning a company so that it has the greatest competitive advantage over others in the markets and industries that they participate in. This process involves making corporate decisions regarding which markets to provide goods and services, pricing, acceptable quality levels, and how to interact with others in the marketplace. The primary objective of business strategy is to create and increase value for all of its shareholders and stakeholders through the creation of customer value. According to InformationWeek.com, Google has a distinctive technology advantage over its competitors like Microsoft, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo. Google utilizes custom high-performance systems which are cost efficient because they can scale to extreme workloads. This hardware allows for a huge cost advantage over its competitors. In addition, InformationWeek.com interviewed Stephen Arnold who stated that Google’s programmers are 50%-100% more productive compared to programmers working for their competitors.  He based this theory on Google’s competitors having to spend up to four times as much just to keep up. In addition to Google’s technological advantage, they also have developed a decentralized management schema where employees report directly to multiple managers and team project leaders. This allows for the responsibility of the technology department to be shared amongst multiple senior level engineers and removes the need for a singular department head to oversee the activities of the department.  This is a unique approach from the standard management style. Typically a department head like a CIO or CTO would oversee the department’s global initiatives and business functionality.  This would then be passed down and administered through middle management and implemented by programmers, business analyst, network administrators and Database administrators. It goes without saying that an IT professional’s responsibilities would be directed by Google’s technological advantage and management strategy.  Simply because they work within the department, and would have to design, develop, and support the high-performance systems and would have to report multiple managers and project leaders on a regular basis. Since Google was established and driven by new and immerging technology, all other departments would be directly impacted by the technology department.  In fact, they would have to cater to the technology department since it is a huge driving for in the success of Google. Reference: http://www.smbtn.com/smallbusinessdictionary/#b http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/linux/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192300292&pgno=1&queryText=&isPrev=

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• Action delegate in C#

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  In last few posts about I have written lots of things about delegates and this post is also part of that series. In this post we are going to learn about Action delegates in C#.  Following is a list of post related to delegates. Delegates in C#. Multicast Delegates in C#. Func Delegates in C#. Action Delegates in c#: As per MSDN action delegates used to pass a method as parameter without explicitly declaring custom delegates. Action Delegates are used to encapsulate method that does not have return value. C# 4.0 Action delegates have following different variants like following. It can take up to 16 parameters. Action – It will be no parameter and does not return any value. Action(T) Action(T1,T2) Action(T1,T2,T3) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11,T12) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11,T12,T13) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11,T12,T13,T14) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11,T12,T13,T14,T15) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11,T12,T13,T14,T15,T16) So for this Action delegate you can have up to 16 parameters for Action.  Sound interesting!!… Enough theory now. It’s time to implement real code. Following is a code for that. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace DelegateExample { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Action<String> Print = p => Console.WriteLine(p); Action<String,String> PrintAnother = (p1,p2)=> Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} {1}",p1,p2)); Print("Hello"); PrintAnother("Hello","World"); } } } In the above code you can see that I have created two Action delegate Print and PrintAnother. Print have one string parameter and its printing that. While PrintAnother have two string parameter and printing both the strings via Console.Writeline. Now it’s time to run example and following is the output as expected. That’s it. Hope you liked it. Stay tuned for more updates!!

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• Mocking property sets

  - by mehfuzh

  In this post, i will be showing how you can mock property sets with your expected values or even action using JustMock. To begin, we have a sample interface: public interface IFoo {     int Value { get; set; } } Now,  we can create a mock that will throw on any call other than the one expected, generally its a strict mock and we can do it like: bool expected = false;  var foo = Mock.Create<IFoo>(BehaviorMode.Strict);  Mock.ArrangeSet(() => { foo.Value = 1; }).DoInstead(() => expected  = true);    foo.Value = 1;    Assert.True(expected); Here , the method for running though our expectation for set is Mock.ArrangeSet , where we can directly set our expectations or can even set matchers into it like: var foo = Mock.Create<IFoo>(BehaviorMode.Strict);   Mock.ArrangeSet(() => foo.Value = Arg.Matches<int>(x => x > 3));   foo.Value = 4; foo.Value = 5;   Assert.Throws<MockException>(() => foo.Value = 3);   In the example, any set for value not satisfying matcher expression will throw an MockException as this is a strict mock but what will be the case for loose mocks, where we also have to assert it. Here, let’s take an interface with an indexed property. Indexers are treated in the same way as properties, as with basic indexers let you access your class if it were an array. public interface IFooIndexed {     string this[int key] { get; set; } } We want to  setup a value for a particular index,  we then will pass that mock to some implementer where it will be actually called. Once done, we want to assert that if it has been invoked properly. var foo = Mock.Create<IFooIndexed>();   Mock.ArrangeSet(() => foo[0] = "ping");   foo[0] = "ping";   Mock.AssertSet(() => foo[0] = "ping"); In the above example, both the values are user defined, it might happen that we want to make it more dynamic, In this example, i set it up for set with any value and finally checked if it is set with the one i am looking for. var foo = Mock.Create<IFooIndexed>();   Mock.ArrangeSet(() => foo[0] = Arg.Any<string>());   foo[0] = "ping";   Mock.AssertSet(() => foo[0] = Arg.Matches<string>(x => string.Compare("ping", x) == 0)); This is more or less of mocking user sets , but we can further have it to throw exception or even do our own task for a particular set , like : Mock.ArrangeSet(() => foo.MyProperty = 10).Throws(new ArgumentException()); Or  bool expected = false;  var foo = Mock.Create<IFoo>(BehaviorMode.Strict);  Mock.ArrangeSet(() => { foo.Value = 1; }).DoInstead(() => expected  = true);    foo.Value = 1;    Assert.True(expected); Or call the original setter , in this example it will throw an NotImplementedExpectation var foo = Mock.Create<FooAbstract>(BehaviorMode.Strict); Mock.ArrangeSet(() => { foo.Value = 1; }).CallOriginal(); Assert.Throws<NotImplementedException>(() => { foo.Value = 1; });   Finally, try all these, find issues, post them to forum and make it work for you :-). Hope that helps,

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• Detecting Duplicates Using Oracle Business Rules

  - by joeywong-Oracle

  Recently I was involved with a Business Process Management Proof of Concept (BPM PoC) where we wanted to show how customers could use Oracle Business Rules (OBR) to easily define some rules to detect certain conditions, such as duplicate account numbers, duplicate names, high transaction amounts, etc, in a set of transactions. Traditionally you would have to loop through the transactions and compare each transaction with each other to find matching conditions. This is not particularly nice as it relies on more traditional approaches (coding) and is not the most efficient way. OBR is a great place to house these types’ of rules as it allows users/developers to externalise the rules, in a simpler manner, externalising the rules from the message flows and allows users to change them when required. So I went ahead looking for some examples. After quite a bit of time spent Googling, I did not find much out in the blogosphere. In fact the best example was actually from...... wait for it...... Oracle Documentation! (http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E28271_01/user.1111/e10228/rules_start.htm#ASRUG228) However, if you followed the link there was not much explanation provided with the example. So the aim of this article is to provide a little more explanation to the example so that it can be better understood. Note: I won’t be covering the BPM parts in great detail. Use case: Payment instruction file is required to be processed. Before instruction file can be processed it needs to be approved by a business user. Before the approval process, it would be useful to run the payment instruction file through OBR to look for transactions of interest. The output of the OBR can then be used to flag the transactions for the approvers to investigate. Example BPM Process So let’s start defining the Business Rules Dictionary. For the input into our rules, we will be passing in an array of payments which contain some basic information for our demo purposes. Input to Business Rules And for our output we want to have an array of rule output messages. Note that the element I am using for the output is only for one rule message element and not an array. We will configure the Business Rules component later to return an array instead. Output from Business Rules Business Rule – Create Dictionary Fill in all the details and click OK. Open the Business Rules component and select Decision Functions from the side. Modify the Decision Function Configuration Select the decision function and click on the edit button (the pencil), don’t worry that JDeveloper indicates that there is an error with the decision function. Then click the Ouputs tab and make sure the checkbox under the List column is checked, this is to tell the Business Rules component that it should return an array of rule message elements. Updating the Decision Service Next we will define the actual rules. Click on Ruleset1 on the side and then the Create Rule in the IF/THEN Rule section. Creating new rule in ruleset Ok, this is where some detailed explanation is required. Remember that the input to this Business Rules dictionary is a list of payments, each of those payments were of the complex type PaymentType. Each of those payments in the Oracle Business Rules engine is treated as a fact in its working memory. Implemented rule So in the IF/THEN rule, the first task is to grab two PaymentType facts from the working memory and assign them to temporary variable names (payment1 and payment2 in our example). Matching facts Once we have them in the temporary variables, we can then start comparing them to each other. For our demonstration we want to find payments where the account numbers were the same but the account name was different. Suspicious payment instruction And to stop the rule from comparing the same facts to each other, over and over again, we have to include the last test. Stop rule from comparing endlessly And that’s it! No for loops, no need to keep track of what you have or have not compared, OBR handles all that for you because everything is done in its working memory. And once all the tests have been satisfied we need to assert a new fact for the output. Assert the output fact Save your Business Rules. Next step is to complete the data association in the BPM process. Pay extra care to use Copy List instead of the default Copy when doing data association at an array level. Input and output data association Deploy and test. Test data Rule matched Parting words: Ideally you would then use the output of the Business Rules component to then display/flag the transactions which triggered the rule so that the approver can investigate. Link: SOA Project Archive [Download]

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• Suggestions for connecting .NET WPF GUI with Java SE Server

  - by Sam Goldberg

  BACKGROUND We are building a Java (SE) trading application which will be monitoring market data and sending trade messages based on the market data, and also on user defined configuration parameters. We are planning to provide the user with a thin client, built in .NET (WPF) for managing the parameters, controlling the server behavior, and viewing the current state of the trading. The client doesn't need real-time updates; it will instead update the view once every few seconds (or whatever interval is configured by the user). The client has about 6 different operations it needs to perform with the server, for example: CRUD with configuration parameters query subset of the data receive updates of current positions from server It is possible that most of the different operations (except for receiving data) are just different flavors of managing the configuration parameters, but it's too early in our analysis for us to be sure. To connect the client with the server, we have been considering using: SOAP Web Service RESTful service building a custom TCP/IP based API (text or xml) (least preferred - but we use this approach with other applications we have) As best as I understand, pros and cons of the different web service flavors are: SOAP pro: totally automated in .NET (and Java), modifying server side interface require no code changes in communication layer, just running refresh on Web Service reference to regenerate the classes. con: more overhead in the communication layer sending more text, etc. We're not using J2EE container so maybe doesn't work so well with J2SE REST pro: lighter weight, less data. Has good .NET and Java support. (I don't have any real experience with this, so don't know what other benefits it has.) con: client will not be automatically aware if there are any new operations or properties added (?), so communication layer needs to be updated by developer if server interface changes. con: (both approaches) Server cannot really push updates to the client at regular intervals (?) (However, we won't mind if client polls the server to get updates.) QUESTION What are your opinions on the above options or suggestions for other ways to connect the 2 parts? (Ideally, we don't want to put much work into the communication layer, because it's not the significant part of the application so the more off-the-shelf and automated the better.)

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• Ubuntu won't display netbook's native resolution

  - by Daniel

  FYI: My Netbook model is HP Mini 210-1004sa, which comes with Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150, and has a display 10.1" Active Matrix Colour TFT 1024 x 600. I recently removed Windows 7 Starter from my netbook, and replaced it with Ubuntu 12.10. The problem is the OS doesn't seem to recognise the native display resolution of 1024x600 i.e. the bottom bits of Ubuntu is hidden beneath the screen & the only 2 available resolutions are: the default 1024x768 and 800x600. I've also thought about replacing Ubuntu with Lubuntu or Puppy Linux, as the system does run a bit slow, but I can't, as then I won't be able to access the taskbar and application menu which will be hidden beneath the screen. Only Ubuntu with Unity is currently usable, as the Unity Launcher is visible enough. I was able to define a custom resolution 1024x600 using the Q&A: How set my monitor resolution? but when I set that resolution, there appears a black band at the top of the screen and the desktop area is lowered, with bits of it hidden beneath the screen. I tried leaving it at this new resolution and restarting the system to see if the black band would disappear & the display will fit correctly, but it gets reset to 1024x768 at startup and displays following error: Could not apply the stored configuration for monitors none of the selected modes were compatible with the possible modes: Trying modes for CRTC 63 CRTC 63: trying mode 800x600@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 63: trying mode 800x600@56Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 63: trying mode 640x480@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 63: trying mode 1024x768@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 63: trying mode 800x600@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 63: trying mode 800x600@56Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 63: trying mode 640x480@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) Trying modes for CRTC 64 CRTC 64: trying mode 1024x768@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 64: trying mode 800x600@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 64: trying mode 800x600@56Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 64: trying mode 640x480@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 0) CRTC 64: trying mode 1024x768@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 64: trying mode 800x600@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 64: trying mode 800x600@56Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1) CRTC 64: trying mode 640x480@60Hz with output at 1024x600@60Hz (pass 1)

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• Desktop Fun: Runic Style Fonts

  - by Asian Angel

  Most of the time regular fonts are just what you need for documents, invitations, or adding text to images. But what if you are in the mood for something unusual or unique to add that perfect touch? If you like older runic style writing, then enjoy finding some new favorites for your collection with our Runic Style Fonts collection. Temple photo by ShinyShiny. Note: To manage the fonts on your Windows 7, Vista, & XP systems see our article here. The Runic Style Fonts Sable Download Worn Manuscript Download JSL Ancient Download Antropos Download Cave Gyrl Download The Roman Runes Alliance Download Ancient Geek Download Troll Download Runish Quill MK *includes two font types Download DS RUNEnglish 2 Download Runes Written *includes two font types Download Wolves And Ravens Download Art Greco Download Dalek Download Glagolitic AOE Download Linear B Download Cartouche Download Greywolf Glyphs *includes 62 individual characters Note: This group represents A – Z in all capital letters. Note: This group represents A – Z in all lower case letters. Note: This group represents the numbers 0 – 9. Download Africain *includes 62 individual characters Note: This group represents A – Z in all capital letters. Note: This group represents A – Z in all lower case letters. Note: This group represents the numbers 0 – 9. Download Cave Writings *includes 52 individual characters Note: This group represents A – Z in all capital letters. Note: This group represents A – Z in all lower case letters. Download For more great ways to customize your computer be certain to look through our Desktop Fun section. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 Five Sleek Audi R8 Car Themes for Chrome and Iron MS Notepad Replacement Metapad Returns with a New Beta Version Spybot Search and Destroy Now Available as a Portable App (PortableApps.com) ShapeShifter: What Are Dreams? [Video] This Computer Runs on Geek Power Wallpaper Bones, Clocks, and Counters; A Look at the First 35,000 Years of Computing

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• Build 2012, some thoughts..

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  I think you probably read my rant about the logistics at Build 2012, as posted here, so I am not going into that anymore. Instead, let’s look at the content. (BTW If you did read that post and want some more info then read Nia Angelina’s post about Build. I have nothing to add to that.) As usual, there were good speakers and some speakers who could benefit from some speaker training. I find it hard to understand why Microsoft allows certain people on stage, people who speak English with such strong accents it’s hard for people, especially from abroad, to understand. Some basic training might be useful for some of them. However, it is nice to see that most speakers are project managers, program managers or even devs on the teams that build the stuff they talk about: there was a lot of knowledge on stage! And that means when you ask questions you get very relevant information. I realize I am not the average audience member here, I am regular speaker myself so I tend to look for other things when I am in a room than most audience members so my opinion might differ from others. All in all the knowledge of the speakers was above average but the presentation skills were most of the times below what I would describe as adequate. But let us look at the contents. Since the official name of the conference is Build Windows 2012 it is not surprising most of the talks were focused on building Windows 8 apps. Next to that, there was a lot of focus on Azure and of course Windows Phone 8 that launched the day before Build started. Most sessions dealt with C# and JavaScript although I did see a tendency to use C++ more. Touch. Well, that was the focus on a lot of sessions, that goes without saying. Microsoft is really betting on Touch these days and being a Touch oriented developer I can only applaud this. The term NUI is getting a bit outdated but the principles behind it certainly aren’t. The sessions did cover quite a lot on how to make your applications easy to use and easy to understand. However, not all is touch nowadays; still the majority of people use keyboard and mouse to interact with their machines (or, as I do, use keyboard, mouse AND touch at the same time). Microsoft understands this and has spend some serious thoughts on this as well. It was all about making your apps run everywhere on all sorts of devices and in all sorts of scenarios. I have seen a couple of sessions focusing on the portable class library and on sharing code between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. You get the feeling Microsoft is enabling us devs to write software that will be ubiquitous. They want your stuff to be all over the place and they do anything they can to help. To achieve that goal they provide us with brilliant SDK’s, great tooling, a very, very good backend in the form of Windows Azure (I was particularly impressed by the Mobility part of Azure) and some fantastic hardware. And speaking of hardware: the partners such as Acer, Lenovo and Dell are making hardware that puts Apple to a shame nowadays. To illustrate: in Bellevue (very close to Redmond where Microsoft HQ is) they have the Microsoft Store located very close to the Apple Store, so it’s easy to compare devices. And I have to say: the Microsoft offerings are much, much more appealing that what the Cupertino guys have to offer. That was very visible by the number of people visiting the stores: even on the day that Apple launched the iPad Mini there were more people in the Microsoft store than in the Apple store. So, the future looks like it’s going to be fun. Great hardware (did I mention the Nokia Lumia 920? No? It’s brilliant), great software (Windows 8 is in a league of its own), the best dev tools (Visual Studio 2012 is still the champion here) and a fantastic backend (Azure.. need I say more?). It’s up to us devs to fill up the stores with applications that matches this. To summarize: it is great to be a Windows developer. PS. Did I mention Surface RT? Man….. People were drooling all over it wherever I went. It is fantastic :-) Technorati Tags: Build,Windows 8,Windows Phone,Lumia,Surface,Microsoft

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• How Estimates Became Quotes

  - by Lee Brandt

  It’s our fault. Well, not completely, but we haven’t helped the situation any. All of what follows comes from my own experiences which, from talking to lots of other developers about it, seems to be pretty much par for the course. Where We Started When we first started estimating, we estimated pretty clearly. We would try to imagine something we’d done that was similar to the project being estimated and we’d toss it about in our heads a bit and see how much bigger or smaller we thought this new thing was, and add or subtract accordingly. We wouldn’t spend too much time on it, because we wanted to get to writing the software. Eventually, we’d come across some huge problem that there was now way we could’ve known about ahead of time. Either we didn’t see this thing or, we didn’t realize that this particular version of a problem would be so… problematic. We usually call this “not knowing what we don’t know”. It’s unavoidable. We just can’t know. Until we wade in and start putting some code together, there are just some things we won’t know… and some things we don’t even know that we don’t know. Y’know? So what happens? We go over budget. Project managers scream and dance the dance of the stressed-out project manager, and there is nothing we can do (or could’ve done) about it. We didn’t know. We thought about it for a bit and we didn’t see this herculean task sitting in the middle of our nice quiet project, and it has bitten us in the rear end. We now know how to handle this in the future, though. We will take some more time to pick around the requirements and discover all those things we don’t know. We’ll do some prototyping, we’ll read some blogs about similar projects, we’ll really grill the customer with questions during the requirements gathering phase. We’ll keeping asking “what else?” until the shove us down the stairs. We’ll take our time and uncover it all. We Learned, But Good The next time comes, and you know what happens? We do it. We grill the customer for weeks and prototype and read and research and we estimate everything down to the last button on the last form. Know what that gets us? It gets us three months of wasted time, and our estimate will still be off. Possibly off by a factor of four. WTF, mate? No way we could be surprised by something! We uncovered every particle. We turned every stone. How is it we still came across unknowns? Because we STILL didn’t know what we didn’t know. How could we? We didn’t know to ask. The worst part is, we’ve now convinced the product that this is NOT an estimate. It is a solid number based on massive research and an endless number of questions that they answered. There is absolutely now way you don’t know everything there is to know about this project now. No way there is anything you haven’t uncovered. And their faith in that “Esti-Quote” goes through the roof. When the project goes over this time, they might even begin to question whether or not you know what you’re doing. Who could blame them? You drilled them for weeks about every little thing, and when they complained about all the questions, you told them you wanted to uncover everything so there would be no surprises. SO we set them up to faile Guess, Then Plan We had a chance. At the beginning we could have just said, “That’s just a gut-feeling estimate, based on my past experience with similar projects. There could still be surprises.” If we spend SOME time doing SOME discovery and then bounce that against our own past experiences, we can come up with a fairly healthy estimate. We can then help the product owner understand that an estimate is a guess. Sure, it’s an educated guess, but it is still a guess. If we get it right it will be almost completely luck. Then, we help them to plan the development by taking that guess (yes, they still need the guess for planning purposes) and start measuring early and often to see if we still think we are right. We should adjust the estimate and alert the product owner as soon as we see problems (bad news does not age well) and we should be able to see any problems immediately if we are constantly measuring our pace. In lean software, we start with that guess and begin measuring cycle times immediately. Then we can make projections based on those cycle times and compare them to our estimate. This constant feedback is the best way to ensure that there are no surprises at the END of the project. There sill still be surprises, but we’ll see them sooner and have a better understanding of how they will affect our overall timeline. What do you think?

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• SharePoint Navigation - Setting the Audience Property of an SPNavigationNode

  - by jhallal

  In this tip/trick i will demonstrate a way of setting by code the target audience of an SP navigation node.You might say setting this property in SharePoint UI is quite simple, but if you want to set it by code you will not find any straight forward property or method out of the box in SharePoint Object Model that does the job. The SPNavigationNode class has a property called “Properties”, which allows us to add custom properties to the node. One of the Property is “Audience”, which is used for setting the target audience on the navigation node. using (SPSite site = new SPSite("URL of your SharePoint Site")) {                using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())         {             SPNavigationNode navNode = web.Navigation.GlobalNodes[0];              if (navNode.Properties.Contains("Audience"))             {                 navNode.Properties["Audience"] = "Users or Groups";             }             else             {                 navNode.Properties.Add("Audience", "Users or Groups");             }             navNode.Update();         } }

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• Cooking with Wessty: WordPress and HTML 5

  - by David Wesst

  WordPress is easily one, if not the most, popular blogging platforms on the web. With the release of WordPress 3.x, the potential for what you can do with this open source software is limitless. This technique intends to show you how to get your WordPress wielding the power of the future web, that being HTML 5. --- Ingredients WordPress 3.x Your favourite HTML 5 compliant browser (e.g. Internet Explorer 9) Directions Setup WordPress on your server or host. Note: You can setup a WordPress.com account, but you will require an paid add-on to really take advantage of this technique.Login to the administration panel. Login to the administration section of your blog, using your web browser.  On the left side of the page, click the Appearance heading. Then, click on Themes. At the top of the page, select the Install Themes tab. In the search box, type the “toolbox” and click search. In the search results, you should see an theme called Toolbox. Click the Install link in the Toolbox item. A dialog window should appear with a sample picture of what the theme looks like. Click on the Install Now button in the bottom right corner. Et voila! Once the installation is done, you are done and ready to bring your blog into the future of the web. Try previewing your blog in HTML 5 by clicking the preview link.   Now, you are probably thinking “Man…HTML 5 looks like junk”. To that, I respond: “HTML was never why your site looked good in the first place. It was the CSS.” Now you have an un-stylized theme that uses HTML 5 elements throughout your WordPress site. If you want to learn how to apply CSS to your WordPress blog, you should check out the WordPress codex that pretty much covers everything there is to cover about WordPress development. Now, remember how we noted earlier that your free WordPress.com account wouldn’t take advantage of this technique? That is because, as of the time of this writing, you needed to pay a fee to use custom CSS. Remember now, this only gives you the foundation to create your own HTML 5 WordPress site. There are some HTML 5 themes out there that already look good, and were built using this as the foundation and added some CSS 3 to really spice it up. Looking forward to seeing more HTML 5 WordPress sites! Enjoy developing the future of the web. Resources Toolbox Theme JustCSS Theme WordPress Installation Tutorial WordPress Theme Development Tutorial This post also appears at http://david.wes.st

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• SQL SERVER – Template Browser – A Very Important and Useful Feature of SSMS

  - by pinaldave

  Let me start today’s blog post with a direction question. How many of you have ever used Template Browser? Template Browser is a very important and useful feature of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). Every time when I am talking about SQL Server there is always someone comes up with the question, why there is no step by step procedure included in SSMS for features. Honestly every time I get this question, the question I ask back is How many of you have ever used Template Browser? I think the answer to this question is most of the time either no or we have not heard of the feature. One of the people asked me back – have you ever written about it on your blog? I have not yet written about it. Basically there is nothing much to write about it. It is pretty straight forward feature, like any other feature and it is indeed difficult to elaborate. However, I will try to give a quick introduction to this feature. Templates are like a quick cheat sheet or quick reference. Templates are available to create objects like databases, tables, views, indexes, stored procedures, triggers, statistics, and functions. Templates are also available for Analysis Services as well. The template scripts contain parameters to help you customize the code. You can Replace Template Parameters dialog box to insert values into the script. Additionally users can create new custom templates as well with folder structure. To open a template from Template Explorer Go to View menu >> Template Explorer or type CTRL+ALT+L. You will find a list of categories click on any category and expand the folder structure. For our sample example let us expand Index Folder. In this folder you will notice the various T-SQL Scripts. These scripts can be opened by double click or can be dragged to editor area and modified as needed. Sample template is now available in the query editor area with all the necessary parameter place folder. You can replace the same parameter by typing either CTRL+SHIFT+M or by going to Query Menu >> Specify Values for Template Parameters. In this screen it will show  Specify Values for Template Parameters dialog box, accept the value or replace it with a new value. This will now get your script ready to go. Check it one more time and change the script to fit your requirement. I personally use template explorer for two things. First one is obviously for templates but the hidden one and an important one is for learning new features and T-SQL commands. There is so much to learn and so little time. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• ApiChange Corporate Edition

  - by Alois Kraus

  In my inital announcement I could only cover a small subset what ApiChange can do for you. Lets look at how ApiChange can help you to fix bugs due to wrong usage of an Api within a fraction of time than it would take normally. It happens that software is tested and some bugs show up. One bug could be …. : We get way too man log messages during our test run. Now you have the task to find the most frequent messages and eliminate the Log calls from the source code. But what about the myriads other log calls? How can we check that the distribution of log calls is nearly equal across all developers? And if not how can we contact the developer to check his code? ApiChange can help you too connect these loose ends. It combines several information silos into one cohesive view. The picture below shows how it is able to fill the gaps. The public version does currently “only” parse the binaries and pdbs to give you for a –whousesmethod query the following colums: If it happens that you have Rational ClearCase (a source control system) in your development shop and an Active Directory in place then ApiChange will try to determine from the source file which was determined from the pdb the last check in user which should be present in your Active Directory. From there it is only a small hop to an LDAP query to your AD domain or the GC (Global Catalog) to get from the user name his Full name Email Phone number Department …. ApiChange will append this additional data all of your query results which contain source files if you add the –fileinfo option. As I said this is currently not enabled by default since the AD domain needs to be configured which are currently only some hard coded values in the SiteConstants.cs source file of ApiChange.Api.dll. Once you got this data you can generate metrics based on source file, developer, assembly, … and add additional data by drag and drop directly into the pivot tables inside Excel. This allows you to e.g. to generate a report which lists the source files with most log calls in descending order along with the developer name and email in the pivot table. Armed with this knowledge you can take meaningful measures e.g. to ask the developer if the huge number of log calls in this source file can be optimized. I am aware that this is a very specific scenario but it is a huge time saver when you are able to fill the missing gaps of information. ApiChange does this in an extensible way. namespace ApiChange.ExternalData {     public interface IFileInformationProvider     {         UserInfo GetInformationFromFile(string fileName);     } } It defines an interface where you can implement your custom information provider to close the gap between source control system and the real person I have to send an email to ask if his code needs a closer inspection.

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• First Foray&ndash;About timeout

  - by SQLMonger

  It has been quite a while since I signed up for this blog site and high time that something was posted.  I have a list of topics that I will be working through and posting.  Some I am sure will have been posted by others, but I will be sticking to the technical problems and challenges that I’ve recently faced, and the solutions that worked for me.  My motto when learning something new has always been “My kingdom for an example!”, and I plan on delivering useful examples here so others can learn from my efforts, failures and successes.   A bit of background about me… My name is Clayton Groom. I am a founding partner of a consulting firm in St. Louis Missouri, Covenant Technology Partners, LLC and focus on SQL Server Data Warehouse design, Analysis Services and Enterprise Reporting solutions.  I have been working with SQL Server since the early nineties, when it still only ran on OS/2. I love solving puzzles and technical challenges.   Enough about me… On to a real problem… SSIS Connection Time outs versus Command Time outs Last week, I was working on automating the processing for a large Analysis Services cube.  I had reworked an SSIS package and script task originally posted by Vidas Matelis that automates the process of adding new and dropping old partitions to/from an Analysis Services cube.  I had the package working great, tested, and ready for deployment.  It basically performs a query against the source system to determine if there is new data in the warehouse that will require a new partition to be added to the cube, and it checks the cube to see if there are any partitions that are present that are no longer needed in a rolling 60 month window. My client uses Tivoli for running all their production jobs, and not SQL Agent, so I had to build a command line file for Tivoli to use to run the package. Everything was going great. I had tested the command file from my development workstation using an XML configuration file to pass in server-specific parameters into the package when executed using the DTExec utility. With all the pieces ready, I updated the dtsconfig file to point to the UAT environment and started working with the Tivoli developer to test the job.  On the first run, the job failed, and from what I could see in the SSIS log, it had failed because of a timeout. Other errors in the log made me think that perhaps the connection string had not been passed into the package correctly. We bumped the Connection Manager  timeout values from 20 seconds to 120 seconds and tried again. The job still failed. After changing the command line to use the /SET option instead of the /CONFIGFILE option, we tested again, and again failure. After a number more failed attempts, and getting the Teradata DBA involved to monitor and see if we were connecting and failing or just failing to connect, we determined that the job was indeed connecting to the server and then disconnecting itself after 30 seconds.  This seemed odd, as we had the timeout values for the connection manager set to 180 seconds by then.  At this point one of the DBA’s found a post on the Teradata forum that had the clues to the puzzle: There is a separate “CommandTimeout” custom property on the Data source object that may needed to be adjusted for longer running queries.  I opened up the SSIS package, opened the data flow task that generated the partition list table and right-clicked on the data source. from the context menu, I selected “Show Advanced Editor” and found the property. Sure enough, it was set to 30 seconds. The CommandTimeout property can also be edited in the SSIS Properties sheet. In order to determine how long the timeout needed to be, I ran the query from the task in the development environment and received a response in a matter of seconds.  I then tried the same query against the production database and waited several minutes for a response. This did not seem to be a reasonable response time for the query involved, and indeed it wasn’t. The Teradata DBA’s adjusted the query governor settings for the service account I was testing with, and we were able to get the response back down under a minute.  Still, I set the CommandTimeout property to a much higher value in case the job was ever started during a time of high-demand on the production server. With this change in place, the job finally completed successfully.  The lesson learned for me was two-fold: Always compare query execution times between development and production environments, and don’t assume that production will always be faster.  With higher user demands, query governors, and a whole lot more data, the execution time of even what might seem to be simple queries can vary greatly. SSIS Connection time out settings do not affect command time outs.  Connection timeouts control how long the package will wait for a response from the server before assuming the server is not available or is not responding. Command time outs control how long a task will wait for results to start being returned before deciding that the server is not responding. Both lessons seem pretty straight forward, and I felt pretty sheepish once I finally figured out what the issue was.  To be fair though, In the 5+ years that I have been working with SSIS, I could only recall one other time where I had to set the CommandTimeout property, and that memory only resurfaced while I was penning this post.

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