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• Thought Oracle Usability Advisory Board Was Stuffy? Wrong. Justification for Attending OUAB: ROI

  - by ultan o'broin

  Looking for reasons tell your boss why your organization needs to join the Oracle Usability Advisory Board or why you need approval to attend one of its meetings (see the requirements)? Try phrases such as "Continued Return on Investment (ROI)", "Increased Productivity" or "Happy Workers". With OUAB your participation is about realizing and sustaining ROI across the entire applications life-cycle from input to designs to implementation choices and integration, usage and performance and on measuring and improving the onboarding and support experience. If you think this is a boring meeting of middle-aged people sitting around moaning about customizing desktop forms and why the BlackBerry is here to stay, think again! How about this for a rich agenda, all designed to engage the audience in a thought-provoking and feedback-illiciting day of swirling interactions, contextual usage, global delivery, mobility, consumerizationm, gamification and tailoring your implementation to reflect real users doing real work in real environments.  Foldable, rollable ereader devices provide a newspaper-like UK for electronic news. Or a way to wrap silicon chips, perhaps. Explored at the OUAB Europe Meeting (photograph from Terrace Restaurant in TVP. Nom.) At the 7 December 2012 OUAB Europe meeting in Oracle Thames Valley Park, UK, Oracle partners and customers stepped up to the mic and PPT decks with a range of facts and examples to astound any UX conference C-level sceptic. Over the course of the day we covered much ground, but it was all related in a contextual, flexibile, simplication, engagement way aout delivering results for business: that means solving problems. This means being about the user and their tasks and how to make design and technology transforms work into a productive activity that users and bean counters will be excited by. The sessions really gelled for me: 1. Mobile design patterns and the powerful propositions for customers and partners offered by using the design guidance with Oracle ADF Mobile. Customers' and partners' developers existing ADF developers are now productive, efficient ADF Mobile developers applying proven UX guidance using ADF Mobile components and other Oracle Fusion Middleware in the development toolkit. You can find the Mobile UX Design Patterns and Guidance on Building Mobile Apps on OTN. 2. Oracle Voice and Apps. How this medium offers so much potentual in the enterprise and offers a window in Fusion Apps cloud webservices, Oracle RightNow NLP and Nuance technology. Exciting stuff, demoed live on a mobile phone. Stay tuned for more features and modalities and how you can tailor your own apps experience.  3. Oracle RightNow Natural Language Processing (NLP) Virtual Assistant technology (Ella): how contextual intervention and learning from users sessions delivers a great personalized UX for users interacting with Ella, a fifth generation VA to solve problems and seek knowledge. 4. BYOD Keynote: A balanced keynote address contrasting Fujitsu's explaining of the conceprt, challenges, and trends and setting the expectation that BYOD must be embraced in a flexible way,  with the resolute, crafted high security enterprise requirements that nuancing the BYOD concept and proposals with the realities of their world of water tight information and device sharing policies. Fascinating stuff, as well providing anecdotes to make us thing about out own DYOD Deployments. One size does not fit all. 5. Icon Cultural Surveys Results and Insights Arising: Ever wondered about the cultural appropriateness of icons used in software UIs and how these icons assessed for global use? Or considered that social media "Like" icons might be  unacceptable hand gestures in culture or enterprise? Or do the old world icons like Save floppy disk icons still find acceptable? Well the survey results told you. Challenges must be tested, over time, and context of use is critical now, including external factors such as the internet and social media adoption. Indeed the fears about global rejection of the face and hand icons was not borne out, and some of the more anachronistic icons (checkbooks, microphones, real-to-real tape decks, 3.5" floppies for "save") have become accepted metaphors for current actions. More importantly the findings brought into focus the reason for OUAB - engage with and illicit feedback though working groups before we build anything. 6. EReaders and Oracle iBook: What is the uptake and trends of ereaders? And how about a demo of an iBook with enterprise apps content?  Well received by the audience, the session included a live running poll of ereader usage. 7. Gamification Design Jam: Fun, hands on event for teams of Oracle staff, partners and customers, actually building gamified flows, a practice that can be applied right away by customers and partners.  8. UX Direct: A new offering of usability best practices, coming to an external website for you in 2013. FInd a real user, observe their tasks, design and approve, build and measure. Simple stuff to improve apps implications no end. 9. FUSE (an internal term only, basically Fusion Simplified Experience): demo of the new Face of Fusion Applications: inherently mobile, simple to use, social, personalizable and FAST, three great demos from the HCM, CRM and ICT world on how these UX designs can be used in different ways. So, a powerful breadth and depth of UX solutions and opporunities for customers and partners to engage with and explore how they can make their users happy and benefit their business reaping continued ROI from those apps investments. Find out more about the OUAB and how to get involved here ... 

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• In Social Relationship Management, the Spirit is Willing, but Execution is Weak

  - by Mike Stiles

  In our final talk in this series with Aberdeen’s Trip Kucera, we wanted to find out if enterprise organizations are actually doing anything about what they’re learning around the importance of communicating via social and using social listening for a deeper understanding of customers and prospects. We found out that if your brand is lagging behind, you’re not alone. Spotlight: How was Aberdeen able to find out if companies are putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to implementing social across the enterprise? Trip: One way to think about the relative challenges a business has in a given area is to look at the gap between “say” and “do.” The first of those words reveals the brand’s priorities, while the second reveals their ability to execute on those priorities. In Aberdeen’s research, we capture this by asking firms to rank the value of a set of activities from one on the low end to five on the high end. We then ask them to rank their ability to execute those same activities, again on a one to five, not effective to highly effective scale. Spotlight: And once you get their self-assessments, what is it you’re looking for? Trip: There are two things we’re looking for in this analysis. The first is we want to be able to identify the widest gaps between perception of value and execution. This suggests impediments to adoption or simply a high level of challenge, be it technical or otherwise. It may also suggest areas where we can expect future investment and innovation. Spotlight: So the biggest potential pain points surface, places where they know something is critical but also know they aren’t doing much about it. What’s the second thing you look for? Trip: The second thing we want to do is look at specific areas in which high-performing companies, the Leaders, are out-executing the Followers. This points to the business impact of these activities since Leaders are defined by a set of business performance metrics. Put another way, we’re correlating adoption of specific business competencies with performance, looking for what high-performers do differently. Spotlight: Ah ha, that tells us what steps the winners are taking that are making them winners. So what did you find out? Trip: Generally speaking, we see something of a glass curtain when it comes to the social relationship management execution gap. There isn’t a single social media activity in which more than 50% of respondents indicated effectiveness, which would be a 4 or 5 on that 1-5 scale. This despite the fact that 70% of firms indicate that generating positive social media mentions is valuable or very valuable, a 4 or 5 on our 1-5 scale. Spotlight: Well at least they get points for being honest. The verdict they’re giving themselves is that they just aren’t cutting it in these highly critical social development areas. Trip: And the widest gap is around directly engaging with customers and/or prospects on social networks, which 69% of firms rated as valuable but only 34% of companies say they are executing well. Perhaps even more interesting is that these two are interdependent since you’re most likely to generate goodwill on social through happy, engaged customers. This data also suggests that social is largely being used as a broadcast channel rather than for one-to-one engagement. As we’ve discussed previously, social is an inherently personal media. Spotlight: And if they’re still using it as a broadcast channel, that shows they still fail to understand the root of social and see it as just another outlet for their ads and push-messaging. That’s depressing. Trip: A second way to evaluate this data is by using Aberdeen’s performance benchmarking. The story is both a bit different, but consistent in its own way. The first thing we notice is that Leaders are more effective in their execution of several key social relationship management capabilities, namely generating positive mentions and engaging with “influencers” and customers. Based on the fact that Aberdeen uses a broad set of performance metrics to rank the respondents as either “Leaders” (top 35% in weighted performance) or “Followers” (bottom 65% in weighted performance), from website conversion to annual revenue growth, we can then correlated high social effectiveness with company performance. We can also connect the specific social capabilities used by Leaders with effectiveness. We spoke about a few of those key capabilities last time and also discuss them in a new report: Social Powers Activate: Engineering Social Engagement to Win the Hidden Sales Cycle. Spotlight: What all that tells me is there are rewards for making the effort and getting it right. That’s how you become a Leader. Trip: But there’s another part of the story, which is that overall effectiveness, even among Leaders, is muted. There’s just one activity in which more than a majority of Leaders cite high effectiveness, effectiveness being the generation of positive buzz. While 80% of Leaders indicate “directly engaging with customers” through social media channels is valuable, the highest rated activity among Leaders, only 42% say they’re effective. This gap even among Leaders shows the challenges still involved in effective social relationship management. @mikestilesPhoto: stock.xchng

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 30, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 30, 2012Popular ReleasesCleverBobCat: CleverBobCat 0.4: Added: ModuleCleverResourceTransferMCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.6: Changelog for 2.3.6 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Fixed a bug in multichannel audio conversion failure. AAC does not support 6 channel audio, MCEBuddy now checks for it and force the output to 2 channel if AAC codec is specified 2. Fixed a bug in Original Broadcast Date and Time. Original Broadcast Date and Time is reported in UTC timezone in WTV metadata. TVDB and MovieDB dates are reported in network timezone. It is assumed the video is recorded and converted on the same machine, i.e. local timezone...ZXMAK2: Version 2.6.8.0: Whats new: add Spectrum +3 model; tape serializer: show extended info for crc bad blocksMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.73: Fix issue in Discussion #401101 (unreferenced var in a for-in statement was getting removed). add the grouping operator to the parsed output so that unminified parsed code is closer to the original. Will still strip unneeded parens later, if minifying. more cleaning of references as they are minified out of the code.RiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.03: changes FIXED: Kitty-Kats new Forum UrlJobboard Light Edition: Version 2.2: Major Release Parallalization Added Job posting now working Job Editing now working Search Box Clear Filters added Search criteria updated (more simple) jobdetails page displays missing selections parameters added to url Cleaned UI moreMJP's DirectX 11 Samples: MSAA Resolve Filtering: Sample application and source code from the article "Experimenting with Reconstruction Filters for MSAA Resolve" http://mynameismjp.wordpress.com/2012/10/28/msaa-resolve-filters/Liberty: v3.4.0.1 Release 28th October 2012: Change Log -Fixed -H4 Fixed the save verification screen showing incorrect mission and difficulty information for some saves -H4 Hopefully fixed the issue where progress did not save between missions and saves would not revert correctly -H3 Fixed crashes that occurred when trying to load player information -Proper exception dialogs will now show in place of crashesPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 7): This release is compatible with the version of the Smooth Streaming SDK released today (10/26). Release 1 of the player framework is expected to be available next week. IMPROVEMENTS & FIXESIMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 6 Support for the latest smooth streaming SDK. Xaml only: Support for moving any of the UI elements outside the MediaPlayer (e.g. into the appbar). Note: Equivelent changes to the JS version due in coming week. Support for localizing all text used in t...Send multiple SMS via Way2SMS C#: SMS 1.1: Added support for 160by2Quick Launch: Quick Launch 1.0: A Lightweight and Fast Way to Manage and Launch Thousands of Tools and ApplicationsPress Win+Q and start to search and run. http://www.codeplex.com/Download?ProjectName=quicklaunch&DownloadId=523536Orchard Project: Orchard 1.6: Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.6: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-6-Release-Notes Please do not post questions as reviews. Questions should be posted in the Discussions tab, where they will usually get promptly responded to. If you post a question as a review, you will pollute the rating, and you won't get an answer.Media Companion: Media Companion 3.507b: Once again, it has been some time since our release, and there have been a number changes since then. It is hoped that these changes will address some of the issues users have been experiencing, and of course, work continues! New Features: Added support for adding Home Movies. Option to sort Movies by votes. Added 'selectedBrowser' preference used when opening links in an external browser. Added option to fallback to getting runtime from the movie file if not available on IMDB. Added new Big...MSBuild Extension Pack: October 2012: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack October 2012 release provides a collection of over 475 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GUI...NAudio: NAudio 1.6: Release notes at http://mark-dot-net.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/naudio-16-release-notes-10th.htmlPowerShell Community Extensions: 2.1 Production: PowerShell Community Extensions 2.1 Release NotesOct 25, 2012 This version of PSCX supports both Windows PowerShell 2.0 and 3.0. See the ReleaseNotes.txt download above for more information.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.9.1: Umbraco 4.9.1 is a bugfix release to fix major issues in 4.9.0 BugfixesThe full list of fixes can be found in the issue tracker's filtered results. A summary: Split buttons work again, you can now also scroll easier when the list is too long for the screen Media and Content pickers have information of the full path of the picked item Fixed: Publish status may not be accurate on nodes with large doctypes Fixed: 2 media folders and recycle bins after upgrade to 4.9 The template/code ...AcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v4.2.2: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2...Rawr: Rawr 5.0.2: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...CRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor (1.3.1025.5): [NEW] Support for connecting to CRM Online via Office 365 (OSDP) [NEW] Current connection information and loaded ribbon name are displayed in the status bar [IMPROVED] Connect dialog minor improvements and error message descriptions [IMPROVED] Connecting to a CRM server will close currently loaded ribbon upon confirmation (if another ribbon was loaded previously) [FIX] Fixed bug in Open Ribbon dialog which would not allow to refresh entity list more than onceNew Projects10010dshjlahfajhflkjhkjhherkjhfkja: 10010dshjlahfajhflkjhkjhherkjhfkjaA supplementary Machine Learning and Evolutionary Computation suite for Orange: ML & EC tools such as: - Optimization Meta-heuristics (EDAs, cGA) - Feature Selection - Kernel Methods - Dependency NetworksATH TaskList 2012: ATH TaskList 2012Canlipe: This is a simple C# / Mono (.NET) static blog generator. Nothing fancy, just the basic functionality at the moment. The code is really dirty too.com.sogeti.certif: Basic but essential source code example for SharePoint 2010Duhking: A quasi-duck typing library for .Net. It doesn't provide "real" duck typing, but it kinda looks a little bit like a duck if you squint and look at it from a distance. This library is built on and for .Net 3.5,Guestbook 2: A highly customizable program to track people visiting a booth via recording their name and some basic information. Written in C#.Interval Mandelbrot Explorer: Explore the Mandelbrot set using interval arithmetic.Isel - Projecto: projecto para isel....killStudentMain: killStudentMainKWSystem-WithClient: c++??La villa del seis: La villa del seis is a multiplatform point-and-click graphical adventure. Also, you can play it like a text adventure (interactive fiction) on a text browser (like Links, w3m or Lynx) or in a normal browser without JavaScript support.malversuchen: Das ist ein TEstPhotoCloud: This is a sample ASP.NET Web Pages app that uses Twitter authentication, HTMl5 drag and drop file uploading, blob storage, and SignalR to build a photo sharing platnosci-test: testSharePoint GSC: SharePoint GSC is a set of SharePoint utilities developed in General de Software. SHCODE: SH Project please contact little_deer@hotmail.com for more details.SimpleImageCacherRT: WinRT????????????????????。Windows.UI.XAML.Controls.Image????Source?????????????????????。???????????????…SLIP Framework: SilverLightweight Prism FrameworkSmallCheck: F# exhaustive testing framework. Port of Haskell SmallCheck test librarySolution organizer: Help developers organizing their Visual Studio 2010 solutionsSukul: Web 2.0 Portal for powering modern CMStestjabbr1029: heTFS Reflect Work Items Links: This small utility allows complex TFS to TFS migration to preserve work item links during the process. It is used in complement with the TFS Integration tools.XactiSource Application Framework: The XactiSource Application Framework is an attempt to add basic functionality that can be used from one project to the next. Yasminoku: Yasminoku is an open source "Sudoku" alike game totally written in DHTML (JavaScript, CSS and HTML) that uses mouse. Includes sudoku solver. This cross-platform and cross-browser game was tested under BeOS, Linux, *BSD, Windows and others.Zalgo for Word: Zalgo addin for Word 2010

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 16, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 16, 2012Popular ReleasesMagelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 2.1: Scheduler Import & Export feature UTC datetime and timezone support .net 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012 migration client magelia global refactoring nugget package https://nuget.org/packages/Magelia.Webstore.Client/2.1.254.1 burst optimisation burst time improvment (multithreading, index, ...) current burst is still active when a new burst is generating bugfixes version 2.1.254.1DevLib: 70038 binary dlls: 70038 binary dllsP1 Port monitoring with Netduino Plus: V0.2 Beta Netduino Plus P1 Port Monitoring: This is the stable beta release of the Netduino Plus P1 port monitoring. Please read the requirements on the Documentation page.JayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.2.2: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript to CRUD + Query data from different sources like OData, MongoDB, WebSQL, SqLite, HTML5 localStorage, Facebook or YQL. The library can be integrated with Knockout.js or Sencha Touch 2 and can be used on Node.js as well. See it in action in this 6 minutes video Sencha Touch 2 example app using JayData: Netflix browser. What's new in JayData 1.2.2 For detailed release notes check the release notes. Revitalized IndexedDB providerNow you c...VFPX: FoxcodePlus: FoxcodePlus - Visual Studio like extensions to Visual FoxPro IntelliSense.Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.8 Beta: fixed the icon for packages on the desktop fixed the install dialog closing right when it starts removed the link to "set up the sdk for me" as this is no longer supported. fixed bug where the device selection dialog would show, even if there was only one device connected. fixed toolbar from having "gap" between other toolbar removed main menu items that do not have any menus Iveely Search Engine: Iveely Search Engine （0.3.0）: Iveely Search Engine?????????????，0.3.0????????，????????：??????。 ????????????"????“？???????,????????????。??0.3.0??????????？0.3.0????????，????。 ?????，????????????????，??????300????，?????????300?????????????????，?????????????????。????，??????????，???????，???????。???????IveelySE.Resource，???????????，???????????????????????，???????????。 ????????Iveely.config，??????IveelySE.Run.Task.exe，?????????http://127.0.0.1:8088/query=yourkeyword，??????。 ????，??? ??http://www.cnblogs.com/liufanping...Fiskalizacija za developere: FiskalizacijaDev 1.0: Prva verzija ovog projekta, još je uvijek oznacena kao BETA - ovo znaci da su naša testiranja prošla uspješno :) No, kako mi ne proizvodimo neki software za blagajne, tako sve ovo nije niti isprobano u "realnim" uvjetima - svaka je sugestija, primjedba ili prijava bug-a je dobrodošla. Za sve ovo koristite, molimo, Discussions ili Issue Tracker. U ovom trenutku runtime binary je raspoloživ kao Any CPU za .NET verzije 2.0. Javite ukoliko trebaju i verzije buildane za 32-bit/64-bit kao i za .N...Squiggle - A free open source LAN Messenger: Squiggle 3.2 (Development): NOTE: This is development release and not recommended for production use. This release is mainly for enabling extensibility and interoperability with other platforms. Support for plugins Support for extensions Communication layer and protocol is platform independent (ZeroMQ, ProtocolBuffers) Bug fixes New /invite command Edit the sent message Disable update check NOTE: This is development release and not recommended for production use.AcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v4.2: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2...PHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.8: See Change Log for details of the new features and bugfixes included in this release, and methods that are now deprecated. Note changes to the PDF Writer: tcPDF is no longer bundled with PHPExcel, but should be installed separately if you wish to use that 3rd-Party library with PHPExcel. Alternatively, you can choose to use mPDF or DomPDF as PDF Rendering libraries instead: PHPExcel now provides a configurable wrapper allowing you a choice of PDF renderer. See the documentation, or the PDF s...DirectX Tool Kit: October 12, 2012: October 12, 2012 Added PrimitiveBatch for drawing user primitives Debug object names for all D3D resources (for PIX and debug layer leak reporting)Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.70: Fixed issue described in discussion #399087: variable references within case values weren't getting resolved.GoogleMap Control: GoogleMap Control 6.1: Some important bug fixes and couple of new features were added. There are no major changes to the sample website. Source code could be downloaded from the Source Code section selecting branch release-6.1. Thus just builds of GoogleMap Control are issued here in this release. Update 14.Oct.2012 - Client side access fixed NuGet Package GoogleMap Control 6.1 NuGet Package FeaturesBounds property to provide ability to create a map by center and bounds as well; Setting in markup <artem:Goog...mojoPortal: 2.3.9.3: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2393-released Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0, but we recommend you to use .NET 4, we will probably drop support for .NET 3.5 once .NET 4.5 is available The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code and are not intended for use in Visual Studio. To download the source code see getting the lates...D3 Loot Tracker: 1.5.4: Fixed a bug where the server ip was not logged properly in the stats file.Captcha MVC: Captcha Mvc 2.1.2: v 2.1.2: Fixed problem with serialization. Made all classes from a namespace Jetbrains.Annotaions as the internal. Added autocomplete attribute and autocorrect attribute for captcha input element. Minor changes. Updated: I'm added an example for this question. v 2.1.1: Fixed problem with serialization. Minor changes. v 2.1: Added support for storing captcha in the session or cookie. See the updated example. Updated example. Minor changes. v 2.0.1: Added support for a partial ...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.04: Major Highlights Fixed issue where the module printing function was only visible to administrators Fixed issue where pane level skinning was being assigned to a default container for any content pane Fixed issue when using password aging and FB / Google authentication Fixed issue that was causing the DateEditControl to not load the assigned value Fixed issue that stopped additional profile properties to be displayed in the member directory after modifying the template Fixed er...Database View-plug-ins Programming Helper: Database View-plug-ins 1.3: V1.3 added feature: Metadata Deployment. The download package consists of deployment SQL scripts. Run every scripts of all subdirectories in order (sort by name). "VPI" is the default schema name in the manifest, it can be changed to other name according to your enterprise database policy. Current release is for Oracle version (SQL Server version will be released later).Advanced DataGridView with Excel-like auto filter: 1.0.0.0: ?????? ??????New ProjectsAerTHe: Simple, test project about EntityFramework, NUnit, etc.BalanceManagerApp: BalanceManagerAppC++ Debugger Visualizers for VS2012: C++ Debugger Visualizers for Boost, wxWidgets, TinyXML, TinyXML2ClipReader: A Text-To-Speach reader that reads from the clipboard. Reads any text you copy to the clipboard. Similar idea to ReadPlease. Coursework 2.0 UGC Site: University of Hertfordshire coursework project to develop a Web 2.0-style UGC website. DavesinitialcourseworkcalculatorinVS: Basic calculator for assignment 1DL_Assignment 1: This project forms Task 1 of Assignment 1 for 7COM0207. The requirement is that a user can enter 2 numbers and the sum of the numbes is displayed. Document Storage: This project is intended to act as a learning exercise for the participants. gillsassignment1: This is task 1 for assignment 1 which adds 2 numbers and displays the result.gillstestproject: This is my first little test.Iconator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: This application ease the customization of custom entities icons in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.Infopath 2010 Web Signature Capture: A simple method of adding signature capture to InfoPath Browser enabled forms. KennyWorld: Kenny's blog based on BLogEngine.netMirus - Advanced Open Source Operating System: Mirus is a new, advanced, open source operating system written in C# using the Cosmos toolkit aiming for POSIX compatibility, ease of use, and innovation.Morgado Finance: Test of Finance ManagementMPF for Projects - Visual Studio 2012: A community project containing the source code and tests of a library for creating project system plug-ins for Visual Studio 2012 using C#.OpenWeb: OpenWeb project by Deigo Stefanon [*/*P1 Port monitoring with Netduino Plus: This program reads the Dutch electricity meter P1 port messages and publishes the information to Cosm and ThingSpeak for monitoring.Powerless View: Proof of concept application for hosting the Power View Silverlight application outside of a SharePoint and Reporting Services environment.RAM Drive: A Windows Service that copies an existing Virtual Hard Disk in memory, then mounts it as a disk giving the ability to use your RAM as a super-fast drive.Roderick Vella's Interactive Learning: Web Scripting and Content CreationSaveDouban: ?????????????????，????.NetFramework3.5?????ScriptEase for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Utility to synchronize your Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 JavaScripts with your files on your local hard-drive.T.REST: T.REST - a framework for testing REST ressourcesVisual Leak Detector Performance Test: Tests for Visual Leak Detector for Visual C++ 2008/2010/2012 [url:http://vld.codeplex.com/]???????: ????????????????。?????????????。 ??url??，??????

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• Custom Configuration Section Handlers

  Most .NET developers who need to store something in configuration tend to use appSettings for this purpose, in my experience.  More recently, the framework itself has helped things by adding the <connectionStrings /> section so at least these are in their own section and not adding to the appSettings clutter that pollutes most apps.  I recommend avoiding appSettings for several reasons.  In addition to those listed there, I would add that strong typing and validation are additional reasons to go the custom configuration section route. For my ASP.NET Tips and Tricks talk, I use the following example, which is a simple DemoSettings class that includes two fields.  The first is an integer representing how many attendees there are present for the talk, and the second is the title of the talk.  The setup in web.config is as follows: <configSections> <section name="DemoSettings" type="ASPNETTipsAndTricks.Code.DemoSettings" /> </configSections>   <DemoSettings sessionAttendees="100" title="ASP.NET Tips and Tricks DevConnections Spring 2010" /> Referencing the values in code is strongly typed and straightforward.  Here I have a page that exposes two properties which internally get their values from the configuration section handler: public partial class CustomConfig1 : System.Web.UI.Page { public string SessionTitle { get { return DemoSettings.Settings.Title; } } public int SessionAttendees { get { return DemoSettings.Settings.SessionAttendees; } } } Note that the settings are only read from the config file once after that they are cached so there is no need to be concerned about excessive file access. Now weve seen how to set it up on the config file and how to refer to the settings in code.  All that remains is to see the file itself: public class DemoSettings : ConfigurationSection { private static DemoSettings settings = ConfigurationManager.GetSection("DemoSettings") as DemoSettings; public static DemoSettings Settings{ get { return settings;} }   [ConfigurationProperty("sessionAttendees" , DefaultValue = 200 , IsRequired = false)] [IntegerValidator(MinValue = 1 , MaxValue = 10000)] public int SessionAttendees { get { return (int)this["sessionAttendees"]; } set { this["sessionAttendees"] = value; } }   [ConfigurationProperty("title" , IsRequired = true)] [StringValidator(InvalidCharacters = "~!@#$%^&*()[]{}/;\"|\\")] public string Title { get { return (string)this["title"]; } set { this["title"] = value; }   } } The class is pretty straightforward, but there are some important components to note.  First, it must inherit from System.Configuration.ConfigurationSection.  Next, as a convention I like to have a static settings member that is responsible for pulling out the section when the class is first referenced, and further to expose this collection via a static readonly property, Settings.  Note that the types of both of these are the type of my class, DemoSettings. The properties of the class, SessionAttendees and Title, should map to the attributes of the config element in the XML file.  The [ConfigurationProperty] attribute allows you to map the attribute name to the property name (thus using both XML standard naming conventions and C# naming conventions).  In addition, you can specify a default value to use if nothing is specified in the config file, and whether or not the setting must be provided (IsRequired).  If it is required, then it doesnt make sense to include a default value. Beyond defaults and required, you can specify more advanced validation rules for the configuration values using additional C# attributes, such as [IntegerValidator] and [StringValidator].  Using these, you can declaratively specify that your configuration values be in a given range, or omit certain forbidden characters, for instance.  Of course you can write your own custom validation attributes, and there are others specified in System.Configuration. Individual sections can also be loaded from separate files, using syntax like this: <DemoSettings configSource="demosettings.config" /> Summary Using a custom configuration section handler is not hard.  If your application or component requires configuration, I recommend creating a custom configuration handler dedicated to your app or component.  Doing so will reduce the clutter in appSettings, will provide you with strong typing and validation, and will make it much easier for other developers or system administrators to locate and understand the various configuration values that are necessary for a given application. 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.

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• Highlights from the Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  The Oracle Customer Experience Summit was the first-ever event covering the full breadth of Oracle's CX portfolio -- Marketing, Sales, Commerce, and Service. The purpose of the Summit was to articulate the customer experience imperative and to showcase the suite of Oracle products that can help our customers create the best possible customer experience. This topic has always been a very important one, but now that there are so many alternative companies to do business with and because people have such public ways to voice their displeasure, it's necessary for vendors to have multiple listening posts in place to gauge consumer sentiment. They need to know what is going on in real time and be able to react quickly to turn negative situations into positive ones. Those can then be shared in a social manner to enhance the brand and turn the customer into a repeat customer. The Summit was focused on Oracle's portfolio of products and entirely dedicated to customers who are committed to building great customer experiences within their businesses. Rather than DBAs, the attendees were business people looking to collaborate with other like-minded experts and find out how Oracle can help in terms of technology, best practices, and expertise. The event was at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco as part of Oracle OpenWorld. We had eight hundred people attend, which was great for the first year. Next year, there's no doubt in my mind, we can raise that number to 5,000. Alignment and Logic Oracle's Customer Experience portfolio is made up of a combination of acquired and organic products owned by many people who are new to Oracle. We include homegrown Fusion CRM, as well as RightNow, Inquira, OPA, Vitrue, ATG, Endeca, and many others. The attendees knew of the acquisitions, so naturally they wanted to see how the products all fit together and hear the logic behind the portfolio. To tell them about our alignment, we needed to be aligned. To accomplish that, a cross functional team at Oracle agreed on the messaging so that every single Oracle presenter could cover the big picture before going deep into a product or topic. Talking about the full suite of products in one session produced overflow value for other products. And even though this internal coordination was a huge effort, everyone saw the value for our customers and for our long-term cooperation and success. Keynotes, Workshops, and Tents of Innovation We scored by having Seth Godin as our keynote speaker ? always provocative and popular. The opening keynote was a session orchestrated by Mark Hurd, Anthony Lye, and me. Mark set the stage by giving real-world examples of bad customer experiences, Anthony clearly articulated the business imperative for addressing these experiences, and I brought it all to life by taking the audience around the Customer Lifecycle and showing demos and videos, with partners included at each of the stops around the lifecycle. Brian Curran, a VP for RightNow Product Strategy, presented a session that was in high demand called The Economics of Customer Experience. People loved hearing how to build a business case and justify the cost of building a better customer experience. John Kembel, another VP for RightNow Product Strategy, held a workshop that customers raved about. It was based on the journey mapping methodology he created, which is a way to talk to customers about where they want to make improvements to their customers' experiences. He divided the audience into groups led by facilitators. Each person had the opportunity to engage with experts and peers and construct some real takeaways. The conference hotel was across from Union Square so we used that space to set up Innovation Tents. During the day we served lunch in the tents and partners showed their different innovative ideas. It was very interesting to see all the technologies and advancements. It also gave people a place to mix and mingle and to think about the fringe of where we could all take these ideas. Product Portfolio Plus Thought Leadership Of course there is always room for improvement, but the feedback on the format of the conference was positive. Ninety percent of the sessions had either a partner or a customer teamed with an Oracle presenter. The presentations weren't dry, one-way information dumps, but more interactive. I just followed up with a CEO who attended the conference with his Head of Marketing. He told me that they are using John Kembel's journey mapping methodology across the organization to pull people together. This sort of thought leadership in these highly competitive areas gives Oracle permission to engage around the technology. We have to differentiate ourselves and it's harder to do on the product side because everyone looks the same on paper. But on thought leadership ? we can, and did, take some really big steps. David Vap Group Vice President Oracle Applications Product Development

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• WIF-less claim extraction from ACS: SWT

  - by Elton Stoneman

  WIF with SAML is solid and flexible, but unless you need the power, it can be overkill for simple claim assertion, and in the REST world WIF doesn’t have support for the latest token formats.  Simple Web Token (SWT) may not be around forever, but while it's here it's a nice easy format which you can manipulate in .NET without having to go down the WIF route. Assuming you have set up a Relying Party in ACS, specifying SWT as the token format: When ACS redirects to your login page, it will POST the SWT in the first form variable. It comes through in the BinarySecurityToken element of a RequestSecurityTokenResponse XML payload , the SWT type is specified with a TokenType of http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2009/11/swt-token-profile-1.0 : <t:RequestSecurityTokenResponse xmlns:t="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/02/trust">   <t:Lifetime>     <wsu:Created xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd">2012-08-31T07:31:18.655Z</wsu:Created>     <wsu:Expires xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd">2012-08-31T09:11:18.655Z</wsu:Expires>   </t:Lifetime>   <wsp:AppliesTo xmlns:wsp="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/09/policy">     <EndpointReference xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing">       <Address>http://localhost/x.y.z</Address>     </EndpointReference>   </wsp:AppliesTo>   <t:RequestedSecurityToken>     <wsse:BinarySecurityToken wsu:Id="uuid:fc8d3332-d501-4bb0-84ba-d31aa95a1a6c" ValueType="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2009/11/swt-token-profile-1.0" EncodingType="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-soap-message-security-1.0#Base64Binary" xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd" xmlns:wsse="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd"> [ base64string ] </wsse:BinarySecurityToken>   </t:RequestedSecurityToken>   <t:TokenType>http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2009/11/swt-token-profile-1.0</t:TokenType>   <t:RequestType>http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/02/trust/Issue</t:RequestType>   <t:KeyType>http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/NoProofKey</t:KeyType> </t:RequestSecurityTokenResponse> Reading the SWT is as simple as base-64 decoding, then URL-decoding the element value:     var wrappedToken = XDocument.Parse(HttpContext.Current.Request.Form[1]);     var binaryToken = wrappedToken.Root.Descendants("{http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd}BinarySecurityToken").First();     var tokenBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(binaryToken.Value);     var token = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(tokenBytes);     var tokenType = wrappedToken.Root.Descendants("{http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/02/trust}TokenType").First().Value; The decoded token contains the claims as key/value pairs, along with the issuer, audience (ACS realm), expiry date and an HMAC hash, which are in query string format. Separate them on the ampersand, and you can write out the claim values in your logged-in page:     var decoded = HttpUtility.UrlDecode(token);     foreach (var part in decoded.Split('&'))     {         Response.Write("<pre>" + part + "</pre><br/>");     } - which will produce something like this: http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/claims/authenticationinstant=2012-08-31T06:57:01.855Z http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/claims/authenticationmethod=http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/authenticationmethod/windows http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/claims/windowsaccountname=XYZ http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/[email protected] http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/[email protected] http://schemas.microsoft.com/accesscontrolservice/2010/07/claims/identityprovider=http://fs.svc.xyz.com/adfs/services/trust Audience=http://localhost/x.y.z ExpiresOn=1346402225 Issuer=https://x-y-z.accesscontrol.windows.net/ HMACSHA256=oDCeEDDAWEC8x+yBnTaCLnzp4L6jI0Z/xNK95PdZTts= The HMAC hash lets you validate the token to ensure it hasn’t been tampered with. You'll need the token signing key from ACS, then you can re-sign the token and compare hashes. There's a full implementation of an SWT parser and validator here: How To Request SWT Token From ACS And How To Validate It At The REST WCF Service Hosted In Windows Azure, and a cut-down claim inspector on my github code gallery: ACS Claim Inspector. Interestingly, ACS lets you have a value for your logged-in page which has no relation to the realm for authentication, so you can put this code into a generic claim inspector page, and set that to be your logged-in page for any relying party where you want to check what's being sent through. Particularly handy with ADFS, when you're modifying the claims provided, and want to quickly see the results.

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• Session Report - Java on the Raspberry Pi

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  On mid-day Wednesday, the always colorful Oracle Evangelist Simon Ritter demonstrated Java on the Raspberry Pi at his session, “Do You Like Coffee with Your Dessert?”. The Raspberry Pi consists of a credit card-sized single-board computer developed in the UK with the intention of stimulating the teaching of basic computer science in schools. “I don't think there is a single feature that makes the Raspberry Pi significant,” observed Ritter, “but a combination of things really makes it stand out. First, it's $35 for what is effectively a completely usable computer. You do have to add a power supply, SD card for storage and maybe a screen, keyboard and mouse, but this is still way cheaper than a typical PC. The choice of an ARM (Advanced RISC Machine and Acorn RISC Machine) processor is noteworthy, because it avoids problems like cooling (no heat sink or fan) and can use a USB power brick. When you add in the enormous community support, it offers a great platform for teaching everyone about computing.”Some 200 enthusiastic attendees were present at the session which had the feel of Simon Ritter sharing a fun toy with friends. The main point of the session was to show what Oracle was doing to support Java on the Raspberry Pi in a way that is entertaining and fun. Ritter pointed out that, in addition to being great for teaching, it’s an excellent introduction to the ARM architecture, and runs well with Java and will get better once it has official hard float support. The possibilities are vast.Ritter explained that the Raspberry Pi Project started in 2006 with the goal of devising a computer to inspire children; it drew inspiration from the BBC Micro literacy project of 1981 that produced a series of microcomputers created by the Acorn Computer company. It was officially launched on February 29, 2012, with a first production of 10,000 boards. There were 100,000 pre-orders in one day; currently about 4,000 boards are produced a day. Ritter described the specification as follows:* CPU: ARM 11 core running at 700MHz Broadcom SoC package Can now be overclocked to 1GHz (without breaking the warranty!) * Memory: 256Mb* I/O: HDMI and composite video 2 x USB ports (Model B only) Ethernet (Model B only) Header pins for GPIO, UART, SPI and I2C He took attendees through a brief history of ARM Architecture:* Acorn BBC Micro (6502 based) Not powerful enough for Acorn’s plans for a business computer * Berkeley RISC Project UNIX kernel only used 30% of instruction set of Motorola 68000 More registers, less instructions (Register windows) One chip architecture to come from this was… SPARC * Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) 32-bit data, 26-bit address space, 27 registers First machine was Acorn Archimedes * Spin off from Acorn, Advanced RISC MachinesNext he presented its features:* 32-bit RISC Architecture–  ARM accounts for 75% of embedded 32-bit CPUs today– 6.1 Billion chips sold last year (zero manufactured by ARM)* Abstract architecture and microprocessor core designs– Raspberry Pi is ARM11 using ARMv6 instruction set* Low power consumption– Good for mobile devices– Raspberry Pi can be powered from 700mA 5V only PSU– Raspberry Pi does not require heatsink or fanHe described the current ARM Technology:* ARMv6– ARM 11, ARM Cortex-M* ARMv7– ARM Cortex-A, ARM Cortex-M, ARM Cortex-R* ARMv8 (Announced)– Will support 64-bit data and addressingHe next gave the Java Specifics for ARM: Floating point operations* Despite being an ARMv6 processor it does include an FPU– FPU only became standard as of ARMv7* FPU (Hard Float, or HF) is much faster than a software library* Linux distros and Oracle JVM for ARM assume no HF on ARMv6– Need special build of both– Raspbian distro build now available– Oracle JVM is in the works, release date TBDNot So RISCPerformance Improvements* DSP Enhancements* Jazelle* Thumb / Thumb2 / ThumbEE* Floating Point (VFP)* NEON* Security Enhancements (TrustZone)He spent a few minutes going over the challenges of using Java on the Raspberry Pi and covered:* Sound* Vision * Serial (TTL UART)* USB* GPIOTo implement sound with Java he pointed out:* Sound drivers are now included in new distros* Java Sound API– Remember to add audio to user’s groups– Some bits work, others not so much* Playing (the right format) WAV file works* Using MIDI hangs trying to open a synthesizer* FreeTTS text-to-speech– Should work once sound works properlyHe turned to JavaFX on the Raspberry Pi:* Currently internal builds only– Will be released as technology preview soon* Work involves optimal implementation of Prism graphics engine– X11?* Once the JavaFX implementation is completed there will be little of concern to developers-- It’s just Java (WORA). He explained the basis of the Serial Port:* UART provides TTL level signals (3.3V)* RS-232 uses 12V signals* Use MAX3232 chip to convert* Use this for access to serial consoleHe summarized his key points. The Raspberry Pi is a very cool (and cheap) computer that is great for teaching, a great introduction to ARM that works very well with Java and will work better in the future. The opportunities are limitless. For further info, check out, Raspberry Pi User Guide by Eben Upton and Gareth Halfacree. From there, Ritter tried out several fun demos, some of which worked better than others, but all of which were greeted with considerable enthusiasm and support and good humor (even when he ran into some glitches).  All in all, this was a fun and lively session.

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• Seven Random Thoughts on JavaOne

  - by HecklerMark

  As most people reading this blog may know, last week was JavaOne. There are a lot of summary/recap articles popping up now, and while I didn't want to just "add to pile", I did want to share a few observations. Disclaimer: I am an Oracle employee, but most of these observations are either externally verifiable or based upon a collection of opinions from Oracle and non-Oracle attendees alike. Anyway, here are a few take-aways: The Java ecosystem is alive and well, with a breadth and depth that is impossible to adequately describe in a short post...or a long post, for that matter. If there is any one area within the Java language or JVM that you would like to - or need to - know more about, it's well-represented at J1. While there are several IDEs that are used to great effect by the developer community, NetBeans is on a roll. I lost count how many sessions mentioned or used NetBeans, but it was by far the dominant IDE in use at J1. As a recent re-convert to NetBeans, I wasn't surprised others liked it so well, only how many. OpenJDK, OpenJFX, etc. Many developers were understandably concerned with the change of sponsorship/leadership when Java creator and longtime steward Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle. The read I got from attendees regarding Oracle's stewardship was almost universally positive, and the push for "openness" is deep and wide within the current Java environs. Few would probably have imagined it to be this good, this soon. Someone observed that "Larry (Ellison) is competitive, and he wants to be the best...so if he wants to have a community, it will be the best community on the planet." Like any company, Oracle is bound to make missteps, but leadership seems to be striking an excellent balance between embracing open efforts and innovating in competitive paid offerings. JavaFX (2.x) isn't perfect or comprehensive, but a great many people (myself included) see great potential, are developing for it, and are really excited about where it is and where it may be headed. This is another part of the Java ecosystem that has impressive depth for being so new (JavaFX 1.x aside). If you haven't kicked the tires yet, give it a try! You'll be surprised at how capable and versatile it is, and you'll probably catch yourself smiling while coding again.  :-) JavaEE is everywhere. Not exactly a newsflash, but there is a lot of buzz around EE still/again/anew. Sessions ranged from updated component specs/technologies to Websockets/HTML5, from frameworks to profiles and application servers. Programming "server-side" Java isn't confined to the server (as you no doubt realize), and if you still consider JavaEE a cumbersome beast, you clearly haven't been using the last couple of versions. Download GlassFish or the WebLogic Zip distro (or another JavaEE 6 implementation) and treat yourself. JavaOne is not inexpensive, but to paraphrase an old saying, "If you think that's expensive, you should try ignorance." :-) I suppose it's possible to attend J1 and learn nothing, but you'd have to really work at it! Attending even a single session is bound to expand your horizons and make you approach your code, your problem domain, differently...even if it's a session about something you already know quite well. The various presenters offer vastly different perspectives and challenge you to re-think your own approach(es). And finally, if you think the scheduled sessions are great - and make no mistake, most are clearly outstanding - wait until you see what you pick up from what I like to call the "hallway sessions". Between the presentations, people freely mingle in the hallways, go to lunch and dinner together, and talk. And talk. And talk. Ideas flow freely, sparking other ideas and the "crowdsourcing" of knowledge in a way that is hard to imagine outside of a conference of this magnitude. Consider this the "GO" part of a "BOGO" (Buy One, Get One) offer: you buy the ticket to the "structured" part of JavaOne and get the hallway sessions at no additional charge. They're really that good. If you weren't able to make it to JavaOne this year, you can still watch/listen to the sessions online by visiting the JavaOne course catalog and clicking the media link(s) in the right column - another demonstration of Oracle's commitment to the Java community. But make plans to be there next year to get the full benefit! You'll be glad you did. All the best,Mark P.S. - I didn't mention several other exciting developments in areas like the embedded space and the "internet of things" (M2M), robotics, optimization, and the cloud (among others), but I think you get the idea. JavaOne == brainExpansion;  Hope to see you there next year!

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• SQL SERVER – ?Finding Out What Changed in a Deleted Database – Notes from the Field #041

  - by Pinal Dave

  [Note from Pinal]: This is a 41th episode of Notes from the Field series. The real world is full of challenges. When we are reading theory or book, we sometimes do not realize how real world reacts works and that is why we have the series notes from the field, which is extremely popular with developers and DBA. Let us talk about interesting problem of how to figure out what has changed in the DELETED database. Well, you think I am just throwing the words but in reality this kind of problems are making our DBA’s life interesting and in this blog post we have amazing story from Brian Kelley about the same subject. In this episode of the Notes from the Field series database expert Brian Kelley explains a how to find out what has changed in deleted database. Read the experience of Brian in his own words. Sometimes, one of the hardest questions to answer is, “What changed?” A similar question is, “Did anything change other than what we expected to change?” The First Place to Check – Schema Changes History Report: Pinal has recently written on the Schema Changes History report and its requirement for the Default Trace to be enabled. This is always the first place I look when I am trying to answer these questions. There are a couple of obvious limitations with the Schema Changes History report. First, while it reports what changed, when it changed, and who changed it, other than the base DDL operation (CREATE, ALTER, DELETE), it does not present what the changes actually were. This is not something covered by the default trace. Second, the default trace has a fixed size. When it hits that size, the changes begin to overwrite. As a result, if you wait too long, especially on a busy database server, you may find your changes rolled off. But the Database Has Been Deleted! Pinal cited another issue, and that’s the inability to run the Schema Changes History report if the database has been dropped. Thankfully, all is not lost. One thing to remember is that the Schema Changes History report is ultimately driven by the Default Trace. As you may have guess, it’s a trace, like any other database trace. And the Default Trace does write to disk. The trace files are written to the defined LOG directory for that SQL Server instance and have a prefix of log_: Therefore, you can read the trace files like any other. Tip: Copy the files to a working directory. Otherwise, you may occasionally receive a file in use error. With the Default Trace files, if you ask the question early enough, you can see the information for a deleted database just the same as any other database. Testing with a Deleted Database: Here’s a short script that will create a database, create a schema, create an object, and then drop the database. Without the database, you can’t do a standard Schema Changes History report. CREATE DATABASE DeleteMe; GO USE DeleteMe; GO CREATE SCHEMA Test AUTHORIZATION dbo; GO CREATE TABLE Test.Foo (FooID INT); GO USE MASTER; GO DROP DATABASE DeleteMe; GO This sets up the perfect situation where we can’t retrieve the information using the Schema Changes History report but where it’s still available. Finding the Information: I’ve sorted the columns so I can see the Event Subclass, the Start Time, the Database Name, the Object Name, and the Object Type at the front, but otherwise, I’m just looking at the trace files using SQL Profiler. As you can see, the information is definitely there: Therefore, even in the case of a dropped/deleted database, you can still determine who did what and when. You can even determine who dropped the database (loginame is captured). The key is to get the default trace files in a timely manner in order to extract the information. If you want to get started with performance tuning and database security with the help of experts, read more over at Fix Your SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Notes from the Field, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Security, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, July 27, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, July 27, 2013Popular ReleasesSharpCompress - a fully native C# library for RAR, 7Zip, Zip, Tar, GZip, BZip2: SharpCompress 0.10: - Added support for RAR Decryption (thanks to https://github.com/hrasyid) - Embedded some BouncyCastle crypto classes to allow RAR Decryption and Winzip AES Decryption in Portable and Windows Store DLLs - Built in Release (I think)Memory Teaser Game: Full Release 1.1.0: -> Fixed Memory leak issue. -> Restart game button issue. -> Added Splash screen. -> Changed Release Icon. This is the version 1.1.0.0VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.46: changes FIXED LoginOfflineBrowser: Preview Release: This is a preview release so that others can help me find bugs. This should be pretty stable, but any bugs found should be reported here as an Issue.Home Access Plus+: v9.4.0727: Released to allow you to disable secure LDAP queriesOpen Source Job board: Version X3: Full version of job board, didn't have monies to fund it so it's free.DSeX DragonSpeak eXtended Editor: Version 1.0.116.0726: Cleaned up Wizard Interface Added Functionality for RTF UndoRedo IE Inserting Text from Wizard output to the Tabbed Editor Added Sanity Checks to Search/Replace Dialog to prevent crashes Fixed Template and Paste undoredo Fix Undoredo Blank spots Added New_FileTag Const = "(New FIle)" Added Filename to Modified FileClose queries (Thanks Lothus Marque)Math.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.6.0: What's New in Math.NET Numerics 2.6 - Announcement, Explanations and Sample Code. New: Linear Curve Fitting Linear least-squares fitting (regression) to lines, polynomials and linear combinations of arbitrary functions. Multi-dimensional fitting. Also works well in F# with the F# extensions. New: Root Finding Brent's method. ~Candy Chiu, Alexander Täschner Bisection method. ~Scott Stephens, Alexander Täschner Broyden's method, for multi-dimensional functions. ~Alexander Täschner ...Microsoft .NET Gadgeteer: .NET Gadgeteer Core 2.43.800: The .NET Gadgeteer Core installer includes the core libraries and end user project templates for Microsoft .NET Gadgeteer. This is a prerequisite for end users to build and deploy .NET Gadgeteer projects. It includes a project template wizard in the New Project dialog in Visual Studio 2012 or 2010 (or express versions) under the Gadgeteer tab - ".NET Gadgeteer Application". This template uses a graphical designer built for Visual Studio which allows end users to visually configure .NET Gadget...FogBugzPd - Project Dashboard For FogBugz: 1.0: First public release of FogBugzPd. Zip File includes web application. Requires: IIS 7+ Sql Server 2008/2012 or Sql Server Express 2012 .NET 4.5Open Url Rewriter for DotNetNuke: Open Url Rewriter Core 0.4.3 (Beta): bug fix for removing home page New Tab with rules count for each Portal with memory use estimation OpenUrlRewriter_00.04.03_Install.zip : for dnn 6.01 to 7.06 OpenUrlRewriter71_00.04.03_Install.zip : for dnn 7.1KerbalAlarmClock: v2.5.0.0 Release: Version 2.5.0.0 Recompiled it for 0.21 Fixed some issues with Hyperbolic orbits and AN/DN NodesAJAX Control Toolkit: July 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - July 2013 Release Version 7.0725July 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - Instructions for using the AJAX Control Toolkit with ASP.NET 4.5 can be found at...MJP's DirectX 11 Samples: Specular Antialiasing Sample: Sample code to complement my presentation that's part of the Physically Based Shading in Theory and Practice course at SIGGRAPH 2013, entitled "Crafting a Next-Gen Material Pipeline for The Order: 1886". Demonstrates various methods of preventing aliasing from specular BRDF's when using high-frequency normal maps. The zip file contains source code as well as a pre-compiled x64 binary.Kartris E-commerce: Kartris v2.5003: This fixes an issue where search engines appear to identify as IE and so trigger the noIE page if there is not a non-responsive skin specified.GoAgent GUI: GoAgent GUI 1.3.5 Alpha (20130723): ????????Alpha?，???????????，?????????????。 ??????????GoAgent???（???phus lu?GitHub??????GoAgent??????，??????????????????） ????????????????????????Bug ?????????。??????????????。 ????issue????，????????，????????????????。LogicCircuit: LogicCircuit 2.13.07.22: Logic Circuit - is educational software for designing and simulating logic circuits. Intuitive graphical user interface, allows you to create unrestricted circuit hierarchy with multi bit buses, debug circuits behavior with oscilloscope, and navigate running circuits hierarchy. Changes of this versionYou can make visual elements of the circuit been visible on its symbols. This way you can build composite displays, keyboards and reuse them. Please read about displays for more details http://ww...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.08: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.4.3: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.4.3 ?? ??Bilibili????????????? ???????????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2.10?...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.6.601: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.6.6. These zip files are also available as a NuGet package: https://nuget.org/profiles/dlemstra/New Projectsagree grammar engineering environment: agree is a concurrent parse/generation engine, a .NET implementation of the DELPH-IN joint reference formalism for natural language analysis. AWF's Utility Library: A collection of awf utilities C# chat client with server: Newest chat with client and server.Charming components for Windows Phone: Build Charming apps for Windows Phone. Adds ready-made Search, Share and Settings functionality to Windows Phone. Share more code across platforms.Darkorbit Configuration Manager: config manager dark orbit darkorbit eltepvpers heaven 'Heaven. configuration manager configurationmanagerDarkorbit MultiTool: dark orbit darkorbit multi tool mulitool heaven 'Heaven. elitepvpers awesome skylab bot trade bot techcenter bot multiaccount diabind: Python binding of DIA (Debug Interface Access) SDKDoodle .Net Connector: This library allows an easy access to the Doodle REST API.DssCECB Version 2.0: aaaeCommunity: e-communityEFDemo: This is a demo for Entity frameworkEmployee Directory Webpart in SharePoint 2010: Employee Directory for SharePoint 2010EntityContext: A lightweight wrapper around Entity Framework allowing for accessing some internals of the framework, as well as, some functionality usually required.EwsRelentless: This is a sample application which demonstrates you might place a heavy load of EWS calls against an Exchange server in order to test performance. FogBugzPd - Project Dashboard For FogBugz: This tool helps PMs, Tech Leads and Executives to see actual progress on the projects tracked in FogBugz.HP Battery Health Scan Script: Silently runs HP Battery Check Utility and saves result to an Access DB.I am following: Users can follow nearly everything in SharePoint 2013. This solution provides a list of followed contend where ever you need it in you SharePoint.Image Viewer: Simple image viewer written for academic purposes LIBRERIA PRISA: sistema de ventasLiduv: Facilitate teachers daily work including creating marks and lesson drafts, curricula and calculating marks for written tests etc.Maze Builder Library: A builder for random maze generationPayPal Express Checkout for nopCommerce: nopCommerce plugin to allow for PayPal Express Checkout. Full integration with shipping options.PsTest - UnitTesting for PowerShell: PsTest is a lightweight UnitTesting Module for use in PowerShell. It lets PowerShell users create, discover and run UnitTests in PowerShell.SIGE: sistema integral gestion educativaSql Mass Dumper: Sql Mass Dumper. A simple project to dump all the data in your SQL Server in XML or in JSON format.SSIS Wait Task: A SSIS task which suspends execution for a time period or until a specific time. Additionally a sql statement can be defined that can also delay execution.Tactical Combat - Unity3d Game: A first person shooter! The main character is Billy Hills, need a story plot.The open source customer relation and billing software.: Memtem in a open source customer relation and billing software written in C#.NET.Tridion Gateway Service: WCF Support for the Tridion TOM COM APIWINJS CTK: WinJS Control kit is a set of custom WINJS controls that are not supported by Windows 8.

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• Stepping outside Visual Studio IDE [Part 1 of 2] with Eclipse

  - by mbcrump

  “If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress." – Barack Obama In my quest to become a better programmer, I’ve decided to start the process of learning Java. I will be primary using the Eclipse Language IDE. I will not bore you with the history just what is needed for a .NET developer to get up and running. I will provide links, screenshots and a few brief code tutorials. Links to documentation. The Official Eclipse FAQ’s Links to binaries. Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers the Galileo Package (based on Eclipse 3.5 SR2)  Sun Developer Network – Java Eclipse officially recommends Java version 5 (also known as 1.5), although many Eclipse users use the newer version 6 (1.6). That's it, nothing more is required except to compile and run java. Installation Unzip the Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers and double click the file named Eclipse.exe. You will probably want to create a link for it on your desktop. Once, it’s installed and launched you will have to select a workspace. Just accept the defaults and you will see the following: Lets go ahead and write a simple program. To write a "Hello World" program follow these steps: Start Eclipse. Create a new Java Project: File->New->Project. Select "Java" in the category list. Select "Java Project" in the project list. Click "Next". Enter a project name into the Project name field, for example, "HW Project". Click "Finish" Allow it to open the Java perspective Create a new Java class: Click the "Create a Java Class" button in the toolbar. (This is the icon below "Run" and "Window" with a tooltip that says "New Java Class.") Enter "HW" into the Name field. Click the checkbox indicating that you would like Eclipse to create a "public static void main(String[] args)" method. Click "Finish". A Java editor for HW.java will open. In the main method enter the following line.      System.out.println("This is my first java program and btw Hello World"); Save using ctrl-s. This automatically compiles HW.java. Click the "Run" button in the toolbar (looks like a VCR play button). You will be prompted to create a Launch configuration. Select "Java Application" and click "New". Click "Run" to run the Hello World program. The console will open and display "This is my first java program and btw Hello World". You now have your first java program, lets go ahead and make an applet. Since you already have the HW.java open, click inside the window and remove all code. Now copy/paste the following code snippet. Java Code Snippet for an applet. 1: import java.applet.Applet; 2: import java.awt.Graphics; 3: import java.awt.Color; 4:  5: @SuppressWarnings("serial") 6: public class HelloWorld extends Applet{ 7:  8: String text = "I'm a simple applet"; 9:  10: public void init() { 11: text = "I'm a simple applet"; 12: setBackground(Color.GREEN); 13: } 14:  15: public void start() { 16: System.out.println("starting..."); 17: } 18:  19: public void stop() { 20: System.out.println("stopping..."); 21: } 22:  23: public void destroy() { 24: System.out.println("preparing to unload..."); 25: } 26:  27: public void paint(Graphics g){ 28: System.out.println("Paint"); 29: g.setColor(Color.blue); 30: g.drawRect(0, 0, 31: getSize().width -1, 32: getSize().height -1); 33: g.setColor(Color.black); 34: g.drawString(text, 15, 25); 35: } 36: } The Eclipse IDE should look like Click "Run" to run the Hello World applet. Now, lets test our new java applet. So, navigate over to your workspace for example: “C:\Users\mbcrump\workspace\HW Project\bin” and you should see 2 files. HW.class java.policy.applet Create a HTML page with the following code: 1: <HTML> 2: <BODY> 3: <APPLET CODE=HW.class WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=100> 4: </APPLET> 5: </BODY> 6: </HTML> Open, the HTML page in Firefox or IE and you will see your applet running.  I hope this brief look at the Eclipse IDE helps someone get acquainted with Java Development. Even if your full time gig is with .NET, it will not hurt to have another language in your tool belt. As always, I welcome any suggestions or comments.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, July 30, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, July 30, 2014Popular ReleasesGhostscript.NET: Ghostscript.NET v.1.1.9.: v.1.1.9. fixed problem with the PDF invisible layers (the optional content groups which will be left unmarked if processtrailerattrs is not executed). fixed text rasterization problem for some pdf's, it seems that the 'pdfopen begin' did not initialize everything required to render pdf properly so we replaced it with the 'runpdfopen' method which corrects everything (problem reported by "xatabhk"). changed GhostscriptRasterizer methods to support Stream insted of the MemoryStream. fixed...Recaptcha for .NET: Recaptcha for .NET v1.5: What's NewMinor bug fixes Support for legacy .NET framework 4.0 and ASP.NET MVC 4. Support for .NET Framework 4.5.1.Azure Storage Explorer: Azure Storage Explorer 6 Preview 1: Welcome to Azure Storage Explorer 6 Preview 1 This is the first release of the latest Azure Storage Explorer, code-named Phoenix. What's New?Here are some important things to know about version 6: Open Source Now being run as a full open source project. Full source code on CodePlex. Collaboration encouraged! Updated Code Base Brand-new code base (WPF/C#/.NET 4.5) Visual Studio 2013 solution (previously VS2010) Uses the Task Parallel Library (TPL) for asynchronous background operat...Wsus Package Publisher: release v1.3.1407.29: Updated WPP to recognize the very latest console version. Some files was missing into the latest release of WPP which lead to crash when trying to make a custom update. Add a workaround to avoid clipboard modification when double-clicking on a label when creating a custom update. Add the ability to publish detectoids. (This feature is still in a BETA phase. Packages relying on these detectoids to determine which computers need to be updated, may apply to all computers).VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.32: changes NEW: Added Support for 'ImgMega.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgCandy.net' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgPit.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'Img.yt' links FIXED: 'Radikal.ru' links FIXED: 'ImageTeam.org' links FIXED: 'ImgSee.com' links FIXED: 'Img.yt' linksAsp.Net MVC-4,Entity Framework and JQGrid Demo with Todo List WebApplication: Asp.Net MVC-4,Entity Framework and JQGrid Demo: Asp.Net MVC-4,Entity Framework and JQGrid Demo with simple Todo List WebApplication, Overview TodoList is a simple web application to create, store and modify Todo tasks to be maintained by the users, which comprises of following fields to the user (Task Name, Task Description, Severity, Target Date, Task Status). TodoList web application is created using MVC - 4 architecture, code-first Entity Framework (ORM) and Jqgrid for displaying the data.Waterfox: Waterfox 31.0 Portable: New features in Waterfox 31.0: Added support for Unicode 7.0 Experimental support for WebCL New features in Firefox 31.0:New Add the search field to the new tab page Support of Prefer:Safe http header for parental control mozilla::pkix as default certificate verifier Block malware from downloaded files Block malware from downloaded files audio/video .ogg and .pdf files handled by Firefox if no application specified Changed Removal of the CAPS infrastructure for specifying site-sp...SuperSocket, an extensible socket server framework: SuperSocket 1.6.3: The changes below are included in this release: fixed an exception when collect a server's status but it has been stopped fixed a bug that can cause an exception in case of sending data when the connection dropped already fixed the log4net missing issue for a QuickStart project fixed a warning in a QuickStart projectYnote Classic: Ynote Classic 2.8.5 Beta: Several Changes - Multiple Carets and Multiple Selections - Improved Startup Time - Improved Syntax Highlighting - Search Improvements - Shell Command - Improved StabilityTEBookConverter: 1.2: Fixed: Could not start convertion in some cases Fixed: Progress show during convertion was truncated Fixed: Stopping convertion didn't reset program titleSharePoint 2010 & 2013 Google Maps V3 WebPart: SPGoogleMap webpart - SharePoint 2013 - July 2014: Google API key support added. The webpart does not need it but if you have one you can use it.QuieNet: Version 2.0: Replaced autoplay prevention mechanism: instead of replacing the player itself, only the function that starts the player is replaced. This only works for video players for now, and live streams are handled as before.XamlImageConverter: Xaml Image Converter 3.11: Improvements: - ASP.NET 64bit support for html2pdf. - Attribute to suppress parallel execution. - Ghostscript rendering. - No need for a snapshot for a imagemap, you can use original svg image.Automatic Parallel Computing: APC SDK 2.1: Features: integration with Amazon DynamoDB. Includes: Investment Club Benchmark Investor Ranking BenchmarkCatchException (Manage Exception): CatchMe Exception Version 1.0: Code SourceDnnFoundation Skin for DnnCMS: DnnC DnnFoundation Skin: First release of the DnnC DnnFoundation SkinQND Operations Manager SNMP Monitoring: QND.SNMP.Library version 1.0.0.103: fixed bug #1815FlMML customized: FlMML customized c.s.30938: ????????LFO、?????LFO??????。 ???·Y·????LFO、??????????????????。 ???LFO????????????????????。CS-Script Source: Release v3.8.4: CSScript.Evaluator is migrated to Mono v3.3.0 Added aggregating //css_ignore_ns from the imported scripts cs-script.7z - CS-Script Suite (binaries, documentation, samples) cs-script.ExtensionPack.7z - CS-Script Extension Pack (additional binaries and samples) cs-scriptDocs.7z - CS-Script DocumentationDotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.7: DotSpatial.Full - includes all DotSpatial libraries, extensions and DemoMap application DotSpatial.Core - includes only DotSpatial core libraries Entire list of changes see in the issue tracker. Main changes: Improved common stability, optimized memory and speed when loading and rendering shapefiles, fixed some memory leaks in rasters and shape layers. Simplified plugin infrastructure. Now there are predefined implementations for all required components (IStatusControl, IDockManager, IHead...New ProjectsAdmin QuikView for Dynamics CRM 2013: Admin QuickView is a gives you a quick hierarchical snapshot of all active Business Units, Teams, Security Roles and Users in your Dynamics CRM Organization.All bots: Windows Phone app to chat with bots from http://www.pandorabots.com/Calculator Proj: Calculator with power hexadecimal binary option and more... Computational Network Toolkit (CNTK): Computational networks (CNs) generalize models that can be described as a series of computational steps such as DNN, CNN, RNN, LSTM, and maximum entropy models.DelegateExpressionizer: Library is intended to decompile delegate code at runtime and build and appropriate expression tree.Hystaspes: Logistics Management System: Logistics Management SystemKinect Experiments: This repository contains various code samples, proof-of-concepts and utilities for Kinect for Windows (v1.8 and v2)ppcs: Placement Project Version 1.0.0.0Reusable MVC Partial View with JQuery Datatables: Reusable jQuery DataTables integrated with in a Partial View of MVC 4.0 is a reusable control/view written entirely in C# and JQuery, my aim was to create a MVCShared Code Project Template for Visual Studio 2013 Update 2: This Project contains the source code for a Shared Project template for VS 2013 which extends the shareing of code to all Project types besides universal apps. Text word search: This project is a sample for searching words in a notepad or a word file through wpf platform. Trace And Watch: Trace And Watch is a Pintool developed to assist in finding 32-bit integer errors.Vtron Automatic tester screen parameters: VTRONWalli: Walli is an open source SalesForce integrated developer environment(IDE) application written in .NET.Windows Kirlian WiFi App: Illustrates the radio field generated by WiFiWOMPS - What's new On My PLEX Server: Purpose of this project is to send an user a weekly or daily email of all new content add to their Plex library.

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• Microsoft BUILD 2013 Day 1&ndash;Keynote

  - by Tim Murphy

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/27/microsoft-build-2013-day-1ndashkeynote.aspx This one is going to be a little long because the keynote was jam-packed so bare with me. The keynote for the first day of BUILD 2013 was kicked off by Steve Balmer.  He made it very clear that Microsoft’s focus is on accelerating its time to market with products and product updates.  His quote was that “Rapid release” is the new norm.  He continued by showing off several new Lumias that have been buzzing around the internet for a while and announce that Sprint will now be carrying the HTC 8XT and Samsung ATIV. Balmer is known for repeating words or phrase for affect.  This time it was “Rapid release, rapid release” and “Touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, …”.  This was fun, but even more fun was when he announce that all attendees would receive an Acer Iconia 8” tablet. SCORE! The next subject Balmer focused on is new apps.  The three new ones were Flipboard, Facebook and NFL Fantasy Football.  I liked the first two because these are ones that people coming from other platforms are missing.  The NFL app is great just because it targets a demographic that can be fanatical.  If these types of apps keep coming than the missing app argument goes away. While many Negative Nancy’s are describing Windows 8.1 as Windows 180 Steve Balmer chose to call it a “refined blend” as in a coffee that has been improved with a new mix.  This includes more multi-tasking options and leveraging Bing straight throughout the entire ecosystem. He ended this first section by explaining that this will also bring more Bing development opportunities to the community. Steve Balmer was followed by Julie Larson-Green who spent her time on stage selling us on Windows 8 all over again from my point of view.  Something that I would not have thought was needed until I had listened to some other attendees who had a number of concerns and complaints.  She showed a number of new gestures that will come with Windows 8.1, and while they were cool I was left wondering if they really improved the experience.  I guess only time will tell. I did like the fact that it the UI implementation to bring up “All Apps” now mirrors that of Windows Phone.  The consistency is a big step forward that I hope to see continue.  The cool factor went up from there as she swiped content from a desktop (mega-tablet) to the XBox One.  This seamless experience I believe is what is really needed for any future platform to be relevant. I was much more enthused by the presentation of Antoine Leblond who humbled us by letting us know that there are 5k new API.  How that can be or how anyone would ever use all of them is another question.  His announcement was that the Visual Studio 2013 preview would be available today along with the Windows 8.1 bits.  One of the features of VS2013 that he demonstrated is the power consumption profiler.  With battery life being a key factor with consumer consumption devices this is a welcome addition. He didn’t limit his presentation to VS2013 features though.  He showed how the Store has been redesigned to enable better search and discoverability of apps and how Win 8.1 can perform multiple screen scales depending on the resolution of the device automatically.  The last feature he demoed was the real time video streaming API which he made sure we understood by attaching a Surface to a little robot.  Oh, but there was one more thing.  Antoine and Julie announce that all attendees would also be getting Surface Pros.  BONUS! How much more could there be?  Gurdeep Singh Pall was about to pile on.  He introduced us to Bing as a platform (BaaP?).  He said if they (Microsoft) could do something with and API that is good 3rd party developers can do something that is dynamite and showed us some of the tools they had produced.  These included natural user interface improvements such as voice commands that looked to put Siri to shame.  Add to that 3D, OCR and translation capabilities and the future looks to be full of opportunities. Balmer then came out to show us one last thing.  Project Spark is a game design environment that will be available for Windows 8.1, XBox 360 and XBox One.  All I can say is that if my kids get their hands on this they are going to be able to learn some of what dad does in a much more enjoyable way. At the end of it all I was both exhausted and energized by what I saw.  What could they have possibly left for the day 2 keynote?  I hear it will feature Scott Hanselman.  If that is right we are in for a treat.  See you there. del.icio.us Tags: BUILD 2013,Windows 8.1,Winodws Phone,XAML,Keynote,Bing,Visual Studio 2013,Project Spark

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• Code refactoring with Visual Studio 2010 Part-4

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  I have been writing few post with code refactoring features in Visual Studio 2010. This post also will be part of series and this post will be last of the series. In this post I am going explain two features 1) Encapsulate Field and 2) Extract Interface. Let’s explore both features in details. Encapsulate Field: This is a nice code refactoring feature provides by Visual Studio 2010. With help of this feature we can create properties from the existing private field of the class. Let’s take a simple example of Customer Class. In that I there are two private field called firstName and lastName. Below is the code for the class. public class Customer { private string firstName; private string lastName; public string Address { get; set; } public string City { get; set; } } Now lets encapsulate first field firstName with Encapsulate feature. So first select that field and goto refactor menu in Visual Studio 2010 and click on Encapsulate Field. Once you click that a dialog box will appear like following. Now once you click OK a preview dialog box will open as we have selected preview reference changes. I think its a good options to check that option to preview code that is being changed by IDE itself. Dialog will look like following. Once you click apply it create a new property called FirstName. Same way I have done for the lastName and now my customer class code look like following. public class Customer { private string firstName; public string FirstName { get { return firstName; } set { firstName = value; } } private string lastName; public string LastName { get { return lastName; } set { lastName = value; } } public string Address { get; set; } public string City { get; set; } } So you can see that its very easy to create properties with existing fields and you don’t have to change anything there in code it will change all the stuff itself. Extract Interface: When you are writing software prototype and You don’t know the future implementation of that then its a good practice to use interface there. I am going to explain here that How we can extract interface from the existing code without writing a single line of code with the help of code refactoring feature of Visual Studio 2010. For that I have create a Simple Repository class called CustomerRepository with three methods like following. public class CustomerRespository { public void Add() { // Some code to add customer } public void Update() { //some code to update customer } public void Delete() { //some code delete customer } } In above class there are three method Add,Update and Delete where we are going to implement some code for each one. Now I want to create a interface which I can use for my other entities in project. So let’s create a interface from the above class with the help of Visual Studio 2010. So first select class and goto refactor menu and click Extract Interface. It will open up dialog box like following. Here I have selected all the method for interface and Once I click OK then it will create a new file called ICustomerRespository where it has created a interface. Just like following. Here is a code for that interface. using System; namespace CodeRefractoring { interface ICustomerRespository { void Add(); void Delete(); void Update(); } } Now let's see the code for the our class. It will also changed like following to implement the interface. public class CustomerRespository : ICustomerRespository { public void Add() { // Some code to add customer } public void Update() { //some code to update customer } public void Delete() { //some code delete customer } } Isn't that great we have created a interface and implemented it without writing a single line of code. Hope you liked it. Stay tuned for more.. Till that Happy Programming.

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• My error with upgrading 4.0 to 4.2- What NOT to do...

  - by Steve Tunstall

  Last week, I was helping a client upgrade from the 2011.1.4.0 code to the newest 2011.1.4.2 code. We downloaded the 4.2 update from MOS, upload and unpacked it on both controllers, and upgraded one of the controllers in the cluster with no issues at all. As this was a brand-new system with no networking or pools made on it yet, there were not any resources to fail back and forth between the controllers. Each controller had it's own, private, management interface (igb0 and igb1) and that's it. So we took controller 1 as the passive controller and upgraded it first. The first controller came back up with no issues and was now on the 4.2 code. Great. We then did a takeover on controller 1, making it the active head (although there were no resources for it to take), and then proceeded to upgrade controller 2. Upon upgrading the second controller, we ran the health check with no issues. We then ran the update and it ran and rebooted normally. However, something strange then happened. It took longer than normal to come back up, and when it did, we got the "cluster controllers on different code" error message that one gets when the two controllers of a cluster are running different code. But we just upgraded the second controller to 4.2, so they should have been the same, right??? Going into the Maintenance-->System screen of controller 2, we saw something very strange. The "current version" was still on 4.0, and the 4.2 code was there but was in the "previous" state with the rollback icon, as if it was the OLDER code and not the newer code. I have never seen this happen before. I would have thought it was a bad 4.2 code file, but it worked just fine with controller 1, so I don't think that was it. Other than the fact the code did not update, there was nothing else going on with this system. It had no yellow lights, no errors in the Problems section, and no errors in any of the logs. It was just out of the box a few hours ago, and didn't even have a storage pool yet. So.... We deleted the 4.2 code, uploaded it from scratch, ran the health check, and ran the upgrade again. once again, it seemed to go great, rebooted, and came back up to the same issue, where it came to 4.0 instead of 4.2. See the picture below.... HERE IS WHERE I MADE A BIG MISTAKE.... I SHOULD have instantly called support and opened a Sev 2 ticket. They could have done a shared shell and gotten the correct Fishwork engineer to look at the files and the code and determine what file was messed up and fixed it. The system was up and working just fine, it was just on an older code version, not really a huge problem at all. Instead, I went ahead and clicked the "Rollback" icon, thinking that the system would rollback to the 4.2 code.   Ouch... What happened was that the system said, "Fine, I will delete the 4.0 code and boot to your 4.2 code"... Which was stupid on my part because something was wrong with the 4.2 code file here and the 4.0 was just fine.  So now the system could not boot at all, and the 4.0 code was completely missing from the system, and even a high-level Fishworks engineer could not help us. I had messed it up good. We could only get to the ILOM, and I had to re-image the system from scratch using a hard-to-get-and-use FishStick USB drive. These are tightly controlled and difficult to get, almost always handcuffed to an engineer who will drive out to re-image a system. This took another day of my client's time.  So.... If you see a "previous version" of your system code which is actually a version higher than the current version... DO NOT ROLL IT BACK.... It did not upgrade for a very good reason. In my case, after the system was re-imaged to a code level just 3 back, we once again tried the same 4.2 code update and it worked perfectly the first time and is now great and stable.  Lesson learned.  By the way, our buddy Ryan Matthews wanted to point out the best practice and supported way of performing an upgrade of an active/active ZFSSA, where both controllers are doing some of the work. These steps would not have helpped me for the above issue, but it's important to follow the correct proceedure when doing an upgrade. 1) Upload software to both controllers and wait for it to unpack 2) On controller "A" navigate to configuration/cluster and click "takeover" 3) Wait for controller "B" to finish restarting, then login to it, navigate to maintenance/system, and roll forward to the new software. 4) Wait for controller "B" to apply the update and finish rebooting 5) Login to controller "B", navigate to configuration/cluster and click "takeover" 6) Wait for controller "A" to finish restarting, then login to it, navigate to maintenance/system, and roll forward to the new software. 7) Wait for controller "A" to apply the update and finish rebooting 8) Login to controller "B", navigate to configuration/cluster and click "failback"

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• Upgrading to Code Based Migrations EF 4.3.1 with Connector/Net 6.6

  - by GABMARTINEZ

  Entity Framework 4.3.1 includes a new feature called code first migrations.  We are adding support for this feature in our upcoming 6.6 release of Connector/Net.  In this walk-through we'll see the workflow of code-based migrations when you have an existing application and you would like to upgrade to this EF 4.3.1 version and use this approach, so you can keep track of the changes that you do to your database.   The first thing we need to do is add the new Entity Framework 4.3.1 package to our application. This should via the NuGet package manager.  You can read more about why EF is not part of the .NET framework here. Adding EF 4.3.1 to our existing application  Inside VS 2010 go to Tools -> Library Package Manager -> Package Manager Console, this will open the Power Shell Host Window where we can work with all the EF commands. In order to install this library to your existing application you should type Install-Package EntityFramework This will make some changes to your application. So Let's check them. In your .config file you'll see a  <configSections> which contains the version you have from EntityFramework and also was added the <entityFramework> section as shown below. This section is by default configured to use SQL Express which won't be necesary for this case. So you can comment it out or leave it empty. Also please make sure you're using the Connector/Net 6.6.x version which is the one that has this support as is shown in the previous image. At this point we face one issue; in order to be able to work with Migrations we need the __MigrationHistory table that we don't have yet since our Database was created with an older version. This table is used to keep track of the changes in our model. So we need to get it in our existing Database. Getting a Migration-History table into an existing database First thing we need to do to enable migrations in our existing application is to create our configuration class which will set up the MySqlClient Provider as our SQL Generator. So we have to add it with the following code: using System.Data.Entity.Migrations;     //add this at the top of your cs file public class Configuration : DbMigrationsConfiguration<NameOfYourDbContext>  //Make sure to use the name of your existing DBContext { public Configuration() { this.AutomaticMigrationsEnabled = false; //Set Automatic migrations to false since we'll be applying the migrations manually for this case. SetSqlGenerator("MySql.Data.MySqlClient", new MySql.Data.Entity.MySqlMigrationSqlGenerator());     }   }  This code will set up our configuration that we'll be using when executing all the migrations for our application. Once we have done this we can Build our application so we can check that everything is fine. Creating our Initial Migration Now let's add our Initial Migration. In Package Manager Console, execute "add-migration InitialCreate", you can use any other name but I like to set this as our initial create for future reference. After we run this command, some changes were done in our application: A new Migrations Folder was created. A new class migration call InitialCreate which in most of the cases should have empty Up and Down methods as long as your database is up to date with your Model. Since all your entities already exists, delete all duplicated code to create any entity which exists already in your Database if there is any. I found this easier when you don't have any pending updates to do to your database. Now we have our empty migration that will make no changes in our database and represents how are all the things at the begining of our migrations.  Finally, let's create our MigrationsHistory table. Optionally you can add SQL code to delete the edmdata table which is not needed anymore. public override void Up() { // Just make sure that you used 4.1 or later version         Sql("DROP TABLE EdmMetadata"); } From our Package Manager Console let's type: Update-database; If you like to see the operations made on each Update-database command you can use the flag -verbose after the Update-database. This will make two important changes.  It will execute the Up method in the initial migration which has no changes in the database. And second, and very important,  it will create the __MigrationHistory table necessary to keep track of your changes. And next time you make a change to your database it will compare the current model to the one stored in the Model Column of this table. Conclusion The important thing of this walk through is that we must create our initial migration before we start doing any changes to our model. This way we'll be adding the necessary __MigrationsHistory table to our existing database, so we can keep our database up to date with all the changes we do in our context model using migrations. Hope you have found this information useful. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments, also please check our forums here where we keep answering questions in general for the community.  Happy MySQL/Net Coding!

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• NDepend Evaluation: Part 3

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  NDepend is a Visual Studio add-in designed for intense code analysis with the goal of high code quality. NDepend uses a number of metrics and aggregates the data in pleasing static and active visual reports. My evaluation of NDepend will be broken up into several different parts. In the first part of the evaluation I looked at installing the add-in.  And in the last part I went over my first impressions including an overview of the features.  In this installment I provide a little more detail on a few of the features that I really like. Dependency Matrix The dependency matrix is one of the rich visual components provided with NDepend.  At a glance it lets you know where you have coupling problems including cycles.  It does this with number indicating the weight of the dependency and a color-coding that indicates the nature of the dependency. Green and blue cells are direct dependencies (with the difference being whether the relationship is from row-to-column or column-to-row).  Black cells are the ones that you really want to know about.  These indicate that you have a cycle.  That is, type A refers to type B and type B also refers to Type A. But, that’s not the end of the story.  A handy pop-up appears when you hover over the cell in question.  It explains the color, the dependency, and provides several interesting links that will teach you more than you want to know about the dependency. You can double-click the problem cells to explode the dependency.  That will show the dependencies on a method-by-method basis allowing you to more easily target and fix the problem.  When you’re done you can click the back button on the toolbar. Dependency Graph The dependency graph is another component provided.  It’s complementary to the dependency matrix, but it isn’t as easy to identify dependency issues using the window. On a positive note, it does provide more information than the matrix. My biggest issue with the dependency graph is determining what is shown.  This was not readily obvious.  I ended up using the navigation buttons to get an acceptable view.  I would have liked to choose what I see. Once you see the types you want you can get a decent idea of coupling strength based on the width of the dependency lines.  Double-arrowed lines are problematic and are shown in red.  The size of the boxes will be related to the metric being displayed.  This is controlled using the Box Size drop-down in the toolbar.  Personally, I don’t find the size of the box to be helpful, so I change it to Constant Font. One nice thing about the display is that you can see the entire path of dependencies when you hover over a type.  This is done by color-coding the dependencies and dependants.  It would be nice if selecting the box for the type would lock the highlighting in place. I did find a perhaps unintended work-around to the color-coding.  You can lock the color-coding in by hovering over the type, right-clicking, and then clicking on the canvas area to clear the pop-up menu.  You can then do whatever with it including saving it to an image file with the color-coding. CQL NDepend uses a code query language (CQL) to work with your code just like it was a database.  CQL cannot be confused with the robustness of T-SQL or even LINQ, but it represents an impressive attempt at providing an expressive way to enumerate and interrogate your code. There are two main windows you’ll use when working with CQL.  The CQL Query Explorer allows you to define what queries (rules) are run as part of a report – I immediately unselected rules that I don’t want in my results.  The CQL Query Edit window is where you can view or author your own rules.  The explorer window is pretty self-explanatory, so I won’t mention it further other than to say that any queries you author will appear in the custom group. Authoring your own queries is really hard to screw-up.  The Intellisense-like pop-ups tell you what you can do while making composition easy.  I was able to create a query within two minutes of playing with the editor.  My query warns if any types that are interfaces don’t start with an “I”. WARN IF Count > 0 IN SELECT TYPES WHERE IsInterface AND !NameLike “I” The results from the CQL Query Edit window are immediate. That fact makes it useful for ad hoc querying.  It’s worth mentioning two things that could make the experience smoother.  First, out of habit from using Visual Studio I expect to be able to scroll and press Tab to select an item in the list (like Intellisense).  You have to press Enter when you scroll to the item you want.  Second, the commands are case-sensitive.  I don’t see a really good reason to enforce that. CQL has a lot of potential not just in enforcing code quality, but also enforcing architectural constraints that your enterprise has defined. Up Next My next update will be the final part of the evaluation.  I will summarize my experience and provide my conclusions on the NDepend add-in. ** View Part 1 of the Evaluation ** ** View Part 2 of the Evaluation ** Disclaimer: Patrick Smacchia contacted me about reviewing NDepend. I received a free license in return for sharing my experiences and talking about the capabilities of the add-in on this site. There is no expectation of a positive review elicited from the author of NDepend.

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• Inside BackgroundWorker

  - by João Angelo

  The BackgroundWorker is a reusable component that can be used in different contexts, but sometimes with unexpected results. If you are like me, you have mostly used background workers while doing Windows Forms development due to the flexibility they offer for running a background task. They support cancellation and give events that signal progress updates and task completion. When used in Windows Forms, these events (ProgressChanged and RunWorkerCompleted) get executed back on the UI thread where you can freely access your form controls. However, the logic of the progress changed and worker completed events being invoked in the thread that started the background worker is not something you get directly from the BackgroundWorker, but instead from the fact that you are running in the context of Windows Forms. Take the following example that illustrates the use of a worker in three different scenarios: – Console Application or Windows Service; – Windows Forms; – WPF. using System; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Threading; using System.Windows.Forms; using System.Windows.Threading; class Program { static AutoResetEvent Synch = new AutoResetEvent(false); static void Main() { var bw1 = new BackgroundWorker(); var bw2 = new BackgroundWorker(); var bw3 = new BackgroundWorker(); Console.WriteLine("DEFAULT"); var unspecializedThread = new Thread(() => { OutputCaller(1); SynchronizationContext.SetSynchronizationContext( new SynchronizationContext()); bw1.DoWork += (sender, e) => OutputWork(1); bw1.RunWorkerCompleted += (sender, e) => OutputCompleted(1); // Uses default SynchronizationContext bw1.RunWorkerAsync(); }); unspecializedThread.IsBackground = true; unspecializedThread.Start(); Synch.WaitOne(); Console.WriteLine(); Console.WriteLine("WINDOWS FORMS"); var windowsFormsThread = new Thread(() => { OutputCaller(2); SynchronizationContext.SetSynchronizationContext( new WindowsFormsSynchronizationContext()); bw2.DoWork += (sender, e) => OutputWork(2); bw2.RunWorkerCompleted += (sender, e) => OutputCompleted(2); // Uses WindowsFormsSynchronizationContext bw2.RunWorkerAsync(); Application.Run(); }); windowsFormsThread.IsBackground = true; windowsFormsThread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA); windowsFormsThread.Start(); Synch.WaitOne(); Console.WriteLine(); Console.WriteLine("WPF"); var wpfThread = new Thread(() => { OutputCaller(3); SynchronizationContext.SetSynchronizationContext( new DispatcherSynchronizationContext()); bw3.DoWork += (sender, e) => OutputWork(3); bw3.RunWorkerCompleted += (sender, e) => OutputCompleted(3); // Uses DispatcherSynchronizationContext bw3.RunWorkerAsync(); Dispatcher.Run(); }); wpfThread.IsBackground = true; wpfThread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA); wpfThread.Start(); Synch.WaitOne(); } static void OutputCaller(int workerId) { Console.WriteLine( "bw{0}.{1} | Thread: {2} | IsThreadPool: {3}", workerId, "RunWorkerAsync".PadRight(18), Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId, Thread.CurrentThread.IsThreadPoolThread); } static void OutputWork(int workerId) { Console.WriteLine( "bw{0}.{1} | Thread: {2} | IsThreadPool: {3}", workerId, "DoWork".PadRight(18), Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId, Thread.CurrentThread.IsThreadPoolThread); } static void OutputCompleted(int workerId) { Console.WriteLine( "bw{0}.{1} | Thread: {2} | IsThreadPool: {3}", workerId, "RunWorkerCompleted".PadRight(18), Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId, Thread.CurrentThread.IsThreadPoolThread); Synch.Set(); } } Output: //DEFAULT //bw1.RunWorkerAsync | Thread: 3 | IsThreadPool: False //bw1.DoWork | Thread: 4 | IsThreadPool: True //bw1.RunWorkerCompleted | Thread: 5 | IsThreadPool: True //WINDOWS FORMS //bw2.RunWorkerAsync | Thread: 6 | IsThreadPool: False //bw2.DoWork | Thread: 5 | IsThreadPool: True //bw2.RunWorkerCompleted | Thread: 6 | IsThreadPool: False //WPF //bw3.RunWorkerAsync | Thread: 7 | IsThreadPool: False //bw3.DoWork | Thread: 5 | IsThreadPool: True //bw3.RunWorkerCompleted | Thread: 7 | IsThreadPool: False As you can see the output between the first and remaining scenarios is somewhat different. While in Windows Forms and WPF the worker completed event runs on the thread that called RunWorkerAsync, in the first scenario the same event runs on any thread available in the thread pool. Another scenario where you can get the first behavior, even when on Windows Forms or WPF, is if you chain the creation of background workers, that is, you create a second worker in the DoWork event handler of an already running worker. Since the DoWork executes in a thread from the pool the second worker will use the default synchronization context and the completed event will not run in the UI thread.

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• Take Two: Comparing JVMs on ARM/Linux

  - by user12608080

  Although the intent of the previous article, entitled Comparing JVMs on ARM/Linux, was to introduce and highlight the availability of the HotSpot server compiler (referred to as c2) for Java SE-Embedded ARM v7,  it seems, based on feedback, that everyone was more interested in the OpenJDK comparisons to Java SE-E.  In fact there were two main concerns: The fact that the previous article compared Java SE-E 7 against OpenJDK 6 might be construed as an unlevel playing field because version 7 is newer and therefore potentially more optimized. That the generic compiler settings chosen to build the OpenJDK implementations did not put those versions in a particularly favorable light. With those considerations in mind, we'll institute the following changes to this version of the benchmarking: In order to help alleviate an additional concern that there is some sort of benchmark bias, we'll use a different suite, called DaCapo.  Funded and supported by many prestigious organizations, DaCapo's aim is to benchmark real world applications.  Further information about DaCapo can be found at http://dacapobench.org. At the suggestion of Xerxes Ranby, who has been a great help through this entire exercise, a newer Linux distribution will be used to assure that the OpenJDK implementations were built with more optimal compiler settings.  The Linux distribution in this instance is Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot. Having experienced difficulties getting Ubuntu 11.10 to run on the original D2Plug ARMv7 platform, for these benchmarks, we'll switch to an embedded system that has a supported Ubuntu 11.10 release.  That platform is the Freescale i.MX53 Quick Start Board.  It has an ARMv7 Coretex-A8 processor running at 1GHz with 1GB RAM. We'll limit comparisons to 4 JVM implementations: Java SE-E 7 Update 2 c1 compiler (default) Java SE-E 6 Update 30 (c1 compiler is the only option) OpenJDK 6 IcedTea6 1.11pre 6b23~pre11-0ubuntu1.11.10.2 CACAO build 1.1.0pre2 OpenJDK 6 IcedTea6 1.11pre 6b23~pre11-0ubuntu1.11.10.2 JamVM build-1.6.0-devel Certain OpenJDK implementations were eliminated from this round of testing for the simple reason that their performance was not competitive.  The Java SE 7u2 c2 compiler was also removed because although quite respectable, it did not perform as well as the c1 compilers.  Recall that c2 works optimally in long-lived situations.  Many of these benchmarks completed in a relatively short period of time.  To get a feel for where c2 shines, take a look at the first chart in this blog. The first chart that follows includes performance of all benchmark runs on all platforms.  Later on we'll look more at individual tests.  In all runs, smaller means faster.  The DaCapo aficionado may notice that only 10 of the 14 DaCapo tests for this version were executed.  The reason for this is that these 10 tests represent the only ones successfully completed by all 4 JVMs.  Only the Java SE-E 6u30 could successfully run all of the tests.  Both OpenJDK instances not only failed to complete certain tests, but also experienced VM aborts too. One of the first observations that can be made between Java SE-E 6 and 7 is that, for all intents and purposes, they are on par with regards to performance.  While it is a fact that successive Java SE releases add additional optimizations, it is also true that Java SE 7 introduces additional complexity to the Java platform thus balancing out any potential performance gains at this point.  We are still early into Java SE 7.  We would expect further performance enhancements for Java SE-E 7 in future updates. In comparing Java SE-E to OpenJDK performance, among both OpenJDK VMs, Cacao results are respectable in 4 of the 10 tests.  The charts that follow show the individual results of those four tests.  Both Java SE-E versions do win every test and outperform Cacao in the range of 9% to 55%. For the remaining 6 tests, Java SE-E significantly outperforms Cacao in the range of 114% to 311% So it looks like OpenJDK results are mixed for this round of benchmarks.  In some cases, performance looks to have improved.  But in a majority of instances, OpenJDK still lags behind Java SE-Embedded considerably. Time to put on my asbestos suit.  Let the flames begin...

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• Developing Schema Compare for Oracle (Part 6): 9i Query Performance

  - by Simon Cooper

  All throughout the EAP and beta versions of Schema Compare for Oracle, our main request was support for Oracle 9i. After releasing version 1.0 with support for 10g and 11g, our next step was then to get version 1.1 of SCfO out with support for 9i. However, there were some significant problems that we had to overcome first. This post will concentrate on query execution time. When we first tested SCfO on a 9i server, after accounting for various changes to the data dictionary, we found that database registration was taking a long time. And I mean a looooooong time. The same database that on 10g or 11g would take a couple of minutes to register would be taking upwards of 30 mins on 9i. Obviously, this is not ideal, so a poke around the query execution plans was required. As an example, let's take the table population query - the one that reads ALL_TABLES and joins it with a few other dictionary views to get us back our list of tables. On 10g, this query takes 5.6 seconds. On 9i, it takes 89.47 seconds. The difference in execution plan is even more dramatic - here's the (edited) execution plan on 10g: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Bytes | Cost |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 108K| 939 || 1 | SORT ORDER BY | | 108K| 939 || 2 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 108K| 938 ||* 3 | HASH JOIN RIGHT OUTER | | 103K| 762 || 4 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_LOCATIONS | 2058 | 3 ||* 20 | HASH JOIN RIGHT OUTER | | 73472 | 759 || 21 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_TABLES | 2097 | 3 ||* 34 | HASH JOIN RIGHT OUTER | | 39920 | 755 || 35 | VIEW | ALL_MVIEWS | 51 | 7 || 58 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 39104 | 748 || 59 | VIEW | ALL_TABLES | 6704 | 668 || 89 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_TAB_COMMENTS | 2025 | 5 || 106 | VIEW | ALL_PART_TABLES | 277 | 11 |------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And the same query on 9i: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Bytes | Cost |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 16P| 55G|| 1 | SORT ORDER BY | | 16P| 55G|| 2 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 16P| 862M|| 3 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 5251G| 992K|| 4 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 4243M| 2578 || 5 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 2669K| 1440 ||* 6 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 398K| 302 || 7 | VIEW | ALL_TABLES | 342K| 276 || 29 | VIEW | ALL_MVIEWS | 51 | 20 ||* 50 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_TAB_COMMENTS | 2043 | ||* 66 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_EXTERNAL_TABLES | 1777K| ||* 80 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_EXTERNAL_LOCATIONS | 1744K| ||* 96 | VIEW | ALL_PART_TABLES | 852K| |------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have a look at the cost column. 10g's overall query cost is 939, and 9i is 55,000,000,000 (or more precisely, 55,496,472,769). It's also having to process far more data. What on earth could be causing this huge difference in query cost? After trawling through the '10g New Features' documentation, we found item 1.9.2.21. Before 10g, Oracle advised that you do not collect statistics on data dictionary objects. From 10g, it advised that you do collect statistics on the data dictionary; for our queries, Oracle therefore knows what sort of data is in the dictionary tables, and so can generate an efficient execution plan. On 9i, no statistics are present on the system tables, so Oracle has to use the Rule Based Optimizer, which turns most LEFT JOINs into nested loops. If we force 9i to use hash joins, like 10g, we get a much better plan: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Bytes | Cost |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 7587K| 3704 || 1 | SORT ORDER BY | | 7587K| 3704 ||* 2 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 7587K| 822 ||* 3 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 5262K| 616 ||* 4 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 2980K| 465 ||* 5 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 710K| 432 ||* 6 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 398K| 302 || 7 | VIEW | ALL_TABLES | 342K| 276 || 29 | VIEW | ALL_MVIEWS | 51 | 20 || 50 | VIEW | ALL_PART_TABLES | 852K| 104 || 78 | VIEW | ALL_TAB_COMMENTS | 2043 | 14 || 93 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_LOCATIONS | 1744K| 31 || 106 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_TABLES | 1777K| 28 |------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That's much more like it. This drops the execution time down to 24 seconds. Not as good as 10g, but still an improvement. There are still several problems with this, however. 10g introduced a new join method - a right outer hash join (used in the first execution plan). The 9i query optimizer doesn't have this option available, so forcing a hash join means it has to hash the ALL_TABLES table, and furthermore re-hash it for every hash join in the execution plan; this could be thousands and thousands of rows. And although forcing hash joins somewhat alleviates this problem on our test systems, there's no guarantee that this will improve the execution time on customers' systems; it may even increase the time it takes (say, if all their tables are partitioned, or they've got a lot of materialized views). Ideally, we would want a solution that provides a speedup whatever the input. To try and get some ideas, we asked some oracle performance specialists to see if they had any ideas or tips. Their recommendation was to add a hidden hook into the product that allowed users to specify their own query hints, or even rewrite the queries entirely. However, we would prefer not to take that approach; as well as a lot of new infrastructure & a rewrite of the population code, it would have meant that any users of 9i would have to spend some time optimizing it to get it working on their system before they could use the product. Another approach was needed. All our population queries have a very specific pattern - a base table provides most of the information we need (ALL_TABLES for tables, or ALL_TAB_COLS for columns) and we do a left join to extra subsidiary tables that fill in gaps (for instance, ALL_PART_TABLES for partition information). All the left joins use the same set of columns to join on (typically the object owner & name), so we could re-use the hash information for each join, rather than re-hashing the same columns for every join. To allow us to do this, along with various other performance improvements that could be done for the specific query pattern we were using, we read all the tables individually and do a hash join on the client. Fortunately, this 'pure' algorithmic problem is the kind that can be very well optimized for expected real-world situations; as well as storing row data we're not using in the hash key on disk, we use very specific memory-efficient data structures to store all the information we need. This allows us to achieve a database population time that is as fast as on 10g, and even (in some situations) slightly faster, and a memory overhead of roughly 150 bytes per row of data in the result set (for schemas with 10,000 tables in that means an extra 1.4MB memory being used during population). Next: fun with the 9i dictionary views.

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• WMemoryProfiler is Released

  - by Alois Kraus

  What is it? WMemoryProfiler is a managed profiling Api to aid integration testing. This free library can get managed heap statistics and memory usage for your own process (remember testing) and other processes as well. The best thing is that it does work from .NET 2.0 up to .NET 4.5 in x86 and x64. To make it more interesting it can attach to any running .NET process. The reason why I do mention this is that commercial profilers do support this functionality only for their professional editions. An normally only since .NET 4.0 since the profiling API only since then does support attaching to a running process. This thing does differ in many aspects from “normal” profilers because while profiling yourself you can get all objects from all managed heaps back as an object array. If you ever wanted to change the state of an object which does only exist a method local in another thread you can get your hands on it now … Enough theory. Show me some code /// <summary> /// Show feature to not only get statisics out of a process but also the newly allocated /// instances since the last call to MarkCurrentObjects. /// GetNewObjects does return the newly allocated objects as object array /// </summary> static void InstanceTracking() { using (var dumper = new MemoryDumper()) // if you have problems use to see the debugger windows true,true)) { dumper.MarkCurrentObjects(); Allocate(); ILookup<Type, object> newObjects = dumper.GetNewObjects() .ToLookup( x => x.GetType() ); Console.WriteLine("New Strings:"); foreach (var newStr in newObjects[typeof(string)] ) { Console.WriteLine("Str: {0}", newStr); } } } … New Strings: Str: qqd Str: String data: Str: String data: 0 Str: String data: 1 … This is really hot stuff. Not only you can get heap statistics but you can directly examine the new objects and make queries upon them. When I do find more time I can reconstruct the object root graph from it from my own process. It this cool or what? You can also peek into the Finalization Queue to check if you did accidentally forget to dispose a whole bunch of objects … /// <summary> /// .NET 4.0 or above only. Get all finalizable objects which are ready for finalization and have no other object roots anymore. /// </summary> static void NotYetFinalizedObjects() { using (var dumper = new MemoryDumper()) { object[] finalizable = dumper.GetObjectsReadyForFinalization(); Console.WriteLine("Currently {0} objects of types {1} are ready for finalization. Consider disposing them before.", finalizable.Length, String.Join(",", finalizable.ToLookup( x=> x.GetType() ) .Select( x=> x.Key.Name)) ); } } How does it work? The W of WMemoryProfiler is a good hint. It does employ Windbg and SOS dll to do the heavy lifting and concentrates on an easy to use Api which does hide completely Windbg. If you do not want to see Windbg you will never see it. In my experience the most complex thing is actually to download Windbg from the Windows 8 Stanalone SDK. This is described in the Readme and the exception you are greeted with if it is missing in much greater detail. So I will not go into this here.   What Next? Depending on the feedback I do get I can imagine some features which might be useful as well Calculate first order GC Roots from the actual object graph Identify global statics in Types in object graph Support read out of finalization queue of .NET 2.0 as well. Support Memory Dump analysis (again a feature only supported by commercial profilers in their professional editions if it is supported at all) Deserialize objects from a memory dump into a live process back (this would need some more investigation but it is doable) The last item needs some explanation. Why on earth would you want to do that? The basic idea is to store in your live process some logging/tracing data which can become quite big but since it is never written to it is very fast to generate. When your process crashes with a memory dump you could transfer this data structure back into a live viewer which can then nicely display your program state at the point it did crash. This is an advanced trouble shooting technique I have not seen anywhere yet but it could be quite useful. You can have here a look at the current feature list of WMemoryProfiler with some examples.   How To Get Started? First I would download the released source package (it is tiny). And compile the complete project. Then you can compile the Example project (it has this name) and uncomment in the main method the scenario you want to check out. If you are greeted with an exception it is time to install the Windows 8 Standalone SDK which is described in great detail in the exception text. Thats it for the first round. I have seen something more limited in the Java world some years ago (now I cannot find the link anymore) but anyway. Now we have something much better.

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• Extending Expression Blend 4 &amp; Blend for Visual Studio 2012

  - by Chris Skardon

  Just getting this off the bat, I presume this will also work for Blend 5, but I can’t confirm it… Anyhews, I imagine you’re here because you want to know how to create an addin for Blend, so let’s jump right in there! First, and foremost, we’re going to need to ensure our development environment has the right setup, so the checklist: Visual Studio 2012 Blend for Visual Studio 2012 OK, let’s create a new project (class library, .NET 4.5): Hello.Extension The ‘.Extension’ bit is very very important. The addin will not work unless it is named in this way. You can put whatever you want at the front, but it has to have the extension bit. OK, so now we have a solution with one project. To this project we need to add references to the following things: Microsoft.Expression.Extensibility (from c:\program files\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Blend\   -- x86 folder if you are on an x64 windows install) Microsoft.Expression.Framework (same location as above) PresentationCore PresentationFramework WindowsBase System.ComponentModel.Composition Got them? ACE. Let’s now add a project to contain our control, so, create a new WPF Application project, cunningly named something like ‘Hello.Control’… (I’m creating a WPF application here, because I’m too lazy to dig up the correct references, and this will add all the ones I need ) Once that is created, delete the App.xaml and MainWindow.xaml files, we won’t be needing them. You will also need to change the properties of the project itself, so it is only a class library. Once that is done, let’s add a new UserControl, which will be this: <UserControl x:Class="Hello.Control.HelloControl" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="300"> <Grid> <TextBlock Text="HELLO!!!"/> </Grid> </UserControl> Impressive eh? Now, let’s reference the WPF project from the Extension library. All that’s left now is to code up our extension… So, add a class to the Extension project (name wise doesn’t matter), and make it implement the IPackage interface from the Microsoft.Expression.Extensibility library: public class HelloExtension : IPackage { /**/ } We’ll implement the two methods we need to: public class HelloExtension : IPackage { public void Load(IServices services) { } public void Unload() { } } We’re only really concerned about the Load method in this case, as let’s face it, the extension we have doesn’t need to do a lot to bog off. The interesting thing about the Load method is that it receives an IServices instance. This allows us to get access to all the services that Expression provides, in this case we’re interested in one in particular, the ‘IWindowService’ So, let’s get that bad boy… private IWindowService _windowService; public void Load(IServices services) { _windowService = services.GetService<IWindowService>(); } Nailed it… But why? The WindowService allows us to register our UserControl with Blend, which in turn allows people to activate and see it, which is a big plus point. So, let’s do that… We’ll create an ‘Initialize’ method to create our new control, and add it to the WindowService: private HelloControl _helloControl; public void Initialize() { _helloControl = new HelloControl(); if (_windowService.PaletteRegistry["HelloPanel"] == null) _windowService.RegisterPalette("HelloPanel", _helloControl, "Hello Window"); } First we check that we’re not already registered, and if we’re not we register, the first argument is the identifier used by the service to, well, identify your extension. The second argument is the actual control, the third argument is the name that people will see in the ‘Windows’ menu of Blend itself (so important note here – don’t put anything embarrassing or (need I say it?) sweary…) There are only two things to do now - Call ‘Initialize()’ from our Load method, and Export the class This is easy money – add [Export(typeof(IPackage))] to the top of our class… The full code will (should) look like this: [Export(typeof (IPackage))] public class HelloExtension : IPackage { private HelloControl _helloControl; private IWindowService _windowService; public void Load(IServices services) { _windowService = services.GetService<IWindowService>(); Initialize(); } public void Unload() { } public void Initialize() { _helloControl = new HelloControl(); if (_windowService.PaletteRegistry["HelloControl"] == null) _windowService.RegisterPalette("HelloControl", _helloControl, "Hello Window"); } } If you build this and copy it to your ‘Extensions’ folder in Blend (c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 11.0\blend\) and start Blend, you should see ‘Hello Window’ listed in the Window menu: That as they say is it!

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• Oracle Cloud Applications: The Right Ingredients Baked In

  - by yaldahhakim

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Oracle Cloud Applications: The Right Ingredients Baked In Eggs, flour, milk, and sugar. The magic happens when you mix these ingredients together. The same goes for the hottest technologies fast changing how IT impacts our organizations today: cloud, social, mobile, and big data. By themselves they’re pretty good; combining them with a great recipe is what unlocks real transformation power. Choosing the right cloud can be very similar to choosing the right cake. First consider comparing the core ingredients that go into baking a cake and the core design principles in building a cloud-based application. For instance, if flour is the base ingredient of a cake, then rich functionality that spans complete business processes is the base of an enterprise-grade cloud. Cloud computing is more than just consuming an "application as service", and having someone else manage it for you. Rather, the value of cloud is about making your business more agile in the marketplace, and shortening the time it takes to deliver and adopt new innovation. It’s also about improving not only the efficiency at which we communicate but the actual quality of the information shared as well. Data from different systems, like ingredients in a cake, must also be blended together effectively and evaluated through a consolidated lens. When this doesn’t happen, for instance when data in your sales cloud doesn't seamlessly connect with your order management and other “back office” applications, the speed and quality of information can decrease drastically. It’s like mixing ingredients in a strainer with a straw – you just can’t bring it all together without losing something. Mixing ingredients is similar to bringing clouds together, and co-existing cloud applications with traditional on premise applications. This is where a shared services  platform built on open standards and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is critical. It’s essentially a cloud recipe that calls for not only great ingredients, but also ingredients you can get locally or most likely already have in your kitchen (or IT shop.) Open standards is the best way to deliver a cost effective, durable application integration strategy – regardless of where your apps are deployed. It’s also the best way to build your own cloud applications, or extend the ones you consume from a third party. Just like using standard ingredients and tools you already have in your kitchen, a standards based cloud enables your IT resources to ensure a cloud works easily with other systems. Your IT staff can also make changes using tools they are already familiar with. Or even more ideal, enable business users to actually tailor their experience without having to call upon IT for help at all. This frees IT resources to focus more on developing new innovative services for the organization vs. run and maintain. Carrying the cake analogy forward, you need to add all the ingredients in before you bake it. The same is true with a modern cloud. To harness the full power of cloud, you can’t leave out some of the most important ingredients and just layer them on top later. This is what a lot of our niche competitors have done when it comes to social, mobile, big data and analytics, and other key technologies impacting the way we do business. The transformational power of these technology trends comes from having a strategy from the get-go that combines them into a winning recipe, and delivers them in a unified way. In looking at ways Oracle’s cloud is different from other clouds – not only is breadth of functionality rich across functional pillars like CRM, HCM, ERP, etc. but it embeds social, mobile, and rich intelligence capabilities where they make the most sense across business processes. This strategy enables the Oracle Cloud to uniquely deliver on all three of these dimensions to help our customers unlock the full power of these transformational technologies.

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• Summit reflections

  - by Rob Farley

  So far, my three PASS Summit experiences have been notably different to each other. My first, I wasn’t on the board and I gave two regular sessions and a Lightning Talk in which I told jokes. My second, I was a board advisor, and I delivered a precon, a spotlight and a Lightning Talk in which I sang. My third (last week), I was a full board director, and I didn’t present at all. Let’s not talk about next year. I’m not sure there are many options left. This year, I noticed that a lot more people recognised me and said hello. I guess that’s potentially because of the singing last year, but could also be because board elections can bring a fair bit of attention, and because of the effort I’ve put in through things like 24HOP... Yeah, ok. It’d be the singing. My approach was very different though. I was watching things through different eyes. I looked for the things that seemed to be working and the things that didn’t. I had staff there again, and was curious to know how their things were working out. I knew a lot more about what was going on behind the scenes to make various things happen, and although very little about the Summit was actually my responsibility (based on not having that portfolio), my perspective had moved considerably. Before the Summit started, Board Members had been given notebooks – an idea Tom (who heads up PASS’ marketing) had come up with after being inspired by seeing Bill walk around with a notebook. The plan was to take notes about feedback we got from people. It was a good thing, and the notebook forms a nice pair with the SQLBits one I got a couple of years ago when I last spoke there. I think one of the biggest impacts of this was that during the first keynote, Bill told everyone present about the notebooks. This set a tone of “we’re listening”, and a number of people were definitely keen to tell us things that would cause us to pull out our notebooks. PASSTV was a new thing this year. Justin, the host, featured on the couch and talked a lot of people about a lot of things, including me (he talked to me about a lot of things, I don’t think he talked to a lot people about me). Reaching people through online methods is something which interests me a lot – it has huge potential, and I love the idea of being able to broadcast to people who are unable to attend in person. I’m keen to see how this medium can be developed over time. People who know me will know that I’m a keen advocate of certification – I've been SQL certified since version 6.5, and have even been involved in creating exams. However, I don’t believe in studying for exams. I think training is worthwhile for learning new skills, but the goal should be on learning those skills, not on passing an exam. Exams should be for proving that the skills are there, not a goal in themselves. The PASS Summit is an excellent place to take exams though, and with an attitude of professional development throughout the event, why not? So I did. I wasn’t expecting to take one, but I was persuaded and took the MCM Knowledge Exam. I hadn’t even looked at the syllabus, but tried it anyway. I was very tired, and even fell asleep at one point during it. I’ll find out my result at some point in the future – the Prometric site just says “Tested” at the moment. As I said, it wasn’t something I was expecting to do, but it was good to have something unexpected during the week. Of course it was good to catch up with old friends and make new ones. I feel like every time I’m in the US I see things develop a bit more, with more and more people knowing who I am, who my staff are, and recognising the LobsterPot brand. I missed being a presenter, but I definitely enjoyed seeing many friends on the list of presenters. I won’t try to list them, because there are so many these days that people might feel sad if I don’t mention them. For those that I managed to see, I was pleased to see that the majority of them have lifted their presentation skills since I last saw them, and I happily told them as much. One person who I will mention was Paul White, who travelled from New Zealand to his first PASS Summit. He gave two sessions (a regular session and a half-day), packed large rooms of people, and had everyone buzzing with enthusiasm. I spoke to him after the event, and he told me that his expectations were blown away. Paul isn’t normally a fan of crowds, and the thought of 4000 people would have been scary. But he told me he had no idea that people would welcome him so well, be so friendly and so down to earth. He’s seen the significance of the SQL Server community, and says he’ll be back. It’ll be good to see him there. Will you be there too?

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