Search Results

Search found 36520 results on 1461 pages for 'default editing language'.

Page 557/1461 | < Previous Page | 553 554 555 556 557 558 559 560 561 562 563 564 | Next Page >

Table sorting & pagination with jQuery and Razor in ASP.NET MVC

- by hajan

Introduction jQuery enjoys living inside pages which are built on top of ASP.NET MVC Framework. The ASP.NET MVC is a place where things are organized very well and it is quite hard to make them dirty, especially because the pattern enforces you on purity (you can still make it dirty if you want so ;) ). We all know how easy is to build a HTML table with a header row, footer row and table rows showing some data. With ASP.NET MVC we can do this pretty easy, but, the result will be pure HTML table which only shows data, but does not includes sorting, pagination or some other advanced features that we were used to have in the ASP.NET WebForms GridView. Ok, there is the WebGrid MVC Helper, but what if we want to make something from pure table in our own clean style? In one of my recent projects, I’ve been using the jQuery tablesorter and tablesorter.pager plugins that go along. You don’t need to know jQuery to make this work… You need to know little CSS to create nice design for your table, but of course you can use mine from the demo… So, what you will see in this blog is how to attach this plugin to your pure html table and a div for pagination and make your table with advanced sorting and pagination features. Demo Project Resources The resources I’m using for this demo project are shown in the following solution explorer window print screen: Content/images – folder that contains all the up/down arrow images, pagination buttons etc. You can freely replace them with your own, but keep the names the same if you don’t want to change anything in the CSS we will built later. Content/Site.css – The main css theme, where we will add the theme for our table too Controllers/HomeController.cs – The controller I’m using for this project Models/Person.cs – For this demo, I’m using Person.cs class Scripts – jquery-1.4.4.min.js, jquery.tablesorter.js, jquery.tablesorter.pager.js – required script to make the magic happens Views/Home/Index.cshtml – Index view (razor view engine) the other items are not important for the demo. ASP.NET MVC 1. Model In this demo I use only one Person class which defines Person entity with several properties. You can use your own model, maybe one which will access data from database or any other resource. Person.cs public class Person { public string Name { get; set; } public string Surname { get; set; } public string Email { get; set; } public int? Phone { get; set; } public DateTime? DateAdded { get; set; } public int? Age { get; set; } public Person(string name, string surname, string email, int? phone, DateTime? dateadded, int? age) { Name = name; Surname = surname; Email = email; Phone = phone; DateAdded = dateadded; Age = age; } } 2. View In our example, we have only one Index.chtml page where Razor View engine is used. Razor view engine is my favorite for ASP.NET MVC because it’s very intuitive, fluid and keeps your code clean. 3. Controller Since this is simple example with one page, we use one HomeController.cs where we have two methods, one of ActionResult type (Index) and another GetPeople() used to create and return list of people. HomeController.cs public class HomeController : Controller { // // GET: /Home/ public ActionResult Index() { ViewBag.People = GetPeople(); return View(); } public List<Person> GetPeople() { List<Person> listPeople = new List<Person>(); listPeople.Add(new Person("Hajan", "Selmani", "[email protected]", 070070070,DateTime.Now, 25)); listPeople.Add(new Person("Straight", "Dean", "[email protected]", 123456789, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-5), 35)); listPeople.Add(new Person("Karsen", "Livia", "[email protected]", 46874651, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-2), 31)); listPeople.Add(new Person("Ringer", "Anne", "[email protected]", null, DateTime.Now, null)); listPeople.Add(new Person("O'Leary", "Michael", "[email protected]", 32424344, DateTime.Now, 44)); listPeople.Add(new Person("Gringlesby", "Anne", "[email protected]", null, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-9), 18)); listPeople.Add(new Person("Locksley", "Stearns", "[email protected]", 2135345, DateTime.Now, null)); listPeople.Add(new Person("DeFrance", "Michel", "[email protected]", 235325352, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-18), null)); listPeople.Add(new Person("White", "Johnson", null, null, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-22), 55)); listPeople.Add(new Person("Panteley", "Sylvia", null, 23233223, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-1), 32)); listPeople.Add(new Person("Blotchet-Halls", "Reginald", null, 323243423, DateTime.Now, 26)); listPeople.Add(new Person("Merr", "South", "[email protected]", 3232442, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-5), 85)); listPeople.Add(new Person("MacFeather", "Stearns", "[email protected]", null, DateTime.Now, null)); return listPeople; } } TABLE CSS/HTML DESIGN Now, lets start with the implementation. First of all, lets create the table structure and the main CSS. 1. HTML Structure @{ Layout = null; } <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>ASP.NET & jQuery</title>  </head> <body> <div> <table class="tablesorter"> <thead> <tr> <th> value </th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>value</td> </tr> </tbody> <tfoot> <tr> <th> value </th> </tr> </tfoot> </table> <div id="pager"> </div> </div> </body> </html> So, this is the main structure you need to create for each of your tables where you want to apply the functionality we will create. Of course the scripts are referenced once ;). As you see, our table has class tablesorter and also we have a div with id pager. In the next steps we will use both these to create the needed functionalities. The complete Index.cshtml coded to get the data from controller and display in the page is: <body> <div> <table class="tablesorter"> <thead> <tr> <th>Name</th> <th>Surname</th> <th>Email</th> <th>Phone</th> <th>Date Added</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> @{ foreach (var p in ViewBag.People) { <tr> <td>@p.Name</td> <td>@p.Surname</td> <td>@p.Email</td> <td>@p.Phone</td> <td>@p.DateAdded</td> </tr> } } </tbody> <tfoot> <tr> <th>Name</th> <th>Surname</th> <th>Email</th> <th>Phone</th> <th>Date Added</th> </tr> </tfoot> </table> <div id="pager" style="position: none;"> <form> <img src="@Url.Content("~/Content/images/first.png")" class="first" /> <img src="@Url.Content("~/Content/images/prev.png")" class="prev" /> <input type="text" class="pagedisplay" /> <img src="@Url.Content("~/Content/images/next.png")" class="next" /> <img src="@Url.Content("~/Content/images/last.png")" class="last" /> <select class="pagesize"> <option selected="selected" value="5">5</option> <option value="10">10</option> <option value="20">20</option> <option value="30">30</option> <option value="40">40</option> </select> </form> </div> </div> </body> So, mainly the structure is the same. I have added @Razor code to create table with data retrieved from the ViewBag.People which has been filled with data in the home controller. 2. CSS Design The CSS code I’ve created is: /* DEMO TABLE */ body { font-size: 75%; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Sans-Serif; color: #232323; background-color: #fff; } table { border-spacing:0; border:1px solid gray;} table.tablesorter thead tr .header { background-image: url(images/bg.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center right; cursor: pointer; } table.tablesorter tbody td { color: #3D3D3D; padding: 4px; background-color: #FFF; vertical-align: top; } table.tablesorter tbody tr.odd td { background-color:#F0F0F6; } table.tablesorter thead tr .headerSortUp { background-image: url(images/asc.png); } table.tablesorter thead tr .headerSortDown { background-image: url(images/desc.png); } table th { width:150px; border:1px outset gray; background-color:#3C78B5; color:White; cursor:pointer; } table thead th:hover { background-color:Yellow; color:Black;} table td { width:150px; border:1px solid gray;} PAGINATION AND SORTING Now, when everything is ready and we have the data, lets make pagination and sorting functionalities 1. jQuery Scripts referencing <link href="@Url.Content("~/Content/Site.css")" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery-1.4.4.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.tablesorter.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.tablesorter.pager.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> 2. jQuery Sorting and Pagination script <script type="text/javascript"> $(function () { $("table.tablesorter").tablesorter({ widthFixed: true, sortList: [[0, 0]] }) .tablesorterPager({ container: $("#pager"), size: $(".pagesize option:selected").val() }); }); </script> So, with only two lines of code, I’m using both tablesorter and tablesorterPager plugins, giving some options to both these. Options added: tablesorter - widthFixed: true – gives fixed width of the columns tablesorter - sortList[[0,0]] – An array of instructions for per-column sorting and direction in the format: [[columnIndex, sortDirection], ... ] where columnIndex is a zero-based index for your columns left-to-right and sortDirection is 0 for Ascending and 1 for Descending. A valid argument that sorts ascending first by column 1 and then column 2 looks like: [[0,0],[1,0]] (source: http://tablesorter.com/docs/) tablesorterPager – container: $(“#pager”) – tells the pager container, the div with id pager in our case. tablesorterPager – size: the default size of each page, where I get the default value selected, so if you put selected to any other of the options in your select list, you will have this number of rows as default per page for the table too. END RESULTS 1. Table once the page is loaded (default results per page is 5 and is automatically sorted by 1st column as sortList is specified) 2. Sorted by Phone Descending 3. Changed pagination to 10 items per page 4. Sorted by Phone and Name (use SHIFT to sort on multiple columns) 5. Sorted by Date Added 6. Page 3, 5 items per page ADDITIONAL ENHANCEMENTS We can do additional enhancements to the table. We can make search for each column. I will cover this in one of my next blogs. Stay tuned. DEMO PROJECT You can download demo project source code from HERE.CONCLUSION Once you finish with the demo, run your page and open the source code. You will be amazed of the purity of your code.Working with pagination in client side can be very useful. One of the benefits is performance, but if you have thousands of rows in your tables, you will get opposite result when talking about performance. Hence, sometimes it is nice idea to make pagination on back-end. So, the compromise between both approaches would be best to combine both of them. I use at most up to 500 rows on client-side and once the user reach the last page, we can trigger ajax postback which can get the next 500 rows using server-side pagination of the same data. I would like to recommend the following blog post http://weblogs.asp.net/gunnarpeipman/archive/2010/09/14/returning-paged-results-from-repositories-using-pagedresult-lt-t-gt.aspx, which will help you understand how to return page results from repository. I hope this was helpful post for you. Wait for my next posts ;). Please do let me know your feedback. Best Regards, Hajan

Read the article
Anti-Forgery Request Recipes For ASP.NET MVC And AJAX

- by Dixin

Background To secure websites from cross-site request forgery (CSRF, or XSRF) attack, ASP.NET MVC provides an excellent mechanism: The server prints tokens to cookie and inside the form; When the form is submitted to server, token in cookie and token inside the form are sent in the HTTP request; Server validates the tokens. To print tokens to browser, just invoke HtmlHelper.AntiForgeryToken():<% using (Html.BeginForm()) { %> <%: this.Html.AntiForgeryToken(Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)%> <%-- Other fields. --%> <input type="submit" value="Submit" /> <% } %> This invocation generates a token then writes inside the form:<form action="..." method="post"> <input name="__RequestVerificationToken" type="hidden" value="J56khgCvbE3bVcsCSZkNVuH9Cclm9SSIT/ywruFsXEgmV8CL2eW5C/gGsQUf/YuP" />  <input type="submit" value="Submit" /> </form> and also writes into the cookie: __RequestVerificationToken_Lw__= J56khgCvbE3bVcsCSZkNVuH9Cclm9SSIT/ywruFsXEgmV8CL2eW5C/gGsQUf/YuP When the above form is submitted, they are both sent to server. In the server side, [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attribute is used to specify the controllers or actions to validate them:[HttpPost] [ValidateAntiForgeryToken(Salt = Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)] public ActionResult Action(/* ... */) { // ... } This is very productive for form scenarios. But recently, when resolving security vulnerabilities for Web products, some problems are encountered. Specify validation on controller (not on each action) The server side problem is, It is expected to declare [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] on controller, but actually it has be to declared on each POST actions. Because POST actions are usually much more then controllers, the work would be a little crazy. Problem Usually a controller contains actions for HTTP GET and actions for HTTP POST requests, and usually validations are expected for HTTP POST requests. So, if the [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] is declared on the controller, the HTTP GET requests become invalid:[ValidateAntiForgeryToken(Salt = Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)] public class SomeController : Controller // One [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attribute. { [HttpGet] public ActionResult Index() // Index() cannot work. { // ... } [HttpPost] public ActionResult PostAction1(/* ... */) { // ... } [HttpPost] public ActionResult PostAction2(/* ... */) { // ... } // ... } If browser sends an HTTP GET request by clicking a link: http://Site/Some/Index, validation definitely fails, because no token is provided. So the result is, [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attribute must be distributed to each POST action:public class SomeController : Controller // Many [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attributes. { [HttpGet] public ActionResult Index() // Works. { // ... } [HttpPost] [ValidateAntiForgeryToken(Salt = Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)] public ActionResult PostAction1(/* ... */) { // ... } [HttpPost] [ValidateAntiForgeryToken(Salt = Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)] public ActionResult PostAction2(/* ... */) { // ... } // ... } This is a little bit crazy, because one application can have a lot of POST actions. Solution To avoid a large number of [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attributes (one for each POST action), the following ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute wrapper class can be helpful, where HTTP verbs can be specified:[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Class | AttributeTargets.Method, AllowMultiple = false, Inherited = true)] public class ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute : FilterAttribute, IAuthorizationFilter { private readonly ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute _validator; private readonly AcceptVerbsAttribute _verbs; public ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute(HttpVerbs verbs) : this(verbs, null) { } public ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute(HttpVerbs verbs, string salt) { this._verbs = new AcceptVerbsAttribute(verbs); this._validator = new ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute() { Salt = salt }; } public void OnAuthorization(AuthorizationContext filterContext) { string httpMethodOverride = filterContext.HttpContext.Request.GetHttpMethodOverride(); if (this._verbs.Verbs.Contains(httpMethodOverride, StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) { this._validator.OnAuthorization(filterContext); } } } When this attribute is declared on controller, only HTTP requests with the specified verbs are validated:[ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapper(HttpVerbs.Post, Constants.AntiForgeryTokenSalt)] public class SomeController : Controller { // GET actions are not affected. // Only HTTP POST requests are validated. } Now one single attribute on controller turns on validation for all POST actions. Maybe it would be nice if HTTP verbs can be specified on the built-in [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attribute, which is easy to implemented. Specify Non-constant salt in runtime By default, the salt should be a compile time constant, so it can be used for the [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] or [ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapper] attribute. Problem One Web product might be sold to many clients. If a constant salt is evaluated in compile time, after the product is built and deployed to many clients, they all have the same salt. Of course, clients do not like this. Even some clients might want to specify a custom salt in configuration. In these scenarios, salt is required to be a runtime value. Solution In the above [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] and [ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapper] attribute, the salt is passed through constructor. So one solution is to remove this parameter:public class ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute : FilterAttribute, IAuthorizationFilter { public ValidateAntiForgeryTokenWrapperAttribute(HttpVerbs verbs) { this._verbs = new AcceptVerbsAttribute(verbs); this._validator = new ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute() { Salt = AntiForgeryToken.Value }; } // Other members. } But here the injected dependency becomes a hard dependency. So the other solution is moving validation code into controller to work around the limitation of attributes:public abstract class AntiForgeryControllerBase : Controller { private readonly ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute _validator; private readonly AcceptVerbsAttribute _verbs; protected AntiForgeryControllerBase(HttpVerbs verbs, string salt) { this._verbs = new AcceptVerbsAttribute(verbs); this._validator = new ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute() { Salt = salt }; } protected override void OnAuthorization(AuthorizationContext filterContext) { base.OnAuthorization(filterContext); string httpMethodOverride = filterContext.HttpContext.Request.GetHttpMethodOverride(); if (this._verbs.Verbs.Contains(httpMethodOverride, StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) { this._validator.OnAuthorization(filterContext); } } } Then make controller classes inheriting from this AntiForgeryControllerBase class. Now the salt is no long required to be a compile time constant. Submit token via AJAX For browser side, once server side turns on anti-forgery validation for HTTP POST, all AJAX POST requests will fail by default. Problem In AJAX scenarios, the HTTP POST request is not sent by form. Take jQuery as an example:$.post(url, { productName: "Tofu", categoryId: 1 // Token is not posted. }, callback); This kind of AJAX POST requests will always be invalid, because server side code cannot see the token in the posted data. Solution Basically, the tokens must be printed to browser then sent back to server. So first of all, HtmlHelper.AntiForgeryToken() need to be called somewhere. Now the browser has token in both HTML and cookie. Then jQuery must find the printed token in the HTML, and append token to the data before sending:$.post(url, { productName: "Tofu", categoryId: 1, __RequestVerificationToken: getToken() // Token is posted. }, callback); To be reusable, this can be encapsulated into a tiny jQuery plugin:/// <reference path="jquery-1.4.2.js" /> (function ($) { $.getAntiForgeryToken = function (tokenWindow, appPath) { // HtmlHelper.AntiForgeryToken() must be invoked to print the token. tokenWindow = tokenWindow && typeof tokenWindow === typeof window ? tokenWindow : window; appPath = appPath && typeof appPath === "string" ? "_" + appPath.toString() : ""; // The name attribute is either __RequestVerificationToken, // or __RequestVerificationToken_{appPath}. tokenName = "__RequestVerificationToken" + appPath; // Finds the <input type="hidden" name={tokenName} value="..." /> from the specified. // var inputElements = $("input[type='hidden'][name='__RequestVerificationToken" + appPath + "']"); var inputElements = tokenWindow.document.getElementsByTagName("input"); for (var i = 0; i < inputElements.length; i++) { var inputElement = inputElements[i]; if (inputElement.type === "hidden" && inputElement.name === tokenName) { return { name: tokenName, value: inputElement.value }; } } return null; }; $.appendAntiForgeryToken = function (data, token) { // Converts data if not already a string. if (data && typeof data !== "string") { data = $.param(data); } // Gets token from current window by default. token = token ? token : $.getAntiForgeryToken(); // $.getAntiForgeryToken(window). data = data ? data + "&" : ""; // If token exists, appends {token.name}={token.value} to data. return token ? data + encodeURIComponent(token.name) + "=" + encodeURIComponent(token.value) : data; }; // Wraps $.post(url, data, callback, type). $.postAntiForgery = function (url, data, callback, type) { return $.post(url, $.appendAntiForgeryToken(data), callback, type); }; // Wraps $.ajax(settings). $.ajaxAntiForgery = function (settings) { settings.data = $.appendAntiForgeryToken(settings.data); return $.ajax(settings); }; })(jQuery); In most of the scenarios, it is Ok to just replace $.post() invocation with $.postAntiForgery(), and replace $.ajax() with $.ajaxAntiForgery():$.postAntiForgery(url, { productName: "Tofu", categoryId: 1 }, callback); // Token is posted. There might be some scenarios of custom token, where $.appendAntiForgeryToken() is useful:data = $.appendAntiForgeryToken(data, token); // Token is already in data. No need to invoke $.postAntiForgery(). $.post(url, data, callback); And there are scenarios that the token is not in the current window. For example, an HTTP POST request can be sent by an iframe, while the token is in the parent window. Here, token's container window can be specified for $.getAntiForgeryToken():data = $.appendAntiForgeryToken(data, $.getAntiForgeryToken(window.parent)); // Token is already in data. No need to invoke $.postAntiForgery(). $.post(url, data, callback); If you have better solution, please do tell me.

Read the article
O’Reilly Deal of the Day 7/August/2014 - Windows PowerShell for Developers

- by TATWORTH

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2014/08/07/orsquoreilly-deal-of-the-day-7august2014---windows-powershell-for.aspxToday’s half-price Deal of the Day from O’Reilly at http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920024491.do?code=MSDEAL is Windows PowerShell for Developers. “Want to perform programming tasks better, faster, simpler, and make them repeatable? Take a deep dive into Windows PowerShell and discover what this distributed automation platform can do. Whether you’re a .NET developer or IT pro, this concise guide will show you how PowerShell’s scripting language can help you be more productive on everyday tasks.”

Read the article
How to Reuse Your Old Wi-Fi Router as a Network Switch

- by Jason Fitzpatrick

Just because your old Wi-Fi router has been replaced by a newer model doesn’t mean it needs to gather dust in the closet. Read on as we show you how to take an old and underpowered Wi-Fi router and turn it into a respectable network switch (saving your $20 in the process). Image by mmgallan. Why Do I Want To Do This? Wi-Fi technology has changed significantly in the last ten years but Ethernet-based networking has changed very little. As such, a Wi-Fi router with 2006-era guts is lagging significantly behind current Wi-Fi router technology, but the Ethernet networking component of the device is just as useful as ever; aside from potentially being only 100Mbs instead of 1000Mbs capable (which for 99% of home applications is irrelevant) Ethernet is Ethernet. What does this matter to you, the consumer? It means that even though your old router doesn’t hack it for your Wi-Fi needs any longer the device is still a perfectly serviceable (and high quality) network switch. When do you need a network switch? Any time you want to share an Ethernet cable among multiple devices, you need a switch. For example, let’s say you have a single Ethernet wall jack behind your entertainment center. Unfortunately you have four devices that you want to link to your local network via hardline including your smart HDTV, DVR, Xbox, and a little Raspberry Pi running XBMC. Instead of spending $20-30 to purchase a brand new switch of comparable build quality to your old Wi-Fi router it makes financial sense (and is environmentally friendly) to invest five minutes of your time tweaking the settings on the old router to turn it from a Wi-Fi access point and routing tool into a network switch–perfect for dropping behind your entertainment center so that your DVR, Xbox, and media center computer can all share an Ethernet connection. What Do I Need? For this tutorial you’ll need a few things, all of which you likely have readily on hand or are free for download. To follow the basic portion of the tutorial, you’ll need the following: 1 Wi-Fi router with Ethernet ports 1 Computer with Ethernet jack 1 Ethernet cable For the advanced tutorial you’ll need all of those things, plus: 1 copy of DD-WRT firmware for your Wi-Fi router We’re conducting the experiment with a Linksys WRT54GL Wi-Fi router. The WRT54 series is one of the best selling Wi-Fi router series of all time and there’s a good chance a significant number of readers have one (or more) of them stuffed in an office closet. Even if you don’t have one of the WRT54 series routers, however, the principles we’re outlining here apply to all Wi-Fi routers; as long as your router administration panel allows the necessary changes you can follow right along with us. A quick note on the difference between the basic and advanced versions of this tutorial before we proceed. Your typical Wi-Fi router has 5 Ethernet ports on the back: 1 labeled “Internet”, “WAN”, or a variation thereof and intended to be connected to your DSL/Cable modem, and 4 labeled 1-4 intended to connect Ethernet devices like computers, printers, and game consoles directly to the Wi-Fi router. When you convert a Wi-Fi router to a switch, in most situations, you’ll lose two port as the “Internet” port cannot be used as a normal switch port and one of the switch ports becomes the input port for the Ethernet cable linking the switch to the main network. This means, referencing the diagram above, you’d lose the WAN port and LAN port 1, but retain LAN ports 2, 3, and 4 for use. If you only need to switch for 2-3 devices this may be satisfactory. However, for those of you that would prefer a more traditional switch setup where there is a dedicated WAN port and the rest of the ports are accessible, you’ll need to flash a third-party router firmware like the powerful DD-WRT onto your device. Doing so opens up the router to a greater degree of modification and allows you to assign the previously reserved WAN port to the switch, thus opening up LAN ports 1-4. Even if you don’t intend to use that extra port, DD-WRT offers you so many more options that it’s worth the extra few steps. Preparing Your Router for Life as a Switch Before we jump right in to shutting down the Wi-Fi functionality and repurposing your device as a network switch, there are a few important prep steps to attend to. First, you want to reset the router (if you just flashed a new firmware to your router, skip this step). Following the reset procedures for your particular router or go with what is known as the “Peacock Method” wherein you hold down the reset button for thirty seconds, unplug the router and wait (while still holding the reset button) for thirty seconds, and then plug it in while, again, continuing to hold down the rest button. Over the life of a router there are a variety of changes made, big and small, so it’s best to wipe them all back to the factory default before repurposing the router as a switch. Second, after resetting, we need to change the IP address of the device on the local network to an address which does not directly conflict with the new router. The typical default IP address for a home router is 192.168.1.1; if you ever need to get back into the administration panel of the router-turned-switch to check on things or make changes it will be a real hassle if the IP address of the device conflicts with the new home router. The simplest way to deal with this is to assign an address close to the actual router address but outside the range of addresses that your router will assign via the DHCP client; a good pick then is 192.168.1.2. Once the router is reset (or re-flashed) and has been assigned a new IP address, it’s time to configure it as a switch. Basic Router to Switch Configuration If you don’t want to (or need to) flash new firmware onto your device to open up that extra port, this is the section of the tutorial for you: we’ll cover how to take a stock router, our previously mentioned WRT54 series Linksys, and convert it to a switch. Hook the Wi-Fi router up to the network via one of the LAN ports (consider the WAN port as good as dead from this point forward, unless you start using the router in its traditional function again or later flash a more advanced firmware to the device, the port is officially retired at this point). Open the administration control panel via web browser on a connected computer. Before we get started two things: first, anything we don’t explicitly instruct you to change should be left in the default factory-reset setting as you find it, and two, change the settings in the order we list them as some settings can’t be changed after certain features are disabled. To start, let’s navigate to Setup ->Basic Setup. Here you need to change the following things: Local IP Address: [different than the primary router, e.g. 192.168.1.2] Subnet Mask: [same as the primary router, e.g. 255.255.255.0] DHCP Server: Disable Save with the “Save Settings” button and then navigate to Setup -> Advanced Routing: Operating Mode: Router This particular setting is very counterintuitive. The “Operating Mode” toggle tells the device whether or not it should enable the Network Address Translation (NAT) feature. Because we’re turning a smart piece of networking hardware into a relatively dumb one, we don’t need this feature so we switch from Gateway mode (NAT on) to Router mode (NAT off). Our next stop is Wireless -> Basic Wireless Settings: Wireless SSID Broadcast: Disable Wireless Network Mode: Disabled After disabling the wireless we’re going to, again, do something counterintuitive. Navigate to Wireless -> Wireless Security and set the following parameters: Security Mode: WPA2 Personal WPA Algorithms: TKIP+AES WPA Shared Key: [select some random string of letters, numbers, and symbols like JF#d$di!Hdgio890] Now you may be asking yourself, why on Earth are we setting a rather secure Wi-Fi configuration on a Wi-Fi router we’re not going to use as a Wi-Fi node? On the off chance that something strange happens after, say, a power outage when your router-turned-switch cycles on and off a bunch of times and the Wi-Fi functionality is activated we don’t want to be running the Wi-Fi node wide open and granting unfettered access to your network. While the chances of this are next-to-nonexistent, it takes only a few seconds to apply the security measure so there’s little reason not to. Save your changes and navigate to Security ->Firewall. Uncheck everything but Filter Multicast Firewall Protect: Disable At this point you can save your changes again, review the changes you’ve made to ensure they all stuck, and then deploy your “new” switch wherever it is needed. Advanced Router to Switch Configuration For the advanced configuration, you’ll need a copy of DD-WRT installed on your router. Although doing so is an extra few steps, it gives you a lot more control over the process and liberates an extra port on the device. Hook the Wi-Fi router up to the network via one of the LAN ports (later you can switch the cable to the WAN port). Open the administration control panel via web browser on the connected computer. Navigate to the Setup -> Basic Setup tab to get started. In the Basic Setup tab, ensure the following settings are adjusted. The setting changes are not optional and are required to turn the Wi-Fi router into a switch. WAN Connection Type: Disabled Local IP Address: [different than the primary router, e.g. 192.168.1.2] Subnet Mask: [same as the primary router, e.g. 255.255.255.0] DHCP Server: Disable In addition to disabling the DHCP server, also uncheck all the DNSMasq boxes as the bottom of the DHCP sub-menu. If you want to activate the extra port (and why wouldn’t you), in the WAN port section: Assign WAN Port to Switch [X] At this point the router has become a switch and you have access to the WAN port so the LAN ports are all free. Since we’re already in the control panel, however, we might as well flip a few optional toggles that further lock down the switch and prevent something odd from happening. The optional settings are arranged via the menu you find them in. Remember to save your settings with the save button before moving onto a new tab. While still in the Setup -> Basic Setup menu, change the following: Gateway/Local DNS : [IP address of primary router, e.g. 192.168.1.1] NTP Client : Disable The next step is to turn off the radio completely (which not only kills the Wi-Fi but actually powers the physical radio chip off). Navigate to Wireless -> Advanced Settings -> Radio Time Restrictions: Radio Scheduling: Enable Select “Always Off” There’s no need to create a potential security problem by leaving the Wi-Fi radio on, the above toggle turns it completely off. Under Services -> Services: DNSMasq : Disable ttraff Daemon : Disable Under the Security -> Firewall tab, uncheck every box except “Filter Multicast”, as seen in the screenshot above, and then disable SPI Firewall. Once you’re done here save and move on to the Administration tab. Under Administration -> Management: Info Site Password Protection : Enable Info Site MAC Masking : Disable CRON : Disable 802.1x : Disable Routing : Disable After this final round of tweaks, save and then apply your settings. Your router has now been, strategically, dumbed down enough to plod along as a very dependable little switch. Time to stuff it behind your desk or entertainment center and streamline your cabling.

Read the article
Ten Things I Wish I’d Known When I Started Using tSQLt and SQL Test

The open-source Unit Test framework tSQLt is a great way of writing unit tests in the same language as the one being tested. In retrospect, after using tSQLt for a while, what are the 'gotchas'; those things that you'd have been better off knowing about before you get started? David Green lists a few tips he wished he'd read beforehand. Learn Agile Database Development Best PracticesAgile database development experts Sebastian Meine and Dennis Lloyd are running day-long classes designed to complement Red Gate’s SQL in the City US tour. Classes will be held in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Seattle. Register Now.

Read the article
How to Make Your Computer Press a Key Every X Seconds

- by The Geek

Have you ever needed to press a key every couple of seconds, or every few minutes? Perhaps you’re playing a video game and you’re waiting for an item, or you’ve got some other reason. Either way, here’s how to make your PC do it automatically. You’ll need to start by downloading and installing AutoHotkey, which is a simple scripting language that allows you to create easy scripts. Once you do that, right-click anywhere and choose New –> AutoHotkey Script. Once you’ve done that, paste the following into the script: #PersistentSetTimer, PressTheKey, 1800000Return HTG Explains: How Hackers Take Over Web Sites with SQL Injection / DDoS Use Your Android Phone to Comparison Shop: 4 Scanner Apps Reviewed How to Run Android Apps on Your Desktop the Easy Way

Read the article
Where are some good resources to learn Game Development with OpenGL ES 2.X

- by Mahbubur R Aaman

Background: From http://www.khronos.org/opengles/2_X/ OpenGL ES 2.0 combines a version of the OpenGL Shading Language for programming vertex and fragment shaders that has been adapted for embedded platforms, together with a streamlined API from OpenGL ES 1.1 that has removed any fixed functionality that can be easily replaced by shader programs, to minimize the cost and power consumption of advanced programmable graphics subsystems. Related Resources The OpenGL ES 2.0 specification, header files, and optional extension specifications The OpenGL ES 2.0 Online Manual Pages The OpenGL ES 3.0 Shading LanguageOnline Reference Pages The OpenGL ES 2.0 Quick Reference Card OpenGL ES 1.X OpenGL ES 2.0 From http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/archives/2003 Cocos2d Version 2 released and one of primary key point noted as OpenGL ES 2.0 support From http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Compiz-now-supports-OpenGL-ES-2-0-1674605.html Compiz now supports OpenGL ES 2.0 My Question : Being as a Game Developer ( I have to work with several game engine Cocos2d, Unity). I need several resources to cope up with OpenGL ES 2.X for better outcome while developing games?

Read the article
Mario’s Agent Discusses an Image Makeover and Identity Changes with Him [Video]

- by Asian Angel

Mario has a meeting with his agent to discuss an image makeover, some changes to his identity, and his current problems with P.E.T.A. So much for being known as Jumpman and his relationship with his fiancée Pauline! What other changes does the agent have in mind our favorite carpenter…err…plumber? Watch to find out! Note: Video contains some language that may be considered inappropriate. Mario Meets With His Agent [Dorkly Bits] How to Make and Install an Electric Outlet in a Cabinet or DeskHow To Recover After Your Email Password Is CompromisedHow to Clean Your Filthy Keyboard in the Dishwasher (Without Ruining it)

Read the article
CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server

- by The Geek

Overview CloudBerry Online Backup version 1.5 is a front end application for Amazon S3 storage for backing up your Windows Home Server data. It makes backing up your essential data to Amazon S3 an easy process in the event the disaster strikes. Installation You install the Cloudberry Addin as you do for any addins for Windows Home Server. On a PC on your network, browse to the shared folders on your server and open the Add-Ins folder and copy over WHS_CloudBerryOnlineBackupSetup_v1.5.0.81S3o.msi (link below), then close out of the folder. Next launch the Windows Home Server Console, click Settings, then Add-Ins. Click on the Available tab and click the Install button. It installs very quickly, and when you get the Installation Succeeded dialog click OK. You will lose connection through the Console, just click OK, then reconnect. After reconnecting, you’ll see CloudBerry Backup has been installed, and you can begin using it. You can setup a backup plan right away or find out what’s new with version 1.5. Amazon S3 Account If you don’t already have an Amazon S3 account, you’ll be prompted to create a new one. Click on the Create an account hyperlink, which takes you to the Amazon S3 page where you can sign up. After reviewing the functionality of Amazon S3, click on the Sign Up for Amazon S3 button. Enter in your contact information and accept the Amazon Web Services Customer Agreement. You’re then shown their pricing for storage plans. The amount of storage space you use will depend on your needs. It’s relatively cheap for smaller amounts of data. Just keep in mind the more data you store and download, the more S3 is going to cost. Note: Amazon S3 is introducing Reduced Redundancy Storage which will lower the cost of the data stored on S3. CloudBerry 1.5 will support this new feature. You can find out more about this new pricing structure. Note: Keep in mind that after you first sign up for an Amazon S3 account, it can take up to 24 hours to be authorized. In fact, you may want to sign up for the S3 account before installing the Add-In. After you sign up for your S3 Account, you’ll be given access credentials which you can enter in and create a Storage Bucket name. Features & Use CloudBerry is wizard driven, straight-forward and easy to use. Here we take a look at creating a backup plan. To begin, click on the Setup Backup Plan button to kick off the wizard. Select your backup mode based on the amount of features you want. In our example we’re going to select Advanced Mode as it offers more features than Simple Mode. Select your backup storage account or create a new one. You can select a default account by checking Use currently selected account as default. Now you can go through and select the files and folders you want to backup from your home server. Check the box Show physical drives to get more of a selection of files and folders. This also allows you to backup files from your data drive as well. It has full support for drive extenders so you can backup your shares as well. The cool thing about Cloudberry is it allows you to drill down specific files and folders unlike other WHS backup utilities. Next you can use advanced filters to specify files and/or folders to skip if you want. There are compression and encryption options as well. This will save storage space, bandwidth, and keep your data secure. Purge Options allow you to customize options for getting rid of older files. You can also select the option to delete files from the S3 service that have been deleted locally. Be careful with this option however, as you won’t be able to restore files if you delete them locally. You have some nice scheduling options from running backups manually, specific date and time, or recurring daily, weekly or monthly. Receive email notifications in all cases or when a backup fails. This is a good option so you know if things were successful or something failed, and you need to back it up manually. Email notifications… Give your plan a name… Then if the summary page looks good you can continue, or still go back at this point if something doesn’t look correct and needs adjusting. That’s it! You’re ready to go, and you have an option to start your first backup right away. After you’ve created a backup plan, you can go in and edit, delete, view history, or restore files. Restoring Files using CloudBerry To restore data from your backups kick off the Restore Wizard and select the backup to restore from. You can select the last backup, a specific point in time, or manually browse through the files. Browse through the directory and select the files you need to restore. Choose the destination to restore the files to. You can select from the original location, a specific location, to overwrite existing files, or set the location as the default for future restores. If the files are encrypted, enter in the correct passwords. If the summary looks good, click on Next to start the restore process. You’ll be shown a progress bar at the bottom of the screen while the files are restored. After the process has completed, close out of the Restore Wizard. In this example we restored a couple of music files to the desktop of Windows Home Server… But as shown above you can save them to the original location, other network locations, or WHS shared folders. This can make it a lot easier to keep track of files you’ve restored. You can also access different options for CloudBerry by clicking Settings in WHS Console then CloudBerry Backup. Here you can set up a new storage account, check for updates, app options, Diagnostics, and send feedback. Under Options there are several settings you can tweak to get the best experience for your WHS backups. CloudBerry Web Interface Another nice feature is the CloudBerry Web Interface so you can access your data from anywhere you have an Internet connection. To check it out in WHS Console, click on the Backup Web Interface link…you’ll probably want to bookmark the link in your favorite browser. Note: This feature is still in beta and at the time of this review, the Web Interface wasn’t up and running so we weren’t able to test it out. Performance The Cloudberry app works very well through the Windows Home Server Console. The amount of time it takes to backup or restore your data will depend on the speed of your Internet connection and size of the files. In our tests, backing up 1GB of data to the Amazon S3 account took around an hour, but we were running it on a DSL with limited upload speeds so your mileage will vary. Product Support In our experience, the team at CloudBerry offered great support in a timely manner when contacting them. You can fill out a help request through a form on their website and they also have a community forum. Conclusion We were very pleased with CloudBerry Online Backup for WHS. It’s wizard driven interface makes it extremely easy to use, and offers comprehensive backup choices for your Amazon S3 account. CloudBerry will only backup files that have been modified, so if files haven’t been changed, they won’t be backed up again.They offer a free 15 day trial and is $29.99 after that for a full license. Once you buy the app you own it, and charges to your S3 account will vary depending on the amount of data you upload. If you’re looking for an effective and easy to use front end application to backup your Windows Home Server data to your Amazon S3 account, CloudBerry is a recommended affordable choice. Download CloudBerry for Windows Home Server Sign Up For Amazon S3 Account Rating Installation: 9 Ease of Use: 8 Features: 8 Performance: 8 Product Support: 8 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home ServerGMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerBackup Windows Home Server Folders to an External Hard DriveBackup Your Windows Home Server Off-Site with Asus WebstorageRemove a Network Computer from Windows Home Server TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox)

Read the article
Comments on Comments

- by Joe Mayo

I almost tweeted a reply to Capar Kleijne's question about comments on Twitter, but realized that my opinion exceeded 140 characters. The following is based upon my experience with extremes and approaches that I find useful in code comments. There are a couple extremes that I've seen and reasons why people go the distance in each approach. The most common extreme is no comments in the code at all. A few bad reasons why this happens is because a developer is in a hurry, sloppy, or is interested in job preservation. The unfortunate result is that the code is difficult to understand and hard to maintain. The drawbacks to no comments in code are a primary reason why teachers drill the need for commenting code into our heads. This viewpoint assumes the lack of comments are bad because the code is bad, but there is another reason for not commenting that is gaining more popularity. I've heard/and read that code should be self documenting. Following this thought pattern, if code is well written with meaningful names, there should not be a reason for comments. An addendum to this argument is that comments are often neglected and get out-of-date, but the code is what is kept up-to-date. Presumably, if code contained very good naming, it would be easy to maintain. This is a noble perspective and I like the practice of meaningful naming of identifiers. However, I think it's also an extreme approach that doesn't cover important cases. i.e. If an identifier is named badly (subjective differences in opinion) or not changed appropriately during maintenance, then the badly named identifier is no more useful than a stale comment. These were the two no-comment extremes, so let's look at the too many comments extreme. On a regular basis, I'll see cases where the code is over-commented; not nearly as often as the no-comment scenarios, but still prevalent. These are examples of where every single line in the code is commented. These comments make the code harder to read because they get in the way of the algorithm. In most cases, the comments parrot what each line of code does. If a developer understands the language, then most statements are immediately intuitive. i.e. what use is it to say that I'm assigning foo to bar when it's clear what the code is doing. I think that over-commenting code is a waste of time that slows down initial development and maintenance. Understandably, the developer's intentions are admirable because they've had it beaten into their heads that they must comment. However, I think it's an extreme and prefer a more moderate approach. I don't think the extremes do justice to code because each can make maintenance harder. No comments on bad code is obviously a problem, but the other two extremes are subtle and require qualification to address properly. The problem I see with the code-as-documentation approach is that it doesn't lift the developer out of the algorithm to identify dependencies, intentions, and hacks. Any developer can read code and follow an algorithm, but they still need to know where it fits into the big picture of the application. Because of indirections with language features like interfaces, delegates, and virtual members, code can become complex. Occasionally, it's useful to point out a nuance or reason why a piece of code is there. i.e. If you've building an app that communicates via HTTP, you'll have certain headers to include for the endpoint, and it could be useful to point out why the code for setting those header values is there and how they affect the application. An argument against this could be that you should extract that code into a separate method with a meaningful name to describe the scenario. My problem with such an approach would be that your code base becomes even more difficult to navigate and work with because you have all of this extra code just to make the code more meaningful. My opinion is that a simple and well-stated comment stating the reasons and intention for the code is more natural and convenient to the initial developer and maintainer. I just don't agree with the approach of going out of the way to avoid making a comment. I'm also concerned that some developers would take this approach as an excuse to not comment their bad code. Another area where I like comments is on documentation comments. Java has it and so does C# and VB. It's convenient because we can build automated tools that extract these comments. These extracted comments are often much better than no documentation at all. The "go read the code" answer always doesn't fulfill the need for a quick summary of an API. To summarize, I think that the extremes of no comments and too many comments are less than desirable approaches. I prefer documentation comments to explain each class and member (API level) and code comments as necessary to supplement well-written code. Joe

Read the article
Google I/O 2010 - Go Programming

Google I/O 2010 - Go Programming Google I/O 2010 - Go Programming Tech Talks Rob Pike, Russ Cox The Go Programming Language was released as an open source project in late 2009. This session will illustrate how programming in Go differs from other languages through a set of examples demonstrating features particular to Go. These include concurrency, embedded types, methods on any type, and program construction using interfaces. Very little time will be spent waiting for compilation. For all I/O 2010 sessions, please go to code.google.com From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 12 0 ratings Time: 56:11 More in Science & Technology

Read the article
Do’s and Don’ts Building SharePoint Applications

- by Bil Simser

SharePoint is a great platform for building quick LOB applications. Simple things from employee time trackers to server and software inventory to full blown Help Desks can be crafted up using SharePoint from just customizing Lists. No programming necessary. However there are a few tricks I’ve painfully learned over the years that you can use for your own solutions. DO What’s In A Name? When you create a new list, column, or view you’ll commonly name it something like “Expense Reports”. However this has the ugly effect of creating a url to the list as “Expense%20Reports”. Or worse, an internal field name of “Expense_x0x0020_Reports” which is not only cryptic but hard to remember when you’re trying to find the column by internal name. While “Expense Reports 2011” is user friendly, “ExpenseReports2011” is not (unless you’re a programmer). So that’s not the solution. Well, not entirely. Instead when you create your column or list or view use the scrunched up name (I can’t think of the technical term for it right now) of “ExpenseReports2011”, “WomenAtTheOfficeThatAreMen” or “KoalaMeatIsGoodWhenBroiled”. After you’ve created it, go back and change the name to the more friendly “Silly Expense Reports That Nobody Reads”. The original internal name will be the url and code friendly one without spaces while the one used on data entry forms and view headers will be the human version. Smart Columns When building a view include columns that make sense. By default when you add a column the “Add to default view” is checked. Resist the urge to be lazy and leave it checked. Uncheck that puppy and decide consciously what columns should be included in the view. Pick columns that make sense to what the user is trying to do. This means you have to talk to the user. Yes, I know. That can be trying at times and even painful. Go ahead, talk to them. You might learn something. Find out what’s important to them and why. If they’re doing something repetitively as part of their job, try to make their life easier by including what’s most important to them. Do they really need to see the Created *and* Modified date of a document or do they just need the title and author? You’ll only find out after talking to them (or getting them drunk in a bar and leaving them in the back alley handcuffed to a garbage bin, don’t ask). Gotta Keep it Separated Hey, views are there for a reason. Use them. While “All Items” is a fine way to present a list of well, all items, it’s hardly sufficient to present a list of servers built before the Y2K bug hit. You’ll be scrolling the list for hours finally arriving at Page 387 of 12,591 and cursing that SharePoint guy for convincing you that putting your hardware into a list would be of any use to anyone. Next to collecting the data, presenting it is just as important. Views are often overlooked and many times ignored or misused. They’re the way you can slice and dice the data up so that you’re not trying to consume 3,000 years of human evolution on a single web page. Remember views can be filtered so feel free to create a view for each status or one for each operating system or one for each species of Information Worker you might be putting in that list or document library. Not only will it reduce the number of items someone sees at one time, it’ll also make the information that much more relevant. Also remember that each view is a separate page. Use it in navigation by creating a menu on the Quick Launch to each view. The discoverability of the Views menu isn’t overly obvious and if you violate the rule of columns (see Horizontally Scrolling below) the view menu doesn’t even show up until you shuffle the scroll bar to the left. Navigation links, big giant buttons, a screaming flashing “CLICK ME NOW” will help your users find their way. Sort It! Views are great so we’re building nice, rich views for the user. Awesomesauce. However sort is not very discoverable by the user. For example when you’re looking at a view how do you know if it’s ascending or descending and what is it sorted on. Maybe it’s sorted using two fields so what’s that all about? Help your users by letting them know the information they’re looking at is sorted. Maybe you name the view something appropriate like “Bogus Expense Claims Sorted By Deadbeats”. If you use the naming strategy just make sure you keep the name consistent with the description. In the previous example their better be a Deadbeat column so I can see the sort in action. Having a “Loser” column, while equally correct, is a little obtuse to the average Information Worker. Remember, they usually don’t use acronyms and even if they knew how to, it’s not immediately obvious to them that’s what you’re trying to convey. Another option is to simply drop a Content Editor Web Part above the list and explain exactly the view they’re looking at. Each view is it’s own page so one CEWP won’t be used across the board. Be descriptive in what the user is seeing but try to keep it brief. Dumping the first chapter of I, Claudius might be informative to the data but can gobble up screen real estate and miss the point of having the list. DO NOT Useless Attachments The attachments column is, in a word, useless. For the most part. Sure it indicates there’s an attachment on the list item but in the grand scheme of things that’s not overly informative. Maybe it is and by all means, if it makes sense to you include it. Colour it. Make it shine and stand like the Return of Clippy on every SharePoint list. Without it being functional it can be boring. EndUserSharePoint.com has an article to make the son of Clippy that much more useful so feel free to head over and check out this blog post by Paul Grenier on the task (Warning code ahead! Danger Will Robinson!) In any case, I would suggest you remove it from your views. Again if it’s important then include it but consider the jQuery solution above to make it functional. It’s added by default to views and one of things that people forget to clean up. Horizontal Scrolling Screen real estate is premium so building a list that contains 8,000 columns and stretches horizontally across 15 screens probably isn’t the most user friendly experience. Most users can’t figure out how to scroll vertically let alone horizontally so don’t make it even that more confusing for them. Take the Steve Krug approach in your view designs and try not to make the user think. Again views are your friend. Consider splitting up the data into views where one view contains 10 columns and other view contains the other 10. Okay, maybe your information doesn’t work that way but humans can only process 7 pieces of data at a time, 10 at most (then their heads explode and you don’t want to clean that mess up, especially on a Friday night before the big dance). It drives me batshit crazy when I see a view with 80 columns of data. I often ask the user “So what do you do with all this information”. The response is usually “With this data [the first 10 columns] I decide if I’m going to fire everyone, and with this data [the next 10 columns] I decide if I’m going to set the building on fire and collect the insurance”. It’s at that point I show them how to create two new views “People Who Are About To Get The Axe” and “Beach Time For The Executives”. Again, talk to your users and try to reason with them on cutting down the number of columns they see at once. Vertical Scrolling Another big faux pas I find is the use of multi-line comment fields in views. It’s not so bad when you have a statement like this in your view: “I really like, oh my god, thought I was going to scream when I saw this turtle then I decided what I was going to have for dinner and frankly I hate having to work late so when I was talking to the customer I thought, oh my god, what if the customer has turtles and then it appeared to me that I really was hungry so I'm going to have lunch now.” It’s fine if that’s the only column along with two or three others, but once you slap those 20 columns of data into the list, the comment field wraps and forms a new multi-page novel that takes up your entire screen. Do everyone a favour and just avoid adding the column to views. Train the user to just click through to the item if they need to see the contents. Duplicate Information Duplication is never good. Views and great as you can group data together. For example create a view of project status reports grouped by author. Then you can see what project manager is being a dip and not submitting their report. However if you group by author do you really need the Created By field as well in the view? Or if the view is grouped by Project then Author do you need both. Horizontal real estate is always at a premium so try not to clutter up the view with duplicate data like this. Oh yeah, if you’re scratching your head saying “But Bil, if I don’t include the Project name in the view and I have a lot of items then how do I know which one I’m looking at”. That’s a hint that your grouping is too vague or you have too much data in the view based on that criteria. Filter it down a notch, create some views, and try to keep the group down to a single screen where you can see the group header at the top of the page. Again it’s just managing the information you have. Redundant, See Redundant This partially relates to duplicate information and smart columns but basically remember to not include the obvious in a view. Remember, don’t make me think. If you’ve gone to the trouble (and it was a lot of trouble wasn’t it?) to create separate views of your data by creating a “September Zombie Brain Sales”, “October Zombie Brain Sales”, etc. then please for the love of all that is holy do not include the Month and Product columns in your view. Similarly if you create a “My” view of anything (“My Favourite Brands of Spandex”, “My Co-Workers I Find The Urge To Disinfect”) then again, do not include the owner or author field (or whatever field you use to identify “My”). That’s just silly. Hope that helps! Happy customizing!

Read the article
Get started with C++ AMP

- by Daniel Moth

With the imminent release of Visual Studio 2012, even if you do not classify yourself as a C++ developer, C++ AMP is something you should learn so you can understand how to speed up your loops by offloading to the GPU the computation performed in the loop (assuming you have large number of iterations/data). We have many C# customers who are using C++ AMP through pinvoke, and of course many more directly from C++. So regardless of your programming language, I hope you'll find helpful these short videos that help you get started with C++ AMP C++ AMP core API introduction... from scratch Tiling Introduction - C++ AMP Matrix Multiplication with C++ AMP GPU debugging in Visual Studio 2012 In particular the work we have done for parallel and GPU debugging in Visual Studio 2012 is market leading, so check it out! Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

Read the article
Can't add Fedora 14 to grub.

- by Dananjaya

Today I installed Fedora 14 in a different partition in the same hard drive as Ubuntu. At the Fedora 14 installation, I chose not to install Boot-loader in the MBR, and instead chose to install it in the Fedora partition itself, which is according to my HD layout /sda3. After the Fedora 14 installation I booted in to Ubuntu and ran sudo update-grub but 'grub.cfg' fails to add Fedora 14 in to the OS list. Here is the output of boot-info script. Boot Info Script 0.60 from 17 May 2011 ============================= Boot Info Summary: =============================== = Grub2 (v1.99) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks at sector 1 of the same hard drive for core.img. core.img is at this location and looks for (,msdos1)/boot/grub on this drive. sda1: __________________________________________________________________________ File system: ext4 Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: Operating System: Ubuntu 11.04 Boot files: /boot/grub/grub.cfg /etc/fstab /boot/grub/core.img sda2: __________________________________________________________________________ File system: Extended Partition Boot sector type: Unknown Boot sector info: sda5: __________________________________________________________________________ File system: swap Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: sda3: __________________________________________________________________________ File system: ext4 Boot sector type: Grub Legacy Boot sector info: Grub Legacy (v0.97) is installed in the boot sector of sda3 and looks at sector 49897340 on boot drive #1 for the stage2 file. A stage2 file is at this location on /dev/sda. Stage2 looks on partition #3 for /grub/grub.conf. Operating System: Boot files: /grub/menu.lst /grub/grub.conf sda4: __________________________________________________________________________ File system: LVM2_member Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: ============================ Drive/Partition Info: ============================= Drive: sda _____________________________________________________________________ Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders, total 78165360 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Partition Boot Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors Id System /dev/sda1 * 2,048 49,865,759 49,863,712 83 Linux /dev/sda2 74,866,686 78,163,967 3,297,282 5 Extended /dev/sda5 74,866,688 78,163,967 3,297,280 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda3 49,866,752 50,890,751 1,024,000 83 Linux /dev/sda4 50,890,752 74,864,639 23,973,888 8e Linux LVM "blkid" output: ________________________________________________________________ Device UUID TYPE LABEL /dev/sda1 03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 ext4 /dev/sda3 dea81d77-a375-4d0e-954e-1829f6b91f10 ext4 /dev/sda4 mzVoj0-GHJu-DJr4-0G2Y-SzZ0-LTfW-F01yf9 LVM2_member /dev/sda5 3e89ba8e-7754-4ee4-aca1-e2a82bffb7a7 swap ================================ Mount points: ================================= Device Mount_Point Type Options /dev/sda1 / ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,user_xattr,commit=0) =========================== sda1/boot/grub/grub.cfg: =========================== -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE # # It is automatically generated by grub-mkconfig using templates # from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub # ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/00_header ### if [ -s $prefix/grubenv ]; then set have_grubenv=true load_env fi set default="2" if [ "${prev_saved_entry}" ]; then set saved_entry="${prev_saved_entry}" save_env saved_entry set prev_saved_entry= save_env prev_saved_entry set boot_once=true fi function savedefault { if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then saved_entry="${chosen}" save_env saved_entry fi } function recordfail { set recordfail=1 if [ -n "${have_grubenv}" ]; then if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then save_env recordfail; fi; fi } function load_video { insmod vbe insmod vga insmod video_bochs insmod video_cirrus } insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sda,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 if loadfont /usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2 ; then set gfxmode=1024x768 load_video insmod gfxterm fi terminal_output gfxterm insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sda,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 set locale_dir=($root)/boot/grub/locale set lang=en_US insmod gettext if [ "${recordfail}" = 1 ]; then set timeout=-1 else set timeout=10 fi ### END /etc/grub.d/00_header ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### set menu_color_normal=white/black set menu_color_highlight=black/light-gray if background_color 44,0,30; then clear fi ### END /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### if [ ${recordfail} != 1 ]; then if [ -e ${prefix}/gfxblacklist.txt ]; then if hwmatch ${prefix}/gfxblacklist.txt 3; then if [ ${match} = 0 ]; then set linux_gfx_mode=keep else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi else set linux_gfx_mode=keep fi else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi export linux_gfx_mode if [ "$linux_gfx_mode" != "text" ]; then load_video; fi menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.38-8-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail set gfxpayload=$linux_gfx_mode insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sda,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic root=UUID=03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7 initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.38-8-generic (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail set gfxpayload=$linux_gfx_mode insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sda,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 echo 'Loading Linux 2.6.38-8-generic ...' linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic root=UUID=03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 ro single echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic } submenu "Previous Linux versions" { menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.35-28-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail set gfxpayload=$linux_gfx_mode insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sda,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-28-generic root=UUID=03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7 initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-28-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.35-28-generic (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail set gfxpayload=$linux_gfx_mode insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sda,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 echo 'Loading Linux 2.6.35-28-generic ...' linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-28-generic root=UUID=03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 ro single echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-28-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.32-21-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail set gfxpayload=$linux_gfx_mode insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sda,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-21-generic root=UUID=03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7 initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-21-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.32-21-generic (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail set gfxpayload=$linux_gfx_mode insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sda,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 echo 'Loading Linux 2.6.32-21-generic ...' linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-21-generic root=UUID=03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 ro single echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-21-generic } } ### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### END /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sda,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin } menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sda,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin console=ttyS0,115200n8 } ### END /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### if [ "x${timeout}" != "x-1" ]; then if keystatus; then if keystatus --shift; then set timeout=-1 else set timeout=0 fi else if sleep --interruptible 3 ; then set timeout=0 fi fi fi ### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### # This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the # menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change # the 'exec tail' line above. ### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/41_custom ### if [ -f $prefix/custom.cfg ]; then source $prefix/custom.cfg; fi ### END /etc/grub.d/41_custom ### -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- =============================== sda1/etc/fstab: ================================ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier # for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name # devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5). # # proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0 # / was on /dev/sda1 during installation # Commented out by Dropbox # UUID=03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation UUID=3e89ba8e-7754-4ee4-aca1-e2a82bffb7a7 none swap sw 0 0 UUID=03e2a8da-171f-49e9-b24d-434e66cd1140 / ext4 errors=remount-ro,user_xattr 0 1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- =================== sda1: Location of files loaded by Grub: ==================== GiB - GB File Fragment(s) 0.065803528 = 0.070656000 boot/grub/core.img 1 21.263332367 = 22.831329280 boot/grub/grub.cfg 1 0.771381378 = 0.828264448 boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-wl 1 2.054199219 = 2.205679616 boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-21-generic 3 2.893260956 = 3.106615296 boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-28-generic 2 6.833232880 = 7.337127936 boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic 2 1.772453308 = 1.903157248 boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-21-generic 2 2.068012238 = 2.220511232 boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-28-generic 1 5.532531738 = 5.940510720 boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic 1 6.833232880 = 7.337127936 initrd.img 2 2.893260956 = 3.106615296 initrd.img.old 2 5.532531738 = 5.940510720 vmlinuz 1 2.068012238 = 2.220511232 vmlinuz.old 1 ============================= sda3/grub/grub.conf: ============================= -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # grub.conf generated by anaconda # # Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file # NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that # all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg. # root (hd0,2) # kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root # initrd /initrd-[generic-]version.img #boot=/dev/sda3 default=0 timeout=0 splashimage=(hd0,2)/grub/splash.xpm.gz hiddenmenu title Fedora (2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686) root (hd0,2) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686 ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_root rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_swap rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet initrd /initramfs-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.img -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- =================== sda3: Location of files loaded by Grub: ==================== GiB - GB File Fragment(s) 23.792903900 = 25.547436032 grub/grub.conf 1 23.792903900 = 25.547436032 grub/menu.lst 1 23.793020248 = 25.547560960 grub/stage2 1 23.817364693 = 25.573700608 initramfs-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.img 2 23.787566185 = 25.541704704 initrd-plymouth.img 1 23.791228294 = 25.545636864 vmlinuz-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686 1 ======================== Unknown MBRs/Boot Sectors/etc: ======================== Unknown BootLoader on sda2 00000000 81 71 62 ff a1 94 89 ff 4d 43 3a ff fa f2 ec ff |.qb.....MC:.....| 00000010 fb f6 f1 ff fc f8 f4 ff fc f8 f4 ff fc f8 f4 ff |................| 00000020 5d 56 50 ff a1 94 89 ff 81 70 62 ff 81 70 62 ff |]VP......pb..pb.| 00000030 81 70 62 ff 81 70 62 ff 81 70 62 ff a1 94 89 ff |.pb..pb..pb.....| 00000040 4d 43 3a ff fa f2 ec ff fb f6 f1 ff fc f8 f4 ff |MC:.............| 00000050 fc f8 f4 ff fc f8 f4 ff 5d 56 50 ff a1 94 89 ff |........]VP.....| 00000060 81 70 62 ff 81 70 62 ff 81 70 62 ff 81 70 62 ff |.pb..pb..pb..pb.| 00000070 81 70 62 ff a1 94 89 ff 4d 43 3a ff fa f2 ec ff |.pb.....MC:.....| 00000080 fb f6 f1 ff fc f8 f4 ff fc f8 f4 ff fc f8 f4 ff |................| 00000090 5d 56 50 ff a0 93 89 ff 80 6f 61 ff 80 6f 61 ff |]VP......oa..oa.| 000000a0 80 6f 61 ff 80 6f 61 ff 80 6f 61 ff a0 93 89 ff |.oa..oa..oa.....| 000000b0 4d 43 3a ff fa f2 ed ff fb f6 f2 ff fc f8 f5 ff |MC:.............| 000000c0 fc f8 f5 ff fc f8 f5 ff 5d 56 50 ff 9f 93 88 ff |........]VP.....| 000000d0 7f 6f 60 ff 7f 6f 60 ff 7f 6f 60 ff 7f 6f 60 ff |.o`..o`..o`..o`.| 000000e0 7f 6f 60 ff 9f 93 88 ff 4d 43 3a ff fa f2 ed ff |.o`.....MC:.....| 000000f0 fb f6 f2 ff fc f8 f5 ff fc f8 f5 ff fc f8 f5 ff |................| 00000100 5d 56 50 ff 9f 93 88 ff 7f 6f 60 ff 7f 6f 60 ff |]VP......o`..o`.| 00000110 7f 6f 60 ff 7f 6f 60 ff 7f 6f 60 ff 9f 93 88 ff |.o`..o`..o`.....| 00000120 4d 43 3a ff fa f2 ed ff fb f6 f2 ff fc f8 f5 ff |MC:.............| 00000130 fc f8 f5 ff fc f8 f5 ff 5d 56 50 ff 9e 92 88 ff |........]VP.....| 00000140 7e 6e 60 ff 7e 6e 60 ff 7e 6e 60 ff 7e 6e 60 ff |~n`.~n`.~n`.~n`.| 00000150 7e 6e 60 ff 9e 92 88 ff 4d 43 3a ff fa f2 ed ff |~n`.....MC:.....| 00000160 fb f6 f2 ff fc f8 f5 ff fc f8 f5 ff fc f8 f5 ff |................| 00000170 5d 56 50 ff 9e 92 88 ff 7d 6d 5f ff 7d 6d 5f ff |]VP.....}m_.}m_.| 00000180 7d 6d 5f ff 7d 6d 5f ff 7d 6d 5f ff 9e 92 88 ff |}m_.}m_.}m_.....| 00000190 4d 43 3a ff fa f2 ed ff fb f6 f2 ff fc f8 f5 ff |MC:.............| 000001a0 fc f8 f5 ff fc f8 f5 ff 5d 56 50 ff 9e 92 88 ff |........]VP.....| 000001b0 7d 6d 5f ff 7d 6d 5f ff 7d 6d 5f ff 7d 6d 00 fe |}m_.}m_.}m_.}m..| 000001c0 ff ff 82 fe ff ff 02 00 00 00 00 50 32 00 00 00 |...........P2...| 000001d0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................| * 000001f0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 aa |..............U.| 00000200 =============================== StdErr Messages: =============================== unlzma: Decoder error According to this Fedora 14 is visible in sda3. Does anybody know a way to add Fedora 14 to grub.cfg of Ubuntu so I can choose which OS to boot? Thanks in advance.

Read the article
Optional Parameters and Named Arguments in C# 4 (and a cool scenario w/ ASP.NET MVC 2)

[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 seventeenth in a series of blog posts Im doing on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release. Todays post covers two new language feature being added to C# 4.0 optional parameters and named arguments as well as a cool way you can take advantage of optional parameters (both in VB and C#) with ASP.NET MVC 2. Optional Parameters in C# 4.0 C# 4.0 now...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

Read the article
SQL SERVER – Concurrency Basics – Guest Post by Vinod Kumar

- by pinaldave

This guest post is by Vinod Kumar. Vinod Kumar has worked with SQL Server extensively since joining the industry over a decade ago. Working on various versions from SQL Server 7.0, Oracle 7.3 and other database technologies – he now works with the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) as a Technology Architect. Let us read the blog post in Vinod’s own voice. Learning is always fun when it comes to SQL Server and learning the basics again can be more fun. I did write about Transaction Logs and recovery over my blogs and the concept of simplifying the basics is a challenge. In the real world we always see checks and queues for a process – say railway reservation, banks, customer supports etc there is a process of line and queue to facilitate everyone. Shorter the queue higher is the efficiency of system (a.k.a higher is the concurrency). Every database does implement this using checks like locking, blocking mechanisms and they implement the standards in a way to facilitate higher concurrency. In this post, let us talk about the topic of Concurrency and what are the various aspects that one needs to know about concurrency inside SQL Server. Let us learn the concepts as one-liners: Concurrency can be defined as the ability of multiple processes to access or change shared data at the same time. The greater the number of concurrent user processes that can be active without interfering with each other, the greater the concurrency of the database system. Concurrency is reduced when a process that is changing data prevents other processes from reading that data or when a process that is reading data prevents other processes from changing that data. Concurrency is also affected when multiple processes are attempting to change the same data simultaneously. Two approaches to managing concurrent data access: Optimistic Concurrency Model Pessimistic Concurrency Model Concurrency Models Pessimistic Concurrency Default behavior: acquire locks to block access to data that another process is using. Assumes that enough data modification operations are in the system that any given read operation is likely affected by a data modification made by another user (assumes conflicts will occur). Avoids conflicts by acquiring a lock on data being read so no other processes can modify that data. Also acquires locks on data being modified so no other processes can access the data for either reading or modifying. Readers block writer, writers block readers and writers. Optimistic Concurrency Assumes that there are sufficiently few conflicting data modification operations in the system that any single transaction is unlikely to modify data that another transaction is modifying. Default behavior of optimistic concurrency is to use row versioning to allow data readers to see the state of the data before the modification occurs. Older versions of the data are saved so a process reading data can see the data as it was when the process started reading and not affected by any changes being made to that data. Processes modifying the data is unaffected by processes reading the data because the reader is accessing a saved version of the data rows. Readers do not block writers and writers do not block readers, but, writers can and will block writers. Transaction Processing A transaction is the basic unit of work in SQL Server. Transaction consists of SQL commands that read and update the database but the update is not considered final until a COMMIT command is issued (at least for an explicit transaction: marked with a BEGIN TRAN and the end is marked by a COMMIT TRAN or ROLLBACK TRAN). Transactions must exhibit all the ACID properties of a transaction. ACID Properties Transaction processing must guarantee the consistency and recoverability of SQL Server databases. Ensures all transactions are performed as a single unit of work regardless of hardware or system failure. A – Atomicity C – Consistency I – Isolation D- Durability Atomicity: Each transaction is treated as all or nothing – it either commits or aborts. Consistency: ensures that a transaction won’t allow the system to arrive at an incorrect logical state – the data must always be logically correct. Consistency is honored even in the event of a system failure. Isolation: separates concurrent transactions from the updates of other incomplete transactions. SQL Server accomplishes isolation among transactions by locking data or creating row versions. Durability: After a transaction commits, the durability property ensures that the effects of the transaction persist even if a system failure occurs. If a system failure occurs while a transaction is in progress, the transaction is completely undone, leaving no partial effects on data. Transaction Dependencies In addition to supporting all four ACID properties, a transaction might exhibit few other behaviors (known as dependency problems or consistency problems). Lost Updates: Occur when two processes read the same data and both manipulate the data, changing its value and then both try to update the original data to the new value. The second process might overwrite the first update completely. Dirty Reads: Occurs when a process reads uncommitted data. If one process has changed data but not yet committed the change, another process reading the data will read it in an inconsistent state. Non-repeatable Reads: A read is non-repeatable if a process might get different values when reading the same data in two reads within the same transaction. This can happen when another process changes the data in between the reads that the first process is doing. Phantoms: Occurs when membership in a set changes. It occurs if two SELECT operations using the same predicate in the same transaction return a different number of rows. Isolation Levels SQL Server supports 5 isolation levels that control the behavior of read operations. Read Uncommitted All behaviors except for lost updates are possible. Implemented by allowing the read operations to not take any locks, and because of this, it won’t be blocked by conflicting locks acquired by other processes. The process can read data that another process has modified but not yet committed. When using the read uncommitted isolation level and scanning an entire table, SQL Server can decide to do an allocation order scan (in page-number order) instead of a logical order scan (following page pointers). If another process doing concurrent operations changes data and move rows to a new location in the table, the allocation order scan can end up reading the same row twice. Also can happen if you have read a row before it is updated and then an update moves the row to a higher page number than your scan encounters later. Performing an allocation order scan under Read Uncommitted can cause you to miss a row completely – can happen when a row on a high page number that hasn’t been read yet is updated and moved to a lower page number that has already been read. Read Committed Two varieties of read committed isolation: optimistic and pessimistic (default). Ensures that a read never reads data that another application hasn’t committed. If another transaction is updating data and has exclusive locks on data, your transaction will have to wait for the locks to be released. Your transaction must put share locks on data that are visited, which means that data might be unavailable for others to use. A share lock doesn’t prevent others from reading but prevents them from updating. Read committed (snapshot) ensures that an operation never reads uncommitted data, but not by forcing other processes to wait. SQL Server generates a version of the changed row with its previous committed values. Data being changed is still locked but other processes can see the previous versions of the data as it was before the update operation began. Repeatable Read This is a Pessimistic isolation level. Ensures that if a transaction revisits data or a query is reissued the data doesn’t change. That is, issuing the same query twice within a transaction cannot pickup any changes to data values made by another user’s transaction because no changes can be made by other transactions. However, this does allow phantom rows to appear. Preventing non-repeatable read is a desirable safeguard but cost is that all shared locks in a transaction must be held until the completion of the transaction. Snapshot Snapshot Isolation (SI) is an optimistic isolation level. Allows for processes to read older versions of committed data if the current version is locked. Difference between snapshot and read committed has to do with how old the older versions have to be. It’s possible to have two transactions executing simultaneously that give us a result that is not possible in any serial execution. Serializable This is the strongest of the pessimistic isolation level. Adds to repeatable read isolation level by ensuring that if a query is reissued rows were not added in the interim, i.e, phantoms do not appear. Preventing phantoms is another desirable safeguard, but cost of this extra safeguard is similar to that of repeatable read – all shared locks in a transaction must be held until the transaction completes. In addition serializable isolation level requires that you lock data that has been read but also data that doesn’t exist. Ex: if a SELECT returned no rows, you want it to return no. rows when the query is reissued. This is implemented in SQL Server by a special kind of lock called the key-range lock. Key-range locks require that there be an index on the column that defines the range of values. If there is no index on the column, serializable isolation requires a table lock. Gets its name from the fact that running multiple serializable transactions at the same time is equivalent of running them one at a time. Now that we understand the basics of what concurrency is, the subsequent blog posts will try to bring out the basics around locking, blocking, deadlocks because they are the fundamental blocks that make concurrency possible. Now if you are with me – let us continue learning for SQL Server Locking Basics. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Concurrency

Read the article
Is it really free to deploy SharpDevelop apps?

- by Gabriel

I'm trying SharpDevelop to develop c# applications. Regardless of the language and the IDE, is it free to deploy applications that use WinForms? I've been developing with MonoDevelop just because it has a designer for Gtk# (client doesn't want to pay more for licences as to use VS...), but it's too buggy and it's making us lose lots of time. SharpDevelop looks great at first sight, but I wouldn't like the user or us to have problems with legal software. Thank you for the data! Warm regards.

Read the article
JavaScript Intellisense with Telerik in ASP.NET Master Page Project with VS 2010

- by Otto Neff

Today I was looking for a solution to get finally the JScript/Javascript/jQuery Intellisense Featureworking with my ASP.Net Webform Project to work. I found some good articles: - JScript IntelliSense Overview- JScript IntelliSense: A Reference for the “Reference” Tag- Enabling JavaScript intellisense in VS.NET 2010 to work with SharePoint 2010- Rich IntelliSense for jQueryBUT, all of suggested solutions did not work right with my Master Page based Visual Studio 2010 Solution.Only with physical Javascript Files (Telerik includes certain Javascript Files like jQuery as Ressource) or/andconfigure always a new ASP.NET Scriptmanager / RadScriptManager on every page derived from the Master Page, wasn't exactly what I was looking for. So I came up with the following simple Solution, to Trick VS2010and still have the Project running with multiple runat="server" Scriptmanagers. In short:- New ASP.NET control derived from ScriptManager with emtpy overwritten OnInit() to use it as emtpy wrapper for VS2010. In detail:New RadScriptManager Classusing System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using Telerik.Web.UI; namespace IntellisenseJavascript.Controls { public class IntelliJS : RadScriptManager { protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { } protected override void OnPreRender(EventArgs e) { } protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e) { } protected override void Render(System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter writer) { } public override void RenderControl(System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter writer) { } } } web.config<configuration> ... <system.web> ... <pages> <controls> <add tagPrefix="telerik" namespace="Telerik.Web.UI" assembly="Telerik.Web.UI, Version=2011.3.1115.40, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=121fae78165ba3d4"/> <add tagPrefix="VSFix" namespace="IntellisenseJavascript.Controls" assembly="IntellisenseJavascript"/> </controls> </pages> ... Master Page<%@ Master Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Site.master.cs" Inherits="IntellisenseJavascript.Site" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html > <head id="head" runat="server"> <title></title> <telerik:RadStyleSheetManager ID="radStyleSheetManager" runat="server" /> </head> <body> <form id="form" runat="server"> <telerik:RadScriptManager ID="radScriptManager" runat="server"> <Scripts> <asp:ScriptReference Assembly="Telerik.Web.UI, Version=2011.3.1115.40, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=121fae78165ba3d4" Name="Telerik.Web.UI.Common.Core.js" /> <asp:ScriptReference Assembly="Telerik.Web.UI, Version=2011.3.1115.40, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=121fae78165ba3d4" Name="Telerik.Web.UI.Common.jQuery.js" /> <asp:ScriptReference Assembly="Telerik.Web.UI, Version=2011.3.1115.40, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=121fae78165ba3d4" Name="Telerik.Web.UI.Common.jQueryInclude.js" /> </Scripts> </telerik:RadScriptManager> <telerik:RadAjaxManager ID="radAjaxManager" runat="server"> </telerik:RadAjaxManager> <div> #MASTER CONTENT# <asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="contentPlaceHolder" runat="server"> </asp:ContentPlaceHolder> </div> </form> <script type="text/javascript"> $(function () { // Masterpage ready $('body').css('margin', '50px'); }); </script> </body> </html> ASPX Page<%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Site.Master" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="IntellisenseJavascript.Default" %> <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="contentPlaceHolder" runat="server"> <VSFix:IntelliJS runat="server" ID="intelliJS"> <Scripts> <asp:ScriptReference Assembly="Telerik.Web.UI, Version=2011.3.1115.40, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=121fae78165ba3d4" Name="Telerik.Web.UI.Common.Core.js" /> <asp:ScriptReference Assembly="Telerik.Web.UI, Version=2011.3.1115.40, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=121fae78165ba3d4" Name="Telerik.Web.UI.Common.jQuery.js" /> <asp:ScriptReference Assembly="Telerik.Web.UI, Version=2011.3.1115.40, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=121fae78165ba3d4" Name="Telerik.Web.UI.Common.jQueryInclude.js" /> </Scripts> </VSFix:IntelliJS> <div style="border: 5px solid #FF9900;"> #PAGE CONTENT# </div> <script type="text/javascript"> $(function () { // Page ready $('body').css('border', '5px solid #888'); }); </script> </asp:Content> The Result I know, this is not the way it meant to be... but now at least you can have a Main ScriptManager for all Common Scripts and Settings, inject page specific Javascripts in PageLoad Event in normal ASPX Files and have JavaScript Intellisense for defined Scripts from JS Files or Assembly Ressouce in your Content Maybe, vNext will fix this.

Read the article
Mario and Luigi’s Pick-up Game of Baseball – Choosing Teams [Video]

- by Asian Angel

Mario and Luigi are choosing players for a pick-up game of baseball and Chargin’ Chuck is ready to go. Will Mario or Luigi pick him for their teams early on or will poor Chuck be the last one chosen? Note: Contains slightly inappropriate language. Dorkly Bits: Chargin’ Chuck Gets Picked Last [via Geeks are Sexy] HTG Explains: What’s the Difference Between the Windows 7 HomeGroups and XP-style Networking?Internet Explorer 9 Released: Here’s What You Need To KnowHTG Explains: How Does Email Work?

Read the article
what, why, when, should I learn computer science?

- by dramasea

I'm 16 years old and really an enthusiast on web programming. I know (X)HTML, css, javascript and php. And i heard about computer science. Below are my question: What is computer science? Should a web programmer learn computer science? If the answer of question 2 is yes, then what programming language(s) should I learn before I get into computer science (I saw the video of 'Introduction to computer science' which is one of the MIT opencourse and it started to use python without teaching you from scratch.) Can I learn computer science now? (Without a university degree, I can watch open courseware.)

Read the article
Finding a problem in some task [closed]

- by nagisa

Recently I competed in nation wide programming contest finals. Not unexpectedly all problems were algorithmic. I lost (40 points out of 600. Winner got ~300). I know why I lost very well - I don't know how to find actual problem in those obfuscated tasks which are life-blood of every competition. I think that being self-taught and not well versed in algorithms got me too. As side effect of learning things myself I know how to search for information, however all I could find are couple questions about learning algorithms. For now I put Python Algorithms: Mastering Basic Algorithms in the Python Language and Analysis of Algorithms which I found in those questions to my "to read" list. That leaves my first problem of not knowing how to find a problem unsolved. Will that ability come with learning algorithms? Or does it need some special attention? Any suggestions are welcomed.

Read the article
Le C++ expressif n° 3 : pourquoi les erreurs de templates posent problèmes, un article d'Eric Niebler traduit par Guillaume Belz

Bienvenue dans le troisième article de la série « le C++ expressif », une série d'articles consacrés aux Domain-Specific Embedded Language (DSEL) et à Boost.Proto, une bibliothèque pour les implémenter en C++. Dans cet article, Eric Niebler aborde le problème délicat des messages d'erreurs générés par les templates et surtout le fait que ce n'est pas une fatalité. Il insiste en particulier sur le fait qu'il est de la responsabilités des concepteurs de bibliothèques de faire en sorte que les messages d'erreurs soient compréhensibles par les utilisateurs. Le C++ expressif n° 3 : pourquoi les erreurs des templates posent des problèmes et qu'est-ce que vous pouvez faire pour ça ?

Read the article
Will TSQL become useless because of new ORMs? [closed]

- by Saeed Neamati

By introducing LINQ to SQL, I found myself and my .NET developer colleagues gradually moving from TSQL to C# to create queries on the database. Entity Framework made that shift almost permanent. Now it's nearly 2 years that I use LINQ to SQL and LINQ to Entities and haven't used TSQL that much. Yesterday, a colleague encountered a problem (he had to create a SP) and we went to help him. But we all found that our TSQL knowledge was diminished for sure, and a simple SP that seemed trivial to us 2 or 3 years ago, was a challenge to be solved yesterday. Thus it came to my mind that while TSQL's life is attached to SQL Server, and logically as long as SQL Server lives and doesn't change it's SQL language, TSQL would also live, practically it might die, and soon very few people might know it. Am I right? Do existence of ORMs like Entity Framework threaten TSQL's life and usability?

Read the article
Would a cut and paste coder ever get past a job interview?

- by bigdave

As a long time cut and paste coder I never committed much of the syntax of a language to memory. Even worse, I now use google to solve many of the coding problems which are of the type typically used in job interviews. This has greatly increased my productivity, the quality of the end result and stops me perpetuating the same bugs across all my code. However it means I don't actually remember the detail of the solution. For some reason in a job interview "I would look that up on google" does not seem to be the right answer. Am I better off in the interview to pass no comment on my coding style and simply pull out an iPad and produce the solution?

Read the article
UPK Content State

- by peter.maravelias

State is an editable property for communicating the status of a document in the UPK library. This is particularly helpful when working with other authors in a development team. Authors can assign a state to any document using the values that are defined in the master list. The default master list of State values includes Not Started, Draft, In Review, and Final (in the language installed on the server). Administrators can customize the list by adding, deleting, or renaming the values as well as sequencing the values as they will appear on the assignment list from the Properties pane. Let us know if or how you are using UPK Content States in your development efforts!

Read the article

Search Results

Search found 36520 results on 1461 pages for 'default editing language'.

Page 557/1461 | < Previous Page | 553 554 555 556 557 558 559 560 561 562 563 564 | Next Page >

- by hajan

- by Dixin

- by TATWORTH

- by Jason Fitzpatrick

- by The Geek

- by Mahbubur R Aaman

- by Asian Angel

- by The Geek

- by Joe Mayo

- by Bil Simser

- by Daniel Moth

- by Dananjaya

- by pinaldave

- by Gabriel

- by Otto Neff

- by Asian Angel

- by dramasea

- by nagisa

- by Saeed Neamati

- by bigdave

- by peter.maravelias

< Previous Page | 553 554 555 556 557 558 559 560 561 562 563 564 | Next Page >