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• World Backup Day

  - by red(at)work

  Here at Red Gate Towers, the SQL Backup development team have been hunkered down in their shed for the last few months, with the toolbox, blowtorch and chamois leather out, upgrading SQL Backup. When we started, autumn leaves were falling. Now we're about to finish, spring flowers are budding. If not quite a gleaming new machine, at the very least a familiar, reliable engine with some shiny new bits on it will trundle magnificently out of the workshop. One of the interesting things I've noticed about working on software development teams is that the team is together for so long 'implementing' stuff - designing, coding, testing, fixing bugs and so on - that you occasionally forget why you're doing what you're doing. Doubt creeps in. It feels like a long time since we launched this project in a fanfare of optimism and enthusiasm, and all that clarity of purpose and mission "yee-haw" has dissipated with the daily pressures of development. Every now and again, we look up from our bunker and notice all those thousands of users out there, with their different configurations and working practices and each with their own set of problems and requirements, and we ask ourselves "does anyone care about what we're doing?" Has the world moved on while we've been busy? Could we have been doing something more useful with the time and talent of all these excellent people we've assembled? In truth, you can research and test and validate all you like, but you never really know if you've done the right thing (or at least, something valuable for some users) until you release. All projects suffer this insecurity. If they don't, maybe you're not worrying enough about what you're building. The two enemies of software development are certainty and complacency. Oh, and of course, rival teams with Nerf guns. The goal of SQL Backup 7 is to make it so easy to schedule regular restores of your backups that you have no excuse not to. Why schedule a restore? Because your data is not as good as your last backup. It's only as good as your last successful restore. If you're not checking your backups by restoring them and running an integrity check on the database, you're only doing half the job. It seems that most DBAs know that this is best practice, but it can be tricky and time-consuming to set up, so it's one of those tasks that can get forgotten in the midst all the other demands on their time. Sometimes, they're just too busy firefighting. But if it was simple to do? That was our inspiration for SQL Backup 7. So it was heartening to read Brent Ozar's blog post the other day about World Backup Day. To be honest, I'd never heard of World Backup Day (Talk Like a Pirate Day, yes, but not this one); however, its emphasis on not just backing up your data but checking the validity of those backups was exactly the same message we had in mind when building SQL Backup 7. It's printed on a piece of A3 above our planning board - "Make backup verification so easy to do that no DBA has an excuse for not doing it" It's the missing piece that completes the puzzle. Simple idea, great concept, useful feature, but, as it turned out, far from straightforward to implement. The problem is the future. As Marty McFly discovered over the course of three movies, the future is uncertain and hard to predict - so when you are scheduling a restore to take place an hour, day, week or month after the backup, there are all kinds of questions that you wouldn't normally have to consider. Where will this backup live? Will it even exist at the time? Will it be split into multiple files? What will the file names be? Will it be encrypted? What files should it be restored to? SQL Backup needs to know what to expect at the time the restore job is actually run. Of course, a DBA will know the answer to all these questions, but to deliver the whole point of version 7, we wanted to make it easy for them to input that information into SQL Backup. We think we've done that. When you create your scheduled backup job, there is now an option to create a "reminder" to follow it up with a scheduled restore to verify the resulting backups. Actually, it's much more than a reminder, as it stores all the relevant data so you can click it and pre-populate the wizard with all the right settings to set up your verification restores. Simple. But, what do you think? We'd love you to try it. Post by Brian Harris

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• So Much Happening at Devoxx

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Devoxx, the premier Java conference in Europe, has been sold out for a while. The organizers (thanks Stephan and crew!) cap the attendance to make sure all attendees have a great experience, and that speaks volumes about their priorities. The speakers, hackathons, labs, and networking are all first class. The Oracle Technology Network will be there, and if you were smart/lucky enough to get a ticket, come find us and join the fun: IoT Hack Fest Build fun and creative Internet of Things (IoT) applications with Java Embedded, Raspberry Pi and Leap Motion on the University Days (Monday and Tuesday). Learn from top experts Yara & Vinicius Senger and Geert Bevin at two Raspberry Pi & Leap Motion hands-on labs and hacking sessions. Bring your computer. Training and equipment will be provided. Devoxx will also host an Internet of Things shop in the exhibition floor where attendees can purchase Arduino, Raspberry PI and Robot starter kits. Bring your IoT wish list! Video Interviews Yolande Poirier and I will be interviewing members of the Java Community in the back of the Expo hall on Wednesday and Thursday. Videos are posted on Parleys and YouTube/Java. We have a few slots left, so contact me (you can DM @Java) if you want to share your insights or cool new tip or trick with the rest of the developer community. (No commercials, no fluff. Keep it techie and keep it real.)  Oracle Keynote Wednesday morning Mark Reinhold, Chief Java Platform Architect, and Brian Goetz, Java Language Architect will provide an update on Java 8 and beyond. Oracle Booth Drop by the Oracle booth to see old and new friends.  We'll have Java in Action demos and the experts to explain them and answer your questions. We are raffling off Raspberry Pi's each day, so be sure to get your badged scanned. We'll have beer in the booth each evening. Look for @Java in her lab coat.  See you at Devoxx! 

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• Deduping your redundancies

  - by nospam(at)example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp)

  Robin Harris of Storagemojo pointed to an interesting article about about deduplication and it's impact to the resiliency of your data against data corruption on ACM Queue. The problem in short: A considerable number of filesystems store important metadata at multiple locations. For example the ZFS rootblock is copied to three locations. Other filesystems have similar provisions to protect their metadata. However you can easily proof, that the rootblock pointer in the uberblock of ZFS for example is pointing to blocks with absolutely equal content in all three locatition (with zdb -uu and zdb -r). It has to be that way, because they are protected by the same checksum. A number of devices offer block level dedup, either as an option or as part of their inner workings. However when you store three identical blocks on them and the devices does block level dedup internally, the device may just deduplicated your redundant metadata to a block stored just once that is stored on the non-voilatile storage. When this block is corrupted, you have essentially three corrupted copies. Three hit with one bullet. This is indeed an interesting problem: A device doing deduplication doesn't know if a block is important or just a datablock. This is the reason why I like deduplication like it's done in ZFS. It's an integrated part and so important parts don't get deduplicated away. A disk accessed by a block level interface doesn't know anything about the importance of a block. A metadata block is nothing different to it's inner mechanism than a normal data block because there is no way to tell that this is important and that those redundancies aren't allowed to fall prey to some clever deduplication mechanism. Robin talks about this in regard of the Sandforce disk controllers who use a kind of dedup to reduce some of the nasty effects of writing data to flash, but the problem is much broader. However this is relevant whenever you are using a device with block level deduplication. It's just the point that you have to activate it for most implementation by command, whereas certain devices do this by default or by design and you don't know about it. However I'm not perfectly sure about that ? given that storage administration and server administration are often different groups with different business objectives I would ask your storage guys if they have activated dedup without telling somebody elase on their boxes in order to speak less often with the storage sales rep. The problem is even more interesting with ZFS. You may use ditto blocks to protect important data to store multiple copies of data in the pool to increase redundancy, even when your pool just consists out of one disk or just a striped set of disk. However when your device is doing dedup internally it may remove your redundancy before it hits the nonvolatile storage. You've won nothing. Just spend your disk quota on the the LUNs in the SAN and you make your disk admin happy because of the good dedup ratio However you can just fall in this specific "deduped ditto block"trap when your pool just consists out of a single device, because ZFS writes ditto blocks on different disks, when there is more than just one disk. Yet another reason why you should spend some extra-thought when putting your zpool on a single LUN, especially when the LUN is sliced and dices out of a large heap of storage devices by a storage controller. However I have one problem with the articles and their specific mention of ZFS: You can just hit by this problem when you are using the deduplicating device for the pool. However in the specifically mentioned case of SSD this isn't the usecase. Most implementations of SSD in conjunction with ZFS are hybrid storage pools and so rotating rust disk is used as pool and SSD are used as L2ARC/sZIL. And there it simply doesn't matter: When you really have to resort to the sZIL (your system went down, it doesn't matter of one block or several blocks are corrupt, you have to fail back to the last known good transaction group the device. On the other side, when a block in L2ARC is corrupt, you simply read it from the pool and in HSP implementations this is the already mentioned rust. In conjunction with ZFS this is more interesting when using a storage array, that is capable to do dedup and where you use LUNs for your pool. However as mentioned before, on those devices it's a user made decision to do so, and so it's less probable that you deduplicating your redundancies. Other filesystems lacking acapability similar to hybrid storage pools are more "haunted" by this problem of SSD using dedup-like mechanisms internally, because those filesystem really store the data on the the SSD instead of using it just as accelerating devices. However at the end Robin is correct: It's jet another point why protecting your data by creating redundancies by dispersing it several disks (by mirror or parity RAIDs) is really important. No dedup mechanism inside a device can dedup away your redundancy when you write it to a totally different and indepenent device.

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• Part 2&ndash;Load Testing In The Cloud

  - by Tarun Arora

  Welcome to Part 2, In Part 1 we discussed the advantages of creating a Test Rig in the cloud, the Azure edge and the Test Rig Topology we want to get to. In Part 2, Let’s start by understanding the components of Azure we’ll be making use of followed by manually putting them together to create the test rig, so… let’s get down dirty start setting up the Test Rig.  What Components of Azure will I be using for building the Test Rig in the Cloud? To run the Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Compute and to enable communication between Test Controller and Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Connect.  Azure Connect The Test Controller is on premise and the Test Agents are in the cloud (How will they talk?). To enable communication between the two, we’ll make use of Windows Azure Connect. With Windows Azure Connect, you can use a simple user interface to configure IPsec protected connections between computers or virtual machines (VMs) in your organization’s network, and roles running in Windows Azure. With this you can now join Windows Azure role instances to your domain, so that you can use your existing methods for domain authentication, name resolution, or other domain-wide maintenance actions. For more details refer to an overview of Windows Azure connect. A very useful video explaining everything you wanted to know about Windows Azure connect.  Azure Compute Windows Azure compute provides developers a platform to host and manage applications in Microsoft’s data centres across the globe. A Windows Azure application is built from one or more components called ‘roles.’ Roles come in three different types: Web role, Worker role, and Virtual Machine (VM) role, we’ll be using the Worker role to set up the Test Agents. A very nice blog post discussing the difference between the 3 role types. Developers are free to use the .NET framework or other software that runs on Windows with the Worker role or Web role. Developers can also create applications using languages such as PHP and Java. More on Windows Azure Compute. Each Windows Azure compute instance represents a virtual server... Virtual Machine Size CPU Cores Memory Cost Per Hour Extra Small Shared 768 MB $0.04 Small 1 1.75 GB $0.12 Medium 2 3.50 GB $0.24 Large 4 7.00 GB $0.48 Extra Large 8 14.00 GB $0.96   You might want to review the Windows Azure Pricing FAQ. Let’s Get Started building the Test Rig… Configuration Machine Role Comments VM – 1 Domain Controller for Playpit.com On Premise VM – 2 TFS, Test Controller On Premise VM – 3 Test Agent Cloud   In this blog post I would assume that you have the domain, Team Foundation Server and Test Controller Installed and set up already. If not, please refer to the TFS 2010 Installation Guide and this walkthrough on MSDN to set up your Test Controller. You can also download a preconfigured TFS 2010 VM from Brian Keller's blog, Brian also has some great hands on Labs on TFS 2010 that you may want to explore. I. Lets start building VM – 3: The Test Agent Download the Windows Azure SDK and Tools Open Visual Studio and create a new Windows Azure Project using the Cloud Template                   Choose the Worker Role for reasons explained in the earlier post         The WorkerRole.cs implements the Run() and OnStart() methods, no code changes required. You should be able to compile the project and run it in the compute emulator (The compute emulator should have been installed as part of the Windows Azure Toolkit) on your local machine.                   We will only be making changes to WindowsAzureProject, open ServiceDefinition.csdef. Ensure that the vmsize is small (remember the cost chart above). Import the “Connect” module. I am importing the Connect module because I need to join the Worker role VM to the Playpit domain. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="WorkerRole1" vmsize="Small"> <Imports> <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" /> <Import moduleName="Connect"/> </Imports> </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition> Go to the ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg and note that settings with key ‘Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.%%%%’ have been added to the configuration file. This is because you decided to import the connect module. See the config below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>             Let’s go step by step and understand all the highlighted parameters and where you can find the values for them.       osFamily – By default this is set to 1 (Windows Server 2008 SP2). Change this to 2 if you want the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system. The Advantage of using osFamily = “2” is that you get Powershell 2.0 rather than Powershell 1.0. In Powershell 2.0 you could simply use “powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted ./myscript.ps1” and it will work while in Powershell 1.0 you will have to change the registry key by including the following in your command file “reg add HKLM\Software\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\ShellIds\Microsoft.PowerShell /v ExecutionPolicy /d Unrestricted /f” before you can execute any power shell. The other reason you might want to move to os2 is if you wanted IIS 7.5.       Activation Token – To enable communication between the on premise machine and the Windows Azure Worker role VM both need to have the same token. Log on to Windows Azure Management Portal, click on Connect, click on Get Activation Token, this should give you the activation token, copy the activation token to the clipboard and paste it in the configuration file. Note – Later in the blog I’ll be showing you how to install connect on the on premise machine.                       EnableDomainJoin – Set the value to true, ofcourse we want to join the on windows azure worker role VM to the domain.       DomainFQDN, DomainControllerFQDN, DomainAccountName, DomainPassword, DomainOU, Administrators – This information is specific to your domain. I have extracted this information from the ‘service manager’ and ‘Active Directory Users and Computers’. Also, i created a new Domain-OU namely ‘CloudInstances’ so all my cloud instances joined to my domain show up here, this is optional. You can encrypt the DomainPassword – refer to the instructions here. Or hold fire, I’ll be covering that when i come to certificates and encryption in the coming section.       Now once you have filled all this information up, the configuration file should look something like below, <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="2" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="45f55fea-f194-4fbc-b36e-25604faac784" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="WIN-KUDQMQFGQOL.play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="************************" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="OU=CloudInstances, DC=Play, DC=Pit, DC=com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="Playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration> Next we will be enabling the Remote Desktop module in to the ServiceDefinition.csdef, we could make changes manually or allow a beautiful wizard to help us make changes. I prefer the second option. So right click on the Windows Azure project and choose Publish       Now once you get the publish wizard, if you haven’t already you would be asked to import your Windows Azure subscription, this is simply the Msdn subscription activation key xml. Once you have done click Next to go to the Settings page and check ‘Enable Remote Desktop for all roles’.       As soon as you do that you get another pop up asking you the details for the user that you would be logging in with (make sure you enter a reasonable expiry date, you do not want the user account to expire today). Notice the more information tag at the bottom, click that to get access to the certificate section. See screen shot below.       From the drop down select the option to create a new certificate        In the pop up window enter the friendly name for your certificate. In my case I entered ‘WAC – Test Rig’ and click ok. This will create a new certificate for you. Click on the view button to see the certificate details. Do you see the Thumbprint, this is the value that will go in the config file (very important). Now click on the Copy to File button to copy the certificate, we will need to import the certificate to the windows Azure Management portal later. So, make sure you save it a safe location.                                Click Finish and enter details of the user you would like to create with permissions for remote desktop access, once you have entered the details on the ‘Remote desktop configuration’ screen click on Ok. From the Publish Windows Azure Wizard screen press Cancel. Cancel because we don’t want to publish the role just yet and Yes because we want to save all the changes in the config file.       Now if you go to the ServiceDefinition.csdef file you will see that the RemoteAccess and RemoteForwarder roles have been imported for you. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="WorkerRole1" vmsize="Small"> <Imports> <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" /> <Import moduleName="Connect" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteAccess" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteForwarder" /> </Imports> </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition> Now go to the ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg file and you see a whole bunch for setting “Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.%%%” values added for you. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="2" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="45f55fea-f194-4fbc-b36e-25604faac784" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="WIN-KUDQMQFGQOL.play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="************************" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="OU=CloudInstances, DC=Play, DC=Pit, DC=com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="Playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.Enabled" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountUsername" value="Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountEncryptedPassword" value="MIIBnQYJKoZIhvcNAQcDoIIBjjCCAYoCAQAxggFOMIIBSgIBADAyMB4xHDAaBgNVBAMME1dpbmRvd 3MgQXp1cmUgVG9vbHMCEGa+B46voeO5T305N7TSG9QwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQAEggEABg4ol5Xol66Ip6QKLbAPWdmD4ae ADZ7aKj6fg4D+ATr0DXBllZHG5Umwf+84Sj2nsPeCyrg3ZDQuxrfhSbdnJwuChKV6ukXdGjX0hlowJu/4dfH4jTJC7sBWS AKaEFU7CxvqYEAL1Hf9VPL5fW6HZVmq1z+qmm4ecGKSTOJ20Fptb463wcXgR8CWGa+1w9xqJ7UmmfGeGeCHQ4QGW0IDSBU6ccg vzF2ug8/FY60K1vrWaCYOhKkxD3YBs8U9X/kOB0yQm2Git0d5tFlIPCBT2AC57bgsAYncXfHvPesI0qs7VZyghk8LVa9g5IqaM Cp6cQ7rmY/dLsKBMkDcdBHuCTAzBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwFAYIKoZIhvcNAwcECDRVifSXbA43gBApNrp40L1VTVZ1iGag+3O1" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountExpiration" value="2012-11-27T23:59:59.0000000+00:00" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteForwarder.Enabled" value="true" /> </ConfigurationSettings> <Certificates> <Certificate name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.PasswordEncryption" thumbprint="AA23016CF0BDFC344400B5B82706B608B92E4217" thumbprintAlgorithm="sha1" /> </Certificates> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>          Okay let’s look at them one at a time,       Enabled - Yes, we would like to enable Remote Access.       AccountUserName – This is the user name you entered while you were on the publish windows azure role screen, as detailed above.       AccountEncrytedPassword – Try and decode that, the certificate is used to encrypt the password you specified for the user account. Remember earlier i said, either use the instructions or wait and i’ll be showing you encryption, now the user account i am using for rdp has the same password as my domain password, so i can simply copy the value of the AccountEncryptedPassword to the DomainPassword as well.       AccountExpiration – This is the expiration as you specified in the wizard earlier, make sure your account does not expire today.       Remote Forwarder – Check out the documentation, below is how I understand it, -- One role in an application that implements a remote desktop connection must import the RemoteForwarder module. The two modules work together to enable the remote desktop connections to role instances. -- If you have multiple roles defined in the service model, it does not matter which role you add the RemoteForwarder module to, but you must add it to only one of the role definitions.       Certificate – Remember the certificate thumbprint from the wizard, the on premise machine and windows azure role machine that need to speak to each other must have the same thumbprint. More on that when we install Windows Azure connect Endpoints on the on premise machine. As i said earlier, in this blog post, I’ll be showing you the manual process so i won’t be scripting any star up tasks to install the test agent or register the test agent with the TFS Server. I’ll be showing you all this cool stuff in the next blog post, that’s because it’s important to understand the manual side of it, it becomes easier for you to troubleshoot in case something fails. Having said that, the changes we have made are sufficient to spin up the Windows Azure Worker Role aka Test Agent VM, have it connected with the play.pit.com domain and have remote access enabled on it. Before we deploy the Test Agent VM we need to set up Windows Azure Connect on the TFS Server. II. Windows Azure Connect: Setting up Connect on VM – 2 i.e. TFS & Test Controller Glad you made it so far, now to enable communication between the on premise TFS/Test Controller and Azure-ed Test Agent we need to enable communication. We have set up the Azure connect module in the Test Agent configuration, now the connect end points need to be enabled on the on premise machines, let’s have a look at how we can do this. Log on to VM – 2 running the TFS Server and Test Controller Log on to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on Virtual Network Click on Virtual Network, if you already have a subscription you should see the below screen shot, if not, you would be asked to complete the subscription first        Click on Install Local Endpoints from the top left on the panel and you get a url appended with a token id in it, remember the token i showed you earlier, in theory the token you get here should match the token you added to the Test Agent config file.        Copy the url to the clip board and paste it in IE explorer (important, the installation at present only works out of IE and you need to have cookies enabled in order to complete the installation). As stated in the pop up, you can NOT download and run the software later, you need to run it as is, since it contains a token. Once the installation completes you should see the Windows Azure connect icon in the system tray.                         Right click the Azure Connect icon, choose Diagnostics and refer to this link for diagnostic detail terminology. NOTE – Unfortunately I could not see the Windows Azure connect icon in the system tray, a bit of binging with Google revealed that the azure connect icon is only shown when the ‘Windows Azure Connect Endpoint’ Service is started. So go to services.msc and make sure that the service is started, if not start it, unfortunately again, the service did not start for me on a manual start and i realised that one of the dependant services was disabled, you can look at the service dependencies and start them and then start windows azure connect. Bottom line, you need to start Windows Azure connect service before you can proceed. Please refer here on MSDN for more on Troubleshooting Windows Azure connect. (Follow the next step as well)   Now go back to the Windows Azure Management Portal and from Groups and Roles create a new group, lets call it ‘Test Rig’. Make sure you add the VM – 2 (the TFS Server VM where you just installed the endpoint).       Now if you go back to the Azure Connect icon in the system tray and click ‘Refresh Policy’ you will notice that the disconnected status of the icon should change to ready for connection. III. Importing Certificate in to Windows Azure Management Portal But before that you need to import the certificate you created in Step I in to the Windows Azure Management Portal. Log on to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on ‘Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN’ and then ‘Management Certificates’ followed by Add Certificates as shown in the screen shot below        Browse to the location where you saved the certificate earlier, remember… Refer to Step I in case you forgot.        Now you should be able to see the imported certificate here, make sure the thumbprint of the certificate matches the one you inserted in the config files        IV. Publish Windows Azure Worker Role aka Test Agent Having completed I, II and III, you are ready to publish the Test Agent VM – 3 to the cloud. Go to Visual Studio and right click the Windows Azure project and select Publish. Verify the infomration in the wizard, from the advanced settings tab, you can also enabled capture of intellitrace or profiling information.         Click Next and Click Publish! From the view menu bar select the Windows Azure Activity Log window.       Now you should be able to see the deployment progress in real time.             In the Windows Azure Management Portal, you should also be able to see the progress of creation of a new Worker Role.       Once the deployment is complete you should be able to RDP (go to run prompt type mstsc and in the pop up the machine name) in to the Test Agent Worker Role VM from the Playpit network using the domain admin user account. In case you are unable to log in to the Test Agent using the domain admin user account it means the process of joining the Test Agent to the domain has failed! But the good news is, because you imported the connect module, you can connect to the Test Agent machine using Windows Azure Management Portal and troubleshoot the reason for failure, you will be able to log in with the user name and password you specified in the config file for the keys ‘RemoteAccess.AccountUsername, RemoteAccess.EncryptedPassword (just that enter the password unencrypted)’, fix it or manually join the machine to the domain. Once you have managed to Join the Test Agent VM to the Domain move to the next step.      So, log in to the Test Agent Worker Role VM with the Playpit Domain Administrator and verify that you can log in, the machine is connected to the domain and the connect service is successfully running. If yes, give your self a pat on the back, you are 80% mission accomplished!         Go to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on Virtual Network, click on Groups and Roles and click on Test Rig, click Edit Group, the edit the Test Rig group you created earlier. In the Connect to section, click on Add to select the worker role you have just deployed. Also, check the ‘Allow connections between endpoints in the group’ with this you will enable to communication between test controller and test agents and test agents/test agents. Click Save.      Now, you are ready to deploy the Test Agent software on the Worker Role Test Agent VM and configure it to work with the Test Controller. V. Configuring VM – 3: Installing Test Agent and Associating Test Agent to Controller Log in to the Worker Role Test Agent VM that you have just successfully deployed, make sure you log in with the domain administrator account. Download the All Agents software from MSDN, ‘en_visual_studio_agents_2010_x86_x64_dvd_509679.iso’, extract the iso and navigate to where you have extracted the iso. In my case, i have extracted the iso to “C:\Resources\Temp\VsAgentSetup”. Open the Test Agent folder and double click on setup.exe. Once you have installed the Test Agent you should reach the configuration window. If you face any issues installing TFS Test Agent on the VM, refer to the walkthrough on MSDN.       Once you have successfully installed the Test Agent software you will need to configure the test agent. Right click the test agent configuration tool and run as a different user. i.e. an Administrator. This is really to run the configuration wizard with elevated privileges (you might have UAC block something's otherwise).        In the run options, you can select ‘service’ you do not need to run the agent as interactive un less you are running coded UI tests. I have specified the domain administrator to connect to the TFS Test Controller. In real life, i would never do that, i would create a separate test user service account for this purpose. But for the blog post, we are using the most powerful user so that any policies or restrictions don’t block you.        Click the Apply Settings button and you should be all green! If not, the summary usually gives helpful error messages that you can resolve and proceed. As per my experience, you may run in to either a permission or a firewall blocking communication issue.        And now the moment of truth! Go to VM –2 open up Visual Studio and from the Test Menu select Manage Test Controller       Mission Accomplished! You should be able to see the Test Agent that you have just configured here,         VI. Creating and Running Load Tests on your brand new Azure-ed Test Rig I have various blog posts on Performance Testing with Visual Studio Ultimate, you can follow the links and videos below, Blog Posts: - Part 1 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - Part 2 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - Part 3 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Videos: - Test Tools Configuration & Settings in Visual Studio - Why & How to Record Web Performance Tests in Visual Studio Ultimate - Goal Driven Load Testing using Visual Studio Ultimate Now that you have created your load tests, there is one last change you need to make before you can run the tests on your Azure Test Rig, create a new Test settings file, and change the Test Execution method to ‘Remote Execution’ and select the test controller you have configured the Worker Role Test Agent against in our case VM – 2 So, go on, fire off a test run and see the results of the test being executed on the Azur-ed Test Rig. Review and What’s next? A quick recap of the benefits of running the Test Rig in the cloud and what i will be covering in the next blog post AND I would love to hear your feedback! Advantages Utilizing the power of Azure compute to run a heavy virtual user load. Benefiting from the Azure flexibility, destroy Test Agents when not in use, takes < 25 minutes to spin up a new Test Agent. Most important test Network Latency, (network latency and speed of connection are two different things – usually network latency is very hard to test), by placing the Test Agents in Microsoft Data centres around the globe, one can actually test the lag in transferring the bytes not because of a slow connection but because the page has been requested from the other side of the globe. Next Steps The process of spinning up the Test Agents in windows Azure is not 100% automated. I am working on the Worker process and power shell scripts to make the role deployment, unattended install of test agent software and registration of the test agent to the test controller automated. In the next blog post I will show you how to make the complete process unattended and automated. Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Hope you enjoyed this post, I would love to hear your feedback! If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment. See you in Part III.   Share this post : CodeProject

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• WPF DataGrid, Help with Binding to a List<X> where each X has a Dictionary<Y,object> property.

  - by panamack

  I'm building an application which helps someone manage an event and works with data originating from Excel. I want to use the WPF Toolkit DataGrid to display the incoming data but can't guarantee how many Columns there are going to be or what information they will contain. I'd like to have an Info class that stores column information and have each Visitor at my Event own a Dictionary that uses shared references to Info objects for the keys. Here's the general gist: public class Info{ public string Name{get;set;} public int InfoType{get;set;} } public class Visitor{ public Dictionary<Info,object> VisitorInfo {get;set;} } public class Event{ public List<Visitor> Visitors{get;set;} public Event(){ Info i1 = new Info(){ Name = "ID", InfoType = 0};// type 0 for an id Info i2 = new Info(){ Name = "Name", InfoType = 1};// type 1 for a string Info i3 = new Info(){ Name = "City", InfoType = 1}; Visitor v1 = new Visitor(); v1.VisitorInfo.Add(i1, 0); v1.VisitorInfo.Add(i2, "Foo Harris"); v1.VisitorInfo.Add(i3, "Barsville"); Visitor v2 = new Visitor(); ... this.Visitors.Add(v1); this.Visitors.Add(v2); ... } } XAML: <!-- Window1.xaml --> ... <local:Event x:Key="MyEvent"/> ... <wpftk:DataGrid DataContext="{StaticResource MyEvent}" ItemsSource="{Binding Path=Visitors}" /> Disappointingly, DataGrid just sees a collection of Visitors each having a VisitorInfo property and displays one column called VisitorInfo with the string "(Collection)" once for each Visitor. As a workaround I've created a ListTVisitorToDataTableConverter that maps Infos to DataColumns and Visitors to DataRows and used it like this: <wpftk:DataGrid DataContext="{StaticResource Event}" ItemsSource{Binding Path=Visitors, Converter={StaticResource MySmellyListTVisitorToDataTableConverter}}" /> I don't think this is good though, I haven't started trying to convert back yet which I guess I'll need to do if I want to be able to edit any data! How can I do better? Thanks.

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• Hidden Features of C#?

  - by Serhat Özgel

  This came to my mind after I learned the following from this question: where T : struct We, C# developers, all know the basics of C#. I mean declarations, conditionals, loops, operators, etc. Some of us even mastered the stuff like Generics, anonymous types, lambdas, linq, ... But what are the most hidden features or tricks of C# that even C# fans, addicts, experts barely know? Here are the revealed features so far: Keywords yield by Michael Stum var by Michael Stum using() statement by kokos readonly by kokos as by Mike Stone as / is by Ed Swangren as / is (improved) by Rocketpants default by deathofrats global:: by pzycoman using() blocks by AlexCuse volatile by Jakub Šturc extern alias by Jakub Šturc Attributes DefaultValueAttribute by Michael Stum ObsoleteAttribute by DannySmurf DebuggerDisplayAttribute by Stu DebuggerBrowsable and DebuggerStepThrough by bdukes ThreadStaticAttribute by marxidad FlagsAttribute by Martin Clarke ConditionalAttribute by AndrewBurns Syntax ?? operator by kokos number flaggings by Nick Berardi where T:new by Lars Mæhlum implicit generics by Keith one-parameter lambdas by Keith auto properties by Keith namespace aliases by Keith verbatim string literals with @ by Patrick enum values by lfoust @variablenames by marxidad event operators by marxidad format string brackets by Portman property accessor accessibility modifiers by xanadont ternary operator (?:) by JasonS checked and unchecked operators by Binoj Antony implicit and explicit operators by Flory Language Features Nullable types by Brad Barker Currying by Brian Leahy anonymous types by Keith __makeref __reftype __refvalue by Judah Himango object initializers by lomaxx format strings by David in Dakota Extension Methods by marxidad partial methods by Jon Erickson preprocessor directives by John Asbeck DEBUG pre-processor directive by Robert Durgin operator overloading by SefBkn type inferrence by chakrit boolean operators taken to next level by Rob Gough pass value-type variable as interface without boxing by Roman Boiko programmatically determine declared variable type by Roman Boiko Static Constructors by Chris Easier-on-the-eyes / condensed ORM-mapping using LINQ by roosteronacid Visual Studio Features select block of text in editor by Himadri snippets by DannySmurf Framework TransactionScope by KiwiBastard DependantTransaction by KiwiBastard Nullable<T> by IainMH Mutex by Diago System.IO.Path by ageektrapped WeakReference by Juan Manuel Methods and Properties String.IsNullOrEmpty() method by KiwiBastard List.ForEach() method by KiwiBastard BeginInvoke(), EndInvoke() methods by Will Dean Nullable<T>.HasValue and Nullable<T>.Value properties by Rismo GetValueOrDefault method by John Sheehan Tips & Tricks nice method for event handlers by Andreas H.R. Nilsson uppercase comparisons by John access anonymous types without reflection by dp a quick way to lazily instantiate collection properties by Will JavaScript-like anonymous inline-functions by roosteronacid Other netmodules by kokos LINQBridge by Duncan Smart Parallel Extensions by Joel Coehoorn

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• Python sorting list of dictionaries by multiple keys

  - by simi

  I have a list of dicts: b = [{u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Utley, Alex', u'Total_Points': 96.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Russo, Brandon', u'Total_Points': 96.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Chappell, Justin', u'Total_Points': 96.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Foster, Toney', u'Total_Points': 80.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Lawson, Roman', u'Total_Points': 80.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Lempke, Sam', u'Total_Points': 80.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Gnezda, Alex', u'Total_Points': 78.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Kirks, Damien', u'Total_Points': 78.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Worden, Tom', u'Total_Points': 78.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Korecz, Mike', u'Total_Points': 78.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Swartz, Brian', u'Total_Points': 66.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Burgess, Randy', u'Total_Points': 66.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Smugala, Ryan', u'Total_Points': 66.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Harmon, Gary', u'Total_Points': 66.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Blasinsky, Scott', u'Total_Points': 60.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Carter III, Laymon', u'Total_Points': 60.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Coleman, Johnathan', u'Total_Points': 60.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Venditti, Nick', u'Total_Points': 60.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Blackwell, Devon', u'Total_Points': 60.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Kovach, Alex', u'Total_Points': 60.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Bolden, Antonio', u'Total_Points': 60.0}, {u'TOT_PTS_Misc': u'Smith, Ryan', u'Total_Points': 60.0}] and I need to use a multi key sort reversed by Total_Points, then not reversed by TOT_PTS_Misc. This can be done at the command prompt like so: a = sorted(b, key=lambda d: (-d['Total_Points'], d['TOT_PTS_Misc'])) But I have to run this through a function, where I pass in the list and the sort keys. For example, def multikeysort(dict_list, sortkeys):. How can the lambda line be used which will sort the list, for an arbitrary number of keys that are passed in to the multikeysort function, and take into consideration that the sortkeys may have any number of keys and those that need reversed sorts will be identified with a '-' before it?

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• Bibliography behaves strange in lyx.

  - by Orjanp

  Hi! I have created a Bibliography section in my document written in lyx. It uses a book layout. For some reason it did start over again when I added some more entries. The new entries was made some time later than the first ones. I just went down to key-27 and hit enter. Then it started on key-1 again. Does anyone know why it behaves like this? The lyx code is below. \begin{thebibliography}{34} \bibitem{key-6}Lego mindstorms, http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/default.aspx \bibitem{key-7}C.A.R. Hoare. Communicating sequential processes. Communications of the ACM, 21(8):666-677, pages 666\textendash{}677, August 1978. \bibitem{key-8}C.A.R. Hoare. Communicating sequential processes. Prentice-Hall, 1985. \bibitem{key-9}CSPBuilder, http://code.google.com/p/cspbuilder/ \bibitem{key-10}Rune Møllegård Friborg and Brian Vinter. CSPBuilder - CSP baset Scientific Workflow Modelling, 2008. \bibitem{key-11}Labview, http://www.ni.com/labview \bibitem{key-12}Robolab, http://www.lego.com/eng/education/mindstorms/home.asp?pagename=robolab \bibitem{key-13}http://code.google.com/p/pycsp/ \bibitem{key-14}Paparazzi, http://paparazzi.enac.fr \bibitem{key-15}Debian, http://www.debian.org \bibitem{key-16}Ubuntu, http://www.ubuntu.com \bibitem{key-17}GNU, http://www.gnu.org \bibitem{key-18}IVY, http://www2.tls.cena.fr/products/ivy/ \bibitem{key-19}Tkinter, http://wiki.python.org/moin/TkInter \bibitem{key-20}pyGKT, http://www.pygtk.org/ \bibitem{key-21}pyQT4, http://wiki.python.org/moin/PyQt4 \bibitem{key-22}wxWidgets, http://www.wxwidgets.org/ \bibitem{key-23}wxPython GUI toolkit, http://www.wxPython.org \bibitem{key-24}Python programming language, http://www.python.org \bibitem{key-25}wxGlade, http://wxglade.sourceforge.net/ \bibitem{key-26}http://numpy.scipy.org/ \bibitem{key-27}http://www.w3.org/XML/ \bibitem{key-1}IVY software bus, http://www2.tls.cena.fr/products/ivy/ \bibitem{key-2}sdas \bibitem{key-3}sad \bibitem{key-4}sad \bibitem{key-5}fsa \bibitem{key-6}sad \bibitem{key-7} \end{thebibliography}

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• Updates to fullcalendar events (through updateEvent) not maintaining across ajax month changes

  - by user549615

  Hey there. I have the calendar configured to allow me to edit and add (drag/drop) calendar events. I use .fullCalendar('updateEvent', theEvent) to edit an event, and it immediately updates on the page. Excellent. If I move to another month and then move back (get via ajax), that change is undone. By contrast, if I add a new event by drag/drop using: .fullCalendar('renderEvent', newEventObject, true); it appears on the calendar, and if I move to another month, and move back, it maintains. If I edit this newly added event object, and move to another month and back, the updates are retained! So the "stickiness" of edits seem to work on newly added events, but not events that were pulled via ajax (since it just pulls a fresh version via ajax when the month changes). My calendar config is: $('#calendar').fullCalendar({ theme: true, header: { left: "prev,next today", center: 'title', right: "today prev,next" }, selectable: true, selectHelper: true, select: calendarSelect, droppable: true, drop: calendarDrop, events:getCalendarData, eventClick:calendarEventClicked }); I tried setting editable: true, as well, but no dice. I noticed that if I view "event.source" on one of the ajax pulled events, it shows me a function, and if i read the source attribute on one of the "added" events, it reads [object]. So I tried setting the event.source of the event being added, to that same event object: curCalendarEvent.source = curCalendarEvent But no dice. It sets, but when I move back month forward again, it returns to the function as a source. I tried adding lazyFetching: false to my calendar config, but that didn't help. I even tried a .fullCalendar('renderEvent', curCalendarEvent, true); on the existing "edited" event to see if I could get "stick" to work, and it didn't help. The only thing I can think of doing is deleting the event flat out and recreating it. Any help would be appreciated. -Brian

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• Serialize a C# class to xml. Store the XML as a string in SQL Server and then restore the class late

  - by BrianK

  I want to serialize a class to xml and store that in a field in a database. I can serialize with this: StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(); XmlSerializer xmlser = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyClass)); xmlser.Serialize(sw, myClassVariable); string s = sw.ToString(); sw.Close(); Thats works, but it has the namesapces in it. xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" Will these slow down the deserialization because it will go out to those and verify the XML? I got rid of the namespaces by creating a blank XmlSerializerNamespaces and using that to serialize, but then the xml still had namespaces around integer variables: <anyType xmlns:q1="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" d3p1:type="q1:int" xmlns:d3p1="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> 3 </anyType> My question is: Is it necessary to have the namesapces for deserialization and if not, how to get rid of them? How do I tell it fields are ints so it doesnt put in "anytype" Thanks, Brian

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• How can I filter a Perl DBIx recordset with 2 conditions on the same column?

  - by BrianH

  I'm getting my feet wet in DBIx::Class - loving it so far. One problem I am running into is that I want to query records, filtering out records that aren't in a certain date range. It took me a while to find out how to do a "<=" type of match instead of an equality match: my $start_criteria = ">= $start_date"; my $end_criteria = "<= $end_date"; my $result = $schema->resultset('MyTable')->search( { 'status_date' => \$start_criteria, 'status_date' => \$end_criteria, }); The obvious problem with this is that since the filters are in a hash, I am overwriting the value for "status_date", and am only searching where the status_date <= $end_date. The SQL that gets executed is: SELECT me.* from MyTable me where status_date <= '9999-12-31' I've searched CPAN, Google and SO and haven't been able to figure out how to apply 2 conditions to the same column. All documentation I've been able to find shows how to filter on more than 1 column, but not 2 conditions on the same column. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious - hoping someone here can point it out to me? Thanks in advance! Brian

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• ASP.NET - I am generating an .XLS file with a DLL, how do I grant permissions for writing to file? (

  - by hamlin11

  I'm generating an .XLS file with a DLL (Excel Library http://code.google.com/p/excellibrary/) I've added this DLL as a reference to my project. The code to save the .XLS to disk is running, but it's encountering a permissions issue. I've attempted to set full access for IUSRS, Network Service, and Everyone just to see if I could get it working, and none of these seems to make a difference. Here's where I'm trying to write the file: c:/temp/test1.xls Here's the error: [SecurityException: Request for the permission of type 'System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' failed.] System.Security.CodeAccessSecurityEngine.Check(Object demand, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean isPermSet) +0 System.Security.CodeAccessPermission.Demand() +54 System.IO.FileStream.Init(String path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, Int32 rights, Boolean useRights, FileShare share, Int32 bufferSize, FileOptions options, SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES secAttrs, String msgPath, Boolean bFromProxy) +2103 System.IO.FileStream..ctor(String path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, FileShare share, Int32 bufferSize, FileOptions options, String msgPath, Boolean bFromProxy) +138 System.IO.FileStream..ctor(String path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, FileShare share) +89 System.IO.File.Open(String path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, FileShare share) +58 ExcelLibrary.Office.CompoundDocumentFormat.CompoundDocument.Create(String file) +88 ExcelLibrary.Office.Excel.Workbook.Save(String file) +73 CHC_Reports.LitAnalysis.CreateSpreadSheet_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) in C:\Users\brian\Desktop\Enterprise Manager\CHC_Reports\LitAnalysis.aspx.vb:19 System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e) +115 System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) +140 System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(IPostBackEventHandler sourceControl, String eventArgument) +29 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +11041511 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +11041050 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest() +91 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) +240 ASP.litanalysis_aspx.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) +52 System.Web.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +599 System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +171 Any idea what I need to do to diagnose the permissions issue and allow the file creation? Thanks.

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• linux new/delete, malloc/free large memory blocks

  - by brian_mk

  Hi folks, We have a linux system (kubuntu 7.10) that runs a number of CORBA Server processes. The server software uses glibc libraries for memory allocation. The linux PC has 4G physical memory. Swap is disabled for speed reasons. Upon receiving a request to process data, one of the server processes allocates a large data buffer (using the standard C++ operator 'new'). The buffer size varies depening upon a number of parameters but is typically around 1.2G Bytes. It can be up to about 1.9G Bytes. When the request has completed, the buffer is released using 'delete'. This works fine for several consecutive requests that allocate buffers of the same size or if the request allocates a smaller size than the previous. The memory appears to be free'd ok - otherwise buffer allocation attempts would eventually fail after just a couple of requests. In any case, we can see the buffer memory being allocated and freed for each request using tools such as KSysGuard etc. The problem arises when a request requires a buffer larger than the previous. In this case, operator 'new' throws an exception. It's as if the memory that has been free'd from the first allocation cannot be re-allocated even though there is sufficient free physical memory available. If I kill and restart the server process after the first operation, then the second request for a larger buffer size succeeds. i.e. killing the process appears to fully release the freed memory back to the system. Can anyone offer an explanation as to what might be going on here? Could it be some kind of fragmentation or mapping table size issue? I am thinking of replacing new/delete with malloc/free and use mallopt to tune the way the memory is being released to the system. BTW - I'm not sure if it's relevant to our problem, but the server uses Pthreads that get created and destroyed on each processing request. Cheers, Brian.

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• are there java based auto-updating tools other than WebStart & Eclipse P2?

  - by DaddyB

  Hi, I am working on a java based application and we are looking to ease our deployment of updates. Up until now, we've always simply sent out new install packs & had the sysadmin's on our customer sites roll out the upgrades - painful for a large number of users. what I'd like to do is something similar to java webstart (or eclipse p2) - when the application starts, it checks for updates in a specified location and then downloads the updates prior to starting. But here's my problem - I want more control over what's done outside of the scope of plugins & jar files. For example: I'd like to be able to upate my JVM (we ship a modified version with additional security features). I need to install DLL's - possibly local to the jar files, sometimes to windows Occasiontally run MSI's to install windows components (e.g. printer drivers). I need to modify config files & the registry. I have found a few applications that support this (such as AppLifeUpdate at http://www.kineticjump.com/) but they tend to be .NET focused and it seems a bit perverse to introduce a .NET dependancy on a java application ;) I know I could write my own here, but if there is already a 3rd party library out there that supports this kind of facility, then it would make my life a lot easier. So, has anyone else had a similar problem & knows of some products I could look at? Thanks, Brian.

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• L10N: Trusted test data for Locale Specific Sorting

  - by Chris Betti

  I'm working on an internationalized database application that supports multiple locales in a single instance. When international users sort data in the applications built on top of the database, the database theoretically sorts the data using a collation appropriate to the locale associated with the data the user is viewing. I'm trying to find sorted lists of words that meet two criteria: the sorted order follows the collation rules for the locale the words listed will allow me to exercise most / all of the specific collation rules for the locale I'm having trouble finding such trusted test data. Are such sort-testing datasets currently available, and if so, what / where are they? "words.en.txt" is an example text file containing American English text: Andrew Brian Chris Zachary I am planning on loading the list of words into my database in randomized order, and checking to see if sorting the list conforms to the original input. Because I am not fluent in any language other than English, I do not know how to create sample datasets like the following sample one in French (call it "words.fr.txt"): cote côte coté côté The French prefer diacritical marks to be ordered right to left. If you sorted that using code-point order, it likely comes out like this (which is an incorrect collation): cote coté côte côté Thank you for the help, Chris

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• Max Daily Budget exceeded and Billing Status "Changing Daily Budget"

  - by draftpik

  We've exceeded the Max Daily Budget for our app, but we can't increase the budget due to a serious flaw in Google's billing system. Google App Engine and Google Wallet do not have very capable support for multiple sign-in. As a result, I went to change the budget, but it used the wrong Google Wallet account (a different Google Account I was signed in as). I had to go back and try again, but now our GAE app shows the following status: Billing Status: Changing Daily Budget Your account has been locked while we process your budget changes. If you were redirected to Google Checkout but did not complete the process, your settings will remain unchanged. (You will be able to make changes to your budget settings again once the outstanding payment is processed.) Now I'm completely prevented from making any billing changes, our app is shut off (over quota), and I have NOTHING I can do to fix it. This is a seriously fundamental flaw in App Engine's billing system and Google Wallet integration. Has anyone run into this before? Is there a workaround anyone is aware of? Right now, our production app is completely down thanks to this issue. Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated? If you're from Google and you might be able to help on the backend, our app id is "nhldraftpik". Thanks! Brian

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• Create a new webpage using a WCF service

  - by sweeney

  Hello, I'd like to create WCF operation contract which consumes a string, produces a public webpage and then returns the address of this new page. [ServiceContract(Namespace = "")] public class DatabaseService { [OperationContract] public string BuildPage(string fileName, string html) { //writes html to file //returns public file url } } This doesn't seem like it should be complicated but i cant figure out how to do it. So far what i've tried is this: [OperationContract] public string PrintToFile(string name, string text) { FileInfo f = new FileInfo(name); StreamWriter w = f.AppendText(); w.Write(text); w.Close(); return f.Directory.ToString(); } Here's the problem. This does not create a file in the web root, it creates it in the directory where the webdav server is running. When i run this on an IIS server it seems to do nothing at all (at least not that i can tell). How can I get a handle to the webroot programmatically so that i can place the resultant file there and then return the public URL? I can tack on the domain name after the fact without issue so if it only returns the relative path to the file that's fine. Thanks, brian

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• VB.NET Two different approaches to generic cross-threaded operations; which is better?

  - by BASnappl

  VB.NET 2010, .NET 4 Hello, I recently read about using SynchronizationContext objects to control the execution thread for some code. I have been using a generic subroutine to handle (possibly) cross-thread calls for things like updating UI controls that utilizes Invoke. I'm an amateur and have a hard time understanding the pros and cons of any particular approach. I am looking for some insight on which approach might be preferable and why. Update: This question is motivated, in part, by statements such as the following from the MSDN page on Control.InvokeRequired. An even better solution is to use the SynchronizationContext returned by SynchronizationContext rather than a control for cross-thread marshaling. Method 1: Public Sub InvokeControl(Of T As Control)(ByVal Control As T, ByVal Action As Action(Of T)) If Control.InvokeRequired Then Control.Invoke(New Action(Of T, Action(Of T))(AddressOf InvokeControl), New Object() {Control, Action}) Else Action(Control) End If End Sub Method 2: Public Sub UIAction(Of T As Control)(ByVal Control As T, ByVal Action As Action(Of Control)) SyncContext.Send(New Threading.SendOrPostCallback(Sub() Action(Control)), Nothing) End Sub Where SyncContext is a Threading.SynchronizationContext object defined in the constructor of my UI form: Public Sub New() InitializeComponent() SyncContext = WindowsFormsSynchronizationContext.Current End Sub Then, if I wanted to update a control (e.g., Label1) on the UI form, I would do: InvokeControl(Label1, Sub(x) x.Text = "hello") or UIAction(Label1, Sub(x) x.Text = "hello") So, what do y'all think? Is one way preferred or does it depend on the context? If you have the time, verbosity would be appreciated! Thanks in advance, Brian

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• Please recommend the one SQL book for a developer without a lot of SQL experience.

  - by Hamish Grubijan

  I have too many hobbies outside of my profession, so I am hoping to read just one good book, and get a tad better at SQL. My background: took one boring, theoretical class in databases, was exposed to SQL professionally (in addition to several other languages and technologies) for a year and a half. I've done about 5 years of C#/Java stuff professionally. By "professionally" I mean doing it full-time while someone paid me more than $25/hr for it - not necessarily that I created masterpieces along the way :) I want to become better at SQL (coding aspect; DBA is not of particular importance to me right now). I am looking for one book to give me a solid foundation in it. When I needed to learn some C from almost a scratch, I used (and loved) this book: http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-2nd-Brian-Kernighan/dp/0131103628 I am hoping to find one just like this for SQL. I am not doing web development now or in a near future, and I am looking for something that is hopefully not specific to any one sub-industry. Thanks in advance.

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• SQL Server: String Manipulation, Unpivoting

  - by OMG Ponies

  I have a column called body, which contains body content for our CMS. The data looks like: ...{cloak:id=1.1.1}...{cloak}...{cloak:id=1.1.2}...{cloak}...{cloak:id=1.1.3}...{cloak}... A moderately tweaked for readability example: ## h5. A formal process for approving and testing all external network connections and changes to the firewall and router configurations? {toggle-cloak:id=1.1.1}{tree-plus-icon} *Compliance:* {color:red}{*}Partial{*}{color} (?) {cloak:id=1.1.1} || Date: | 2010-03-15 || || Owner: | Brian || || Researched by: | || || Narrative: | Jira tickets are normally used to approve and track network changes\\ || || Artifacts: | Jira.bccampus.ca\\ || || Recommendation: | Need to update policy that no Jira = no change\\ || || Proposed Remedy(ies): | || || Approved Remedy(ies): | || || Date: | || || Reviewed by: | || || Remarks/comments: | || {cloak}## h5. Current network diagrams with all connections to cardholder data, including any wireless networks? {toggle-cloak:id=1.1.2}{tree-plus-icon} *Compliance:* {color:red}{*}TBD{*}{color} (?) {cloak:id=1.1.2} I'd like to get the cloak values out in the following format: requirement_num ----------------- 1.1.1 1.1.2 1.1.3 I'm looking at using UNIONs - does anyone have a better recommendation? Forgot to mention: I can't use regex, because CLR isn't enabled on the database. The numbers aren't sequencial. The current record jumps from 1.1.6 to 1.2.1

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• What’s New from the Oracle Marketing Cloud at Oracle OpenWorld 2014?

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Marketing—CX Central is your hub for all things Marketing related at OpenWorld in San Francisco, September 28-October 2, 2014. Learn how to personalize the modern marketing journey to improve customer loyalty. We’re hosting more than 60 breakout sessions, half of which will highlight customer success stories from marquee brands including Bizo, Comcast, Dell, Epson, John Deere, Lane Bryant, ReadyTalk and Shutterfly. Moscone West, Levels 2 and 3 To learn more about how modern marketing works, visit Moscone West, levels 2 and 3, for exciting demos of each of the Oracle Marketing Cloud solutions (BlueKai, Compendium, Eloqua, Push I/O, and Responsys). You also can check out our stations for Vertical Marketing Best Practices, the Markie Awards, and more! CX Spotlight Sessions “Accelerating Big Profits in Big Data,” Jeff Tanner, Baylor University “Using Content Marketing to Impact Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey,” Jennifer Agustin, Bizo “Expanding Your Marketing with Proven Testing and Optimization,” Brian Border, Shutterfly and Matthew Balthazor, Epson “Modern Marketing: The New Digital Dialogue,” Cory Treffiletti, Oracle A Special Marquee Session Dell’s Hayden Mugford will speak on “The Digital Ecosystem: Driving Experience Through Contact Engagement.” She will highlight how the organization built a digital ecosystem that supports a behaviorally driven, multivehicle nurturing campaign. The Dell 1:1 Global Marketing team worked with multiple partners to innovate integrations with Oracle Eloqua, Oracle Real-Time Decisions for real-time decision logic, and a content management system (CMS) that enables 100 percent customized e-mails. The program doubled average order values for nurtured contacts versus non-nurtured and tripled open and click-through rates versus push e-mail. Other Oracle Marketing Cloud Session Highlights Thought leadership by role Exploring the benefits of moving to the Cloud Product line roadmaps and innovations in Marketing Technical deep dives for product lines within Marketing Best practices and impactful business measurements Solutions that are Integrated across CX Target Audience Session content is geared toward professionals in Marketing, Marketing Operations, Marketing Demand Generation, Social: Chief Marketing Officers, Vice Presidents, Directors and Managers. Outcomes Customers attending Marketing—CX Central @ OpenWorld will be able to: Gain insight into delivering consistent cross-channel marketing Discover how to provide the right information to the right customer at the right time and with the right channel Get answers to burning questions and advice on business challenges Hear from other Oracle customers about recommended best practices to help their organization move forward Network and share ideas to help create a strategy for connecting with customers in better ways It Wouldn’t Be an Oracle Marketing Cloud Event Without a Party! We’re hosting CX Central Fest:  a unique customer experience specifically designed for attendees of CX Central. It will include a chance to rock out at a private concert featuring Los Angeles indie electronic pop group, Capital Cities! Join us Tuesday, September 30 from 7-9 p.m. OpenWorld is a fabulous way for your customers to see all that Oracle Marketing Cloud has to offer. Pass on an invitation today. By Laura Vogel (Oracle) /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• April 30th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, Visual Studio 2010

  - by ScottGu

  Here is the latest in my link-listing series. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] ASP.NET Data Web Control Enhancements in ASP.NET 4.0: Scott Mitchell has a good article that summarizes some of the nice improvements coming to the ASP.NET 4 data controls. Refreshing an ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel with JavaScript: Scott Mitchell has another nice article in his series on using ASP.NET AJAX that demonstrates how to programmatically trigger an UpdatePanel refresh using JavaScript on the client. ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC 2: Basics and Introduction: Scott Hanselman delivers an awesome introductory talk on ASP.NET MVC.  Great for people looking to understand and learn ASP.NET MVC. ASP.NET MVC 2: Ninja Black Belt Tips: Another great talk by Scott Hanselman about how to make the most of several features of ASP.NET MVC 2. ASP.NET MVC 2 Html.Editor/Display Templates: A great blog post detailing the new Html.EditorFor() and Html.DisplayFor() helpers within ASP.NET MVC 2. MVCContrib Grid: Jeremy Skinner’s video presentation about the new Html.Grid() helper component within the (most awesome) MvcContrib project for ASP.NET MVC. Code Snippets for ASP.NET MVC 2 in VS 2010: Raj Kaimal documents some of the new code snippets for ASP.NET MVC 2 that are now built-into Visual Studio 2010.  Read this article to learn how to do common scenarios with fewer keystrokes. Turn on Compile-time View Checking for ASP.NET MVC Projects in TFS 2010 Build: Jim Lamb has a nice post that describes how to enable compile-time view checking as part of automated builds done with a TFS Build Server.  This will ensure any errors in your view templates raise build-errors (allowing you to catch them at build-time instead of runtime). Visual Studio 2010 VS 2010 Keyboard Shortcut Posters for VB, C#, F# and C++: Keyboard shortcut posters that you can download and then printout. Ideal to provide a quick reference on your desk for common keystroke actions inside VS 2010. My Favorite New Features in VS 2010: Scott Mitchell has a nice article that summarizes some of his favorite new features in VS 2010.  Check out my VS 2010 and .NET 4 blog series for more details on some of them. 6 Cool VS 2010 Quick Tips and Features: Anoop has a nice blog post describing 6 cool features of VS 2010 that you can take advantage of. SharePoint Development with VS 2010: Beth Massi links to a bunch of nice “How do I?” videos that that demonstrate how to use the SharePoint development support built-into VS 2010. How to Pin a Project to the Recent Projects List in VS 2010: A useful tip/trick that demonstrates how to “pin” a project to always show up on the “Recent Projects” list within Visual Studio 2010. Using the WPF Tree Visualizer in VS 2010: Zain blogs about the new WPF Tree Visualizer supported by the VS 2010 debugger.  This makes it easier to visualize WPF control hierarchies within the debugger. TFS 2010 Power Tools Released: Brian Harry blogs about the cool new TFS 2010 extensions released with this week’s TFS 2010 Power Tools release. What is New with T4 in VS 2010: T4 is the name of Visual Studio’s template-based code generation technology.  Lots of scenarios within VS 2010 now use T4 for code generation customization. Two examples are ASP.NET MVC Views and EF4 Model Generation.  This post describes some of the many T4 infrastructure improvements in VS 2010. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. If you haven’t already, check out this month’s "Find a Hoster” page on the www.asp.net website to learn about great (and very inexpensive) ASP.NET hosting offers.

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• XNA Notes 008

  - by George Clingerman

  This week has been a rough one. I’ve been sick and then in some kind of slump for my afternoon coding sessions. It could be from the cold, could be I’m still tired from writing that Windows Phone 7 game development book (which is out now!) or it could just be I’m tired of winter and want some sunshine. All I know is that even while I’m stick, the XNA world keeps going along at it’s whirlwind pace. Below are the things I caught in between my coughing fits.. Time Critical XNA News: The 2011 MVP summit is almost here so pass along your feelings and thoughts so the MVPs can take them and share them with the team in person http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/76317/464136.aspx#464136 Dream Build Play - there’s no new announcement yet, but you can’t get much more to the end of February than this! http://www.dreambuildplay.com/Main/Home.aspx XNA Team: Dean Johnson from the XNA team shares an excellent way of handling Guide.IsTrialMode on WP7 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dejohn/archive/2011/02/21/calling-guide-istrialmode-on-windows-phone-7.aspx Nick Gravelyn tries a new tactic in deciding if there’s enough interest to develop a sequel or not. Don’t YOU want Pixel Man 2 to come out? http://nickgravelyn.com/pixelman2/ XNA MVPs: Andy “The ZMan” Dunn finally shares what he’s been secretly working on these past 4 months http://twitter.com/#!/The_Zman/status/40590269392887808 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg8Z0ZdYbvg&feature=youtu.be Joel Martinez lets developers around NYC know they should by signing up for Game Hack Day http://twitter.com/joelmartinez/statuses/41118590862102528 http://gamehackday.org/71fdk XNA Developers: Michael McLaughlin shares an XNA RenderTarget2D Sample http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/18/xna-rendertarget2d-sample.aspx Martin Caine starts a new series on Deferred Rendering in XNA 4.0 http://twitter.com/#!/MartinCaine/status/39735221339291648 http://martincaine.com/xna/deferred_rendering_in_xna_4_introduction ElemenyCy posts about his fun time with the IntermediateSerializer http://www.ubergamermonkey.com/xna/holy-bloated-xml-batman/ Ben Kane releases a narrated dev diary video for Project Splice. Let him know if you’d like to see more! (I know I do!) http://twitter.com/#!/benkane/status/39846959498002432 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EmziXZUo08&feature=youtu.be Jason Swearingen (of Novaleaf) posts his part 1 of Spatial Partitioning solutions http://altdevblogaday.org/2011/02/21/spatial-partitioning-part-1-survey-of-spatial-partitioning-solutions/ Brian Lawson of Dark Flow Studios shares what his been up to lately with lots of pretty screenshots and hints of announcements from Microsoft... http://www.darkflowstudios.com/entry/short-and-sweet-part-1 Luke Avery starts a new blog where he plans on making XNA tutorials for beginners (and he’s got a few started already!) http://programmingwithovery.wordpress.com/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): GameMarx Episode 10 http://www.gamemarx.com/video/the-show/24/ep-10-february-18-2010.aspx Minecraft clone FortressCraft coming to XBLIG http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-02-23-minecraft-clone-fortresscraft-hits-xblig ezMuze+ starts an IndieGoGo fundraiser campaign to help fund their second game and get it onto even more devices! http://www.indiegogo.com/ezmuze Gamergeddon XBLIG round up http://www.gamergeddon.com/2011/02/20/xbox-indie-game-round-up-february-20th/?utm_campaign=twitter&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitter JForce Games loses their Ego http://jforcegames.com/blog/index.php?itemid=121&catid=4 XNA Game Development: @BallerIndustry reminds all XNA developers that the Maths are important ;) http://twitter.com/#!/BallerIndustry/status/39317618280243200 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjV3XDFsjP4&feature=player_embedded#at=106 @suhinini stumbles on an older but extremely useful post on XNA Content Pipeline debugging http://twitter.com/#!/suhinini/status/39270189476352000 http://badcorporatelogo.wordpress.com/2010/10/31/xna-content-pipeline-debugging-4-0/ XNA Game Development Workshops at Singapore Universities http://innovativesingapore.com/2011/02/xna-game-development-workshops-at-singapore-universities/ Indiefreaks announces that IGF v0.3 is out with Xbox 360 support, SunBurn 2.0.12 and it’s now Open Source! http://twitter.com/#!/indiefreaks/status/39391953971982336 @liotral announces a new series on properly designing a game http://twitter.com/#!/liortal53/status/39466905081217024 http://liortalblog.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/hello-cosmos/ Indies and XNA at CodeStock 2011 http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/20/indies-and-xna-at-codestock-2011.aspx Train Frontier Express posts about XNA Content Hotloading http://trainfrontierexpress.blogspot.com/2011/02/xna-content-hotloading-overview.html Slyprid announces a new character editor in Transmute http://twitter.com/#!/slyprid/status/40146992818696192 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKhFAc78LDs&feature=youtu.be The XNA 2D from the ground up tutorial series http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgenesis/archive/2011/02/23/recap-the-xna-2d-from-the-ground-up-tutorial-series.aspx Sgt.Conker posts a “Clingerman” (hey that’s me!) to stay relevant http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/02/posting-a-clingerman-to-stay-relevant/

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• If You Could Cut Your Meeting Times in ½ Would You?

  - by [email protected]

  By Brian Dayton on April 22, 2010 2:02 PM I know it sounds like a big promise. And what I'm thinking about may not cut a :60 minute meeting into :30 minutes, but it could make meetings and interactions up to 2X more productive. How? Social Media for the Enterprise, Not Social Media In the Enterprise Bear with me. I'm not talking about whether or not workers should or shouldn't have access to Facebook on corporate networks. That topic has been discussed @ length. I'm also not talking about the direct benefits of Social Networking tools like Presence (the ability to see someone online and ask a question in real-time), blogs, RSS feeds or external tools like Twitter. The Un-Measurable Benefits Would you do something that you believe will have a positive effect--but can't be measured? It's impossible to quantify the effectiveness of a meeting. However, what I am talking about would be more of a byproduct of all of the social networking tools above. Here's the hypothesis: As I've gotten more and more busy with work, family, travel and kids--and the same has happened to my friends and family--I'm less and less connected. But by introducing Facebook to my life I've not only made connections with longtime friends whom I haven't spoken to in years--but I've increased the pace and quality of interactions, on and offline, with close friends who I see and speak to every week. In some cases it even enhances the connections and interactions with those I see or speak to every day. The same holds true in an organization. Especially a larger one with highly matrixed organizational structures. You work with people on a project, new people come in with each different project and a disproportionate amount of time is spent getting oriented and staying current. Going back to the initial value proposition--making meetings shorter/more effective--a large amount of time is spent: - At Project Kick-off: Meeting and understanding team member's histories, goals & roles - Ongoing: Summarizing events since the last meeting or update email In my personal, Facebook life today I know that: - My best friend from college - has been stranded in India for 5 days because of the volcano in Iceland and is now only 250 miles from home - One of my co-workers started conference calls at 6:30 this morning - My wife wasn't terribly pleased with my painting skills in our new bathroom (disclosure: she told me this face to face too) Strengthening Weak Links A recent article in CIO Magazine, Three Dangerous Social Media Misconceptions (Kristen Burnham, March 12, 2010) calls out the #1 misconception as follows: 1. "Face-to-face relationships are far more valuable than virtual ones." While some level of physical interaction will always add value to relationships, Gartner says that come 2020, most relationships and teams will be based on "weak links"--that is, you may not have personally met a contact, but you'll know of or may have interacted with him via social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The sooner your enterprise adopts these tools, the sooner your employees will learn them, and the sooner you'll begin to cultivate these relationships-of-the-future. I personally believe that it's not an either/or choice between face-to-face and virtual interactions. In fact, I'll be as bold as saying it doesn't matter. I can point to two extremely valuable work relationships that I've had over the past 5 years: - I shared an office with one of them - I met the other person, face-to-face, only once Both relationships were very productive. The dynamics were similar. The communication tactics differed immensely. What does matter is the quality, frequency and relevance of interactions. Still sound like too much? An over-promise? Stay tuned for my next post The Gap Between Facebook and LinkedIn. I'll also connect some of the dots with where Oracle Applications and technologies are headed.

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• Having Fun with Coding4Fun&rsquo;s Windows Phone 7 Controls

  - by mbcrump

  I’m a big believer in having a hobby project as you can probably tell from the first sentence in my “personal webpage using Silverlight” article. One of my current hobby projects is to re-do my current WP7 application in the marketplace. I knew up front that I needed a “Loading” animation and a better “About” box. After starting to develop my own, I noticed a great set of WP7 controls by Coding4Fun and decided to use them in my new application. Before I go any further they are FREE and Open-Source. It is really simple to get started, just go to the CodePlex site and click the download button. After you have downloaded it then extract it to a Folder and you will have 4 DLL files. They are listed below: Now create a Windows Phone 7 Project and add references to the DLL’s by right clicking on the References folder and clicking “Add references”.   After adding the references, we can get started. I needed a ProgressOverlay animation or “Loading Screen” while my RSS feed is downloading. Basically, you just need to add the following namespace to whatever page you want the control on: xmlns:Controls="clr-namespace:Coding4Fun.Phone.Controls;assembly=Coding4Fun.Phone.Controls" And then the code inside your Grid or wherever you want the Loading screen placed. <Controls:ProgressOverlay Name="progressOverlay" > <Controls:ProgressOverlay.Content> <TextBlock>Loading</TextBlock> </Controls:ProgressOverlay.Content> </Controls:ProgressOverlay> Bam, you now have a great looking loading screen. Of course inside the ProgressOverlay, you may want to add a Visibility property to turn it off after your data loads if you are using MVVM or similar pattern.   Next up, I needed a nice clean “About Box” that looks good but is also functional. Meaning, if they click on my twitter name, web or email to launch the appropriate task. Again, this is only a few lines of code: var p = new AboutPrompt(); p.VersionNumber = "2.0"; p.Show("Michael Crump", "@mbcrump", "[email protected]", @"http://michaelcrump.net"); A nice clean “About” box with just a few lines of code! I’m all for code that I don’t have to write. It also comes with a pretty sweet InputPrompt for grabbing info from a user: The code for this is also very simple: InputPrompt input = new InputPrompt(); input.Completed += (s, e) => { MessageBox.Show(e.Result.ToString()); }; input.Title = "Input Box"; input.Message = "What does a \"Developer Large\" T-Shirt Mean? "; input.Show(); I also enjoyed the PhoneHelper that allows you to get data out of the WMAppManifest File very easy. So for example if I wanted the Version info from the WMAppManifest file. I could write one line and get it. PhoneHelper.GetAppAttribute("Version") Of course you would want to make sure you add the following using statement: using Coding4Fun.Phone.Controls.Data; You can’t have all these cool controls without a great set of Converters. The included BooleanToVisibility converter will convert a Boolean to and from a Visibility value. This is excellent when using something like a CheckBox to display a TextBox when its checked. See the example below: The code is below: <phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources> <Converters:BooleanToVisibilityConverter x:Key="BooleanToVisibilityConverter"/> </phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources> <CheckBox x:Name="checkBox"/> <TextBlock Text="Display Text" Visibility="{Binding ElementName=checkBox, Path=IsChecked, Converter={StaticResource BooleanToVisibilityConverter} }"/> That’s not all the goodies included. They also provide a RoundedButton, TimePicker and several other converters. The documentation is great and I would recommend you give them a shot if you need any of this functionality. Btw, thank Brian Peek for his awesome work on Coding4Fun!  Subscribe to my feed

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