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  • Why is my program getting slower and slower ?

    - by RedWolf
    I'm using the program to send data from database to the Excel file . It works fine at the beginning and then becomes more and more slowly,finally it run out of the memory and the following error ocurrs: "java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space...". The problem can be resolved by adding the jvm heap sapce.But the question is that it spends too much time to run out the program. After several minutes,it finished a loop with 4 seconds which can be finished with 0.5 seconds at the beginning . I can't found a solution to make it always run in a certain speed. Is it my code problem? Any clues on this? Here is the code: public void addAnswerRow(List<FinalUsers> finalUsersList,WritableWorkbook book){ if (finalUsersList.size() >0 ) { try { WritableSheet sheet = book.createSheet("Answer", 0); int colCount = 0; sheet.addCell(new Label(colCount++,0,"Number")); sheet.addCell(new Label(colCount++,0,"SchoolNumber")); sheet.addCell(new Label(colCount++,0,"District")); sheet.addCell(new Label(colCount++,0,"SchoolName")); sheet.setColumnView(1, 15); sheet.setColumnView(3, 25); List<Elements> elementsList = this.elementsManager.getObjectElementsByEduTypeAndQuestionnaireType(finalUsersList.get(0).getEducationType().getId(), this.getQuestionnaireByFinalUsersType(finalUsersList.get(0).getFinalUsersType().getId())); Collections.sort(elementsList, new Comparator<Elements>(){ public int compare(Elements o1, Elements o2) { for(int i=0; i< ( o1.getItemNO().length()>o2.getItemNO().length()? o2.getItemNO().length(): o1.getItemNO().length());i++){ if (CommonFun.isNumberic(o1.getItemNO().substring(0, o1.getItemNO().length()>3? 4: o1.getItemNO().length()-1)) && !CommonFun.isNumberic(o2.getItemNO().substring(0, o2.getItemNO().length()>3? 4: o2.getItemNO().length()-1))){ return 1; } if (!CommonFun.isNumberic(o1.getItemNO().substring(0, o1.getItemNO().length()>3? 4: o1.getItemNO().length()-1)) && CommonFun.isNumberic(o2.getItemNO().substring(0,o2.getItemNO().length()>3? 4:o2.getItemNO().length()-1))){ return -1; } if ( o1.getItemNO().charAt(i)!=o2.getItemNO().charAt(i) ){ return o1.getItemNO().charAt(i)-o2.getItemNO().charAt(i); } } return o1.getItemNO().length()> o2.getItemNO().length()? 1:-1; }}); for (Elements elements : elementsList){ sheet.addCell(new Label(colCount++,0,this.getTitlePre(finalUsersList.get(0).getFinalUsersType().getId(), finalUsersList.get(0).getEducationType().getId())+elements.getItemNO()+elements.getItem().getStem())); } int sheetRowCount =1; int sheetColCount =0; for(FinalUsers finalUsers : finalUsersList){ sheetColCount =0; sheet.addCell(new Label(sheetColCount++,sheetRowCount,String.valueOf(sheetRowCount))); sheet.addCell(new Label(sheetColCount++,sheetRowCount,finalUsers.getSchool().getSchoolNumber())); sheet.addCell(new Label(sheetColCount++,sheetRowCount,finalUsers.getSchool().getDistrict().getDistrictNumber().toString().trim())); sheet.addCell(new Label(sheetColCount++,sheetRowCount,finalUsers.getSchool().getName())); List<AnswerLog> answerLogList = this.answerLogManager.getAnswerLogByFinalUsers(finalUsers.getId()); Map<String,String> answerMap = new HashMap<String,String>(); for(AnswerLog answerLog :answerLogList ){ if (answerLog.getOptionsId() != null) { answerMap.put(answerLog.getElement().getItemNO(), this.getOptionsAnswer(answerLog.getOptionsId())); }else if (answerLog.getBlanks()!= null){ answerMap.put(answerLog.getElement().getItemNO(), answerLog.getBlanks()); }else{ answerMap.put(answerLog.getElement().getItemNO(), answerLog.getSubjectiveItemContent()); } } for (Elements elements : elementsList){ sheet.addCell(new Label(sheetColCount++,sheetRowCount,null==answerMap.get(elements.getItemNO())?"0":answerMap.get(elements.getItemNO()))); } sheetRowCount++; } book.write(); book.close(); } catch (IOException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } catch (RowsExceededException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } catch (WriteException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } } }

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  • C# slowdown while creating a bitmap - calculating distances from a large List of places for each pixel

    - by user576849
    I'm creating a graphic of the glow of lights above a geographic location based upon Walkers Law: Skyglow=0.01*Population*DistanceFromCenter^-2.5 I have a CSV file of places with 66,000 records using 5 fields (id,name,population,latitude,longitude), parsed on the FormLoad event and stored it in: List<string[]> placeDataList Then I set up nested loops to fill in a bitmap using SetPixel. For each pixel on the bitmap, which represents a coordinate on a map (latitude and longitude), the program loops through placeDataList – calculating the distance from that coordinate (pixel) to each place record. The distance (along with population) is used in a calculation to find how much cumulative sky glow is contributed to the coordinate from each place record. So, for every pixel, 66,000 distance calculations must be made. The problem is, this is predictably EXTREMELY slow – on the order of one line of pixels per 30 seconds or so on a 320 pixel wide image. This is unrelated to SetPixel, which I know is also slow, because the speed is similarly slow when adding the distance calculation results to an array. I don’t actually need to test all 66,000 records for every pixel, only the records within 150 miles (i.e. no skyglow is contributed to a coordinate from a small town 3000 miles away). But to find which records are within 150 miles of my coordinate I would still need to loop through all the records for each pixel. I can't use a smaller number of records because all 66,000 places contribute to skyglow for SOME coordinate in my map as it loops. This seems like a Catch-22, so I know there must be a better method out there. Like I mentioned, the slowdown is related to how many calculations I’m making per pixel, not anything to do with the bitmap. Any suggestions? private void fillPixels(int width) { Color pixelColor; int pixel_w = width; int pixel_h = (int)Math.Floor((width * 0.424088664)); Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(pixel_w, pixel_h); for (int i = 0; i < pixel_h; i++) for (int j = 0; j < pixel_w; j++) { pixelColor = getPixelColor(i, j); bmp.SetPixel(j, i, pixelColor); } bmp.Save("Nightfall", System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Jpeg); pictureBox1.Image = bmp; MessageBox.Show("Done"); } private Color getPixelColor(int height, int width) { int c; double glow,d,cityLat,cityLon,cityPop; double testLat, testLon; int size_h = (int)Math.Floor((size_w * 0.424088664)); ; testLat = (height * (24.443136 / size_h)) + 24.548874; testLon = (width * (57.636853 / size_w)) -124.640767; glow = 0; for (int i = 0; i < placeDataList.Count; i++) { cityPop=Convert.ToDouble(placeDataList[i][2]); cityLat=Convert.ToDouble(placeDataList[i][3]); cityLon=Convert.ToDouble(placeDataList[i][4]); d = distance(testLat, testLon, cityLat, cityLon,"M"); if(d<150) glow = glow+(0.01 * cityPop * Math.Pow(d, -2.5)); } if (glow >= 1) glow=1; c = (int)Math.Ceiling(glow * 255); return Color.FromArgb(c, c, c); }

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  • Loosely coupled implicit conversion

    - by ltjax
    Implicit conversion can be really useful when types are semantically equivalent. For example, imagine two libraries that implement a type identically, but in different namespaces. Or just a type that is mostly identical, except for some semantic-sugar here and there. Now you cannot pass one type into a function (in one of those libraries) that was designed to use the other, unless that function is a template. If it's not, you have to somehow convert one type into the other. This should be trivial (or otherwise the types are not so identical after-all!) but calling the conversion explicitly bloats your code with mostly meaningless function-calls. While such conversion functions might actually copy some values around, they essentially do nothing from a high-level "programmers" point-of-view. Implicit conversion constructors and operators could obviously help, but they introduce coupling, so that one of those types has to know about the other. Usually, at least when dealing with libraries, that is not the case, because the presence of one of those types makes the other one redundant. Also, you cannot always change libraries. Now I see two options on how to make implicit conversion work in user-code: The first would be to provide a proxy-type, that implements conversion-operators and conversion-constructors (and assignments) for all the involved types, and always use that. The second requires a minimal change to the libraries, but allows great flexibility: Add a conversion-constructor for each involved type that can be externally optionally enabled. For example, for a type A add a constructor: template <class T> A( const T& src, typename boost::enable_if<conversion_enabled<T,A>>::type* ignore=0 ) { *this = convert(src); } and a template template <class X, class Y> struct conversion_enabled : public boost::mpl::false_ {}; that disables the implicit conversion by default. Then to enable conversion between two types, specialize the template: template <> struct conversion_enabled<OtherA, A> : public boost::mpl::true_ {}; and implement a convert function that can be found through ADL. I would personally prefer to use the second variant, unless there are strong arguments against it. Now to the actual question(s): What's the preferred way to associate types for implicit conversion? Are my suggestions good ideas? Are there any downsides to either approach? Is allowing conversions like that dangerous? Should library implementers in-general supply the second method when it's likely that their type will be replicated in software they are most likely beeing used with (I'm thinking of 3d-rendering middle-ware here, where most of those packages implement a 3D vector).

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  • How to optimize this javascript code?

    - by Andrija
    I have a jsp which uses a lot of javascript and it's just not fast enough. I would like to optimize it so first, here's a part of the code: In the jsp I have the initialization: window.onload = function () { formCollection.pageSize.value = "<%= pagingSize%>"; elemCollection = iDom3.Table.all["spis"].XML.DOM; <% if (resultList != null) { %> elementsNumber = <%= resultList.size() %>; <%} else { %> elementsNumber = 0; <% } %> contextPath = "<%= request.getContextPath() %>"; } In my js file I have two types of js functions: // gets the first element and sets it's value to all the other; //the selectSingleNode function is used because I use XSLT transformation //to generate the table _setTehJed = function(){ var resultId = formCollection.elements["idTehJedinice_spis_1"].value; var resultText = formCollection.elements["tehnicka_spis_1"].value; if (resultId != ""){ var counter = 1; while (counter<elementsNumber){ counter++; if(formCollection.elements["idTehJedinice_spis_"+counter] != null){ formCollection.elements["idTehJedinice_spis_"+counter].value=resultId; formCollection.elements["tehnicka_spis_"+counter].value=resultText; } var node=elemCollection.selectSingleNode("/suite/table/rows/row[@id = 'spis_"+counter+"']/data[@col = 'tehnicka']/title"); node.text=resultText; var node2=elemCollection.selectSingleNode("/suite/table/rows/row[@id = 'spis_"+counter+"']/data[@col = 'idTehJedinice']/title"); node2.text=resultId; } } } // sets the elements checkbox to checked or unchecked _SelectCheckRokCuvanja = { all : [], Item : function (oItem, sId) { this.all["spis_"+sId] = oItem.value; if (oItem.checked) { elemCollection.selectSingleNode("/suite/table/rows/row[@id = 'spis_"+sId+"']/data[@col = 'rokCheck']").setAttribute("default", "true"); }else{ elemCollection.selectSingleNode("/suite/table/rows/row[@id = 'spis_"+sId+"']/data[@col = 'rokCheck']").setAttribute("default", "false"); } } } I've used these tips: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2006/08/28/728654.aspx http://code.google.com/speed/articles/optimizing-javascript.html but I still think something could be done like defining the functions like this: In the jsp: window.onload = function () { iDom3.DigitalnaArhivaPrihvat.formCollection=document.forms["controller"]; iDom3.DigitalnaArhivaPrihvat.formCollection.pageSize.value = "<%= pagingSize%>"; iDom3.DigitalnaArhivaPrihvat.elemCollection = iDom3.Table.all["spis"].XML.DOM; <% if (resultList != null) { %> iDom3.DigitalnaArhivaPrihvat.elementsNumber = <%= resultList.size() %> <%} else { %> iDom3.DigitalnaArhivaPrihvat.elementsNumber = 0; <% } %> } in the js: iDom3.DigitalnaArhivaPrihvat = { formCollection:null, elemCollection:null, elementsNumber:null, _setTehJed : function(){ var resultId = this.formCollection.elements.idTehJedinice_spis_1.value; var resultText = this.formCollection.elements.tehnicka_spis_1.value; if (resultId != ""){ var counter = 1; while (counter<this.elementsNumber){ counter++; if(this.formCollection.elements["idTehJedinice_spis_"+counter] !== null){ this.formCollection.elements["idTehJedinice_spis_"+counter].value=resultId; this.formCollection.elements["tehnicka_spis_"+counter].value=resultText; } var node=this.elemCollection.selectSingleNode("/suite/table/rows/row[@id = 'spis_"+counter+"']/data[@col = 'tehnicka']/title"); node.text=resultText; var node2=this.elemCollection.selectSingleNode("/suite/table/rows/row[@id = 'spis_"+counter+"']/data[@col = 'idTehJedinice']/title"); node2.text=resultId; } } }, _SelectCheckRokCuvanja = { all : [], Item : function (oItem, sId) { this.all["spis_"+sId] = oItem.value; if (oItem.checked) { this.elemCollection.selectSingleNode("/suite/table/rows/row[@id = 'spis_"+sId+"']/data[@col = 'rokCheck']").setAttribute("default", "true"); }else{ this.elemCollection.selectSingleNode("/suite/table/rows/row[@id = 'spis_"+sId+"']/data[@col = 'rokCheck']").setAttribute("default", "false"); } } } but the problem is scoping (if I do it like this, the second function does not execute properly). Any suggestions?

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  • c# video equivalent to image.fromstream? Or changing the scope of the following script to allow vide

    - by Daniel
    The following is a part of an upload class in a c# script. I'm a php programmer, I've never messed with c# much but I'm trying to learn. This upload script will not handle anything except images, I need to adapt this class to handle other types of media also, or rewrite it all together. If I'm correct, I realize that using (Image image = Image.FromStream(file.InputStream)) basically says that the scope of the following is Image, only an image can be used or the object is discarded? And also that the variable image is being created from an Image from the file stream, which I understand to be, like... the $_FILES array in php? I dunno, I don't really care about making thumbnails right now either way, so if this can be taken out and still process the upload I'm totally cool with that, I just haven't had any luck getting this thing to take anything but images, even when commenting out that whole part of the class... protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { string dir = Path.Combine(Request.PhysicalApplicationPath, "files"); if (Request.Files.Count == 0) { // No files were posted Response.StatusCode = 500; } else { try { // Only one file at a time is posted HttpPostedFile file = Request.Files[0]; // Size limit 100MB if (file.ContentLength > 102400000) { // File too large Response.StatusCode = 500; } else { string id = Request.QueryString["userId"]; string[] folders = userDir(id); foreach (string folder in folders) { dir = Path.Combine(dir, folder); if (!Directory.Exists(dir)) Directory.CreateDirectory(dir); } string path = Path.Combine(dir, String.Concat(Request.QueryString["batchId"], "_", file.FileName)); file.SaveAs(path); // Create thumbnail int dot = path.LastIndexOf('.'); string thumbpath = String.Concat(path.Substring(0, dot), "_thumb", path.Substring(dot)); using (Image image = Image.FromStream(file.InputStream)) { // Find the ratio that will create maximum height or width of 100px. double ratio = Math.Max(image.Width / 100.0, image.Height / 100.0); using (Image thumb = new Bitmap(image, new Size((int)Math.Round(image.Width / ratio), (int)Math.Round(image.Height / ratio)))) { using (Graphics graphic = Graphics.FromImage(thumb)) { // Make sure thumbnail is not crappy graphic.SmoothingMode = SmoothingMode.HighQuality; graphic.InterpolationMode = InterpolationMode.High; graphic.CompositingQuality = CompositingQuality.HighQuality; // JPEG ImageCodecInfo codec = ImageCodecInfo.GetImageEncoders()[1]; // 90% quality EncoderParameters encode = new EncoderParameters(1); encode.Param[0] = new EncoderParameter(Encoder.Quality, 90L); // Resize graphic.DrawImage(image, new Rectangle(0, 0, thumb.Width, thumb.Height)); // Save thumb.Save(thumbpath, codec, encode); } } } // Success Response.StatusCode = 200; } } catch { // Something went wrong Response.StatusCode = 500; } } }

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  • Missing part of the image when taking screenshot while supporting Retina Display

    - by Spaft
    I'm currently working on enabling support for retina display for my game. In the game, we have a feature that the user can take screenshot. We are using these part of code we found online a while ago and it's working fine when we are not supporting retina display: CCDirector* director = [CCDirector sharedDirector]; CGSize size = [director winSizeInPixels]; //Create buffer for pixels GLuint bufferLength = size.width * size.height * 4; GLubyte* buffer = (GLubyte*)malloc(bufferLength); //Read Pixels from OpenGL glReadPixels(0, 100, size.width, size.height, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, buffer); //Make data provider with data. CGDataProviderRef provider = CGDataProviderCreateWithData(NULL, buffer, bufferLength, NULL); //Configure image int bitsPerComponent = 8; int bitsPerPixel = 32; int bytesPerRow = 4 * size.width; CGColorSpaceRef colorSpaceRef = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB(); CGBitmapInfo bitmapInfo = kCGBitmapByteOrderDefault; CGColorRenderingIntent renderingIntent = kCGRenderingIntentDefault; CGImageRef iref = CGImageCreate(size.width, size.height, bitsPerComponent, bitsPerPixel, bytesPerRow, colorSpaceRef, bitmapInfo, provider, NULL, NO, renderingIntent); uint32_t* pixels = (uint32_t*)malloc(bufferLength); CGContextRef context = CGBitmapContextCreate(pixels, size.width, size.height, 8, size.width * 4, CGImageGetColorSpace(iref), kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast | kCGBitmapByteOrder32Big); CGContextTranslateCTM(context, 0, size.height); CGContextScaleCTM(context, 1.0f, -1.0f); switch (director.deviceOrientation) { case CCDeviceOrientationPortrait: break; case CCDeviceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown: CGContextRotateCTM(context, CC_DEGREES_TO_RADIANS(180)); CGContextTranslateCTM(context, -size.width, -size.height); break; case CCDeviceOrientationLandscapeLeft: CGContextRotateCTM(context, CC_DEGREES_TO_RADIANS(-90)); CGContextTranslateCTM(context, -size.width, 0); break; case CCDeviceOrientationLandscapeRight: CGContextRotateCTM(context, CC_DEGREES_TO_RADIANS(90)); CGContextTranslateCTM(context, size.width * 0.5f, -size.height); break; } CGContextDrawImage(context, CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, size.width, size.height), iref); UIImage *outputImage = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:CGBitmapContextCreateImage(context)]; //Dealloc CGDataProviderRelease(provider); CGImageRelease(iref); CGContextRelease(context); free(buffer); free(pixels); return outputImage; But when we enabled retina display in cocos 0.99.5. This functionality is a little messed up since it will miss a little left part of the image while the high is still correct. So I'm wondering if there is anything wrong with the code or am I doing anything wrong here? Thank you in advance for any reply!

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  • Is this a SEO SAFE anchor link

    - by Mayhem
    so... Is this a safe way to use internal links on your site.. By doing this i have the index page generating the usual php content section and handing it to the div element. THE MAIN QUESTION: Will google still index the pages using this method? Common sense tells me it does.. But just double checking and leaving this here as a base example as well if it is. As in. EXAMPLE ONLY PEOPLE The Server Side if (isset($_REQUEST['page'])) {$pageID=$_REQUEST['page'];} else {$pageID="home";} if (isset($_REQUEST['pageMode']) && $_REQUEST['pageMode']=="js") { require "content/".$pageID.".php"; exit; } // ELSE - REST OF WEBSITE WILL BE GENERATED USING THE page VARIABLE The Links <a class='btnMenu' href='?page=home'>Home Page</a> <a class='btnMenu' href='?page=about'>About</a> <a class='btnMenu' href='?page=Services'>Services</a> <a class='btnMenu' href='?page=contact'>Contact</a> The Javascript $(function() { $(".btnMenu").click(function(){return doNav(this);}); }); function doNav(objCaller) { var sPage = $(objCaller).attr("href").substring(6,255); $.get("index.php", { page: sPage, pageMode: 'js'}, function(data) { ("#siteContent").html(data).scrollTop(0); }); return false; } Forgive me if there are any errors, as just copied and pasted from my script then removed a bunch of junk to simplify it as still prototyping/white boarding the project its in. So yes it does look a little nasty at the moment. REASONS WHY: The main reason is bandwidth and speed, This will allow other scripts to run and control the site/application a little better and yes it will need to be locked down with some coding. -- FURTHER EXAMPLE-- INSERT PHP AT TOP <?php // PHP CODE HERE ?> <html> <head> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="scripts.js"></script> </head> <body> <div class='siteBody'> <div class='siteHeader'> <?php foreach ($pageList as $key => $value) { if ($pageID == $key) {$btnClass="btnMenuSel";} else {$btnClass="btnMenu";} echo "<a class='$btnClass' href='?page=".$key."'>".$pageList[$key]."</a>"; } ?> </div><div id="siteContent" style='margin-top:10px;'> <?php require "content/".$pageID.".php"; ?> </div><div class='siteFooter'> </div> </div> </body> </html>

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  • Is 4-5 years the “Midlife Crisis” for a programming career?

    - by Jeffrey
    I’ve been programming C# professionally for a bit over 4 years now. For the past 4 years I’ve worked for a few small/medium companies ranging from “web/ads agencies”, small industry specific software shops to a small startup. I've been mainly doing "business apps" that involves using high-level programming languages (garbage collected) and my overall experience was that all of the works I’ve done could have been more professional. A lot of the things were done incorrectly (in a rush) mainly due to cost factor that people always wanted something “now” and with the smallest amount of spendable money. I kept on thinking maybe if I could work for a bigger companies or a company that’s better suited for programmers, or somewhere that's got the money and time to really build something longer term and more maintainable I may have enjoyed more in my career. I’ve never had a “mentor” that guided me through my 4 years career. I am pretty much blog / google / self taught programmer other than my bachelor IT degree. I’ve also observed another issue that most so called “senior” programmer in “my working environment” are really not that senior skill wise. They are “senior” only because they’ve been a long time programmer, but the code they write or the decisions they make are absolutely rubbish! They don't want to learn, they don't want to be better they just want to get paid and do what they've told to do which make sense and most of us are like that. Maybe that’s why they are where they are now. But I don’t want to become like them I want to be better. I’ve run into a mental state that I no longer intend to be a programmer for my future career. I started to think maybe there are better things out there to work on. The more blogs I read, the more “best practices” I’ve tried the more I feel I am drifting away from “my reality”. But I am not a great programmer otherwise I don't think I am where I am now. I think 4-5 years is a stage that can be a step forward career wise or a step out of where you are. I just wanted to hear what other have to say about what I’ve mentioned above and whether you’ve experienced similar situation in your past programming career and how you dealt with it. Thanks.

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  • Execution plan issue requires reset on SQL Server 2005, how to determine cause?

    - by Tony Brandner
    We have a web application that delivers training to thousands of corporate students running on top of SQL Server 2005. Recently, we started seeing that a single specific query in the application went from 1 second to about 30 seconds in terms of execution time. The application started throwing timeouts in that area. Our first thought was that we may have incorrect indexes, so we reviewed the tables and indexes. However, similar queries elsewhere in the application also run quickly. Reviewing the indexes showed us that they were configured as expected. We were able to narrow it down to a single query, not a stored procedure. Running this query in SQL Studio also runs quickly. We tried running the application in a different server environment. So a different web server with the same query, parameters and database. The query still ran slow. The query is a fairly large one related to determining a student's current list of training. It includes joins and left joins on a dozen tables and subqueries. A few of the tables are fairly large (hundreds of thousands of rows) and some of the other tables are small lookup tables. The query uses a grouping clause and a few where conditions. A few of the tables are quite active and the contents change often but the volume of added rows doesn't seem extreme. These symptoms led us to consider the execution plan. First off, as soon as we reset the execution plan cache with the SQL command 'DBCC FREEPROCCACHE', the problem went away. Unfortunately, the problem started to reoccur within a few days. The problem has continued to plague us for awhile now. It's usually the same query, but we did appear to see the problem occur in another single query recently. It happens enough to be a nuisance. We're having a heck of a time trying to fix it since we can't reproduce it in any other environment other than production. I have downloaded the High Availability guide from Red Gate and I read up more on execution plans. I hope to run the profiler on the live server, but I'm a bit concerned about impact. I would like to ask - what is the best way to figure out what is triggering this problem? Has anyone else seen this same issue?

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  • Why would Linux VM in vSphere ESXi 5.5 show dramatically increased disk i/o latency?

    - by mhucka
    I'm stumped and I hope someone else will recognize the symptoms of this problem. Hardware: new Dell T110 II, dual-core Pentium G860 2.9 GHz, onboard SATA controller, one new 500 GB 7200 RPM cabled hard drive inside the box, other drives inside but not mounted yet. No RAID. Software: fresh CentOS 6.5 virtual machine under VMware ESXi 5.5.0 (build 174 + vSphere Client). 2.5 GB RAM allocated. The disk is how CentOS offered to set it up, namely as a volume inside an LVM Volume Group, except that I skipped having a separate /home and simply have / and /boot. CentOS is patched up, ESXi patched up, latest VMware tools installed in the VM. No users on the system, no services running, no files on the disk but the OS installation. I'm interacting with the VM via the VM virtual console in vSphere Client. Before going further, I wanted to check that I configured things more or less reasonably. I ran the following command as root in a shell on the VM: for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10; do dd if=/dev/zero of=/test.img bs=8k count=256k conv=fdatasync done I.e., just repeat the dd command 10 times, which results in printing the transfer rate each time. The results are disturbing. It starts off well: 262144+0 records in 262144+0 records out 2147483648 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 20.451 s, 105 MB/s 262144+0 records in 262144+0 records out 2147483648 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 20.4202 s, 105 MB/s ... but after 7-8 of these, it then prints 262144+0 records in 262144+0 records out 2147483648 bytes (2.1 GG) copied, 82.9779 s, 25.9 MB/s 262144+0 records in 262144+0 records out 2147483648 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 84.0396 s, 25.6 MB/s 262144+0 records in 262144+0 records out 2147483648 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 103.42 s, 20.8 MB/s If I wait a significant amount of time, say 30-45 minutes, and run it again, it again goes back to 105 MB/s, and after several rounds (sometimes a few, sometimes 10+), it drops to ~20-25 MB/s again. Plotting the disk latency in vSphere's interface, it shows periods of high disk latency hitting 1.2-1.5 seconds during the times that dd reports the low throughput. (And yes, things get pretty unresponsive while that's happening.) What could be causing this? I'm comfortable that it is not due to the disk failing, because I also had configured two other disks as an additional volume in the same system. At first I thought I did something wrong with that volume, but after commenting the volume out from /etc/fstab and rebooting, and trying the tests on / as shown above, it became clear that the problem is elsewhere. It is probably an ESXi configuration problem, but I'm not very experienced with ESXi. It's probably something stupid, but after trying to figure this out for many hours over multiple days, I can't find the problem, so I hope someone can point me in the right direction. (P.S.: yes, I know this hardware combo won't win any speed awards as a server, and I have reasons for using this low-end hardware and running a single VM, but I think that's besides the point for this question [unless it's actually a hardware problem].) ADDENDUM #1: Reading other answers such as this one made me try adding oflag=direct to dd. However, it makes no difference in the pattern of results: initially the numbers are higher for many rounds, then they drop to 20-25 MB/s. (The initial absolute numbers are in the 50 MB/s range.) ADDENDUM #2: Adding sync ; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches into the loop does not make a difference at all. ADDENDUM #3: To take out further variables, I now run dd such that the file it creates is larger than the amount of RAM on the system. The new command is dd if=/dev/zero of=/test.img bs=16k count=256k conv=fdatasync oflag=direct. Initial throughput numbers with this version of the command are ~50 MB/s. They drop to 20-25 MB/s when things go south. ADDENDUM #4: Here is the output of iostat -d -m -x 1 running in another terminal window while performance is "good" and then again when it's "bad". (While this is going on, I'm running dd if=/dev/zero of=/test.img bs=16k count=256k conv=fdatasync oflag=direct.) First, when things are "good", it shows this: When things go "bad", iostat -d -m -x 1 shows this:

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  • Device drivers and Windows

    - by b-gen-jack-o-neill
    Hi, I am trying to complete the picture of how the PC and the OS interacts together. And I am at point, where I am little out of guess when it comes to device drivers. Please, don´t write things like its too complicated, or you don´t need to know when using high programming laguage and winapi functions. I want to know, it´s for study purposes. So, the very basic structure of how OS and PC (by PC I mean of course HW) is how I see it is that all other than direct CPU commands, which can CPU do on itself (arithmetic operation, its registers access and memory access) must pass thru OS. Mainly becouse from ring level 3 you cannot use in and out intructions which are used for acesing other HW. I know that there is MMIO,but it must be set by port comunication first. It was not like this all the time. Even I am bit young to remember MSDOS, I know you could access HW directly, becouse there ws no limitation, no ring mode. So you could to write string to diplay use wheather DOS function, or directly acess video card memory and write it by yourself. But as OS developed, there is no longer this possibility. But it is fine, since OS now handles all the HW comunication, and frankly it more convinient and much more safe (I would say the only option) in multitasking environment. So nowdays you instead of using int instructions to use BIOS mapped function or DOS function you call dll which internally than handles everything you don´t need to know about. I understand this. I also undrstand that device drivers is the piece of code that runs in ring level 0, so it can do all the HW interactions. But what I don´t understand is connection between OS and device driver. Let´s take a example - I want to make a sound card make a sound. So I call windows API to acess sound card, but what happens than? Does windows call device drivers to do so? But if it does call device driver, does it mean, that all device drivers which can be called by winAPI function, must have routines named in some specific way? I mean, when I have new sound card, must its drivers have functions named same as the old one? So Windows can actually call the same function from its perspective? But if Windows have predefined sets of functions requored by device drivers, that it cannot use new drivers that doesent existed before last version of OS came out. Please, help me understand this mess. I am really getting mad. Thanks.

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  • HTML 5 <video> tag vs Flash video. What are the pros and cons?

    - by Vilx-
    Seems like the new <video> tag is all the hype these days, especially since Firefox now supports it. News of this are popping up in blogs all over the place, and everyone seems to be excited. But what about? As much as I searched I could not find anything that would make it better than the good old Flash video. In fact, I see only problems with it: It will still be some time before all the browsers start supporting it, and much more time before most people upgrade; Flash is available already and everyone has it; You can couple Flash with whatever fancy UI you want for controlling the playback. I gather that the tag will be controllable as well (via JavaScript probably), but will it be able to go fullscreen? The only two pros for a <video> tag that I can see are: It is more "semantic" - which probably holds no importance to a whole lot of people, including me; It is not dependent on a single commercial 3rd party entity (Adobe) - which I also don't see as a compelling reason to switch, because free players and video converters are already available, and Adobe is not hindering the whole process in any way (it's not in their interests even). So... what's the big deal? Added: OK, so there is one more Pro... maybe. Support for mobile devices. Hard to say though. A number of thoughts race through my head about the subject: How many mobile devices are actually able to decode video at a decent speed anyway, Flash or otherwise? How long until mainstream mobile devices get the <video> support? Even if it is available through updates, how many people actually do that? How many people watch videos on web pages on their mobile phones at all? As for the semantics part - I understand that search engines might be able to detect videos better now, but... what will they do with them anyway? OK, so they know that there is a video in the page. And? They can't index a video! I'd like some more arguments here. Added: Just thought of another Cons. This opens up a whole new area of cross-browser incompatibility. HTML and CSS is quite messy already in this aspect. Flash at least is the same everywhere. But it's enough for at least one major browser vendor to decide against the <video> tag (can anyone say "Internet Explorer"?) and we have a nice new area of hell to explore. Added: A Pro just came in. More competition = more innovation. That's true. Giving Adobe more competition will probably force them to improve Flash in areas it has been lacking so far. Linux seems to be a weak spot for it, cited by many.

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  • Normalizing a table

    - by Alex
    I have a legacy table, which I can't change. The values in it can be modified from legacy application (application also can't be changed). Due to a lot of access to the table from new application (new requirement), I'd like to create a temporary table, which would hopefully speed up the queries. The actual requirement, is to calculate number of business days from X to Y. For example, give me all business days from Jan 1'st 2001 until Dec 24'th 2004. The table is used to mark which days are off, as different companies may have different days off - it isn't just Saturday + Sunday) The temporary table would be created from a .NET program, each time user enters the screen for this query (user may run query multiple times, with different values, table is created once), so I'd like it to be as fast as possible. Approach below runs in under a second, but I only tested it with a small dataset, and still it takes probably close to half a second, which isn't great for UI - even though it's just the overhead for first query. The legacy table looks like this: CREATE TABLE [business_days]( [country_code] [char](3) , [state_code] [varchar](4) , [calendar_year] [int] , [calendar_month] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month2] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month3] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month4] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month5] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month6] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month7] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month8] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month9] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month10] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month11] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month12] [varchar](31) , misc. ) Each month has 31 characters, and any day off (Saturday + Sunday + holiday) is marked with X. Each half day is marked with an 'H'. For example, if a month starts on a Thursday, than it will look like (Thursday+Friday workdays, Saturday+Sunday marked with X): ' XX XX ..' I'd like the new table to look like so: create table #Temp (country varchar(3), state varchar(4), date datetime, hours int) And I'd like to only have rows for days which are off (marked with X or H from previous query) What I ended up doing, so far is this: Create a temporary-intermediate table, that looks like this: create table #Temp_2 (country_code varchar(3), state_code varchar(4), calendar_year int, calendar_month varchar(31), month_code int) To populate it, I have a union which basically unions calendar_month, calendar_month2, calendar_month3, etc. Than I have a loop which loops through all the rows in #Temp_2, after each row is processed, it is removed from #Temp_2. To process the row there is a loop from 1 to 31, and substring(calendar_month, counter, 1) is checked for either X or H, in which case there is an insert into #Temp table. [edit added code] Declare @country_code char(3) Declare @state_code varchar(4) Declare @calendar_year int Declare @calendar_month varchar(31) Declare @month_code int Declare @calendar_date datetime Declare @day_code int WHILE EXISTS(SELECT * From #Temp_2) -- where processed = 0) BEGIN Select Top 1 @country_code = t2.country_code, @state_code = t2.state_code, @calendar_year = t2.calendar_year, @calendar_month = t2.calendar_month, @month_code = t2.month_code From #Temp_2 t2 -- where processed = 0 set @day_code = 1 while @day_code <= 31 begin if substring(@calendar_month, @day_code, 1) = 'X' begin set @calendar_date = convert(datetime, (cast(@month_code as varchar) + '/' + cast(@day_code as varchar) + '/' + cast(@calendar_year as varchar))) insert into #Temp (country, state, date, hours) values (@country_code, @state_code, @calendar_date, 8) end if substring(@calendar_month, @day_code, 1) = 'H' begin set @calendar_date = convert(datetime, (cast(@month_code as varchar) + '/' + cast(@day_code as varchar) + '/' + cast(@calendar_year as varchar))) insert into #Temp (country, state, date, hours) values (@country_code, @state_code, @calendar_date, 4) end set @day_code = @day_code + 1 end delete from #Temp_2 where @country_code = country_code AND @state_code = state_code AND @calendar_year = calendar_year AND @calendar_month = calendar_month AND @month_code = month_code --update #Temp_2 set processed = 1 where @country_code = country_code AND @state_code = state_code AND @calendar_year = calendar_year AND @calendar_month = calendar_month AND @month_code = month_code END I am not an expert in SQL, so I'd like to get some input on my approach, and maybe even a much better approach suggestion. After having the temp table, I'm planning to do (dates would be coming from a table): select cast(convert(datetime, ('01/31/2012'), 101) -convert(datetime, ('01/17/2012'), 101) as int) - ((select sum(hours) from #Temp where date between convert(datetime, ('01/17/2012'), 101) and convert(datetime, ('01/31/2012'), 101)) / 8) Besides the solution of normalizing the table, the other solution I implemented for now, is a function which does all this logic of getting the business days by scanning the current table. It runs pretty fast, but I'm hesitant to call a function, if I can instead add a simpler query to get result. (I'm currently trying this on MSSQL, but I would need to do same for Sybase ASE and Oracle)

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  • Java template classes using generator or similar?

    - by Hugh Perkins
    Is there some library or generator that I can use to generate multiple templated java classes from a single template? Obviously Java does have a generics implementation itself, but since it uses type-erasure, there are lots of situations where it is less than adequate. For example, if I want to make a self-growing array like this: class EasyArray { T[] backingarray; } (where T is a primitive type), then this isn't possible. This is true for anything which needs an array, for example high-performance templated matrix and vector classes. It should probably be possible to write a code generator which takes a templated class and generates multiple instantiations, for different types, eg for 'double' and 'float' and 'int' and 'String'. Is there something that already exists that does this? Edit: note that using an array of Object is not what I'm looking for, since it's no longer an array of primitives. An array of primitives is very fast, and uses only as much space a sizeof(primitive) * length-of-array. An array of object is an array of pointers/references, that points to Double objects, or similar, which could be scattered all over the place in memory, require garbage collection, allocation, and imply a double-indirection for access. Edit2: good god, voted down for asking for something that probably doesn't currently exist, but is technically possible and feasible? Does that mean that people looking for ways to improve things have already left the java community? Edit3: Here is code to show the difference in performance between primitive and boxed arrays: int N = 10*1000*1000; double[]primArray = new double[N]; for( int i = 0; i < N; i++ ) { primArray[i] = 123.0; } Object[] objArray = new Double[N]; for( int i = 0; i < N; i++ ) { objArray[i] = 123.0; } tic(); primArray = new double[N]; for( int i = 0; i < N; i++ ) { primArray[i] = 123.0; } toc(); tic(); objArray = new Double[N]; for( int i = 0; i < N; i++ ) { objArray[i] = 123.0; } toc(); Results: double[] array: 148 ms Double[] array: 4614 ms Not even close!

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  • Table row height in Internet Explorer

    - by Fritz H
    I have the following table: <table> <tr> <td style="height: 7px; width: 7px"> A1 </td> <td style="height: 7px"> B1 </td> <td style="height: 7px; width: 7px"> C1 </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="width: 7px"> A2 </td> <td> B2 </td> <td style="width: 7px"> C2 </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="height: 7px; width: 7px"> A3 </td> <td style="height: 7px"> B3 </td> <td style="height: 7px; width: 7px"> C3 </td> </tr> </table> The basic idea is that the first row must be 7 pixels high. The left- and rightmost cells (A1 and C1) must be 7px wide, and the middle cell (B1) must scale according to the width of the table. The same goes for the bottom row (A3, B3, C3). The middle row, however, needs to scale in height - in other words, it needs to be (tableheight - 14px). The left- and rightmost cells (A2, C2) need to be 7 pixels wide. An example: 7px x 7px |------|-------------------------|------| --- +------+-------------------------+------+ | | | | | | 7px | | | | | | | | | --- +------+-------------------------+------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | y | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | --- +------+-------------------------+------+ | | | | | | 7px | | | | | | | | | --- +------+-------------------------+------+ HOWEVER: In Internet Explorer, the widths work fine (columns A and C are 7px, column B scales dynamically) - but the heights don't. Rows 1, 2 and 3 turn out to be exactly 33% of the height of the table, no matter what I do. Unfortunately I have to use this table, so replacing it with a set of DIVs is not an option. I have the following DOCTYPE: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> I need to keep this, as some other elements on the page rely on some complex CSS-based layouts. Can anyone point me in the right direction to whip this into shape for IE? EDIT: Should have mentioned earlier - this table is resized on the fly using javascript.

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  • Accessing a broken mdadm raid

    - by CarstenCarsten
    Hi! I used a western digital mybookworld (SOHO NAS storage using Linux) as backup for my Linux box. Suddenly, the mybookworld does not boot up any more. So I opened the box, removed the hard disk and put the hard disk into an external USB HDD case, and connected it to my Linux box. [ 530.640301] usb 2-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3 [ 530.797630] scsi7 : usb-storage 2-1:1.0 [ 531.794844] scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access WDC WD75 00AAKS-00RBA0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 [ 531.796490] sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0 [ 531.797966] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] 1465149168 512-byte logical blocks: (750 GB/698 GiB) [ 531.800317] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off [ 531.800327] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 38 00 00 00 [ 531.800333] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through [ 531.803821] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through [ 531.803836] sdc: sdc1 sdc2 sdc3 sdc4 [ 531.815831] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through [ 531.815842] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk The dmesg output looks normal, but I was wondering why the hardisk was not mounted at all. And why there are 4 different partitions on it. fdisk showed the following: root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# fdisk /dev/sdc WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to sectors (command 'u'). Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sdc: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00007c00 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdc1 4 369 2939895 fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sdc2 370 382 104422+ fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sdc3 383 505 987997+ fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sdc4 506 91201 728515620 fd Linux raid autodetect Oh no! Everything seems to be created as a mdadm software raid. Calling mdadm --examine with the different partitions seems to affirm that. I think the only partition I am interested in, is /dev/sdc4 (because it is the largest). But nevertheless I called mdadm --examine with every partition. root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# mdadm --examine /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdc1: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 00.90.00 UUID : 5626a2d8:070ad992:ef1c8d24:cd8e13e4 Creation Time : Wed Feb 20 00:57:49 2002 Raid Level : raid1 Used Dev Size : 2939776 (2.80 GiB 3.01 GB) Array Size : 2939776 (2.80 GiB 3.01 GB) Raid Devices : 2 Total Devices : 1 Preferred Minor : 1 Update Time : Sun Nov 21 11:05:27 2010 State : clean Active Devices : 1 Working Devices : 1 Failed Devices : 1 Spare Devices : 0 Checksum : 4c90bc55 - correct Events : 16682 Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 0 8 1 0 active sync /dev/sda1 0 0 8 1 0 active sync /dev/sda1 1 1 0 0 1 faulty removed root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# mdadm --examine /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdc2: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 00.90.00 UUID : 9734b3ee:2d5af206:05fe3413:585f7f26 Creation Time : Wed Feb 20 00:57:54 2002 Raid Level : raid1 Used Dev Size : 104320 (101.89 MiB 106.82 MB) Array Size : 104320 (101.89 MiB 106.82 MB) Raid Devices : 2 Total Devices : 1 Preferred Minor : 2 Update Time : Wed Oct 27 20:19:08 2010 State : clean Active Devices : 1 Working Devices : 1 Failed Devices : 1 Spare Devices : 0 Checksum : 55560b40 - correct Events : 9884 Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 0 8 2 0 active sync /dev/sda2 0 0 8 2 0 active sync /dev/sda2 1 1 0 0 1 faulty removed root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# mdadm --examine /dev/sdc3 /dev/sdc3: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 00.90.00 UUID : 08f30b4f:91cca15d:2332bfef:48e67824 Creation Time : Wed Feb 20 00:57:54 2002 Raid Level : raid1 Used Dev Size : 987904 (964.91 MiB 1011.61 MB) Array Size : 987904 (964.91 MiB 1011.61 MB) Raid Devices : 2 Total Devices : 1 Preferred Minor : 3 Update Time : Sun Nov 21 11:05:27 2010 State : clean Active Devices : 1 Working Devices : 1 Failed Devices : 1 Spare Devices : 0 Checksum : 39717874 - correct Events : 73678 Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 0 8 3 0 active sync 0 0 8 3 0 active sync 1 1 0 0 1 faulty removed root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# mdadm --examine /dev/sdc4 /dev/sdc4: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 00.90.00 UUID : febb75ca:e9d1ce18:f14cc006:f759419a Creation Time : Wed Feb 20 00:57:55 2002 Raid Level : raid1 Used Dev Size : 728515520 (694.77 GiB 746.00 GB) Array Size : 728515520 (694.77 GiB 746.00 GB) Raid Devices : 2 Total Devices : 1 Preferred Minor : 4 Update Time : Sun Nov 21 11:05:27 2010 State : clean Active Devices : 1 Working Devices : 1 Failed Devices : 1 Spare Devices : 0 Checksum : 2f36a392 - correct Events : 519320 Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 0 8 4 0 active sync 0 0 8 4 0 active sync 1 1 0 0 1 faulty removed If I read the output correctly everything was removed, because it was faulty. Is there ANY way to see the contents of the largest partition? Or seeing somehow which files are broken? I see that everything is raid1 which is only mirroring, so this should be a normal partition. I am anxious to do anything with mdadm, in fear that I destroy the data on the hard disk. I would be very thankful for any help.

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  • When to use new layouts and when to use new activities?

    - by cmdfrg
    I'm making a game in Android and I'm trying to add a set of menu screens. Each screen takes up the whole display and has various transitions available to other screens. As a rough summary, the menu screens are: Start screen Difficult select screen Game screen. Pause screen. Game over screen. And there are several different ways you can transition between screen: 1 - 2 2 - 3 3 - 4 (pause game) 4 - 1 (exit game) 4 - 3 (resume game) 3 - 5 (game ends) Obviously, I need some stored state when moving between screens, such as the difficulty level select when starting a game and what the player's score is when the game over screen is shown. Can anyone give me some advice for the easiest way to implement the above screens and transitions in Android? All the create/destroy/pause/resume methods make me nervous about writing brittle code if I'm not careful. I'm not fond of using an Activity for each screen. It seems too heavy weight, having to pass data around using intents seems like a real pain and each screen isn't a useful module by itself. As the "back" button doesn't always go back to the previous screen either, my menu layout doesn't seem to fit the activity model well. At the moment, I'm representing each screen as an XML layout file and I have one activity. I set the different buttons on each layout to call setContentView to update the screen the main activity is showing (e.g. the pause button changes the layout to the pause screen). The activity holds onto all the state needed (e.g. the current difficulty level and the game high score), which makes it easy to share data between screens. This seems roughly similar to the LunarLander sample, except I'm using multiple screens. Does what I have at the moment sound OK or am I not doing things the typical Android way? Is there a class I can use (e.g. something like ViewFlipper) that could make my life easier? By the way, my game screen is implemented as a SurfaceView that stores the game state. I need the state in this view to persist between calls to setContentView (e.g. to resume from paused). Is the right idea to create the game view when the activity starts, keep a reference to it and then use this reference with setContentView whenever I want the game screen to appear?

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  • How to prevent DIVs from sliding over each other

    - by Haghpanah
    I’m going to use DIV-based layout instead of table-based to reduce amount of markups and speed up page loading, however I’ve found it too much tricky as I’m not CSS guru. I use following CSS class to simulate rows of a table containing one column for label and one for textbox. .FormItem { margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 604px; min-height: 36px; } .ItemLabel { float: left; width: 120px; padding: 3px 1px 1px 1px; text-align: right; } .ItemTextBox { float: right; width: 480px; padding: 1px 1px 1px 1px; text-align: left; } , <div class="FormItem"> <div class="ItemLabel"> <asp:Label ID="lblName" runat="server" Text="Name :"></asp:Label> </div> <div class="ItemTextBox"> <asp:TextBox ID="txtName" runat="server"></asp:TextBox> <p><span>User Name</span></p> </div> </div> <div class="FormItem"> <div class="ItemLabel"> <asp:Label ID="lblComments" runat="server" Text="Comments :"></asp:Label> </div> <div class="ItemTextBox"> <asp:TextBox ID="txtComments" runat="server"></asp:TextBox> <p><span>(optional)Comments</span></p> </div> </div> These styles work fine if the height of ItemData DIVs are less than or equal to FormItem DIVs min-height. If ItemData DIVs height gets more than FormItem height then ItemText DIVs start sliding over FormItem DIVs to and ItemText and ItemData are no longer aligned. For example the following markups… <div class="FormItem"> <div class="ItemLabel"> <asp:Label ID="lblName" runat="server" Text="Name :"></asp:Label> </div> <div class="ItemTextBox"> <asp:TextBox ID="txtName" runat="server"></asp:TextBox> <p><span>User Name</span></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> </div> <div class="FormLabel"> <div class="ItemText"> <asp:Label ID="lblComments" runat="server" Text="Comments :"></asp:Label> </div> <div class="ItemTextBox"> <asp:TextBox ID="txtComments" runat="server"></asp:TextBox> <p><span>(optional)Comments</span></p> </div> </div> I've tried several CSS attributes such as; position, float, clear… but I can not correct the problem. I’ll be appreciated for any help.

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  • AudioTrack lag: obtainBuffer timed out

    - by BTR
    I'm playing WAVs on my Android phone by loading the file and feeding the bytes into AudioTrack.write() via the FileInputStream BufferedInputStream DataInputStream method. The audio plays fine and when it is, I can easily adjust sample rate, volume, etc on the fly with nice performance. However, it's taking about two full seconds for a track to start playing. I know AudioTrack has an inescapable delay, but this is ridiculous. Every time I play a track, I get this: 03-13 14:55:57.100: WARN/AudioTrack(3454): obtainBuffer timed out (is the CPU pegged?) 0x2e9348 user=00000960, server=00000000 03-13 14:55:57.340: WARN/AudioFlinger(72): write blocked for 233 msecs, 9 delayed writes, thread 0xba28 I've noticed that the delayed write count increases by one every time I play a track -- even across multiple sessions -- from the time the phone has been turned on. The block time is always 230 - 240ms, which makes sense considering a minimum buffer size of 9600 on this device (9600 / 44100). I've seen this message in countless searches on the Internet, but it usually seems to be related to not playing audio at all or skipping audio. In my case, it's just a delayed start. I'm running all my code in a high priority thread. Here's a truncated-yet-functional version of what I'm doing. This is the thread callback in my playback class. Again, this works (only playing 16-bit, 44.1kHz, stereo files right now), it just takes forever to start and has that obtainBuffer/delayed write message every time. public void run() { // Load file FileInputStream mFileInputStream; try { // mFile is instance of custom file class -- this is correct, // so don't sweat this line mFileInputStream = new FileInputStream(mFile.path()); } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {} BufferedInputStream mBufferedInputStream = new BufferedInputStream(mFileInputStream, mBufferLength); DataInputStream mDataInputStream = new DataInputStream(mBufferedInputStream); // Skip header try { if (mDataInputStream.available() > 44) mDataInputStream.skipBytes(44); } catch (IOException e) {} // Initialize device mAudioTrack = new AudioTrack(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC, ConfigManager.SAMPLE_RATE, AudioFormat.CHANNEL_CONFIGURATION_STEREO, AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT, ConfigManager.AUDIO_BUFFER_LENGTH, AudioTrack.MODE_STREAM); mAudioTrack.play(); // Initialize buffer byte[] mByteArray = new byte[mBufferLength]; int mBytesToWrite = 0; int mBytesWritten = 0; // Loop to keep thread running while (mRun) { // This flag is turned on when the user presses "play" while (mPlaying) { try { // Check if data is available if (mDataInputStream.available() > 0) { // Read data from file and write to audio device mBytesToWrite = mDataInputStream.read(mByteArray, 0, mBufferLength); mBytesWritten += mAudioTrack.write(mByteArray, 0, mBytesToWrite); } } catch (IOException e) { } } } } If I can get past the artificially long lag, I can easily deal with the inherit latency by starting my write at a later, predictable position (ie, skip past the minimum buffer length when I start playing a file).

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  • Get backreferences values and modificate these values

    - by roasted
    Could you please explain why im not able to get values of backreferences from a matched regex result and apply it some modification before effective replacement? The expected result is replacing for example string ".coord('X','Y')" by "X * Y". But if X to some value, divide this value by 2 and then use this new value in replacement. Here the code im currently testing: See /*>>1<<*/ & /*>>2<<*/ & /*>>3<<*/, this is where im stuck! I would like to be able to apply modification on backrefrences before replacement depending of backreferences values. Difference between /*>>2<<*/ & /*>>3<<*/ is just the self call anonymous function param The method /*>>2<<*/ is the expected working solution as i can understand it. But strangely, the replacement is not working correctly, replacing by alias $1 * $2 and not by value...? You can test the jsfiddle //string to test ".coord('125','255')" //array of regex pattern and replacement //just one for the example //for this example, pattern matching alphanumerics is not necessary (only decimal in coord) but keep it as it var regexes = [ //FORMAT is array of [PATTERN,REPLACEMENT] /*.coord("X","Y")*/ [/\.coord\(['"]([\w]+)['"],['"]?([\w:\.\\]+)['"]?\)/g, '$1 * $2'] ]; function testReg(inputText, $output) { //using regex for (var i = 0; i < regexes.length; i++) { /*==>**1**/ //this one works as usual but dont let me get backreferences values $output.val(inputText.replace(regexes[i][0], regexes[i][2])); /*==>**2**/ //this one should works as i understand it $output.val(inputText.replace(regexes[i][0], function(match, $1, $2, $3, $4) { $1 = checkReplace(match, $1, $2, $3, $4); //here want using $1 modified value in replacement return regexes[i][3]; })); /*==>**3**/ //this one is just a test by self call anonymous function $output.val(inputText.replace(regexes[i][0], function(match, $1, $2, $3, $4) { $1 = checkReplace(match, $1, $2, $3, $4); //here want using $1 modified value in replacement return regexes[i][4]; }())); inputText = $output.val(); } } function checkReplace(match, $1, $2, $3, $4) { console.log(match + ':::' + $1 + ':::' + $2 + ':::' + $3 + ':::' + $4); //HERE i should be able if lets say $1 > 200 divide it by 2 //then returning $1 value if($1 > 200) $1 = parseInt($1 / 2); return $1; }? Sure I'm missing something, but cannot get it! Thanks for your help, regards. EDIT WORKING METHOD: Finally get it, as mentionned by Eric: The key thing is that the function returns the literal text to substitute, not a string which is parsed for backreferences.?? JSFIDDLE So complete working code: (please note as pattern replacement will change for each matched pattern and optimisation of speed code is not an issue here, i will keep it like that) $('#btn').click(function() { testReg($('#input').val(), $('#output')); }); //array of regex pattern and replacement //just one for the example var regexes = [ //FORMAT is array of [PATTERN,REPLACEMENT] /*.coord("X","Y")*/ [/\.coord\(['"]([\w]+)['"],['"]?([\w:\.\\]+)['"]?\)/g, '$1 * $2'] ]; function testReg(inputText, $output) { //using regex for (var i = 0; i < regexes.length; i++) { $output.val(inputText.replace(regexes[i][0], function(match, $1, $2, $3, $4) { var checkedValues = checkReplace(match, $1, $2, $3, $4); $1 = checkedValues[0]; $2 = checkedValues[1]; regexes[i][1] = regexes[i][1].replace('$1', $1).replace('$2', $2); return regexes[i][1]; })); inputText = $output.val(); } } function checkReplace(match, $1, $2, $3, $4) { console.log(match + ':::' + $1 + ':::' + $2 + ':::' + $3 + ':::' + $4); if ($1 > 200) $1 = parseInt($1 / 2); if ($2 > 200) $2 = parseInt($2 / 2); return [$1,$2]; }

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  • Is there a way to have element behind a div (links) clickable in areas where the div is "transparent

    - by Adam
    I have a block element that is positioned absolutely and some other elements on page that are positioned fixed. The effect is the block on top floats over the page which works well. The links in the elements at the bottom underneath are not clickable. They shouldn't be when the content of the div is over them, but when the "marginal" areas which are transparent are over the links they are visible, but clicks only register to the covering div. The problem only happens when the padding covers the div. But if I just rely on the margin the bottom margin is ignored by browser so the scroll doesn't go high enough up. To solve this I resort to padding at the bottom. This is the problem. Is there a clean way around this? I realize I could have the underneath elements doubled and place on top, but opacity set to 0. That is an undesirable solution however. Sample of the problem: <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang='en' xml:lang='en' xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'> <head> <style> #top, #bottom { position: fixed; border: 1 px solid #333; background-color: #eee; left: 100px; padding: 8px; } #top { top: 0; z-index: 1; } #bottom { bottom: 0; z-index: 2; } #contentWrapper { position: absolute; margin: 100px 0 0 0; /* Padding is used to make sure the scroll goes up further on the page */ padding: 0 0 100px 0; width: 600px; z-index: 3; } #content { border: 1 px solid #333; background-color: #eee; height: 1000px; } </style> </head> <body> <div id='top'><a href="#">Top link</a></div> <div id='bottom'><a href="#">Bottom link</a></div> <div id='contentWrapper'> <div id='content'>Some content</div> </div> </body> </html>

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  • Having trouble with multiple Jquery libraries

    - by user3716971
    I've seen the posts about the no conflict but I'm not very code savvy and can't figure it out alone. I'm having trouble making two libraries work together. At the top I have the 1.9.1 library which controls a news ticker, and a carousel. Near the bottom there is a library 1.6.1, which controls a Dribbble feed. If I remove 1.6.1 everything but the dribbble feed works, and if I remove the 1.9.1 the dribbble feed is the only thing that works. I uploaded the website for you guys to check out. If you could edit my code to make it work that would be amazing, I don't have much knowledge of jquery. This version has a working dribbble feed at the very bottom http://michaelcullenbenson.com/MichaelCullenBenson.com/index.html and this version has a broken feed and everything else works. http://michaelcullenbenson.com/MichaelCullenBenson.com/index2.html Help would be AMAZING as the dribbble feed is the last element I'm trying to finish on my homepage and I'll be able to move on. <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-1.9.1.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.innerfade.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready( function(){ $('#news').innerfade({ animationtype: 'slide', speed: 600, timeout: 6000, type: 'random', containerheight: '1em' }); }); </script> <!-- Include all compiled plugins (below), or include individual files as needed --> <script src="utilcarousel-files/utilcarousel/jquery.utilcarousel.min.js"></script> <script src="utilcarousel-files/magnific-popup/jquery.magnific-popup.js"></script> <script src="js/responsive-nav.js"></script> <script> $(function() { $('#fullwidth').utilCarousel({ breakPoints : [[600, 1], [800, 2], [1000, 3], [1300, 4],], mouseWheel : false, rewind : true, autoPlay : true, pagination : false }); $('#fullwidth2').utilCarousel({ breakPoints : [[600, 1], [800, 2], [1000, 3], [1300, 4],], mouseWheel : false, rewind : true, autoPlay : true, pagination : false }); }); </script> <script> $(document).ready(function() { var movementStrength = 25; var height = movementStrength / $(window).height(); var width = movementStrength / $(window).width(); $("#aboutarea").mousemove(function(e){ var pageX = e.pageX - ($(window).width() / 2); var pageY = e.pageY - ($(window).height() / 2); var newvalueX = width * pageX * -1 - 25; var newvalueY = height * pageY * -1 - 50; $('#aboutarea').css("background-position", newvalueX+"px "+newvalueY+"px"); }); }); </script> <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.1/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="dribbble.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> $(function () { $('#user').dribbble({ player: 'MCBDesign', total: 1 }); }); </script>

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  • How can I use $(this) in a function called by the onClick event?

    - by tepkenvannkorn
    I want to set the current state to selected when clicking on each link. I can do this by: <ul class="places"> <li class="selected"> <a href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="myClick(0);"> <span class="date">Saturday November 2, 2013</span> <span class="time">10am – 12pm</span> <span class="location">Western Sydney Parklands</span> </a> </li> <li> <a href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="myClick(1);"> <span class="date">Saturday November 9, 2013</span> <span class="time">10am – 12pm</span> <span class="location">Bankstown High School</span> </a> </li> <li> <a href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="myClick(2);"> <span class="date">Tuesday November 12, 2013</span> <span class="time">9am – 11am</span> <span class="location">Greystanes Park</span> </a> </li> </ul> $(document).ready( function() { $('.places li a').click( function() { $('.places li').removeClass('selected'); $(this).parent().addClass('selected'); }); }); But this will double triggering onclick event an each link because the calling function myClick() is called to push data to map. Then I decided to implement these in the myClick() function: function myClick( id ) { google.maps.event.trigger(markers[id], 'click'); $('.places li').removeClass('selected'); $(this).parent().addClass('selected'); } The problem is that I cannot use $(this) to add class to its parent li. See what I have tried here. Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks!

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  • Parallelism in .NET – Part 9, Configuration in PLINQ and TPL

    - by Reed
    Parallel LINQ and the Task Parallel Library contain many options for configuration.  Although the default configuration options are often ideal, there are times when customizing the behavior is desirable.  Both frameworks provide full configuration support. When working with Data Parallelism, there is one primary configuration option we often need to control – the number of threads we want the system to use when parallelizing our routine.  By default, PLINQ and the TPL both use the ThreadPool to schedule tasks.  Given the major improvements in the ThreadPool in CLR 4, this default behavior is often ideal.  However, there are times that the default behavior is not appropriate.  For example, if you are working on multiple threads simultaneously, and want to schedule parallel operations from within both threads, you might want to consider restricting each parallel operation to using a subset of the processing cores of the system.  Not doing this might over-parallelize your routine, which leads to inefficiencies from having too many context switches. In the Task Parallel Library, configuration is handled via the ParallelOptions class.  All of the methods of the Parallel class have an overload which accepts a ParallelOptions argument. We configure the Parallel class by setting the ParallelOptions.MaxDegreeOfParallelism property.  For example, let’s revisit one of the simple data parallel examples from Part 2: Parallel.For(0, pixelData.GetUpperBound(0), row => { for (int col=0; col < pixelData.GetUpperBound(1); ++col) { pixelData[row, col] = AdjustContrast(pixelData[row, col], minPixel, maxPixel); } }); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Here, we’re looping through an image, and calling a method on each pixel in the image.  If this was being done on a separate thread, and we knew another thread within our system was going to be doing a similar operation, we likely would want to restrict this to using half of the cores on the system.  This could be accomplished easily by doing: var options = new ParallelOptions(); options.MaxDegreeOfParallelism = Math.Max(Environment.ProcessorCount / 2, 1); Parallel.For(0, pixelData.GetUpperBound(0), options, row => { for (int col=0; col < pixelData.GetUpperBound(1); ++col) { pixelData[row, col] = AdjustContrast(pixelData[row, col], minPixel, maxPixel); } }); Now, we’re restricting this routine to using no more than half the cores in our system.  Note that I included a check to prevent a single core system from supplying zero; without this check, we’d potentially cause an exception.  I also did not hard code a specific value for the MaxDegreeOfParallelism property.  One of our goals when parallelizing a routine is allowing it to scale on better hardware.  Specifying a hard-coded value would contradict that goal. Parallel LINQ also supports configuration, and in fact, has quite a few more options for configuring the system.  The main configuration option we most often need is the same as our TPL option: we need to supply the maximum number of processing threads.  In PLINQ, this is done via a new extension method on ParallelQuery<T>: ParallelEnumerable.WithDegreeOfParallelism. Let’s revisit our declarative data parallelism sample from Part 6: double min = collection.AsParallel().Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); Here, we’re performing a computation on each element in the collection, and saving the minimum value of this operation.  If we wanted to restrict this to a limited number of threads, we would add our new extension method: int maxThreads = Math.Max(Environment.ProcessorCount / 2, 1); double min = collection .AsParallel() .WithDegreeOfParallelism(maxThreads) .Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); This automatically restricts the PLINQ query to half of the threads on the system. PLINQ provides some additional configuration options.  By default, PLINQ will occasionally revert to processing a query in parallel.  This occurs because many queries, if parallelized, typically actually cause an overall slowdown compared to a serial processing equivalent.  By analyzing the “shape” of the query, PLINQ often decides to run a query serially instead of in parallel.  This can occur for (taken from MSDN): Queries that contain a Select, indexed Where, indexed SelectMany, or ElementAt clause after an ordering or filtering operator that has removed or rearranged original indices. Queries that contain a Take, TakeWhile, Skip, SkipWhile operator and where indices in the source sequence are not in the original order. Queries that contain Zip or SequenceEquals, unless one of the data sources has an originally ordered index and the other data source is indexable (i.e. an array or IList(T)). Queries that contain Concat, unless it is applied to indexable data sources. Queries that contain Reverse, unless applied to an indexable data source. If the specific query follows these rules, PLINQ will run the query on a single thread.  However, none of these rules look at the specific work being done in the delegates, only at the “shape” of the query.  There are cases where running in parallel may still be beneficial, even if the shape is one where it typically parallelizes poorly.  In these cases, you can override the default behavior by using the WithExecutionMode extension method.  This would be done like so: var reversed = collection .AsParallel() .WithExecutionMode(ParallelExecutionMode.ForceParallelism) .Select(i => i.PerformComputation()) .Reverse(); Here, the default behavior would be to not parallelize the query unless collection implemented IList<T>.  We can force this to run in parallel by adding the WithExecutionMode extension method in the method chain. Finally, PLINQ has the ability to configure how results are returned.  When a query is filtering or selecting an input collection, the results will need to be streamed back into a single IEnumerable<T> result.  For example, the method above returns a new, reversed collection.  In this case, the processing of the collection will be done in parallel, but the results need to be streamed back to the caller serially, so they can be enumerated on a single thread. This streaming introduces overhead.  IEnumerable<T> isn’t designed with thread safety in mind, so the system needs to handle merging the parallel processes back into a single stream, which introduces synchronization issues.  There are two extremes of how this could be accomplished, but both extremes have disadvantages. The system could watch each thread, and whenever a thread produces a result, take that result and send it back to the caller.  This would mean that the calling thread would have access to the data as soon as data is available, which is the benefit of this approach.  However, it also means that every item is introducing synchronization overhead, since each item needs to be merged individually. On the other extreme, the system could wait until all of the results from all of the threads were ready, then push all of the results back to the calling thread in one shot.  The advantage here is that the least amount of synchronization is added to the system, which means the query will, on a whole, run the fastest.  However, the calling thread will have to wait for all elements to be processed, so this could introduce a long delay between when a parallel query begins and when results are returned. The default behavior in PLINQ is actually between these two extremes.  By default, PLINQ maintains an internal buffer, and chooses an optimal buffer size to maintain.  Query results are accumulated into the buffer, then returned in the IEnumerable<T> result in chunks.  This provides reasonably fast access to the results, as well as good overall throughput, in most scenarios. However, if we know the nature of our algorithm, we may decide we would prefer one of the other extremes.  This can be done by using the WithMergeOptions extension method.  For example, if we know that our PerformComputation() routine is very slow, but also variable in runtime, we may want to retrieve results as they are available, with no bufferring.  This can be done by changing our above routine to: var reversed = collection .AsParallel() .WithExecutionMode(ParallelExecutionMode.ForceParallelism) .WithMergeOptions(ParallelMergeOptions.NotBuffered) .Select(i => i.PerformComputation()) .Reverse(); On the other hand, if are already on a background thread, and we want to allow the system to maximize its speed, we might want to allow the system to fully buffer the results: var reversed = collection .AsParallel() .WithExecutionMode(ParallelExecutionMode.ForceParallelism) .WithMergeOptions(ParallelMergeOptions.FullyBuffered) .Select(i => i.PerformComputation()) .Reverse(); Notice, also, that you can specify multiple configuration options in a parallel query.  By chaining these extension methods together, we generate a query that will always run in parallel, and will always complete before making the results available in our IEnumerable<T>.

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  • Parallelism in .NET – Part 4, Imperative Data Parallelism: Aggregation

    - by Reed
    In the article on simple data parallelism, I described how to perform an operation on an entire collection of elements in parallel.  Often, this is not adequate, as the parallel operation is going to be performing some form of aggregation. Simple examples of this might include taking the sum of the results of processing a function on each element in the collection, or finding the minimum of the collection given some criteria.  This can be done using the techniques described in simple data parallelism, however, special care needs to be taken into account to synchronize the shared data appropriately.  The Task Parallel Library has tools to assist in this synchronization. The main issue with aggregation when parallelizing a routine is that you need to handle synchronization of data.  Since multiple threads will need to write to a shared portion of data.  Suppose, for example, that we wanted to parallelize a simple loop that looked for the minimum value within a dataset: double min = double.MaxValue; foreach(var item in collection) { double value = item.PerformComputation(); min = System.Math.Min(min, value); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This seems like a good candidate for parallelization, but there is a problem here.  If we just wrap this into a call to Parallel.ForEach, we’ll introduce a critical race condition, and get the wrong answer.  Let’s look at what happens here: // Buggy code! Do not use! double min = double.MaxValue; Parallel.ForEach(collection, item => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); min = System.Math.Min(min, value); }); This code has a fatal flaw: min will be checked, then set, by multiple threads simultaneously.  Two threads may perform the check at the same time, and set the wrong value for min.  Say we get a value of 1 in thread 1, and a value of 2 in thread 2, and these two elements are the first two to run.  If both hit the min check line at the same time, both will determine that min should change, to 1 and 2 respectively.  If element 1 happens to set the variable first, then element 2 sets the min variable, we’ll detect a min value of 2 instead of 1.  This can lead to wrong answers. Unfortunately, fixing this, with the Parallel.ForEach call we’re using, would require adding locking.  We would need to rewrite this like: // Safe, but slow double min = double.MaxValue; // Make a "lock" object object syncObject = new object(); Parallel.ForEach(collection, item => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); lock(syncObject) min = System.Math.Min(min, value); }); This will potentially add a huge amount of overhead to our calculation.  Since we can potentially block while waiting on the lock for every single iteration, we will most likely slow this down to where it is actually quite a bit slower than our serial implementation.  The problem is the lock statement – any time you use lock(object), you’re almost assuring reduced performance in a parallel situation.  This leads to two observations I’ll make: When parallelizing a routine, try to avoid locks. That being said: Always add any and all required synchronization to avoid race conditions. These two observations tend to be opposing forces – we often need to synchronize our algorithms, but we also want to avoid the synchronization when possible.  Looking at our routine, there is no way to directly avoid this lock, since each element is potentially being run on a separate thread, and this lock is necessary in order for our routine to function correctly every time. However, this isn’t the only way to design this routine to implement this algorithm.  Realize that, although our collection may have thousands or even millions of elements, we have a limited number of Processing Elements (PE).  Processing Element is the standard term for a hardware element which can process and execute instructions.  This typically is a core in your processor, but many modern systems have multiple hardware execution threads per core.  The Task Parallel Library will not execute the work for each item in the collection as a separate work item. Instead, when Parallel.ForEach executes, it will partition the collection into larger “chunks” which get processed on different threads via the ThreadPool.  This helps reduce the threading overhead, and help the overall speed.  In general, the Parallel class will only use one thread per PE in the system. Given the fact that there are typically fewer threads than work items, we can rethink our algorithm design.  We can parallelize our algorithm more effectively by approaching it differently.  Because the basic aggregation we are doing here (Min) is communitive, we do not need to perform this in a given order.  We knew this to be true already – otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to parallelize this routine in the first place.  With this in mind, we can treat each thread’s work independently, allowing each thread to serially process many elements with no locking, then, after all the threads are complete, “merge” together the results. This can be accomplished via a different set of overloads in the Parallel class: Parallel.ForEach<TSource,TLocal>.  The idea behind these overloads is to allow each thread to begin by initializing some local state (TLocal).  The thread will then process an entire set of items in the source collection, providing that state to the delegate which processes an individual item.  Finally, at the end, a separate delegate is run which allows you to handle merging that local state into your final results. To rewriting our routine using Parallel.ForEach<TSource,TLocal>, we need to provide three delegates instead of one.  The most basic version of this function is declared as: public static ParallelLoopResult ForEach<TSource, TLocal>( IEnumerable<TSource> source, Func<TLocal> localInit, Func<TSource, ParallelLoopState, TLocal, TLocal> body, Action<TLocal> localFinally ) The first delegate (the localInit argument) is defined as Func<TLocal>.  This delegate initializes our local state.  It should return some object we can use to track the results of a single thread’s operations. The second delegate (the body argument) is where our main processing occurs, although now, instead of being an Action<T>, we actually provide a Func<TSource, ParallelLoopState, TLocal, TLocal> delegate.  This delegate will receive three arguments: our original element from the collection (TSource), a ParallelLoopState which we can use for early termination, and the instance of our local state we created (TLocal).  It should do whatever processing you wish to occur per element, then return the value of the local state after processing is completed. The third delegate (the localFinally argument) is defined as Action<TLocal>.  This delegate is passed our local state after it’s been processed by all of the elements this thread will handle.  This is where you can merge your final results together.  This may require synchronization, but now, instead of synchronizing once per element (potentially millions of times), you’ll only have to synchronize once per thread, which is an ideal situation. Now that I’ve explained how this works, lets look at the code: // Safe, and fast! double min = double.MaxValue; // Make a "lock" object object syncObject = new object(); Parallel.ForEach( collection, // First, we provide a local state initialization delegate. () => double.MaxValue, // Next, we supply the body, which takes the original item, loop state, // and local state, and returns a new local state (item, loopState, localState) => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); return System.Math.Min(localState, value); }, // Finally, we provide an Action<TLocal>, to "merge" results together localState => { // This requires locking, but it's only once per used thread lock(syncObj) min = System.Math.Min(min, localState); } ); Although this is a bit more complicated than the previous version, it is now both thread-safe, and has minimal locking.  This same approach can be used by Parallel.For, although now, it’s Parallel.For<TLocal>.  When working with Parallel.For<TLocal>, you use the same triplet of delegates, with the same purpose and results. Also, many times, you can completely avoid locking by using a method of the Interlocked class to perform the final aggregation in an atomic operation.  The MSDN example demonstrating this same technique using Parallel.For uses the Interlocked class instead of a lock, since they are doing a sum operation on a long variable, which is possible via Interlocked.Add. By taking advantage of local state, we can use the Parallel class methods to parallelize algorithms such as aggregation, which, at first, may seem like poor candidates for parallelization.  Doing so requires careful consideration, and often requires a slight redesign of the algorithm, but the performance gains can be significant if handled in a way to avoid excessive synchronization.

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