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• Subscribable World Cup 2010 Calendar

  - by jamiet

  I bang on quite a lot on this blog about ways in which data can get published over the web and one of the most interesting ways, in my opinion, of publishing data in a structured manner that is well understood is to use the iCalendar specification. There isn’t much information in the world that doesn’t have some concept of “when” so iCalendar is a great way of distributing that information. You have probably used iCalendar at some point without even knowing about it. All files with a .ics suffix are iCalendar format files and that is why you can happily import them into Outlook, Hotmail Calendar, Google Calendar etc… where they can be parsed and have the semantic data (when, where and who) extracted from them. Importing of iCalendar format data is really only half the trick though; in my opinion the real value of iCalendar-formatted calendar is the ability to subscribe to them. Subscribing has a simple benefit over importing but that single benefit is of massive importance: a subscriber to an iCalendar calendar can periodically check to see if any updates have been made and, if they have, automatically update the local copy. The real benefit to the user is the productivity gain – a single update to an iCalendar means that all subscribers are automatically made aware of the change and there is zero effort on the part of the subscriber; as my former colleague Howard van Rooijen is fond of saying, “work smarter not harder” – nowhere is this edict more ably demonstrated than subscribing versus importing of calendars. If you want to read some more thoughts about iCalendar then go and read my past blog post Calendar syndication - My big hope for 2009's breakthrough technology or better still go and seek out Jon Udell who speaks very authoritatively on the issue of iCalendar. With this subject of iCalendar on my mind I was interested to discover (via Steve Clayton’s blog post Download the world cup fixtures) that the BBC had made a .ics file available containing all of the matches in the upcoming World Cup. As you can probably guess this was a file that was made available so that it could be imported into your calendar of choice. It had one obvious downside though, right now nobody knows who is going to be playing in the knock-out stages so the calendar looks like this: with no teams being named after 25th June. How much more useful would this calendar have been if the BBC had made it possible to subscribe to the calendar instead, thus the calendar could be updated with the teams for the knock out stages when they are known and every subscriber would have a permanently up-to-date record of all the fixtures in their calendar. Better still, the calendar could be updated with match results as well or perhaps even post a match report from the BBC sport pages; when calendars are made subscribable a sea of opportunity opens up for distribution of information. So with that in mind I have decided to go one better than the BBC. I have imported their .ics into a brand new Hotmail calendar and made it publicly available at the following URLs: HTML http://cid-dc1ed121af0476be.calendar.live.com/calendar/World+Cup+2010/index.html iCalendar webcal://cid-dc1ed121af0476be.calendar.live.com/calendar/World+Cup+2010/calendar.ics The link you’re really interested in is the second one - click on that and it should open up in your calendar software of choice. Or, if you want to view it in an online calendar such as Hotmail Calendar or Google Calendar, copy and paste that URL into the appropriate place. Some people have told me they’re having trouble with the iCalendar link in which case hit the HTML link and then click “View ICS” at the resultant web page: I shall endeavour to keep the calendar updated throughout the World Cup and even if I don’t you’re no worse off than if you had imported the BBC’s .ics file so why not give it a try? If I do keep it up to date then you will have a permanent record of the 2010 World Cup available in your calendar. Forever. If you have your calendar synced to your smartphone then you’ll be carrying match reports around with you without you having to do a single thing. Surely that’s worth a quick click isn’t it?   If you have any thoughts let me have them in the comments below. Thanks for reading. @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Some notes on Reflector 7

  - by CliveT

  Both Bart and I have blogged about some of the changes that we (and other members of the team) have made to .NET Reflector for version 7, including the new tabbed browsing model, the inclusion of Jason Haley's PowerCommands add-in and some improvements to decompilation such as handling iterator blocks. The intention of this blog post is to cover all of the main new features in one place, and to describe the three new editions of .NET Reflector 7. If you'd simply like to try out the latest version of the beta for yourself you can do so here. Three new editions .NET Reflector 7 will come in three new editions: .NET Reflector .NET Reflector VS .NET Reflector VSPro The first edition is just the standalone Windows application. The latter two editions include the Windows application, but also add the power of Reflector into Visual Studio so that you can save time switching tools and quickly get to the bottom of a debugging issue that involves third-party code. Let's take a look at some of the new features in each edition. Tabbed browsing .NET Reflector now has a tabbed browsing model, in which the individual tabs have independent histories. You can open a new tab to view the selected object by using CTRL+CLICK. I've found this really useful when I'm investigating a particular piece of code but then want to focus on some other methods that I find along the way. For version 7, we wanted to implement the basic idea of tabs to see whether it is something that users will find helpful. If it is something that enhances productivity, we will add more tab-based features in a future version. PowerCommands add-in We have also included Jason Haley's PowerCommands add-in as part of version 7. This add-in provides a number of useful commands, including support for opening .xap files and extracting the constituent assemblies, and a query editor that allows C# queries to be written and executed against the Reflector object model . All of the PowerCommands features can be turned on from the options menu. We will be really interested to see what people are finding useful for further integration into the main tool in the future. My personal favourite part of the PowerCommands add-in is the query editor. You can set up as many of your own queries as you like, but we provide 25 to get you started. These do useful things like listing all extension methods in a given assembly, and displaying other lower-level information, such as the number of times that a given method uses the box IL instruction. These queries can be extracted and then executed from the 'Run Query' context menu within the assembly explorer. Moreover, the queries can be loaded, modified, and saved using the built-in editor, allowing very specific user customization and sharing of queries. The PowerCommands add-in contains many other useful utilities. For example, you can open an item using an external application, work with enumeration bit flags, or generate assembly binding redirect files. You can see Bart's earlier post for a more complete list. .NET Reflector VS .NET Reflector VS adds a brand new Reflector object browser into Visual Studio to save you time opening .NET Reflector separately and browsing for an object. A 'Decompile and Explore' option is also added to the context menu of references in the Solution Explorer, so you don't need to leave Visual Studio to look through decompiled code. We've also added some simple navigation features to allow you to move through the decompiled code as quickly and easily as you can in .NET Reflector. When this is selected, the add-in decompiles the given assembly, Once the decompilation has finished, a clone of the Reflector assembly explorer can be used inside Visual Studio. When Reflector generates the source code, it records the location information. You can therefore navigate from the source file to other decompiled source using the 'Go To Definition' context menu item. This then takes you to the definition in another decompiled assembly. .NET Reflector VSPro .NET Reflector VSPro builds on the features in .NET Reflector VS to add the ability to debug any source code you decompile. When you decompile with .NET Reflector VSPro, a matching .pdb is generated, so you can use Visual Studio to debug the source code as if it were part of the project. You can now use all the standard debugging techniques that you are used to in the Visual Studio debugger, and step through decompiled code as if it were your own. Again, you can select assemblies for decompilation. They are then decompiled. And then you can debug as if they were one of your own source code files. The future of .NET Reflector As I have mentioned throughout this post, most of the new features in version 7 are exploratory steps and we will be watching feedback closely. Although we don't want to speculate now about any other new features or bugs that will or won't be fixed in the next few versions of .NET Reflector, Bart has mentioned in a previous post that there are lots of improvements we intend to make. We plan to do this with great care and without taking anything away from the simplicity of the core product. User experience is something that we pride ourselves on at Red Gate, and it is clear that Reflector is still a long way off our usual standards. We plan for the next few versions of Reflector to be worked on by some of our top usability specialists who have been involved with our other market-leading products such as the ANTS Profilers and SQL Compare. I re-iterate the need for the really great simple mode in .NET Reflector to remain intact regardless of any other improvements we are planning to make. I really hope that you enjoy using some of the new features in version 7 and that Reflector continues to be your favourite .NET development tool for a long time to come.

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• Part 1 - 12c Database and WLS - Overview

  - by Steve Felts

  The download of Oracle 12c database became available on June 25, 2013.  There are some big new features in 12c database and WebLogic Server will take advantage of them. Immediately, we will support using 12c database and drivers with WLS 10.3.6 and 12.1.1.  When the next version of WLS ships, additional functionality will be supported (those rows in the table below with all "No" values will get a "Yes).  The following table maps the Oracle 12c Database features supported with various combinations of currently available WLS releases, 11g and 12c Drivers, and 11g and 12c Databases. Feature WebLogic Server 10.3.6/12.1.1 with 11g drivers and 11gR2 DB WebLogic Server 10.3.6/12.1.1 with 11g drivers and 12c DB WebLogic Server 10.3.6/12.1.1 with 12c drivers and 11gR2 DB WebLogic Server 10.3.6/12.1.1 with 12c drivers and 12c DB JDBC replay No No No Yes (Active GridLink only in 10.3.6, add generic in 12.1.1) Multi Tenant Database No Yes (except set container) No Yes (except set container) Dynamic switching between Tenants No No No No Database Resident Connection pooling (DRCP) No No No No Oracle Notification Service (ONS) auto configuration No No No No Global Database Services (GDS) No Yes (Active GridLink only) No Yes (Active GridLink only) JDBC 4.1 (using ojdbc7.jar files & JDK 7) No No Yes Yes  The My Oracle Support (MOS) document covering this is "WebLogic Server 12.1.1 and 10.3.6 Support for Oracle 12c Database [ID 1564509.1]" at the link https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=1564509.1. The following documents are also key references:12c Oracle Database Developer Guide http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E16655_01/appdev.121/e17620/toc.htm 12c Oracle Database Administrator's Guide http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E16655_01/server.121/e17636/toc.htm . I plan to write some related blog articles not to duplicate existing product documentation but to introduce the features, provide some examples, and tie together some information to make it easier to understand. How do you get started with 12c?  The easiest way is to point your data source at a 12c database.  The only change on the WLS side is to update the URL in your data source (assuming that you are not just upgrading your database).  You can continue to use the 11.2.0.3 driver jar files that shipped with WLS 10.3.6 or 12.1.1.  You shouldn't see any changes in your application.  You can take advantage of enhancements on the database side that don't affect the mid-tier.  On the WLS side, you can take advantage of using Global Data Service or connecting to a tenant in a multi-tenant database transparently. If you want to use the 12c client jar files, it's a bit of work because they aren't shipped with WLS and you can't just drop in ojdbc6.jar as in the old days.  You need to use a matched set of jar files and they need to come before existing jar files in the CLASSPATH.  The MOS article is written from the standpoint that you need to get the jar files directly - download almost 1G and install over 600M footprint to get 15 jar files.  Assuming that you have the database installed and you can get access to the installation (or ask the DBA), you need to copy the 15 jar files to each machine with a WLS installation and get them in your CLASSPATH.  You can play with setting the PRE_CLASSPATH but the more practical approach may be to just update WL_HOME/common/bin/commEnv.sh directly.  There's a change in the transaction completion behavior (read the MOS) so if you think you might run into that, you will want to set -Doracle.jdbc.autoCommitSpecCompliant=false.  Also if you are running with Active GridLink, you must set -Doracle.ucp.PreWLS1212Compatible=true (how's that for telling you that this is fixed in WLS 12.1.2).  Once you get the configuration out of the way, you can start using the new ojdbc7.jar in place of the ojdbc6.jar to get the new JDBC 4.1 API's.  You can also start using Application Continuity.  This feature is also known as JDBC Replay because when a connection fails you get a new one with all JDBC operations up to the failure point automatically replayed.  As you might expect, there are some limitations but it's an interesting feature.  Obviously I'm going to focus on the 12c database features that we can leverage in WLS data source.  You will need to read other sources or the product documentation to get all of the new features.

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• Lessons learned from Word 2007 automation with c# 2008

  - by robertphyatt

  My organization has an ongoing project to take documents produced for internal regulations and such, change some of the formatting and then export it as PDF. Our requirements were that only one person would be doing this, but it has been painfully tedious and sometimes error-prone to do by hand. Enter the fearless developer to automate the situation! Since I am one of those guys that just plain does not like VB, I wanted to do the automation in the ever-so-much-more-familiar C#. While Microsoft had made a dll that makes such a task easier, documentation on MSDN is pretty lame and most of the forumns and posts on the internet had little to do with my task. So, I feel like I can give back to the community and make a post here of the things I have learned so far. I hope this is helpful to whoever stumbles upon it. Steps to do this: 1) First of all, make some sort of a project and use some sort of a means to get the filename of the word document you are trying to open. I got the filename the user wanted with an openFileDialog tied to a button that I labeled 'Browse':        private void btnBrowse_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)        {            try            {                DialogResult myResult = openFileDialog1.ShowDialog();                if (myResult.Equals(DialogResult.OK))                {                    if (openFileDialog1.SafeFileName.EndsWith(".doc"))                    {                        txtFileName.Text = openFileDialog1.SafeFileName;                        paramSourceDocPath = openFileDialog1.FileName;                        paramExportFilePath = openFileDialog1.FileName.Replace(".doc", ".pdf");                    }                    else                    {                        txtFileName.Text = "only something that end with .doc, please";                    }                }            }            catch (Exception err)            {                lblError.Text = err.Message;            }        }   2) Add in "using Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word;" after setting your project to reference Microsoft.Office.Core and Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word so that you don't have to add "Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word" to the front of everything. 3) Now you are ready to play. You will need to have a copy of word open and a copy of your word document that you want to modify open to be able to make the changes that are needed. The word interop dll likes using ref on all the parameters passed in, and likes to have them as objects. If you don't want to specify the parameter, you have to give it a "Type.Missing". I suggest creating some objects that you reuse all over the place to maintain sanity. object paramMissing = Type.Missing; ApplicationClass wordApplication = new ApplicationClass(); Document wordDocument = wordApplication.Documents.Open(                ref paramSourceDocPath, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing,                ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing,                ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing,                ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing,                ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing,                ref paramMissing); 4) There are many ways to modify the text of the inside of the word document. One of the ways that was most effective for me was to break it down by paragraph and then do things on each paragraph by what style the particular paragraph had.            foreach (Paragraph thisParagraph in wordDocument.Content.Paragraphs)            {                string strStyleName = ((Style)thisParagraph.get_Style()).NameLocal;                string strText = thisParagraph.Range.Text;                //Do whatever you need to do            } 5) Sometimes you want to insert a new line character somewhere in the text or insert text into the document, etc.  There are a few ways you can do this: you can either modify the text of a paragraph by doing something like this ('\r' makes a new paragraph, '\v' will make a newline without making a new paragraph. If you remove a '\r' from the text, it will eliminate the paragraph you removed it from): thisParagraph.Range.Text = "A\vNew Paragraph!\r" + thisParagraph.Range.Text; OR you could select where you want to insert it and have it act like you were typing in Word like any normal user (note: if you do not collapse the range first, you will overwrite the thing you got the range from) object oCollapseDirectionEnd = WdCollapseDirection.wdCollapseEnd; object oCollapseDirectionStart = WdCollapseDirection.wdCollapseStart; Range rangeInsertAtBeginning = thisParagraph.Range; Range rangeInsertAtEnd = thisParagraph.Range; rangeInsertAtBeginning.Collapse(ref oCollapseDirectionStart); rangeInsertAtEnd.Collapse(ref oCollapseDirectionEnd); rangeInsertAtBeginning.Select(); wordApplication.Selection.TypeText("Blah Blah Blah"); rangeInsertAtEnd.Select(); wordApplication.Selection.TypeParagraph(); 6) If you want to make text columns, like a newspaper or newsletter, you have to modify the page layout of the document or a section of the document to make it happen. In my case, I only wanted a particular section to have that, and I wanted to have a black line before and after the newspaper-like text columns. First you need to do a section break on either side of what you wanted, then you take the section and modify the page layout. Then you can modify the borders of the section (or another object in the word document). I also show here how to modify the alignment of a paragraph.            object oSectionBreak = WdBreakType.wdSectionBreakContinuous;            //These ranges were set while I was going through the paragraphs of my document, like I was showing earlier            rangeHeaderStart.InsertBreak(ref oSectionBreak);            rangeHeaderEnd.InsertBreak(ref oSectionBreak);            //change the alignment to justify            object oRangeHeaderStart = rangeStartJustifiedAlignment.Start;            object oRangeHeaderEnd = rangeHeaderEnd.End;            Range rangeHeader = wordDocument.Range(ref oRangeHeaderStart, ref oRangeHeaderEnd);            rangeHeader.Paragraphs.Alignment = WdParagraphAlignment.wdAlignParagraphJustify;            //find the section break and make it into triple text columns            foreach (Section mySection in wordDocument.Sections)            {                if (mySection.Range.Start == rangeHeaderStart.Start)                {                    mySection.PageSetup.TextColumns.Add(ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing);                    mySection.PageSetup.TextColumns.Add(ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing);                    //I didn't like the default spacing and column widths. This is how I adjusted them.                    foreach (TextColumn txtc in mySection.PageSetup.TextColumns)                    {                        try                        {                            txtc.SpaceAfter = 151.6f;                            txtc.Width = 7;                        }                        catch (Exception)                        {                            txtc.Width = 151.6f;                        }                    }                }            } That is all  I have time for today! I hope this was helpful to someone!

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• So what are zones really?

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  There is a (not so) particular kind of shape in Orchard: zones. Functionally, zones are places where other shapes can render. There are top-level zones, the ones defined on Layout, where widgets typically go, and there are local zones that can be defined anywhere. These local zones are what you target in placement.info. Creating a zone is easy because it really is just an empty shape. Most themes include a helper for it: Func<dynamic, dynamic> Zone = x => Display(x); .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; } With this helper, you can create a zone by simply writing: @Zone(Model.Header) .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; } Let's deconstruct what's happening here with that weird Lambda. In the Layout template where we are working, the Model is the Layout shape itself, so Model.Header is really creating a new Header shape under Layout, or getting a reference to it if it already exists. The Zone function is then called on that object, which is equivalent to calling Display. In other words, you could have just written the following to get the exact same effect: @Display(Model.Header) The Zone helper function only exists to make the intent very explicit. Now here's something interesting: while this works in the Layout template, you can also make it work from any deeper-nested template and still create top-level zones. The difference is that wherever you are, Model is not the layout anymore so you need to access it in a different way: @Display(WorkContext.Layout.Header) This is still doing the exact same thing as above. One thing to know is that for top-level zones to be usable from the widget editing UI, you need one more thing, which is to specify it in the theme's manifest: Name: Contoso Author: The Orchard Team Description: A subtle and simple CMS themeVersion: 1.1 Tags: business, cms, modern, simple, subtle, product, service Website: http://www.orchardproject.net Zones: Header, Navigation, HomeFeaturedImage, HomeFeaturedHeadline, Messages, Content, ContentAside, TripelFirst, TripelSecond, TripelThird, Footer Local zones are just ordinary shapes like global zones, the only difference being that they are created on a deeper shape than layout. For example, in Content.cshtml, you can find our good old code fro creating a header zone: @Display(Model.Header) The difference here is that Model is no longer the Layout shape, so that zone will be local. The name of that local zone is what you specify in placement.info, for example: <Place Parts_Common_Metadata_Summary="Header:1"/> Now here's the really interesting part: zones do not even know that they are zones, and in fact any shape can be substituted. That means that if you want to add new shapes to the shape that some part has been emitting from its driver for example, you can absolutely do that. And because zones are so barebones as shapes go, they can be created the first time they are accessed. This is what enables us to add shapes into a zone before the code that you would think creates it has even run. For example, in the Layout.cshtml template in TheThemeMachine, the BadgeOfHonor shape is being injected into the Footer zone on line 47, even though that zone will really be "created" on line 168.

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• Becoming A Great Developer

  - by Lee Brandt

  Image via Wikipedia I’ve been doing the whole programming thing for awhile and reading and watching some of the best in the business. I have come to notice that the really great developers do a few things that (I think) makes them great. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I am one of these few. I still struggle with doing some of the things that makes one great at development. Coincidently, many of these things also make you a better person period. Believe That Guidance Is Better Than Answers This is one I have no problem with. I prefer guidance any time I am learning from another developer. Answers may get you going, but guidance will leave you stranded. At some point, you will come across a problem that can only be solved by thinking for yourself and this is where that guidance will really come in handy. You can use that guidance and extrapolate whatever technology to salve that problem (if it’s the right tool for solving that problem). The problem is, lots of developers simply want someone to tell them, “Do this, then this, then set that, and write this.” Favor thinking and learn the guidance of doing X and don’t ask someone to show you how to do X, if that makes sense. Read, Read and Read If you don’t like reading, you’re probably NOT going to make it into the Great Developer group. Great developers read books, they read magazines and they read code. Open source playgrounds like SourceForge, CodePlex and GitHub, have made it extremely easy to download code from developers you admire and see how they do stuff. Chances are, if you read their blog too, they’ll even explain WHY they did what they did (see “Guidance” above). MSDN and Code Magazine have not only code samples, but explanations of how to use certain technologies and sometimes even when NOT to use that same technology. Books are also out on just about every topic. I still favor the less technology centric books. For instance, I generally don’t buy books like, “Getting Started with Jiminy Jappets”. I look for titles like, “How To Write More Effective Code” (again, see guidance). The Addison-Wesley Signature Series is a great example of these types of books. They teach technology-agnostic concepts. Head First Design Patterns is another great guidance book. It teaches the "Gang Of Four" Design Patterns in a very easy-to-understand, picture-heavy way (I LIKE pictures). Hang Your Balls Out There Even though the advice came from a 3rd-shift Kinko’s attendant, doesn’t mean it’s not sound advice. Write some code and put it out for others to read, criticize and castigate you for. Understand that there are some real jerks out there who are absolute geniuses. Don’t be afraid to get some great advice wrapped in some really nasty language. Try to take what’s good about it and leave what’s not. I have a tough time with this myself. I don’t really have any code out there that is available for review (other than my demo code). It takes some guts to do, but in the end, there is no substitute for getting a community of developers to critique your code and give you ways to improve. Get Involved Speaking of community, the local and online user groups and discussion forums are a great place to hear about technologies and techniques you might never come across otherwise. Mostly because you might not know to look. But, once you sit down with a bunch of other developers and start discussing what you’re interested in, you may open up a whole new perspective on it. Don’t just go to the UG meetings and watch the presentations either, get out there and talk, socialize. I realize geeks weren’t meant to necessarily be social creatures, but if you’re amongst other geeks, it’s much easier. I’ve learned more in the last 3-4 years that I have been involved in the community that I did in my previous 8 years of coding without it. Socializing works, even if socialism doesn’t. Continuous Improvement Lean proponents might call this “Kaizen”, but I call it progress. We all know, especially in the technology realm, if you’re not moving ahead, you’re falling behind. It may seem like drinking from a fire hose, but step back and pick out the technologies that speak to you. The ones that may you’re little heart go pitter-patter. Concentrate on those. If you’re still overloaded, pick the best of the best. Just know that if you’re not looking at the code you wrote last week or at least last year with some embarrassment, you’re probably stagnating. That’s about all I can say about that, cause I am all out of clichés to throw at it. :0) Write Code Great painters paint, great writers write, and great developers write code. The most sure-fire way to improve your coding ability is to continue writing code. Don’t just write code that your work throws on you, pick that technology you love or are curious to know more about and walk through some blog demo examples. Take the language you use everyday and try to get it to do something crazy. Who knows, you might create the next Google search algorithm! All in all, being a great developer is about finding yourself in all this code. If it is just a job to you, you will probably never be one of the “Great Developers”, but you’re probably okay with that. If, on the other hand, you do aspire to greatness, get out there and GET it. No one’s going hand it to you.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 19, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 19, 2012Popular ReleasesZXMAK2: Version 2.6.1.8: - fix download links with badly formatted content-disposition - little refactoring for AY8910 code - added Sprinter emulation pluginGhostBuster: GhostBuster Setup (91520): Added WMI based RestorePoint support Removed test code from program.cs Improved counting. Changed color of ghosted but unfiltered devices. Changed HwEntries into an ObservableCollection. Added Properties Form. Added Properties MenuItem to Context Menu. Added Hide Unfiltered Devices to Context Menu. If you like this tool, leave me a note, rate this project or write a review or Donate to Ghostbuster. Donate to GhostbusterProject Tracy: Tracy 2.1 Stable (2.1.4): 2.1.4 ???：?dll?????Bin??? ??AppData??????ACCESS 2007?SQL Server2008??、??、????????: DataPie_V3.2: V3.2, 2012?5?19? ????ORACLE??????。AvalonDock: AvalonDock 2.0.0795: Welcome to the Beta release of AvalonDock 2.0 After 4 months of hard work I'm ready to upload the beta version of AvalonDock 2.0. This new version boosts a lot of new features and now is stable enough to be deployed in production scenarios. For this reason I encourage everyone is using AD 1.3 or earlier to upgrade soon to this new version. The final version is scheduled for the end of June. What is included in Beta: 1) Stability! thanks to all users contribution I’ve corrected a lot of issues...myCollections: Version 2.1.0.0: New in this version : Improved UI New Metro Skin Improved Performance Added Proxy Settings New Music and Books Artist detail Lot of Bug FixingfastJSON: v1.9.8: v1.9.8 - added DeepCopy(obj) and DeepCopy<T>(obj) - refactored code to JSONParameters and removed the JSON overloads - added support to serialize anonymous types (deserialize is not possible at the moment) - bug fix $types output with non object rootAspxCommerce: AspxCommerce1.1: AspxCommerce - 'Flexible and easy eCommerce platform' offers a complete e-Commerce solution that allows you to build and run your fully functional online store in minutes. You can create your storefront; manage the products through categories and subcategories, accept payments through credit cards and ship the ordered products to the customers. We have everything set up for you, so that you can only focus on building your own online store. Note: To login as a superuser, the username and pass...SiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.1.1616.403): BUG FIX Hide save button when Titles or Descriptions element is selectedMapWindow 6 Desktop GIS: MapWindow 6.1.2: Looking for a .Net GIS Map Application?MapWindow 6 Desktop GIS is an open source desktop GIS for Microsoft Windows that is built upon the DotSpatial Library. This release requires .Net 4 (Client Profile). Are you a software developer?Instead of downloading MapWindow for development purposes, get started with with the DotSpatial template. The extensions you create from the template can be loaded in MapWindow.DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.2: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Tutorials are available. Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components ...Mugen Injection: Mugen Injection 2.2.1 (WinRT supported): Added ManagedScopeLifecycle. Increase performance. Added support for resolve 'params'.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.52: Make preprocessor comment-statements nestable; add the ///#IFNDEF statement. (Discussion #355785) Don't throw an error for old-school JScript event handlers, and don't rename them if they aren't global functions.DotNetNuke® Events: 06.00.00: This is a serious release of Events. DNN 6 form pattern - We have take the full route towards DNN6: most notably the incorporation of the DNN6 form pattern with streamlined UX/UI. We have also tried to change all formatting to a div based structure. A daunting task, since the Events module contains a lot of forms. Roger has done a splendid job by going through all the forms in great detail, replacing all table style layouts into the new DNN6 div class="dnnForm XXX" type of layout with chang...LogicCircuit: LogicCircuit 2.12.5.15: 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 versionThis release is fixing one but nasty bug. Two functions XOR and XNOR when used with 3 or more inputs were incorrectly evaluating their results. If you have a circuit that is using these functions...Image Popup Module dotnetnuke: Image Pop-up In HTML Module Source: Image Pop-up In HTML Module is a module to show pop ups Please Follow the steps to use this module 1 Install the module and drop on your page where you want to show the pop up 2 In your HTML module editor add the token "{imagepopup}" 3 In your HTML module editor add class="popup-img" in your images which you want to show in popup.FileZilla Server Config File Editor: FileZillaConfig 1.0.0.1: Sorry for not including the config file with the previous release. It was a "lost in translation" when I was moving my local repository to CodePlex repository. Sorry for the rookie mistake.LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.25: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Client Profile, and Windows 8. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also available via NuGet! Follow @JoeMayo.BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.6: Get DotNetBlogEngine for 3 Months Free! Click Here for More Info BlogEngine.NET Hosting - 3 months free! Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here!! Click Here for More Info Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.2: 2012.05.07 Ver5.6.2 (1)　Web???????、????????·????????? (2)　Web???????、?????????? COMSPEC PATHEXT WINDIR SERVERADDR SERVERPORT DOCUMENTROOT SERVERADMIN REMOTE_PORT HTTPACCEPTCHRSET HTTPACCEPTLANGUAGE HTTPACCEPTEXCODINGNew ProjectsAsset Tracking: Bespoke inhouse solution for managing asset's within the organisation.Chsword Project: Chsword project is a collection of .net project.conjee: Conjee UI DesignDealKhuyenMaiV2.com: d? án web cu?i kì nhóm g2Devtm.ServiceModel: ServiceFactory The library provides easy access to all your services through the helper ServiceFactory. This way to consume your services requires absolutely no place the call to service in a block (try / finally) because all proxies provided by the helper "ServiceFactory" are dynamically generated for the contract as a parameter. This block is built into the code provided for each method.Dream Runtime Analyzer: Dream Runtime Analyzer is a tool made to help Furcadia dreamweavers test their dreams for bandwidth usage and optimize their dragonspeak performance. It allows you to see which DragonSpeak lines were transmitted the most and thus tell you which areas need to be optimized.DynamicsNAV Protocol Handler: Target of this project is to develop DYNAMICSNAV protocol handler which will solve problems of side-by-side installation of many NAV versions on one PC. Today only one version could be handled through the hyperlinks. from.js: Powerful and High-speed LINQ implementation for JavaScriptFurcadia Installer Browser: A program that can access files within a Furcadia installer and allow the user to open them from within the install package, extract some or all the files inside the package, check data integrity of each file and compare the content of two installers.Furcadia Map Normalizer: Furcadia Map Normalizer is a small tool that helps recover a damaged Furcadia map after a live-edit bug. It restores out-of-range elements within back to zero.Homework: TSU students in action :DHRASP: human resourcesiseebooks: this is book s website for self developmentITORG CMS: ITORG Simple Content Managment System ASP.NET MVC 3Kinesthesia (Kinect-based MIDI controller): A simple yet highly configurable Kinect-based MIDI controller with MIDI playback, gesture recognition and voice control.LameBT: A .NET Bluetooth 2.0 stack (HOST and ACL only) based on LibUSB, supporting multiple USB bluetooth dongles.pongISEN: projet de l'ISEN pongRadminPassword: ????????? ??? ??????????????? ????? ??????? ? ????????? ????????? ?????????? ?????????? ?? Radmin. A program to automatically enter the passwords in the famous PC remote control software Radmin.RicciWebSiteSystem: soon websiteScripted Deployment of a System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Secondary Site: In System Center 2012 Configuration Manager, you can no longer deploy a secondary site server using Setup (wizard or scripted). Instead, you must use the Configuration Manager console to create a new secondary site. This is less than ideal if you want to deploy several secondary sites or want to automate the process for any other reason. This project provides a script that will allow you to install a new System Center 2012 Configuration Manager secondary site server without using the Con...Snapshot: Snap is a screen and desktop capture application that automatically uploads your screen captures to a remote image host and leaves you their direct links.SOA based Open Source E-Commerce System: This project will be a new Ecommerce System, based on service oriented architecture.Symphony Framework: The Symphony Framework is a set of classes and capabilities that are designed to assist the Synergy/DE developer enhance the power of the Synergy .NET development environment and migrate their traditional Synergy/DE applications to a Windows Presentation Foundation desktop user experience.testddgit0518201201: ghtestddtfs0518201201: ertesttom05072012git01: fsdfdstesttom05182012git01: fdstesttom05182012hg01: Summarytesttom05182012tfs01: fdsfdsfdsVisualCron - web client: VisualCron, www.visualcron.com, is an advanced scheduler and automation tool. VisualCron has a WinForms interface built on the VisualCron API. This projects is a proof of concept web client built upon the VisualCron API. The project was originally built by VisualCron developers as a test to provide a realtime/responsive web client.

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• Weird y offset when using custom frag shader (Cocos2d-x)

  - by Mister Guacamole

  I'm trying to mask a sprite so I wrote a simple fragment shader that renders only the pixels that are not hidden under another texture (the mask). The problem is that it seems my texture has its y-coordinate offset after passing through the shader. This is the init method of the sprite (GroundZone) I want to mask: bool GroundZone::initWithSize(Size size) { // [...] // Setup the mask of the sprite m_mask = RenderTexture::create(textureWidth, textureHeight); m_mask->retain(); m_mask->setKeepMatrix(true); Texture2D *maskTexture = m_mask->getSprite()->getTexture(); maskTexture->setAliasTexParameters(); // Disable linear interpolation on the mask // Load the custom frag shader with a default vert shader as the sprite’s program FileUtils *fileUtils = FileUtils::getInstance(); string vertexSource = ccPositionTextureA8Color_vert; string fragmentSource = fileUtils->getStringFromFile( fileUtils->fullPathForFilename("CustomShader_AlphaMask_frag.fsh")); GLProgram *shader = new GLProgram; shader->initWithByteArrays(vertexSource.c_str(), fragmentSource.c_str()); shader->bindAttribLocation(GLProgram::ATTRIBUTE_NAME_POSITION, GLProgram::VERTEX_ATTRIB_POSITION); shader->bindAttribLocation(GLProgram::ATTRIBUTE_NAME_TEX_COORD, GLProgram::VERTEX_ATTRIB_TEX_COORDS); shader->link(); CHECK_GL_ERROR_DEBUG(); shader->updateUniforms(); CHECK_GL_ERROR_DEBUG(); int maskTexUniformLoc = shader->getUniformLocationForName("u_alphaMaskTexture"); shader->setUniformLocationWith1i(maskTexUniformLoc, 1); this->setShaderProgram(shader); shader->release(); // [...] } These are the custom drawing methods for actually drawing the mask over the sprite: You need to know that m_mask is modified externally by another class, the onDraw() method only render it. void GroundZone::draw(Renderer *renderer, const kmMat4 &transform, bool transformUpdated) { m_renderCommand.init(_globalZOrder); m_renderCommand.func = CC_CALLBACK_0(GroundZone::onDraw, this, transform, transformUpdated); renderer->addCommand(&m_renderCommand); Sprite::draw(renderer, transform, transformUpdated); } void GroundZone::onDraw(const kmMat4 &transform, bool transformUpdated) { GLProgram *shader = this->getShaderProgram(); shader->use(); glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE1); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, m_mask->getSprite()->getTexture()->getName()); glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE0); } Below is the method (located in another class, GroundLayer) that modify the mask by drawing a line from point start to point end. Both points are in Cocos2d coordinates (Point (0,0) is down-left). void GroundLayer::drawTunnel(Point start, Point end) { // To dig a line, we need first to get the texture of the zone we will be digging into. Then we get the // relative position of the start and end point in the zone's node space. Finally we use the custom shader to // draw a mask over the existing texture. for (auto it = _children.begin(); it != _children.end(); it++) { GroundZone *zone = static_cast<GroundZone *>(*it); Point nodeStart = zone->convertToNodeSpace(start); Point nodeEnd = zone->convertToNodeSpace(end); // Now that we have our two points converted to node space, it's easy to draw a mask that contains a line // going from the start point to the end point and that is then applied over the current texture. Size groundZoneSize = zone->getContentSize(); RenderTexture *rt = zone->getMask(); rt->begin(); { // Draw a line going from start and going to end in the texture, the line will act as a mask over the // existing texture DrawNode *line = DrawNode::create(); line->retain(); line->drawSegment(nodeStart, nodeEnd, 20, Color4F::RED); line->visit(); } rt->end(); } } Finally, here's the custom shader I wrote. #ifdef GL_ES precision mediump float; #endif varying vec2 v_texCoord; uniform sampler2D u_texture; uniform sampler2D u_alphaMaskTexture; void main() { float maskAlpha = texture2D(u_alphaMaskTexture, v_texCoord).a; float texAlpha = texture2D(u_texture, v_texCoord).a; float blendAlpha = (1.0 - maskAlpha) * texAlpha; // Show only where mask is invisible vec3 texColor = texture2D(u_texture, v_texCoord).rgb; gl_FragColor = vec4(texColor, blendAlpha); return; } I got a problem with the y coordinates. Indeed, it seems that once it has passed through my custom shader, the sprite's texture is not at the right place: Without custom shader (the sprite is the brown thing): With custom shader: What's going on here? Thanks :) EDIT It looks like after passing through the shader when I set the position of the sprite I set it in points, with (0,0) being in the top-right. Indeed, when I do sprite->setPosition(320, 480), the sprite is perfectly placed at the top of the screen.

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• Five Things Learned at the BSR Conference in San Francisco on Nov 2nd-4th

  - by Evelyn Neumayr

  The BSR Conference 2011—“Redefining Leadership”—held from Nov 2nd to Nov 4th in San Francisco, with Oracle as one of the main sponsors, saw senior business executives, civil society representatives, and other experts from around the world gathering to share strategies and insights on the future of sustainability. The general conference sessions kicked off on November 2nd with a plenary address by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. Other sessions were presented by CEOs of the caliber of Carl Bass (Autodesk), Brian Dunn (Best Buy), Carlos Brito (Anheuser-Busch InBev) and Ofra Strauss (Strauss Group). Here are five key highlights from the conference: 1.      The main leadership challenge is integrating sustainability into core business functions and overcoming short-termism. The “BSR GlobeScan State of Sustainable Business Poll 2011” - a survey of nearly 500 business leaders from 300 member companies - shows that 84% of respondents are optimistic that global businesses will embrace CSR/sustainability as part of their core strategies and operations in the next five years but consider integrating sustainability into their core business functions the key challenge. It is still difficult for many companies that are committed to the sustainability agenda to find investors that understand the long-term implications and as Al Gore said “Many companies are given the signal by the investors that it is the short term results that matter and that is a terribly debilitating force in the market.” 2.      Companies are required to address increasing compliance requirements and transparency in their supply chain, especially in relation with conflict minerals legislation and water management. The Dodd-Frank legislation, OECD guidelines, and the upcoming Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules require companies to monitor upstream the sourcing of tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold, but given the complexity of this issue companies need to collaborate and partner with peer companies in their industry as well as in other industries to understand how to address conflict minerals in their supply chains. The Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs’ (IPE) China Water Pollution Map enables the public to access thousands of environmental quality, discharge, and infraction records released by various government agencies. Empowered with this information, the public has the opportunity to place greater pressure on polluting companies to comply with environmental standards and create solutions to improve their performance. 3.      A new standard for reporting on supply chain greenhouse gas emissions is available. The New “Scope 3” Supply Chain Greenhouse Gas Inventory Standard, released on October 4th 2011, is the only international greenhouse gas emissions standard that accounts for the full lifecycle of a company’s products. It provides a framework for companies to account for indirect emissions outside of energy use, such as transportation, manufacturing, and distribution, and it incorporates both upstream and downstream impacts of a product. With key investors now listing supplier vulnerability to rising energy prices and disruptions of service as a key concern, greenhouse gas (GHG) management isn’t just for leading companies but a necessity for any business. 4.      Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) reporting is becoming increasingly important to investors and other stakeholders. While European investors have traditionally driven the ESG agenda, U.S. investors are increasingly including ESG data in their analyses. This trend will likely increase as stakeholders continue to demand that an ESG lens be applied to their investments. Investors are increasingly looking to partner on sustainability, as they see the benefits of ESG providing significant returns on investment. 5.      Software companies are offering an increasing variety of solutions to help drive changes and measure performance internally, in supply chains, and across peer companies. The significant challenge is how to integrate different software systems to facilitate decision-making based on a holistic understanding of trade-offs. Jon Chorley, Chief Sustainability Officer and Vice President, Supply Chain Management Product Strategy at Oracle was a panelist in the “Trends in Sustainability Software” session and commented that, “How we think about our business decisions really comes down to how we think about cost. And as long as we don’t assign a cost to things that have an environmental impact or social impact, then we make decisions based on incomplete information. If we could include that in the process that determines ‘Is this product profitable? we would then have a much better decision.” For more information on BSR visit www.brs.org. You can also view highlights of the plenary session at http://www.bsr.org/en/bsr-conference/session-summaries/2011. Oracle is proud to be a sponsor of this BSR conference. By Elena Avesani, Principal Product Strategy Manager, Oracle          

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• IE9 not rendering box-shadow Elements inside of Table Cells

  - by Rick Strahl

  Ran into an annoying problem today with IE 9. Slowly updating some older sites with CSS 3 tags and for the most part IE9 does a reasonably decent job of working with the new CSS 3 features. Not all by a long shot but at least some of the more useful ones like border-radius and box-shadow are supported. Until today I was happy to see that IE supported box-shadow just fine, but I ran into a problem with some old markup that uses tables for its main layout sections. I found that inside of a table cell IE fails to render a box-shadow. Below are images from Chrome (left) and IE 9 (right) of the same content: The download and purchase images are rendered with: <a href="download.asp" style="display:block;margin: 10px;"><img src="../images/download.gif" class="boxshadow roundbox" /></a> where the .boxshadow and .roundbox styles look like this:.boxshadow { -moz-box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353; -webkit-box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353; box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353; } .roundbox { -moz-border-radius: 6px 6px 6px 6px; -webkit-border-radius: 6px; border-radius: 6px 6px 6px 6px; } And the Problem is… collapsed Table Borders Now normally these two styles work just fine in IE 9 when applied to elements. But the box-shadow doesn't work inside of this markup - because the parent container is a table cell.<td class="sidebar" style="border-collapse: collapse"> … <a href="download.asp" style="display:block;margin: 10px;"><img src="../images/download.gif" class="boxshadow roundbox" /></a> …</td> This HTML causes the image to not show a shadow. In actuality I'm not styling inline, but as part of my browser Reset I have the following in my master .css file:table { border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0; } which has the same effect as the inline style. border-collapse by default inherits from the parent and so the TD inherits from table and tr - so TD tags are effectively collapsed. You can check out a test document that demonstrates this behavior here in this CodePaste.net snippet or run it here. How to work around this Issue To get IE9 to render the shadows inside of the TD tag correctly, I can just change the style explicitly NOT to use border-collapse:<td class="sidebar" style="border-collapse: separate; border-width: 0;"> Or better yet (thanks to David's comment below), you can add the border-collapse: separate to the .boxshadow style like this:.boxshadow { -moz-box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353; -webkit-box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353; box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353; border-collapse: separate; } With either of these approaches IE renders the shadows correctly. Do you really need border-collapse? Should you bother with border-collapse? I think so! Collapsed borders render flat as a single fat line if a border-width and border-color are assigned, while separated borders render a thin line with a bunch of weird white space around it or worse render a old skool 3D raised border which is terribly ugly as well. So as a matter of course in any app my browser Reset includes the above code to make sure all tables with borders render the same flat borders. As you probably know, IE has all sorts of rendering issues in tables and on backgrounds (opacity backgrounds or image backgrounds) most of which is caused by the way that IE internally uses ActiveX filters to apply these effects. Apparently collapsed borders are yet one more item that causes problems with rendering. There you have it. Another crappy failure in IE we have to check for now, just one more reason to hate Internet Explorer. Luckily this one has a reasonably easy workaround. I hope this helps out somebody and saves them the hour I spent trying to figure out what caused this problem in the first place. Resources Sample HTML document that demonstrates the behavior Run the Sample© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in HTML  Internet Explorer   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Red Gate in the Community

  - by Nick Harrison

  Much has been said recently about Red Gate's community involvement and commitment to the DotNet community. Much of this has been unduly negative. Before you start throwing stones and spewing obscenities, consider some additional facts: Red Gate's software is actually very good. I have worked on many projects where Red Gate's software was instrumental in finishing successfully. Red Gate is VERY good to the community. I have spoken at many user groups and code camps where Red Gate has been a sponsor. Red Gate consistently offers up money to pay for the venue or food, and they will often give away licenses as door prizes. There are many such community events that would not take place without Red Gate's support. All I have ever seen them ask for is to have their products mentioned or be listed as a sponsor. They don't insist on anyone following a specific script. They don't monitor how their products are showcased. They let their products speak for themselves. Red Gate sponsors the Simple Talk web site. I publish there regularly. Red Gate has never exerted editorial pressure on me. No one has ever told me we can't publish this unless you mention Red Gate products. No one has ever said, you need to say nice things about Red Gate products in order to be published. They have told me, "you need to make this less academic, so you don't alienate too many readers. "You need to actually write an introduction so people will know what you are talking about". "You need to write this so that someone who isn't a reflection nut will follow what you are trying to say." In short, they have been good editors worried about the quality of the content and what the readers are likely to be interested in. For me personally, Red Gate and Simple Talk have both been excellent to work with. As for the developer outrage… I am a little embarrassed by so much of the response that I am seeing. So much of the complaints remind me of little children whining "but you promised" Semantics aside. A promise is just a promise. It's not like they "pinky sweared". Sadly no amount name calling or "double dog daring" will change the economics of the situation. Red Gate is not a multibillion dollar corporation. They are a mid size company doing the best they can. Without a doubt, their pockets are not as deep as Microsoft's. I honestly believe that they did try to make the "freemium" model work. Sadly it did not. I have no doubt that they intended for it to work and that they tried to make it work. I also have no doubt that they labored over making this decision. This could not have been an easy decision to make. Many people are gleefully proclaiming a massive backlash against Red Gate swearing off their wonderful products and promising to bash them at every opportunity from now on. This is childish behavior that does not represent professionals. This type of behavior is more in line with bullies in the school yard than professionals in a professional community. Now for my own prediction… This back lash against Red Gate is not likely to last very long. We will all realize that we still need their products. We may look around for alternatives, but realize that they really do have the best in class for every product that they produce, and that they really are not exorbitantly priced. We will see them sponsoring Code Camps and User Groups and be reminded, "hey this isn't such a bad company". On the other hand, software shops like Red Gate, will remember this back lash and give a second thought to supporting open source projects. They will worry about getting involved when an individual wants to turn over control for a product that they developed but can no longer support alone. Who wants to run the risk of not being able to follow through on their best intentions. In the end we may all suffer, even the toddlers among us throwing the temper tantrum, "BUT YOU PROMISED!" Disclaimer Before anyone asks or jumps to conclusions, I do not get paid by Red Gate to say any of this. I have often written about their products, and I have long thought that they are a wonderful company with amazing products. If they ever open an office in the SE United States, I will be one of the first to apply.

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• IndyTechFest Recap

  - by Johnm

  The sun had yet to raise above the horizon on Saturday, May 22nd and I was traveling toward the location of the 2010 IndyTechFest. In my freshly awaken, and pre-coffee, state I reflected on the months that preceded this day and how quickly they slipped away. The big day had finally come and the morning dew glistened with a unique brightness that morning. What is this all about? For those who are unfamiliar with IndyTechFest, it is a regional conference held in Indianapolis and hosted by the Indianapolis .NET Developers Association (IndyNDA) and the Indianapolis Professional Association for SQL Server (IndyPASS).  The event presents multiple tracks and sessions covering subjects such as Business Intelligence,  Database Administration, .NET Development, SharePoint Development, Windows Mobile Development as well as non-Microsoft topics such as Lean and MongoDB. This year's event was the third hosting of IndyTechFest. No man is an island No event such as IndyTechFest is executed by a single person. My fellow co-founders, with their highly complementary skill sets and philanthropy make the process very enjoyable. Our amazing volunteers and their aid were indispensible. The generous financial support of our sponsors that made the event and fabulous prizes possible. The spectacular line up of speakers who came from near and far to donate their time and knowledge. Our beloved attendees who sacrificed the first sunny Saturday in weeks to expand their skill sets and network with their peers. We are deeply appreciative. Challenges in preparation With the preparation of any event comes challenges. It is these challenges that makes the process of planning an event so interesting. This year's largest challenge was the location of the event. In the past two years IndyTechFest was held at the Gene B. Glick Junior Achievement Center in Indianapolis. This facility has been the hub of the Indy technical community for many years. As the big day drew near, the facility's availability came into question due to some recent changes that had occurred with those who operated the facility. We began our search for an alternative option. Thankfully, the Marriott Indianapolis East was available, was very spacious and willing to work within the range of our budget. Within days of our event, the decision to move proved to be wise since the prior location had begun renovations to the interior. Whew! Always trust your gut. Every day it's getting better At the ending of each year, we huddle together, review the evaluations and identify an area in which the event could improve. This year's big opportunity for improvement resided in the prize give-away portion at the end of the day. In the 2008 event, admittedly, this portion was rather chaotic, rushed and disorganized. This year, we broke the drawing into two sections, of which each attendee received two tickets. The first ticket was a drawing for the mountain of books that were given away. The second ticket was a drawing for the big prizes, the 2 Xboxes, 3 laptops and iPad. We peppered the ticket drawings with gift card raffles and tossing t-shirts into the audience. If at first you don't succeed, try and try again Each year of IndyTechFest, we have offered a means for ad-hoc sessions or discussion groups to pop-up. To our disappointment it was something that never quite took off. We have always believed that this unique type of session was valuable and wanted to figure out a way to make it work for this year. A special thanks to Alan Stevens, who took on and facilitated the "open space" track and made it an official success. Share with your tweety When the attendee badges were designed we decided to place an emphasis on the attendee's Twitter account as well as the events hash-tag (#IndyTechFest) to encourage some real-time buzz during the day. At the host table we displayed a Twitter feed for all to enjoy. It was quite successful and encouraging use of social media. My badge was missing my Twitter account since it was recently changed. For those who care to follow my rather sparse tweets, my address is @johnnydata. Man, this is one long blog post! All in all it was a very successful event. It is always great to see new faces and meet old friends. The planning for the 2011 IndyTechFest will kick off very soon. We have more capacity for future growth and a truck full of great ideas. Stay tuned!

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• SQLAuthority Guest Post – Lessons from Life and Work by Srini Chandra (Author of 3 Lives, in search of bliss)

  - by pinaldave

  Work and life are confusing terms together. How can one consider work outside of life. Work should be part of life or are we considering ourselves dead when we are at work. I have often seen developers and DBA complaining and confused about their job, work and life. Complaining is easy and everyone can do. I have heard quite often expression – “I do not have any other option.” I requested Srini Chanda (renowned author of Amazon Best Seller 3 Lives, in search of bliss (Amazon | Flipkart) to write a guest post on this subject which developer can read and appreciate. Let us see Srini’s thoughts in his own words. Each of us who works in the technology industry carries an especially heavy burden nowadays. For, fate has placed in our hands an awesome power to shape our society and its consciousness. For that reason, we must pay more and more attention to issues of professionalism, social responsibility and ethics. Equally importantly, the responsibility lies in our hands to ensure that we view our work and career as an opportunity to enlighten and lift ourselves up. Story: A Prisoner, 20 years and a Wheel Many years ago, I heard this story from a professor when I was a student at Carnegie Mellon. A man was sentenced to 20 years in prison. During his time in prison, he was asked to turn a wheel every day. So, every day he turned the wheel. At times, when he was tired or puzzled and stopped turning the wheel, he would be flogged with a whip. The man did not know anything about the wheel other than that it was placed outside his jail somewhere. He wondered if the wheel crushed corn or if it ground wheat or something similar. He wondered if turning the wheel was useful to anyone. At the end of his jail term, he rushed out to see what the wheel was doing. To his disappointment, he found that the wheel was not connected to anything. All these years, he had been toiling for nothing. He gave a loud, frustrated shout and dropped dead. How many of us are turning wheels wondering what it is connected to? How many of us have unstated, uncaring attitudes towards our careers? How many of us view work as drudgery, as no more than a way to earn that next paycheck? How many of us have wondered about the spiritually uplifting aspect of work? Can a workforce that views work as merely a chore, be ethical? Can it produce truly life enhancing technology? Can it make positive contributions to the quality of life of a society? I think not. Thanks to Pinal and you, his readers, for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts in a series of guest posts. I’d like to present a few ways over the next few weeks, in which we can tap into the liberating potential of work and make our lives better in the process. Now, please allow me to tell you another version of the story that the good professor shared with us in the classroom that day. Story: A Prisoner, 20 years, a Wheel and the LIFE A man was sentenced to 20 years in prison. During his time in prison, he was asked to turn a wheel every day. So, every day he turned the wheel. At first, his whole body and mind rebelled against his predicament. So, his limbs grew weary and his mind became numb and confused. And then, his self-awareness began to grow. He began to wonder how he came to be in the prison in the first place. He looked around and saw all his fellow prisoners also turning the wheel. His wife, his parents, his friends and his children – they were all in the prison too, and turning their own wheels! He began to wonder how this came about. As he wondered more and more, he began to focus less on his physical drudgery and boredom. And he began to clearly see his inner spirit which guided him in ways that allowed him to see the world with a universal view. His inner spirit guided him towards the source of eternal wisdom and happiness. He began to see the source of happiness in everything around him – his prison bound relationships, even his jailers and in his wheel. He became a source of light to those around him. His wheel jokes and humor infected them with joy and happiness. Finally, the day came for his release from jail. He walked calmly outside the jail and laughed aloud when he saw that the wheel was not connected to anything. He knelt down, kissed it and thanked it for the wisdom it taught him. Life is the prison. The wheel is your work. Both are sacred. Both have enormous powers to teach us wisdom and bring us happiness. Whether we allow them to do so, is a choice we have to make. Over the next few weeks, I hope to share with you a few lessons that I have learnt at the wheel in my two decades of my career (prison). Thank you for reading, and do let me know what you think. Reference: Srini Chandra (3 Lives, in search of bliss), Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, T SQL, Technology

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• Interview with Ronald Bradford about MySQL Connect

  - by Keith Larson

  Ronald Bradford,  an Oracle ACE Director has been busy working with  database consulting, book writing (EffectiveMySQL) while traveling and speaking around the world in support of MySQL. I was able to take some of his time to get an interview on this thoughts about theMySQL Connect conference. Keith Larson: What where your thoughts when you heard that Oracle was going to provide the community the MySQL Conference ?Ronald Bradford: Oracle has already been providing various different local community events including OTN Tech Days and  MySQL community days. These are great for local regions both in the US and abroad.  In previous years there has been an increase of content at Oracle Open World, however that benefits the Oracle community far more then the MySQL community.  It is good to see that Oracle is realizing the benefit in providing a large scale dedicated event for the MySQL community that includes speakers from the MySQL development teams, invested companies in the ecosystem and other community evangelists.I fully expect a successful event and look forward to hopefully seeing MySQL Connect at the upcoming Brazil and Japan OOW conferences and perhaps an event on the East Coast.Keith Larson: Since you are part of the content committee, what did you think of the submissions that were received during call for papers?Ronald Bradford: There was a large number of quality submissions to the number of available presentation sessions. As with the previous years as a committee member for the annual MySQL conference, there is always a large variety of common cornerstone MySQL features as well as new products and upcoming companies sharing their MySQL experiences. All of the usual major players in the ecosystem will in presenting at MySQL Connect including Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Continuent, Percona, Tokutek, Sphinx and Amazon to name a few.  This is ensuring the event will have a large number of quality speakers and a difficult time in choosing what to attend. Keith Larson: What sessions do you look forwarding to attending? Ronald Bradford: As with most quality conferences you can only be in one place at one time, so with multiple tracks per session it is always difficult to decide. The continued work and success with MySQL Cluster, and with a number of sessions I am sure will be popular. The features that interest me the most are around the optimizer, where there are several sessions on new features, and on the importance of backups. There are three presentations in this area to choose from.Keith Larson: Are you going to cover any of the content in your books at your MySQL Connect sessions?Ronald Bradford: I will be giving two presentations at MySQL Connect. The first will include the techniques available for creating better indexes where I will be touching on some aspects of the first Effective MySQL book on Optimizing SQL Statements.  In my second presentation from experiences of managing 500+ AWS MySQL instances, I will be touching on areas including SQL tuning, backup and recovery and scale out with replication.   These are the key topics of the initial books in the Effective MySQL series that focus on performance, scalability and business continuity.  The books however cover a far greater amount of detail then can be presented in a 1 hour session. Keith Larson: What features of MySQL 5.6 do you look forward to the most ?Ronald Bradford: I am very impressed with the optimizer trace feature. The ability to see exposed information is invaluable not just for MySQL 5.6, but to also apply information discerned for optimizing SQL statements in earlier versions of MySQL.  Not everybody understands that it is easy to deploy a MySQL 5.6 slave into an existing topology running an older version if MySQL for evaluation of many new features.  You can use the new mysqlbinlog streaming feature for duplicating master binary logs on an older version with a MySQL 5.6 slave.  The improvements in instrumentation in the Performance Schema are exciting.   However, as with my upcoming Replication Techniques in Depth title, that will be available for sale at MySQL Connect, there are numerous replication features, some long overdue with provide significant management benefits. Crash Save Slaves, Global transaction Identifiers (GTID)  and checksums just to mention a few.Keith Larson: You have been to numerous conferences, what would you recommend for people at the conference? Ronald Bradford: Make the time to meet and introduce yourself to the speakers that cover the topics that most interest you. The MySQL ecosystem has a very strong community.  The relationships you build with presenters, developers and architects in MySQL can be invaluable, however they are created over time. Get to know these people, interact with them over time.  This is the opportunity to learn more then just the content from a 1 hour session. Keith Larson: Any additional tips to handling the long hours ? Ronald Bradford: Conferences can be hard, especially with all the post event drinking.  This is a two day event and I am sure will include additional events on Friday and Saturday night so come well prepared, and leave work behind. Take the time to learn something new.   You can always catchup on sleep later. Keith Larson: Thank you so much for taking some time to do this I look forward to seeing you at the MySQL Connect conference.  Please stay tuned here for more updates on MySQL. 

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• Tuning Red Gate: #2 of Many

  - by Grant Fritchey

  In the last installment, I used the SQL Monitor tool to get a snapshot view of the current state of the servers at Red Gate that are giving us trouble. That snapshot suggested some areas where I should focus some time, primarily in which queries were being called most frequently or were running the longest. But, you don't want to just run off & start tuning queries. Remember, the foundation for query tuning is the server itself. So, I want to be sure I'm not looking at some major hardware or configuration issues that I need to address first. Rather than look at the current status of the server, I'm going to look at historical data. Clicking on the Analysis tab of SQL Monitor I get a whole list of counters that I can look at. More importantly, I can look at them over a period of time. Even more importantly, I can compare past periods with current periods to see if we're looking at a progressive issue or not. There are counters here that will give me an indication of load, and there are counters here that will tell me specifics about that load. First, I want to just look at the load to understand where the pain points might be. Trying to drill down before you have detailed information is just bad planning. First thing I'm going to check is the CPU, just to see what's up there. I have two servers I'm interested in, so I'll show you both: Looking at the last 30 days for both servers, well, let's just say that the first server is about what I would expect. It has an average baseline behavior with occasional, regular, peaks. This looks like a system with a fairly steady & predictable load that probably has a nightly batch process that spikes the processor. In short, normal stuff. The points there where the CPU drops radically. that might be worth investigating further because something changed the processing on this system a lot. But the first server. It's all over the place. There's no steady CPU behavior at all. It's spike high for long periods of time. It's up, it's down. I'm really going to have to spend time looking at CPU issues on this server to try to figure out what's up. It might be other processes being shared on the server, it might be something else. Either way, I'm going to have to spend time evaluating this CPU, especially those peeks about a week ago. Looking at the Pages/sec, again, just a measure of load, I see that there are some peaks on the rg-sql02 server, but over all, it looks like a fairly standard load. Plus, the peaks are only up to 550 pages/sec. Remember, this isn't a performance measure, but just a load measurement, but from this, I don't think we're looking at major memory issues, but I may want to correlate these counters with the CPU counters. Again, the other server looks like there's stuff going on. The load is not at all consistent. In fact there was a point earlier in the year that looks pretty severe. Plus the spikes here are twice the size of the other system. We've got a lot more load going on here and I will probably need to drill down on memory usage on this server. Taking a look at the disk transfers/sec the load on both systems seems to roughly correspond to the other load indicators. Notice that drop right in the middle of the graph for rg-sql02. I wonder if the office was closed over that period or a system was down for maintenance. If I saw spikes in memory or disk that corresponded to the drip in CPU, you can assume something was using those other resources and causing a drop, but when everything goes down, it just means that the system isn't gettting used. The disk on the rg-sql01 system isn't spiking exactly the same way as the memory & cpu, so there's a good chance (chance mind you) that any performance issues might not be disk related. However, notice that huge jump at the beginning of the month. Several disks were used more than they were for the rest of the month. That's the load on the server. What about the load on SQL Server itself? Next time.

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• Design review for application facing memory issues

  - by Mr Moose

  I apologise in advance for the length of this post, but I want to paint an accurate picture of the problems my app is facing and then pose some questions below; I am trying to address some self inflicted design pain that is now leading to my application crashing due to out of memory errors. An abridged description of the problem domain is as follows; The application takes in a “dataset” that consists of numerous text files containing related data An individual text file within the dataset usually contains approx 20 “headers” that contain metadata about the data it contains. It also contains a large tab delimited section containing data that is related to data in one of the other text files contained within the dataset. The number of columns per file is very variable from 2 to 256+ columns. The original application was written to allow users to load a dataset, map certain columns of each of the files which basically indicating key information on the files to show how they are related as well as identify a few expected column names. Once this is done, a validation process takes place to enforce various rules and ensure that all the relationships between the files are valid. Once that is done, the data is imported into a SQL Server database. The database design is an EAV (Entity-Attribute-Value) model used to cater for the variable columns per file. I know EAV has its detractors, but in this case, I feel it was a reasonable choice given the disparate data and variable number of columns submitted in each dataset. The memory problem Given the fact the combined size of all text files was at most about 5 megs, and in an effort to reduce the database transaction time, it was decided to read ALL the data from files into memory and then perform the following; perform all the validation whilst the data was in memory relate it using an object model Start DB transaction and write the key columns row by row, noting the Id of the written row (all tables in the database utilise identity columns), then the Id of the newly written row is applied to all related data Once all related data had been updated with the key information to which it relates, these records are written using SqlBulkCopy. Due to our EAV model, we essentially have; x columns by y rows to write, where x can by 256+ and rows are often into the tens of thousands. Once all the data is written without error (can take several minutes for large datasets), Commit the transaction. The problem now comes from the fact we are now receiving individual files containing over 30 megs of data. In a dataset, we can receive any number of files. We’ve started seen datasets of around 100 megs coming in and I expect it is only going to get bigger from here on in. With files of this size, data can’t even be read into memory without the app falling over, let alone be validated and imported. I anticipate having to modify large chunks of the code to allow validation to occur by parsing files line by line and am not exactly decided on how to handle the import and transactions. Potential improvements I’ve wondered about using GUIDs to relate the data rather than relying on identity fields. This would allow data to be related prior to writing to the database. This would certainly increase the storage required though. Especially in an EAV design. Would you think this is a reasonable thing to try, or do I simply persist with identity fields (natural keys can’t be trusted to be unique across all submitters). Use of staging tables to get data into the database and only performing the transaction to copy data from staging area to actual destination tables. Questions For systems like this that import large quantities of data, how to you go about keeping transactions small. I’ve kept them as small as possible in the current design, but they are still active for several minutes and write hundreds of thousands of records in one transaction. Is there a better solution? The tab delimited data section is read into a DataTable to be viewed in a grid. I don’t need the full functionality of a DataTable, so I suspect it is overkill. Is there anyway to turn off various features of DataTables to make them more lightweight? Are there any other obvious things you would do in this situation to minimise the memory footprint of the application described above? Thanks for your kind attention.

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• C# async and actors

  - by Alex.Davies

  If you read my last post about async, you might be wondering what drove me to write such odd code in the first place. The short answer is that .NET Demon is written using NAct Actors. Actors are an old idea, which I believe deserve a renaissance under C# 5. The idea is to isolate each stateful object so that only one thread has access to its state at any point in time. That much should be familiar, it's equivalent to traditional lock-based synchronization. The different part is that actors pass "messages" to each other rather than calling a method and waiting for it to return. By doing that, each thread can only ever be holding one lock. This completely eliminates deadlocks, my least favourite concurrency problem. Most people who use actors take this quite literally, and there are plenty of frameworks which help you to create message classes and loops which can receive the messages, inspect what type of message they are, and process them accordingly. But I write C# for a reason. Do I really have to choose between using actors and everything I love about object orientation in C#? Type safety Interfaces Inheritance Generics As it turns out, no. You don't need to choose between messages and method calls. A method call makes a perfectly good message, as long as you don't wait for it to return. This is where asynchonous methods come in. I have used NAct for a while to wrap my objects in a proxy layer. As long as I followed the rule that methods must always return void, NAct queued up the call for later, and immediately released my thread. When I needed to get information out of other actors, I could use EventHandlers and callbacks (continuation passing style, for any CS geeks reading), and NAct would call me back in my isolated thread without blocking the actor that raised the event. Using callbacks looks horrible though. To remind you: m_BuildControl.FilterEnabledForBuilding(    projects,    enabledProjects = m_OutOfDateProjectFinder.FilterNeedsBuilding(        enabledProjects,             newDirtyProjects =             {                 ....... Which is why I'm really happy that NAct now supports async methods. Now, methods are allowed to return Task rather than just void. I can await those methods, and C# 5 will turn the rest of my method into a continuation for me. NAct will run the other method in the other actor's context, but will make sure that when my method resumes, we're back in my context. Neither actor was ever blocked waiting for the other one. Apart from when they were actually busy doing something, they were responsive to concurrent messages from other sources. To be fair, you could use async methods with lock statements to achieve exactly the same thing, but it's ugly. Here's a realistic example of an object that has a queue of data that gets passed to another object to be processed: class QueueProcessor {    private readonly ItemProcessor m_ItemProcessor = ...     private readonly object m_Sync = new object();    private Queue<object> m_DataQueue = ...    private List<object> m_Results = ...     public async Task ProcessOne() {         object data = null;         lock (m_Sync)         {             data = m_DataQueue.Dequeue();         }         var processedData = await m_ItemProcessor.ProcessData(data); lock (m_Sync)         {             m_Results.Add(processedData);         }     } } We needed to write two lock blocks, one to get the data to process, one to store the result. The worrying part is how easily we could have forgotten one of the locks. Compare that to the version using NAct: class QueueProcessorActor : IActor { private readonly ItemProcessor m_ItemProcessor = ... private Queue<object> m_DataQueue = ... private List<object> m_Results = ... public async Task ProcessOne()     {         // We are an actor, it's always thread-safe to access our private fields         var data = m_DataQueue.Dequeue();         var processedData = await m_ItemProcessor.ProcessData(data);         m_Results.Add(processedData);     } } You don't have to explicitly lock anywhere, NAct ensures that your code will only ever run on one thread, because it's an actor. Either way, async is definitely better than traditional synchronous code. Here's a diagram of what a typical synchronous implementation might do: The left side shows what is running on the thread that has the lock required to access the QueueProcessor's data. The red section is where that lock is held, but doesn't need to be. Contrast that with the async version we wrote above: Here, the lock is released in the middle. The QueueProcessor is free to do something else. Most importantly, even if the ItemProcessor sometimes calls the QueueProcessor, they can never deadlock waiting for each other. So I thoroughly recommend you use async for all code that has to wait a while for things. And if you find yourself writing lots of lock statements, think about using actors as well. Using actors and async together really takes the misery out of concurrent programming.

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• User-Defined Customer Events & their impact (FA Type Profile)

  - by Rajesh Sharma

  CC&B automatically creates field activities when a specific Customer Event takes place. This depends on the way you have setup your Field Activity Type Profiles, the templates within, and associated SP Condition(s) on the template. CC&B uses the service point type, its state and referenced customer event to determine which field activity type to generate.   Customer events available in the base product include: Cut for Non-payment (CNP) Disconnect Warning (DIWA) Reconnect for Payment (REPY) Reread (RERD) Stop Service (STOP) Start Service (STRT) Start/Stop (STSP)   Note the Field values/codes defined for each event.   CC&B comes with a flexibility to define new set of customer events. These can be defined in the Look Up - CUST_EVT_FLG. Values from the Look Up are used on the Field Activity Type Profile Template page.     So what's the use of having user-defined Customer Events? And how will the system detect such events in order to create field activity(s)?   Well, system can only detect such events when you reference a user-defined customer event on a Severance Event Type for an event type Create Field Activities.     This way you can create additional field activities of a specific field activity type for user-defined customer events.   One of our customers adopted this feature and created a user-defined customer event CNPW - Cut for Non-payment for Water Services. This event was then linked on a Field Activity Type Profile and referenced on a Severance Event - CUT FOR NON PAY-W. The associated Severance Process was configured to trigger a reconnection process if it was cancelled (done by defining a Post Cancel Algorithm). Whenever this Severance Event was executed, a specific type of Field Activity was generated for disconnection purposes. The Field Activity type was determined by the system from the Field Activity Type Profile referenced for the SP Type, SP's state and the referenced user-defined customer event. All was working well until the time when they realized that in spite of the Severance Process getting cancelled (when a payment was made); the Post Cancel Algorithm was not executed to start a Reconnection Severance Process for the purpose of generating a reconnection field activity and reconnecting the service.   Basically, the Post Cancel algorithm (if specified on a Severance Process Template) is triggered when a Severance Process gets cancelled because a credit transaction has affected/relieved a Service Agreement's debt.   So what exactly was happening? Now we come to actual question as to what is the impact in having a user-defined customer event.   System defined/base customer events are hard-coded across the entire system. There is an impact even if you remove any customer event entry from the Look Up. User-defined customer events are not recognized by the system anywhere else except in the severance process, as described above.   There are few programs which have routines to first validate the completion of disconnection field activities, which were raised as a result of customer event CNP - Cut for Non-payment in order to perform other associated actions. One such program is the Post Cancel Algorithm, referenced on a Severance Process Template, generally used to reconnect services which were disconnected from other Severance Event, specifically CNP - Cut for Non-Payment. Post cancel algorithm provided by the product - SEV POST CAN does the following (below is the algorithm's description):   This algorithm is called after a severance process has been cancelled (typically because the debt was paid and the SA is no longer eligible to be on the severance process). It checks to see if the process has a completed 'disconnect' event and, if so, starts a reconnect process using the Reconnect Severance Process Template defined in the parameter.    Notice the underlined text. This algorithm implicitly checks for Field Activities having completed status, which were generated from Severance Events as a result of CNP - Cut for Non-payment customer event.   Now if we look back to the customer's issue, we can relate that the Post Cancel algorithm was triggered, but was not able to find any 'Completed' CNP - Cut for Non-payment related field activity. And hence was not able to start a reconnection severance process. This was because a field activity was generated and completed for a customer event CNPW - Cut for Non-payment of Water Services instead.   To conclude, if you introduce new customer events that extend or simulate base customer events, the ones that are included in the base product, ensure that there is no other impact either direct or indirect to other business functions that the application has to offer.  

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• Package Manager Console For More Than Managing Packages

  - by Steve Michelotti

  Like most developers, I prefer to not have to pick up the mouse if I don’t have to. I use the Executor launcher for almost everything so it’s extremely rare for me to ever click the “Start” button in Windows. I also use shortcuts keys when I can so I don’t have to pick up the mouse. By now most people know that the Package Manager Console that comes with NuGet is PowerShell embedded inside of Visual Studio. It is based on its PowerConsole predecessor which was the first (that I’m aware of) to embed PowerShell inside of Visual Studio and give access to the Visual Studio automation DTE object. It does this through an inherent $dte variable that is automatically available and ready for use. This variable is also available inside of the NuGet Package Manager console. Adding a new class file to a Visual Studio project is one of those mundane tasks that should be easier. First I have to pick up the mouse. Then I have to right-click where I want it file to go and select “Add –> New Item…” or “Add –> Class…”   If you know the Ctrl+Shift+A shortcut, then you can avoid the mouse for adding a new item but you have to manually assign a shortcut for adding a new class. At this point it pops up a dialog just so I can enter the name of the class I want. Since this is one of the most common tasks developers do, I figure there has to be an easier way and a way that avoids picking up the mouse and popping up dialogs. This is where your embedded PowerShell prompt in Visual Studio comes in. The first thing you should do is to assign a keyboard shortcut so that you can get a PowerShell prompt (i.e., the Package Manager console) quickly without ever picking up the mouse. I assign “Ctrl+P, Ctrl+M” because “P + M” stands for “Package Manager” so it is easy to remember:   At this point I can type this command to add a new class: PM> $dte.ItemOperations.AddNewItem("Code\Class", "Foo.cs") which will result in the class being added: At this point I’ve satisfied my original goal of not having to pick up a mouse and not having the “Add New Item” dialog pop up. However, having to remember that $dte method call is not very user-friendly at all. The best thing to do is to make this a re-usable function that always loads when Visual Studio starts up. There is a $profile variable that you can use to figure out where that location is for your machine: PM> $profile C:\Users\steve.michelotti\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\NuGet_profile.ps1 If the NuGet_profile.ps1 file does not already exist, you can just create it yourself and place it in the directory. Now you can put a function inside like this: 1: function addClass($className) 2: { 3: if ($className.EndsWith(".cs") -eq $false) { 4: $className = $className + ".cs" 5: } 6: 7: $dte.ItemOperations.AddNewItem("Code\Class", $className) 8: } Since it’s in the NuGet_profile.ps1 file, this function will automatically always be available for me after starting Visual Studio. Now I can simply do this: PM> addClass Foo At this point, we have a *very* nice developer experience. All I did to add a new class was: “Ctrl-P, Ctrl-M”, then “addClass Foo”. No mouse, no pop up dialogs, no complex commands to remember. In fact, PowerShell gives you auto-completion as well. If I type “addc” followed by [TAB], then intellisense pops up: You can see my custom function appear in intellisense above. Now I can type the next letter “c” and [TAB] to auto-complete the command. And if that’s still too many key strokes for you, then you can create your own PowerShell custom alias for your function like this: PM> Set-Alias addc addClass PM> addc Foo While all this is very useful, I did run into some issues which prompted me to make even further customization. This command will add the new class file to the current active directory. Depending on your context, this may not be what you want. For example, by convention all view model objects go in the “Models” folder in an MVC project. So if the current document is in the Controllers folder, it will add your class to that folder which is not what you want. You want it to always add it to the “Models” folder if you are adding a new model in an MVC project. For this situation, I added a new function called “addModel” which looks like this: 1: function addModel($className) 2: { 3: if ($className.EndsWith(".cs") -eq $false) { 4: $className = $className + ".cs" 5: } 6: 7: $modelsDir = $dte.ActiveSolutionProjects[0].UniqueName.Replace(".csproj", "") + "\Models" 8: $dte.Windows.Item([EnvDTE.Constants]::vsWindowKindSolutionExplorer).Activate() 9: $dte.ActiveWindow.Object.GetItem($modelsDir).Select([EnvDTE.vsUISelectionType]::vsUISelectionTypeSelect) 10: $dte.ItemOperations.AddNewItem("Code\Class", $className) 11: } First I figure out the path to the Models directory on line #7. Then I activate the Solution Explorer window on line #8. Then I make sure the Models directory is selected so that my context is correct when I add the new class and it will be added to the Models directory as desired. These are just a couple of examples for things you can do with the PowerShell prompt that you have available in the Package Manager console. As developers we spend so much time in Visual Studio, why would you not customize it so that you can work in whatever way you want to work?! The next time you’re not happy about the way Visual Studio makes you do a particular task – automate it! The sky is the limit.

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• Adventures in Windows 8: Understanding and debugging design time data in Expression Blend

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  One of my favorite features in Expression Blend is the ability to attach a Visual Studio debugger to Blend. First let’s start by answering the question: why exactly do you want to do that? Note: If you are familiar with the creation and usage of design time data, feel free to scroll down to the paragraph titled “When design time data fails”. Creating design time data for your app When a designer works on an app, he needs to see something to design. For “static” UI such as buttons, backgrounds, etc, the user interface elements are going to show up in Blend just fine. If however the data is fetched dynamically from a service (web, database, etc) or created dynamically, most probably Blend is going to show just an empty element. The classical way to design at that stage is to run the application, navigate to the screen that is under construction (which can involve delays, need to log in, etc…), to measure what is on the screen (colors, margins, width and height, etc) using various tools, going back to Blend, editing the properties of the elements, running again, etc. Obviously this is not ideal. The solution is to create design time data. For more information about the creation of design time data by mocking services, you can refer to two talks of mine “Deep dive MVVM” and “MVVM Applied From Silverlight to Windows Phone to Windows 8”. The source code for these talks is here and here. Design time data in MVVM Light One of the main reasons why I developed MVVM Light is to facilitate the creation of design time data. To illustrate this, let’s create a new MVVM Light application in Visual Studio. Install MVVM Light from here: http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com (use the MSI in the Download section). After installing, make sure to read the Readme that opens up in your favorite browser, you will need one more step to install the Project Templates. Start Visual Studio 2012. Create a new MvvmLight (Win8) app. Run the application. You will see a string showing “Welcome to MVVM Light”. In the Solution explorer, right click on MainPage.xaml and select Open in Blend. Now you should see “Welcome to MVVM Light [Design]” What happens here is that Expression Blend runs different code at design time than the application runs at runtime. To do this, we use design-time detection (as explained in a previous article) and use that information to initialize a different data service at design time. To understand this better, open the ViewModelLocator.cs file in the ViewModel folder and see how the DesignDataService is used at design time, while the DataService is used at runtime. In a real-life applicationm, DataService would be used to connect to a web service, for instance. When design time data fails Sometimes however, the creation of design time data fails. It can be very difficult to understand exactly what is happening. Expression Blend is not giving a lot of information about what happened. Thankfully, we can use a trick: Attaching a debugger to Expression Blend and debug the design time code. In WPF and Silverlight (including Windows Phone 7), you could simply attach the debugger to Blend.exe (using the “Managed (v4.5, v4.0) code” option even for Silverlight!!) In Windows 8 however, things are just a bit different. This is because the designer that renders the actual representation of the Windows 8 app runs in its own process. Let’s illustrate that: Open the file DesignDataService in the Design folder. Modify the GetData method to look like this: public void GetData(Action<DataItem, Exception> callback) { throw new Exception(); // Use this to create design time data var item = new DataItem("Welcome to MVVM Light [design]"); callback(item, null); } Go to Blend and build the application. The build succeeds, but now the page is empty. The creation of the design time data failed, but we don’t get a warning message. We need to investigate what’s wrong. Close MainPage.xaml Go to Visual Studio and select the menu Debug, Attach to Process. Update: Make sure that you select “Managed (v4.5, v4.0) code” in the “Attach to” field. Find the process named XDesProc.exe. You should have at least two, one for the Visual Studio 2012 designer surface, and one for Expression Blend. Unfortunately in this screen it is not obvious which is which. Let’s find out in the Task Manager. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del and select Task Manager Go to the Details tab and sort the processes by name. Find the one that says “Blend for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 XAML UI Designer” and write down the process ID. Go back to the Attach to Process dialog in Visual Studio. sort the processes by ID and attach the debugger to the correct instance of XDesProc.exe. Open the MainViewModel (in the ViewModel folder) Place a breakpoint on the first line of the MainViewModel constructor. Go to Blend and open the MainPage.xaml again. At this point, the debugger breaks in Visual Studio and you can execute your code step by step. Simply step inside the dataservice call, and find the exception that you had placed there. Visual Studio gives you additional information which helps you to solve the issue. More info and Conclusion I want to thank the amazing people on the Expression Blend team for being very fast in guiding me in that matter and encouraging me to blog about it. More information about the XDesProc.exe process can be found here. I had to work on a Windows 8 app for a few days without design time data because of an Exception thrown somewhere in the code, and it was really painful. With the debugger, finding the issue was a simple matter of stepping into the code until it threw the exception.   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• SQL SERVER – Recover the Accidentally Renamed Table

  - by pinaldave

  I have no answer to following question. I saw a desperate email marked as urgent delivered in my mailbox. “I accidentally renamed table in my SSMS. I was scrolling very fast and I made mistakes. It was either because I double clicked or clicked on F2 (shortcut key for renaming). However, I have made the mistake and now I have no idea how to fix this. I am in big trouble. Help me get my original tablename.” I have seen many similar scenarios in my life and they give me a very good opportunity to preach wisdom but when the house is burning, we cannot talk about how we should have conserved the water earlier. The goal at that point is to put off the fire as fast as we can. I decided to answer this email with my best knowledge. If you have renamed the table, I think you pretty much is out of luck. Here are few things which you can do which can give you idea about what your tablename can be if you are lucky. Method 1: (Not Recommended but try your luck) Check your naming convention of your system. I have often seen that many organizations name their index as IX_TableName_Colms or name their keys as FK_TableName1_TableName2_Cols. If your organization is following the same you can get the name from your table, you may refer your keys. Again, note that this is quite possible that your tablename was already renamed and your keys were not updated. This can easily lead you to select incorrect name. I think follow this if you are confident or move to the next method. Method 2: (Not Recommended but try your luck) This method is also based on your orgs naming convention. If you use the name of the table in any columnname (some organizations use tablename in their incremental identity column name), you can get that name from there. Method 3: (Not Recommended but try your luck) If you know where your table was used in your stored procedures, you can script your stored procedure and find the name of the table back. Method 4: (Try your luck) All the best organizations first create a data model of the schema and there is good chance that this table is used there, you should take your chances and refer original document. If your organization is good at managing docs or source code, you will get the name of the table back for sure. Method 5: (It WORKS but try on a development server) There is no sure way to get you the name of the table which you accidentally renamed however, there is one way which will work for sure. You need to take your latest full backup and restore it on your development server (remember not on production or where you have renamed this column). Now restore latest differential file of the full backup. Now restore all the log files one by one making sure that you are restoring before the point of time of you renamed the tablename. Now go to explore and this will give you the name of the table which you have renamed. If you are confident that the same table existed with the same name when the last full backup was made, you do not have to go to all the steps. You can just get the name of the table directly from last backup’s restore. Read the article about Backup Timeline. Wisdom: How can I miss to preach wisdom when I get the opportunity to do so? Here are a few points to remember. Use a different account to explore production environment. Do not use the same account which have all the rights and permissions all the time. Use the account which has read only permissions if there are no modification required. Use policy based management to prevent changes which are accidental. If there was policy of valid names, the accidental change of the table was not possible unless it was intentional delibarate changes. Have a proper auditing of the system in place. You can use DDL triggers but be careful with its usage (get it reviewed properly first). (Add your suggestion here) I guess Method 5 will work all the time (using point in time restore). Everything else is chance of luck and if you are lucky are bad – you will get further incorrect name. Now go back and read the first line of this blog. Out of five method four methods are just lucky guesses. The method 5 will work but again it is a lengthy process if the size of the database is huge or if you do not have full backup. Did I miss anything obvious? Please leave a comment and I will publish your answer with due credit. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Windows Azure Recipe: Software as a Service (SaaS)

  - by Clint Edmonson

  The cloud was tailor built for aspiring companies to create innovative internet based applications and solutions. Whether you’re a garage startup with very little capital or a Fortune 1000 company, the ability to quickly setup, deliver, and iterate on new products is key to capturing market and mind share. And if you can capture that share and go viral, having resiliency and infinite scale at your finger tips is great peace of mind. Drivers Cost avoidance Time to market Scalability Solution Here’s a sketch of how a basic Software as a Service solution might be built out: Ingredients Web Role – this hosts the core web application. Each web role will host an instance of the software and as the user base grows, additional roles can be spun up to meet demand. Access Control – this service is essential to managing user identity. It’s backed by a full blown implementation of Active Directory and allows the definition and management of users, groups, and roles. A pre-built ASP.NET membership provider is included in the training kit to leverage this capability but it’s also flexible enough to be combined with external Identity providers including Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook. The provider model provides extensibility to hook into other industry specific identity providers as well. Databases – nearly every modern SaaS application is backed by a relational database for its core operational data. If the solution is sold to organizations, there’s a good chance multi-tenancy will be needed. An emerging best practice for SaaS applications is to stand up separate SQL Azure database instances for each tenant’s proprietary data to ensure isolation from other tenants. Worker Role – this is the best place to handle autonomous background processing such as data aggregation, billing through external services, and other specialized tasks that can be performed asynchronously. Placing these tasks in a worker role frees the web roles to focus completely on user interaction and data input and provides finer grained control over the system’s scalability and throughput. Caching (optional) – as a web site traffic grows caching can be leveraged to keep frequently used read-only, user specific, and application resource data in a high-speed distributed in-memory for faster response times and ultimately higher scalability without spinning up more web and worker roles. It includes a token based security model that works alongside the Access Control service. Blobs (optional) – depending on the nature of the software, users may be creating or uploading large volumes of heterogeneous data such as documents or rich media. Blob storage provides a scalable, resilient way to store terabytes of user data. The storage facilities can also integrate with the Access Control service to ensure users’ data is delivered securely. Training & Examples These links point to online Windows Azure training labs and examples where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. Developing Applications for the Cloud, 2nd Edition (eBook) This book demonstrates how you can create from scratch a multi-tenant, Software as a Service (SaaS) application to run in the cloud using the latest versions of the Windows Azure Platform and tools. The book is intended for any architect, developer, or information technology (IT) professional who designs, builds, or operates applications and services that run on or interact with the cloud. Fabrikam Shipping (SaaS reference application) This is a full end to end sample scenario which demonstrates how to use the Windows Azure platform for exposing an application as a service. We developed this demo just as you would: we had an existing on-premises sample, Fabrikam Shipping, and we wanted to see what it would take to transform it in a full subscription based solution. The demo you find here is the result of that investigation See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including more links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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• Top ten things that don't make sense in The Walking Dead

  - by iamjames

  For those of you that don't know, The Walking Dead is a popular American TV show on AMC about a group of people trying to survive in a zombie-filled world.Here's the top ten eleven things that don't make sense on the show (and have never been explained) 1)  They never visit stores.  No Walmarts, Kmarts, Targets, shopping malls, pawn shops, gas stations, etc.  You'd think that would be the first place you'd visit for supplies, but they never have.  Not once.  There was a tiny corner store they visited in a small town, and while many products were already gone they did find several useful items.  2)  They never raid houses.  Why not?  One would imagine that they would want to search houses for useful items, but they don't.3)  They don't use 2 way radios.  Modern 2-way radios have a 36-mile range.  That's probably best possible range, but even if the range is only 10% of that, 3.6 miles, that's still more than enough for most situations, for the occasional "hey zombies attacking can you give me a hand?" or "there's zombies walking by stay inside until they leave" or "remember to pick up milk at the store love mom".  And yes they would need batteries or recharging, but they have been using gas-powered generators on the show and I'm sure a car charger would work.4)  They use gas-guzzling vehicles.  Every vehicle they have is from the 80s or 90s except for the new Kia SUV there for product placement.  Why?  They should all be driving new small SUVs or hybrids.  Visit a dealership and steal more fuel-efficient vehicles, because while the Walmart's might be empty from people raiding them for supplies, I'm sure most people weren't thinking "Gee, I should go car shopping" when the infection hit5)  They drive a motorcycle.  Seriously?  Let's find the least protective vehicle and drive that.  And while motorcycles get reasonable gas mileage, 5 people in a SUV gets better gas mileage per person than 5 people all driving motorcycles so it doesn't make economical sense either.6)  They drive loud vehicles.  The motorcycle used is commonly referred to as a chopper and is about as loud as a motorcycle can get.  The zombies are attracted to loud noise, so wouldn't it make more sense to drive vehicles that makes less sound?  Because as soon as you stop the bike and get off you're surrounded by zombies that heard you coming.  And it's not just the bike, the ~1980s Chevy SUV in the show is also very loud.7)  They never run out of food.  Seems like that would be a almost daily struggle, keeping enough food available for about a dozen people, yet I've never seen them visit a grocery store or local convenience store to stock up.8)  They don't carry swords, machetes, clubs, etc.  Let's face it, biting is not a very effective means of attack.  It's good for animals because they have fangs and little else, but humans have been finding better ways of killing each other since forever.  So why doesn't everyone on the show carry a sword or machete or at least a baseball bat?  Anything is better than wasting valuable bullets all the time.  Sure, dozen zombies approaching?  Shoot them.  One zombie approaching?  Save the bullet, cut off it's head.  9)  They do not wear protective clothing.  Human teeth are not exactly the sharpest teeth in the animal kingdom.  The leather shoes your dog ripped to shreds within minutes would probably take you days to bite through.  So why do they walk around half-naked?  Yes I know it's hot in Atlanta, but you'd think they'd at least have some tough leather coats or something for protection.  Maybe put a few small vent holes in the fabric if it's really hot.  Or better:  make your own chainmail.  Chainmail was used for thousands of years for protection from swords and is still used by scuba divers for protection from sharks.  If swords and sharks can't puncture it, human teeth don't stand a chance.  10)  They don't build barricades or dig trenches around properties.  In Season 2 they stayed at a farm in the middle of no where.  While being far away from people is a great way to stay far away from zombies, it would still make sense to build some sort of defenses.  Hordes of zombies would knock down almost any fence, but what about a trench or moat?  Maybe something not too wide so it can be jumped over easily but a zombie would fall into because I haven't seen too many jumping zombies on the show.  11)  They don't live in a mall or tall office building.  A mall would be perfect.  They have large security gates designed to keep even hundreds of people from breaking in and offer lots of supplies and food.  They're usually hundreds of thousands of square feet and fully enclosed, one could probably live their entire life happily in a mall.  Tall office building with on-site cafeteria would be another good choice.  They also usually offer good security and office furniture could be pushed out of the windows to crush approaching zombies, and the cafeteria is usually stocked to provide food for hundreds or thousands of office workers so food wouldn't be a problem for a long time. So there you have it, eleven things that don't make sense in The Walking Dead.  Have any of your own you'd like to add or were one of these things covered in the show?  Let me know in the comments.

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• What Counts For A DBA: Foresight

  - by drsql

  Of all the valuable attributes of a DBA covered so far in this series, ranging from passion to humility to practicality, perhaps one of the most important attributes may turn out to be the most seemingly-nebulous: foresight. According to Free Dictionary foresight is the "perception of the significance and nature of events before they have occurred". Foresight does not come naturally to most people, as the parent of any teenager will attest. No matter how clearly you see their problems coming they won't listen, and have to fail before eventually (hopefully) learning for themselves. Having graduated from the school of hard knocks, the DBA, the naive teenager no longer, acquires the ability to foretell how events will unfold in response to certain actions or attitudes with the unerring accuracy of a doom-laden prophet. Like Simba in the Lion King, after a few blows to the head, we foretell that a sore head that will be the inevitable consequence of a swing of Rafiki's stick, and we take evasive action. However, foresight is about more than simply learning when to duck. It's about taking the time to understand and prevent the habits that caused the stick to swing in the first place. And based on this definition, I often think there is a lot less foresight on display in my industry than there ought to be. Most DBAs reading this blog will spot a line such as the following in a piece of "working" code, understand immediately why it is less than optimimum, and take evasive action. …WHERE CAST (columnName as int) = 1 However, the programmers who regularly write this sort of code clearly lack that foresight, and this and numerous other examples of similarly-malodorous code prevail throughout our industry (and provide premium-grade fertilizer for the healthy growth of many a consultant's bank account). Sometimes, perhaps harried by impatient managers and painfully tight deadlines, everyone makes mistakes. Yes, I too occasionally write code that "works", but basically stinks. When the problems manifest, it is sometimes accompanied by a sense of grim recognition that somewhere in me existed the foresight to know that that approach would lead to this problem. However, in the headlong rush, warning signs got overlooked, lessons learned previously, which could supply the foresight to the current project, were lost and not applied.   Of course, the problem often is a simple lack of skills, training and knowledge in the relevant technology and/or business space; programmers and DBAs forced to do their best in the face of inadequate training, or to apply their skills in areas where they lack experience. However, often the problem goes deeper than this; I detect in some DBAs and programmers a certain laziness of attitude.   They veer from one project to the next, going with "whatever works", unwilling or unable to take the time to understand where their actions are leading them. Of course, the whole "Agile" mindset is often interpreted to favor flexibility and rapid production over aiming to get things right the first time. The faster you try to travel in the dark, frequently changing direction, the more important it is to have someone who has the foresight to know at least roughly where you are heading. This is doubly true for the data tier which, no matter how you try to deny it, simply cannot be "redone" every month as you learn aspects of the world you are trying to model that, with a little bit of foresight, you would have seen coming.   Sometimes, when as a DBA you can glance briefly at 200 lines of working SQL code and know instinctively why it will cause problems, foresight can feel like magic, but it isn't; it's more like muscle memory. It is acquired as the consequence of good experience, useful communication with those around you, and a willingness to learn continually, through continued education as well as from failure. Foresight can be deployed only by finding time to understand how the lessons learned from other DBAs, and other projects, can help steer the current project in the right direction.   C.S. Lewis once said "The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is." It cannot be avoided; the quality of what you build now is going to affect you, and others, at some point in the future. Take the time to acquire foresight; it is a love letter to your future self, to say you cared.

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• Guidance: How to layout you files for an Ideal Solution

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Creating a solution and having it maintainable over time is an art and not a science. I like being pedantic and having a place for everything, no matter how small. For setting up the Areas to run Multiple projects under one solution see my post on  When should I use Areas in TFS instead of Team Projects and for an explanation of branching see Guidance: A Branching strategy for Scrum Teams. Update 17th May 2010 – We are currently trialling running a single Sprint branch to improve our history. Whenever I setup a new Team Project I implement the basic version control structure. I put “readme.txt” files in the folder structure explaining the different levels, and a solution file called “[Client].[Product].sln” located at “$/[Client]/[Product]/DEV/Main” within version control. Developers should add any projects you need to create to that solution in the format “[Client].[Product].[ProductArea].[Assembly]” and they will automatically be picked up and built automatically when you setup Automated Builds using Team Foundation Build. All test projects need to be done using MSTest to get proper IDE and Team Foundation Build integration out-of-the-box and be named for the assembly that it is testing with a naming convention of “[Client].[Product].[ProductArea].[Assembly].Tests” Here is a description of the folder layout; this content should be replicated in readme files under version control in the relevant locations so that even developers new to the project can see how to do it. Figure: The Team Project level - at this level there should be a folder for each the products that you are building if you are using Areas correctly in TFS 2010. You should try very hard to avoided spaces as these things always end up in a URL eventually e.g. "Code Auditor" should be "CodeAuditor". Figure: Product Level - At this level there should be only 3 folders (DEV, RELESE and SAFE) all of which should be in capitals. These folders represent the three stages of your application production line. Each of them may contain multiple branches but this format leaves all of your branches at the same level. Figure: The DEV folder is where all of the Development branches reside. The DEV folder will contain the "Main" branch and all feature branches is they are being used. The DEV designation specifies that all code in every branch under this folder has not been released or made ready for release. And feature branches MUST merge (Forward Integrate) from Main and stabilise prior to merging (Reverse Integration) back down into Main and being decommissioned. Figure: In the Feature branching scenario only merges are allowed onto Main, no development can be done there. Once we have a mature product it is important that new features being developed in parallel are kept separate. This would most likely be used if we had more than one Scrum team working on a single product. Figure: when we are ready to do a release of our software we will create a release branch that is then stabilised prior to deployment. This protects the serviceability of of our released code allowing developers to fix bugs and re-release an existing version. Figure: All bugs found on a release are fixed on the release.  All bugs found in a release are fixed on the release and a new deployment is created. After the deployment is created the bug fixes are then merged (Reverse Integration) into the Main branch. We do this so that we separate out our development from our production ready code.  Figure: SAFE or RTM is a read only record of what you actually released. Labels are not immutable so are useless in this circumstance.  When we have completed stabilisation of the release branch and we are ready to deploy to production we create a read-only copy of the code for reference. In some cases this could be a regulatory concern, but in most cases it protects the company building the product from legal entanglements based on what you did or did not release. Figure: This allows us to reference any particular version of our application that was ever shipped.   In addition I am an advocate of having a single solution with all the Project folders directly under the “Trunk”/”Main” folder and using the full name for the project folders.. Figure: The ideal solution If you must have multiple solutions, because you need to use more than one version of Visual Studio, name the solutions “[Client].[Product][VSVersion].sln” and have it reside in the same folder as the other solution. This makes it easier for Automated build and improves the discoverability of your code and its dependencies. Send me your feedback!   Technorati Tags: VS ALM,VSTS Developing,VS 2010,VS 2008,TFS 2010,TFS 2008,TFBS

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