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• Yes, I did it - Skydiving in Mauritius

  Finally, I did it or better said we did it. Already back in November last year I saw the big billboard advertisement of Skydive Austral Mauritius near Caudan Waterfront in Port Louis and decided for myself that this is going to be the perfect birthday gift for my wife. Simply out of curiosity I would join her tandem jump with a second instructor. Due to her pregnancy of our son I had to be patient... But then finally, her birthday had arrived and on our midnight celebration session I showed her her netbook with the website preloaded. Actually, it was the "perfect" timing... Recovery from her cesarean is fine, local weather conditions are gorgious and the children were under surveillance of my mum - spending her annual holidays on the island. So, after late wake-up in the morning, we packed our stuff and off we went. According to Google Maps direction indication we had to drive for roughly 50km (only) but traffic here in Mauritius is always challenging. The dropzone is at the Zone Industrielle Mon Loisir Sugar Estate near Riviere du Rempart at the northern east coast. Anyways, we were not in a hurry and arrived there shortly after noon. The access road to the airfield are just small down-driven paths through sugar cane fields and according to our daughter "it's bumpy!". True true true... The facilities at Skydive Austral Mauritius are complete except for food. Enough space for parking, easy handling at the reception and a lot to see for the kids. There's even a big terrace with several sets of tables and chairs, small bar for soft drinks, strictly non-alcoholic. The team over there is all welcoming and warm-hearthy! Having the kids with us was no issue at all. Quite the opposite, our daugther was allowed to discover a lot of things than we adults did. Even visiting the small air plane was on the menu for her. Really great stuff! While waiting for our turn we enjoyed watching other people getting ready in the jump gear, taking off with the Cessna, and finally coming back down on the tandem parachute. Actually, the different expressions on their faces was one of the best parts while waiting. Great mental preparation as my wife was getting more anxious about her first jump... {loadposition content_adsense} First, we got some information about the procedures on the plane about how to get seated, tight up with our instructors and how to get ready for the jump off the plane as soon as we arrive the height of 10.000 ft. All well explained and easy to understand after all.Next, we met with our jumpers Chris and Lee aka "Rasta" to get dressed and ready for take-off. Those guys are really cool and relaxed for their job. From that point on, the DVD session / recording for my wife's birthday started and we really had a lot of fun... The difference between that small Cessna and a commercial flight with an Airbus or a Boeing is astronomic! The climb up to 10.000 ft took us roughly 25 minutes and we enjoyed the magnificent view over the turquoise lagunes near Poste de Flacq, Lafayette and Isle d'Ambre on the north-east coast. After flying through the clouds we sun-bathed and looked over "iced-sugar covered" Mauritius. You might have a look at the picture gallery of Skydive Mauritius for better imagination. The moment of truth, or better said, point of no return came after approximately 25 minutes. The door opens, moving into position on the side on top of the wheel and... out! Back flip and free fall! Slight turns and Wooooohooooo! through the clouds... It so amazing and breath-taking! So undescribable! You have to experience this yourself! Some seconds later the parachute opened and we glided smoothly with some turns and spins back down to the dropzone. The rest of the family could hear and see us soon and the landing was easy going. We never had any doubts or fear about our instructors. They did a great job and we are looking forward to book our next job. I might even consider to follow educational classes on skydiving and earn a license. By the way, feel free to get in touch with Skydive Austral Mauritius. Either via contact details on their website or tweeting a little bit with them. Follow the tweets of Chris and fellows on SkydiveAustral.

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• Webcor Builders Coordinates Construction Schedules and Mitigates Potential Delays More Efficiently with Integrated Project Management

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} With more than 40 years of commercial construction experience, Webcor Builders is a leading builder of distinguished, high-profile projects, including high-rise condominiums and hotels, laboratories, healthcare centers, and public works projects. Webcor is also known for its award-winning concrete, interior construction, historic restoration, and seismic renovation work. The company has completed more than 50 million square feet of projects to date. Considering the variety and complexity of the construction projects Webcor undertakes, an integrated project management solution is critical to ensuring optimal efficiency and completing client projects on time and on budget. The company previously used a number of scheduling systems for its various building projects. These packages provided different levels of schedule detail and required schedulers, engineers, and other employees to learn multiple systems. From an IT cost and complexity perspective, the company had to manage multiple scheduling systems and pay for multiple sets of licenses. The company looked to standardize on an enterprise project management system, and selected Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management. Webcor uses the solution’s advanced capabilities to schedule complex projects, analyze delays, model and propose multiple scenarios to demonstrate and mitigate delays and cost overruns, and process that information efficiently to deliver the scheduling precision that public and private projects require. In fact, the solution was instrumental in helping the company’s expansion into public sector projects during the recent economic downturn, and with Primavera P6 in place, it can deliver the precise schedule reporting required for large public projects. With Primavera P6 in place, the company could deliver the precise scheduling and milestone reporting capabilities required for large public projects. The solution is in managing the high-profile University of California – Berkeley Memorial Stadium project. Webcor was hired as construction manager and general contractor for the stadium renovation project, which is a fast-paced project located near the seismically active Hayward Fault Zone. Due to the University of California’s football schedule, meeting the Universities deadline for the coming season placed Webcor in a situation where risk awareness and early warnings of issues would be paramount. Webcor and the extended project team needed a solution that could instantly analyze alternate scenarios to mitigate potential delays; Primavera would deliver those answers.The team would also need to enable multiple stakeholders to use an internet-based platform to access the schedule from various locations, and model complicated sequencing requirements where swift decisions would be made to keep the project on track. The schedule is an integral part of Webcor’s construction management process for the stadium project. Rather than providing the client with the industry-standard monthly update, Webcor updates the critical path method (CPM) schedule on a weekly basis. The project team also reviews the schedule and updates weekly to confirm that progress and forecasted performance are accurate. Hired by the University for their ability to deliver in high risk environments The Webcor team was hit recently with a design supplement that could have added up to 70 days to the project. Using Oracle Primavera P6 the team sprung into action analyzing multiple “what if” scenarios to review mitigation means and methods.  Determined to make sure the Bears could take the field in the coming season the project team nearly eliminated the impact with their creative analysis in working the schedule. The total time from the issuance of the final design supplement to an agreed mitigation response was less than one week; leveraging the Oracle Primavera solution Webcor was able to deliver superior customer value With the ability to efficiently manage projects and schedules, Webcor can ensure it completes its projects on time and on budget, as well as inform clients about what changes to plans will mean in terms of delays and additional costs. Read the complete customer case study at :  http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/customers/customersearch/webcor-builders-1-primavera-ss-1639886.html

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• My Feelings About Microsoft Surface

  - by Valter Minute

  Advice: read the title carefully, I’m talking about “feelings” and not about advanced technical points proved in a scientific and objective way I still haven’t had a chance to play with a MS Surface tablet (I would love to, of course) and so my ideas just came from reading different articles on the net and MS official statements. Remember also that the MVP motto begins with “Independent” (“Independent Experts. Real World Answers.”) and this is just my humble opinion about a product and a technology. I know that, being an MS MVP you can be called an “MS-fanboy”, I don’t care, I hope that people can appreciate my opinion, even if it doesn’t match theirs. The “Surface” brand can be confusing for techies that knew the “original” surface concept but I think that will be a fresh new brand name for most of the people out there. But marketing department are here to confuse people… so I can understand this “recycle” of an existing name. So Microsoft is entering the hardware arena… for me this is good news. Microsoft developed some nice hardware in the past: the xbox, zune (even if the commercial success was quite limited) and, last but not least, the two arc mices (old and new model) that I use and appreciate. In the past Microsoft worked with OEMs and that model lead to good and bad things. Good thing (for microsoft, at least) is market domination by windows-based PCs that only in the last years has been reduced by the return of the Mac and tablets. Google is also moving in the hardware business with its acquisition of Motorola, and Apple leveraged his control of both the hardware and software sides to develop innovative products. Microsoft can scare OEMs and make them fly away from windows (but where?) or just lead the pack, showing how devices should be designed to compete in the market and bring back some of the innovation that disappeared from recent PC products (look at the shelves of your favorite electronics store and try to distinguish a laptop between the huge mass of anonymous PCs on displays… only Macs shine out there…). Having to compete with MS “official” hardware will force OEMs to develop better product and bring back some real competition in a market that was ruled only by prices (the lower the better even when that means low quality) and no innovative features at all (when it was the last time that a new PC surprised you?). Moving into a new market is a big and risky move, but with Windows 8 Microsoft is playing a crucial move for its future, trying to be back in the innovation run against apple and google. MS can’t afford to fail this time. I saw the new devices (the WinRT and Pro) and the specifications are scarce, misleading and confusing. The first impression is that the device looks like an iPad with a nice keyboard cover… Using “HD” and “full HD” to define display resolution instead of using the real figures and reviving the “ClearType” brand (now dead on Win8 as reported here and missed by people who hate to read text on displays, like myself) without providing clear figures (couldn’t you count those damned pixels?) seems to imply that MS was caught by surprise by apple recent “retina” displays that brought very high definition screens on tablets.Also there are no specifications about the processors used (even if some sources report NVidia Tegra for the ARM tablet and i5 for the x86 one) and expected battery life (a critical point for tablets and the point that killed Windows7 x86 based tablets). Also nothing about the price, and this will be another critical point because other platform out there already provide lots of applications and have a good user base, if MS want to enter this market tablets pricing must be competitive. There are some expansion ports (SD and USB), so no fixed storage model (even if the specs talks about 32-64GB for RT and 128-256GB for pro). I like this and don’t like the apple model where flash memory (that it’s dirt cheap used in thumdrives or SD cards) is as expensive as gold (or cocaine to have a more accurate per gram measurement) when mounted inside a tablet/phone. For big files you’ll be able to use external media and an SD card could be used to store files that don’t require super-fast SSD-like access times, I hope. To be honest I really don’t like the marketplace model and the limitation of Windows RT APIs (no local database? from a company that based a good share of its success on VB6+Access!) and lack of desktop support on the ARM (even if the support is here and has been used to port office). It’s a step toward the consumer market (where competitors are making big money), but may impact enterprise (and embedded) users that may not appreciate Windows 8 new UI or the limitations of the new app model (if you aren’t connected you are dead ). Not having compatibility with the desktop will require brand new applications and honestly made all the CPU cycles spent to convert .NET IL into real machine code in the past like a huge waste of time… as soon as a new processor architecture is supported by Windows you still have to rewrite part of your application (and MS is pushing HTML5+JS and native code more than .NET in my perception). On the other side I believe that the development experience provided by Visual Studio is still miles (or kilometres) ahead of the competition and even the all-uppercase menu of VS2012 hasn’t changed this situation. The new metro UI got mixed reviews. On my side I should say that is very pleasant to use on a touch screen, I like the minimalist design (even if sometimes is too minimal and hides stuff that, in my opinion, should be visible) but I should also say that using it with mouse and keyboard is like trying to pick your nose with boxing gloves… Metro is also very interesting for embedded devices where touch screen usage is quite common and where having an application taking all the screen is the norm. For devices like kiosks, vending machines etc. this kind of UI can be a great selling point. I don’t need a new tablet (to be honest I’m pretty happy with my wife’s iPad and with my PC), but I may change my opinion after having a chance to play a little bit with those new devices and understand what’s hidden under all this mysterious and generic announcements and specifications!

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• How to Implement Single Sign-On between Websites

  - by hmloo

  Introduction Single sign-on (SSO) is a way to control access to multiple related but independent systems, a user only needs to log in once and gains access to all other systems. a lot of commercial systems that provide Single sign-on solution and you can also choose some open source solutions like Opensso, CAS etc. both of them use centralized authentication and provide more robust authentication mechanism, but if each system has its own authentication mechanism, how do we provide a seamless transition between them. Here I will show you the case. How it Works The method we’ll use is based on a secret key shared between the sites. Origin site has a method to build up a hashed authentication token with some other parameters and redirect the user to the target site. variables Status Description ssoEncode required hash(ssoSharedSecret + , + ssoTime + , + ssoUserName) ssoTime required timestamp with format YYYYMMDDHHMMSS used to prevent playback attacks ssoUserName required unique username; required when a user is logged in Note : The variables will be sent via POST for security reasons Building a Single Sign-On Solution Origin Site has function to 1. Create the URL for your Request. 2. Generate required authentication parameters 3. Redirect to target site. using System; using System.Web.Security; using System.Text; public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { string postbackUrl = "http://www.targetsite.com/sso.aspx"; string ssoTime = DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMddHHmmss"); string ssoUserName = User.Identity.Name; string ssoSharedSecret = "58ag;ai76"; // get this from config or similar string ssoHash = FormsAuthentication.HashPasswordForStoringInConfigFile(string.Format("{0},{1},{2}", ssoSharedSecret, ssoTime, ssoUserName), "md5"); string value = string.Format("{0}:{1},{2}", ssoHash,ssoTime, ssoUserName); Response.Clear(); StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); sb.Append("<html>"); sb.AppendFormat(@"<body onload='document.forms[""form""].submit()'>"); sb.AppendFormat("<form name='form' action='{0}' method='post'>", postbackUrl); sb.AppendFormat("<input type='hidden' name='t' value='{0}'>", value); sb.Append("</form>"); sb.Append("</body>"); sb.Append("</html>"); Response.Write(sb.ToString()); Response.End(); } } Target Site has function to 1. Get authentication parameters. 2. Validate the parameters with shared secret. 3. If the user is valid, then do authenticate and redirect to target page. 4. If the user is invalid, then show errors and return. using System; using System.Web.Security; using System.Text; public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (!IsPostBack) { if (User.Identity.IsAuthenticated) { Response.Redirect("~/Default.aspx"); } } if (Request.Params.Get("t") != null) { string ticket = Request.Params.Get("t"); char[] delimiters = new char[] { ':', ',' }; string[] ssoVariable = ticket.Split(delimiters, StringSplitOptions.None); string ssoHash = ssoVariable[0]; string ssoTime = ssoVariable[1]; string ssoUserName = ssoVariable[2]; DateTime appTime = DateTime.MinValue; int offsetTime = 60; // get this from config or similar try { appTime = DateTime.ParseExact(ssoTime, "yyyyMMddHHmmss", null); } catch { //show error return; } if (Math.Abs(appTime.Subtract(DateTime.Now).TotalSeconds) > offsetTime) { //show error return; } bool isValid = false; string ssoSharedSecret = "58ag;ai76"; // get this from config or similar string hash = FormsAuthentication.HashPasswordForStoringInConfigFile(string.Format("{0},{1},{2}", ssoSharedSecret, ssoTime, ssoUserName), "md5"); if (string.Compare(ssoHash, hash, true) == 0) { if (Math.Abs(appTime.Subtract(DateTime.Now).TotalSeconds) > offsetTime) { //show error return; } else { isValid = true; } } if (isValid) { //Do authenticate; } else { //show error return; } } else { //show error } } } Summary This is a very simple and basic SSO solution, and its main advantage is its simplicity, only needs to add a single page to do SSO authentication, do not need to modify the existing system infrastructure.

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• 4 Ways Your Brand Can Jump From the Edge of Space

  - by Mike Stiles

  Can your brand’s social media content captivate the world and make it hold its collective breath? Can you put something on the screen that’s so compelling that your audience can’t look away? Will they want to make sure their friends see it so they can talk about it? If not, you’re probably not with Red Bull. I was impressed with Red Bull’s approach to social content even before Felix Baumgartner’s stunning skydive from the edge of space. And then they did this. According to Visible Measures, videos of the jump scored 50 million views in 4 days. 1,700 clips were generated from both official and organic sources. The live stream was the most watched YouTube Stream of all time (8 million concurrent viewers). The 2nd most watched live stream was…Felix’ first attempt Oct. 9. Are you ready to compete with that? I ask that question because some brands are still out there tying themselves up in knots about whether or not they should tweet. The public’s time and attention are scarce commodities, commodities they value greatly. The competition amongst brands for that time and attention is intense and going up like Felix’s capsule. If you still view your press releases as “content,” you won’t even be counted as being among the competition. Here are 5 lessons learned from Red Bull’s big leap: 1. They have a total understanding of their target market and audience. Not only do they have an understanding of it, they do something about it. They act on it. They fill the majority of their thoughts with what the audience wants. They hunger for wild applause from that audience. They want to do things that embrace the audience’s lifestyle and immerse in it so the target will identify the brand as “one of them.” Takeaway: BE your target market. 2. They deliver content that strikes the audience right where they emotionally live. If you want your content to have impact, you have to make your audience’s heart race, or make them tear up, or make them laugh. Label them “data points” all you want, but humans are emotional creatures. No message connects that’s not carried in on an emotion. Takeaway: You’re on the inside. If your content doesn’t make you say “wow,” it’s unlikely it will register with fans. 3. They put aside old school marketing and don’t let their content be degraded into a commercial. Their execs seem to understand the value in keeping a lid on the hard sell. So many brands just can’t bring themselves to disconnect advertising and social content. The result is, otherwise decent content gets contaminated with a desperation the viewer can smell a mile away. Think the Baumgartner skydive didn’t do Red Bull any good since he wasn’t drinking one on the way down while singing a jingle? Analysis company Taykey discovered that at the peak of the skydive buzz, about 1% of all online conversation was about the jump. Mentions of Red Bull constituted 1/3 of 1% of all Internet activity. Views of other Red Bull videos also shot up. Takeaway: Chill out with the ads. Your brand will get full credit for entertaining/informing fans in a relevant way, provided you do it. 4. They don’t hesitate to ask, “What can we do next”? Most corporate cultures are a virtual training facility for “we can’t do that.” Few are encouraged to innovate or think big, if think at all. Thinking big involves faith, and work. It means freedom and letting employees run a little wild with their ideas. There will always be the opportunity to let fear of everything that moves creep in and kill grand visions dead in their tracks. Experimenting must be allowed. Failure must be allowed. Red Bull didn’t think big. They thought mega. They tried to outdo themselves. Felix could have gone ahead and jumped halfway up, thinking, “This is still relatively high up. Good enough.” But that wouldn’t have left us breathless. Takeaway: Go for it. Jump. In putting up social properties and gathering fans of your brand, you’ve basically invited people to a party. A good host doesn’t just set out warm beer and stale chips because that’s inexpensive and easy. Be on the lookout for ways to make your guests walk away saying, “That was epic.”

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• Soft lockup after upgrade - cannot install from live CD

  - by nbm

  I dual-boot MacIntel Core 2 duo. nVidia graphics. Ran upgrade from ubuntu 13.10 to 14.04 (64 bit). On restart ran into {numbers} Bug: soft lockup - CPU#0 stuck for 22s! [swapper/0:1] Tried loading earlier kernel: same problem Tried re-installing ubuntu from a liveCD that has worked in the past: version 13.04. Same problem. Tried re-partitioning hard drive using Mac OS X disk utility and then installing ubuntu 14.04LTS from liveCD. Same problem. Not possible to verify liveCD disk (creates same "soft lockup" bug.) Tried installing from the liveCD with version 13.04 that I know works (that's how I got Ubuntu on this machine in the first place.) Same problem. I know this is not a hardware problem as OS X works just fine, I am using it right now on the same machine. I have been using various versions of Ubuntu for 2 years. Things I cannot do: Open a terminal Verify CD image Start ubuntu from CD (same soft lockup problem) This problem is similar to some other questions, none of which have been satisfactorily answered: Ubuntu 14.04 soft lockup on Vostro 3500 Cannot do fresh install of Ubuntu 13.04 while booting from DVD: "soft lockup" bug Live CD stalls when installing Ubuntu 13.10 UPDATE 6/11/14: Following some much-appreciated advice from bain (see below) I burned a 12.04LTS disk and started with kernel parameters: noapic, no1apic, acpi=off, nomodeset, elevator=deadline, and clocksource=jiffies. With all of these parameters I was able to load the 12.04LTS CD ("Try without installing"). It worked fine. However, as soon as I tried to install Ubuntu from the CD, my wired ethernet (eth0) connection would hang. There are already various askubuntu questions and bug reports about this problem, none of which had answers for me. (E.g., dhclient eth0 does nothing, none of the various reset commands does anything, manually setting IP &etc does nothing. I could reliably kill the ethernet connection by clicking "install ubuntu" every single time.) I could go ahead and install 12.04 without an internet connection, but the install would freeze after mostly completing (I tried several times.) There were some relevant error messages in the details of the install output script that, IIRC, had to do with searching for missing files and not being able to access eth0 (internet) to get them. To be honest I gave up at that point and I'm not sure I wrote those down. If I find some notes I will post them. At this point I no longer have Ubuntu on my system. I wiped the partitions and am using exclusively OS X. I am leaving this question in case it helps anyone else with similar problems. I love open source and I love Linux, and the next machine I get I will probably just build from Arch. At the moment I miss repositories and a lot of other things about Ubuntu, but the OS X terminal is 'nix, I can pretty much use all the open source apps I like, and while I am not a fan of the Apple software it gets the job done for me. Unlike Ubuntu, which can't even install. I realize this isn't necessarily a place for a soapbox speech, but when I first installed 12.04 several years ago there were already people in the community complaining that Canonical was going too "commercial". But I loved it. Several years later and all I've seen is Canonical adding more not-so-useful bells and whistles to Ubuntu while continually failing to fix basic problems on upgrades. With a dual-boot (and sometimes triple-boot) system it always took me some tweaking to get an upgrade to work, and to some extent that is okay. But at this point I feel like Canonical ought to just put a price tag on Ubuntu. All I see is more commercialism and advertising and product tie-ins, and ongoing problems do not get fixed. I am a big fan of open-source, not-for profit enterprise. I am also a big fan of for-profit enterprise, which certainly has its place and usefulness. I am not a fan of companies who pretend to be in favor of open source but really are just out to make a buck, and IMNSHO that is what Canonical has become. This is a great community and I wish you all the best, but my next install of Linux will not be Ubuntu.

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• Windows Phone 8 Launch Event Summary

  - by Tim Murphy

  Today was the official coming out party for Windows Phone 8.  Below is a summary of the launch event.  There is a lot here to stay with me. They started with a commercial staring Joe Belfiore show how his Windows Phone 8 was personal too him which highlights something I think Microsoft has done well over the last couple of event: spotlight how Windows Phone is a different experience from other smartphones.  Joe actually called iPhone and Android “tired old metaphors" and explained that the idea around Windows Phone was to “reinvent the smartphone around you” as “the most personal smartphone operating system”.  The is the message that they need to drive home in their adds. The only real technical aspect we found out was that they have optimized the operating system around the dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon chip set.  It seems like all of the other hardware goodies had already been announced.  The remainder of the event was centered around new features of the OS and app announcements. So what are we getting?  The integrated features included lock screen live tile, Data Sense, Rooms and Kids corner.  There wasn’t a lot of information about it, but Joe also talked about apps not just having live tiles, but being live apps that could integrate with wallet and the hub. The lock screen will now be able to be personalized with live tile data or even a photo slide show.  This gives the lock screen an even better ability to give you the information you want to know before you even unlock the phone. The Kids Corner allows you as a parent to setup an area on your phone that you kids can go into an use it without disturbing your apps.  They can play games or use apps that you have designated and will only see those apps.  It even has a special lock screen gesture just for the kids corner. Rooms allow you to organize your phone around the groups of people in your life.  You get a shared calendar, a room wall as well as shared notes beyond just being able to send messages to a group.  You can also invite people not on the Windows Phone platform to access an online version of the room. Data Sense is a new feature that gives you better control and understanding of your data plan usage.  You can see which applications are using data and it can automatically adjust they way your phone behaves as you get close to your data limit. Add to these features the fact that the entire Windows ecosystem is integrated with SkyDrive and you have an available anywhere experience that is unequaled by any other platform.  Your document, photos and music are available on your Windows Phone, Window 8 device and Xbox.  SkyDrive also doesn’t limit how long you can keep files like the competing cloud platforms and give more free storage. It was interesting the way they made the launch event more personal.  First Joe brought out his own kids to demo the Kids Corner.  They followed this up by bringing out Jessica Alba to discuss her experience on the Windows Phone 8.  They need to keep putting a face on the product instead of just showing features as a cold list. Then we get to apps.  We knew that the new Skype was coming, but we found out that it was created in such a way that it can receive calls without running consistently in the background which would eat up battery.  This announcement was follow by the coming Facebook app that is optimized for Windows Phone 8.  As a matter of fact they indicated that just after launch the marketplace would have 46 out of the top 50 apps used by all smartphone platforms.  In a rational world this tide with over 120,000 apps currently in the marketplace there should be no more argument about the Windows Phone ecosystem. For those of us who develop for Windows Phone and weren’t on the early adoption program will finally get access to the SDK tomorrow after an announcement at Build (more waiting).  Perhaps we will get a few new features then. In the end I wouldn’t say there were any huge surprises, but I am really excited about getting my hands on the devices next month and starting to develop.  Stay tuned. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone,Windows Phone 8,Winodws Phone 8 Launch,Joe Belfiore,Jessica Alba

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• Trac vs. Redmine vs. JIRA vs. FogBugz for one-man shop?

  - by kizzx2

  Background I am a one-man freelancer looking for a project management software that can provide the following requirements. I have used Trac for about a year now. Tried Redmine and FogBugz on Demand for a couple of weeks. Never tried JIRA before. Basically, I'm looking for a piece of software that: Facilitates developer-client communication/collaboration Does time tracking Requirements Record time estimates/Time tracking Clients must be able to create/edit his own tickets/cases Clients must not see Developer created tickets/cases (internal) Affordable (price) with multiple clients Nice-to-haves Supports multiple projects in one installation Free eclipse integration (Mylyn) Easy time-tracking without using the Web UI (Trac's post commit hook or Redmine's commit message scanning) Clients can access the Wiki Export the data to standard formats My evaluation Trac can basically fulfill most of the above requirements, but with lots of customizations and plug-ins that it doesn't feel so clean. One downside is that the main trunk (0.11) has been around for a year or more and I still haven't seen much tendency of any upgrades coming up. Redmine has the cleanest Web UI. It's design philosophy seems to be the most elegant, with its innovative commit message scanning and stuff. However, the current version doesn't seem to be very mature and stable yet. It doesn't support internal (private) tickets and the time-tracking commit message patch doesn't support the trunk version. The good thing about it is that the main trunk still seems to be actively developed. FogBugz is actually a very well written piece of software. However the idea of paying $25/month for the client to be able to log-in to the system seems a little bit too far off for an individual developer. The free version supports letting clients create/view their own cases using email, which is a sub-optimal alternative to having a full-fledged list of the user's own cases. That also means clients can't read/write wiki pages. Its time-tracking approach is innovative and good though. However the fact that all the eclipse integration (Bugclipse, Foglyn) are commercial. Yet other investments before I can use my bug-tracker! If I revert back to the Web UI, it's not really a fast rendering Web service. Also, the in-built report functions are excellent (e.g. evidence based scheduling) JIRA is something I have zero experience with. Can someone with JIRA experience recommend why it might be a good fit for this particular situation? Question Can we share experience on this? Any specific plugins/customizations would that would best suit the requirements for this case?

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• TFS and shared projects in multiple solutions

  - by David Stratton

  Our .NET team works on projects for our company that fall into distinct categories. Some are internal web apps, some are external (publicly facing) web apps, we also have internal Windows applications for our corporate office users, and Windows Forms apps for our retail locations (stores). Of course, because we hate code reuse, we have a ton of code that is shared among the different applications. Currently we're using SVN as our source control, and we've got our repository laid out like this: - = folder, | = Visual Studio Solution -SVN - Internet | Ourcompany.com | Oursecondcompany.com - Intranet | UniformOrdering website | MessageCenter website - Shared | ErrorLoggingModule | RegularExpressionGenerator | Anti-Xss | OrgChartModule etc... So.. The OurCompany.com solution in the Internet folder would have a website project, and it would also include the ErrorLoggingModule, RegularExpressionGenerator, and Anti-Xss projects from the shared directory. Similarly, our UniformOrdering website solution would have each of these projects included in the solution as well. We prefer to have a project reference to a .dll reference because, first of all, if we need to add or fix a function in the ErrorLoggingModule while working on the OurCompany.com website, it's right there. Also, this allows us to build each solution and see if changes to shared code break any other applications. This should work well on a build server as well if I'm correct. In SVN, there is no problem with this. SVN and Visual Studio aren't tied together in the way TFS's source control is. We never figured out how to work this type of structure in TFS when we were using it, because in TFS, the TFS project was always tied to a Visual Studio Solution. The Source Code repository was a child of the TFS Project, so if we wanted to do this, we had to duplicate the Shared code in each TFS project's source code repository. As my co-worker put it, this "breaks every known best practice about code reuse and simplicity". It was enough of a deal breaker for us that we switched to SVN. Now, however, we're faced with truly fixing our development processes, and the Application Lifecycle Management of TFS is pretty close to exactly what we want, and how we want to work. Our one sticking point is the shared code issue. We're evaluating other commercial and open source solutions, but since we're already paying for TFS with our MSDN Subscriptions, and TFS is pretty much exactly what we want, we'd REALLY like to find a way around this issue. Has anybody else faced this and come up with a solution? If you've seen an article or posting on this that you can share with me, that would help as well. As always, I'm open to answers like "You're looking at it all wrong, bonehead, HERE'S the way it SHOULD be done.

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• Best ASP.NET E-Commerce Framework (aspDotNetStoreFront, AbleCommerce, BVCommerce, MediaChase,...)

  - by EfficionDave

  I need a full-featured asp.net E-Commerce solution for a project. It needs to be easily extensible as I need to extend it to integrate with a custom Flash based personalization engine. It should also have a great administrative back-end that handles inventory tracking, report, labels, shipping, ... so that the client can really use it as the basis for their business. I've used quite a few different E-Commerce systems including OSCommerce, Zen Cart, Catalook, and eTailer. While I was impressed with Zen Cart and eTailer, this project is big enough that I want to try a more serious, commercial offering. I'm particularly interested in thoughts on aspdotnetstorefront, BVCommerce, AbleCommerce, and MediaChase. [UPDATE] I've done quite a bit of evaluation since I posted this question and will give some of my findings below: BVCommerce - The price point is nice, the product seems fairly well regarded, and I've heard good things about customizing/extending it, it just doesn't seem like it's going to meet my needs as an Top Tier ECommerce solution. After viewing the tutorial videos, the Admin interface just seems too basic and outdated. aspDotNetStorefront - The integration with DotNetNuke was it's biggest selling point for me but after reading peoples opinions, it's integration seems quite weak. It's sounds like there's a significant learning curve and the architecture just doesn't sound like it's as clean as it should be. AbleCommerce - After a rather thorough evaluation, I have selected AbleCommerce for at least my next project. The Admin interface is beautiful and has a nice list of features. The E-Commerce portion of the user side is very well done, highly skin-able (using Master Pages and a couple other techniques), and the checkout workflow has all the features I need while still being very clean. Source to the API can be bought for $500 but you generally won't need it. There are some 3rd party modules available but there's not currently a large market for these. The biggest glaring weakness of AbleCommerce I've found is their CMS capabilities are very limited and not at all well suited for a non-technical user to make most site content updates. But I have a good solution for that that I plan adapting into AbleCommerce. They will automatically generate a site for you to play with to your heart's content for 30 days. It is defniitely worth checking out.

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• What IDE to use for Python

  - by husayt

  As a Python newbie, it is interesting to know what IDE's ("GUIs/editors") others use for Python coding. If you can just give the name (e.g. Textpad, Eclipse ..) that will be enough. If it is already mentioned, you can just vote for it. But if you can also give some more comparative information, that will be much appreciated. Thanks. Update: Results so far PyDev with Eclipse (CP, F, AC, PD, EM, SI, MLS, UML, SC, UT, LN, CF, BM) Komodo (CP, C/F, MLS, PD, AC, SC, SI, BM, LN, CF, CT) Emacs (CP, F, AC, MLS, PD, EM, SC, SI, BM, LN, CF, CT, UT, UML) Vim (CP, F, AC, MLS, SI, BM, LN, CF ) TextMate (Mac, CT, CF, MLS, SI, BM, LN) Gedit (Linux, F, AC, MLS, BM, LN, CT [sort of]) Idle (CP, F, AC) PIDA (Linux, CP, F, AC, MLS, SI, BM, LN, CF)(VIM Based) NotePad++ (Windows) BlueFish (Linux) JEdit (CP, F, BM, LN, CF, MLS) E-Texteditor (TextMate Clone for Windows) WingIde (CP, C, AC, MLS (support for C), PD, EM, SC, SI, BM, LN, CF, CT, UT) Eric Ide (CP, F, AC, PD, EM, SI, LN, CF, UT) Pyscripter (Windows, F, AC, PD, EM, SI, LN, CT, UT) ConTEXT (Windows, C) SPE (F, AC, UML) SciTE (CP, F, MLS, EM, BM, LN, CF, CT, SH) Zeus (W, C, BM, LN, CF, SI, SC, CT) NetBeans (CP, F, PD, UML, AC, MLS, SC, SI, BM, LN, CF, CT, UT, RAD) DABO (CP) BlackAdder (C, CP, CF, SI) PythonWin (W, F, AC, PD, SI, BM, CF) Geany (CP, F, very limited AC, MLS, SI, BM, LN, CF) UliPad (CP, F, AC, PD, MLS, SI, LI, CT, UT, BM) Boa Constructor (CP, F, AC, PD, EM, SI, BM, LN, UML, CF, CT) ScriptDev (W, C, AC, MLS, PD, EM, SI, BM, LN, CF, CT) Spider (CP, F, AC) Editra (CP, F, AC, MLS, SC, SI, BM, LN, CF) Pfaide (Windows, C, AC, MLS, SI, BM, LN, CF, CT) KDevelop (CP, F, MLS, SC, SI, BM, LN, CF) Acronyms used: CP - Cross Platfom C - Commercial F - Free AC - Automatic Code-completion MLS - Multi-Language Support PD - Integrated Python Debugging EM - ErrorMarkup SC - Source Control integration SI - Smart Indent BM - Bracket Matching LN - Line Numbering UML - UML editing / viewing CF - Code Folding CT - Code Templates UT - Unit Testing UID - Gui Designer (e.g. QT, Eric, ..) DB - integrated database support RAD - Rapid app development support I don't mention basics like Syntax highlighting as I expect these by default. This is a just dry list reflecting your feedback and comments, I am not advocating any of these tools. I will keep updating this list as you keep posting your answers. PS. Can you help me to add features of the above editors to the list (like autocomplete, debugging, or etc)?

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• Stand-alone Java code formatter/beautifier/pretty printer?

  - by Greg Mattes

  I'm interested in learning about the available choices of high-quality, stand-alone source code formatters for Java. The formatter must be stand-alone, that is, it must support a "batch" mode that is decoupled from any particular development environment. Ideally it should be independent of any particular operating system as well. So, a built-in formatter for the IDE du jour is of little interest here (unless that IDE supports batch mode formatter invocation, perhaps from the command line). A formatter written in closed-source C/C++ that only runs on, say, Windows is not ideal, but is somewhat interesting. To be clear, a "formatter" (or "beautifier") is not the same as a "style checker." A formatter accepts source code as input, applies styling rules, and produces styled source code that is semantically equivalent to the original source code. A style checker also applies styling rules, but it simply reports rule violations without producing modified source code as output. So the picture looks like this: Formatter (produces modified source code that conforms to styling rules) Read Source Code → Apply Styling Rules → Write Styled Source Code Style Checker (does not produce modified source code) Read Source Code → Apply Styling Rules → Write Rule Violations Further Clarifications Solutions must be highly configurable. I want to be able to specify my own style, not simply select from a canned list. Also, I'm not looking for a general purpose pretty-printer written in Java that can pretty-print many things. I want to style Java code. I'm also not necessarily interested in a grand-unified formatter for many languages. I suppose it might be nice for a solution to have support for languages other than Java, but that is not a requirement. Furthermore, tools that only perform code highlighting are right out. I'm also not interested in a web service. I want a tool that I can run locally. Finally, solutions need not be restricted to open source, public domain, shareware, free software, commercial, or anything else. All forms of licensing are acceptable.

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• Cases of companies taking IP rights of your own personal projects developed outside company time

  - by GSS

  Hi, I have heard of cases where a developer working for a company is also making his own personal projects in his own time, using his own equipment yet the company he works for tries to claim ownership for the project. I really find this annoying, and bang out of order. It should also be illegal. I am in this position (work for a company and working on my own systems - from small class libraries used to practise what I learn in my exam revision to a large commercial-scale system). While I don't know if the company will try to take ownership, all I know is they say they do not want a conflict of interest. Fair enough, my system is developed in my own time using my own equipment. They also say that work time should be for work only, which it is. Funny thing that as work is so boring, easy and slow that I have plenty of free time, which I wish I could spend on something productive - said system. The problem is, my company does not take hiring technical talent seriously. This is my first job, I am a junior coder (but my status/position doesn't really reflect what I can do), but I am the only developer. Likewise with the guy who controls Windows Server. As the contract does not say anything about taking ownership, I would assume they would. They would try to milk my success (I've made a good impression so I am sure they would). How can this be allowed? Are there any examples of this happening to any fellow Stacker here? It really makes my blood boil. What I find funny is that my company hardly has the expertise and resources to even be able to successfully run a project of my size. What I do at work is an ASP.NET application consisting of five pages, and even then there are flaws in the project. If I told them that they would also have to take responsibility for flaws in the project, then they would think twice! It's exactly because of this I save the best code for myself and at work I write rubbish code full of code smells. The company don't really care about error handling, as long as the business functionality works (ie a scheduled email sends, but there is no error handling). They'd think twice when they see the embarassment and business cost of a YSOD...

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• How to actually use Swing Application Framework?

  - by Joonas Pulakka

  Hello, I'd like to learn how to effectively use Swing Application Framework. Most of the the examples I've found are blog entries that just explain how to great it is to extend SingleFrameApplication and override its startup method, but that's about it. Sun's article is almost two years old, as is the project's own introduction, and there has apparently been some evolution since then. Are there any recent and thorough tutorials/HOWTOs available anywhere? There is JavaDoc of course, but it's hard to get the big picture from there. Any pointers are appreciated. Update: I realized that there's a mailing list archive at the project's site. While somewhat clumsy (compared to StackOverflow ;) it seems to be quite active. Still it's a pity that there are no real tutorials anywhere. The information is scattered here and there. Update 2: Let me clarify - I'm not having trouble using Swing (the widget toolkit) itself, I'm talking about its Application Framework, which is supposed to ease things like application lifecycle (startup, exit and whatever happens between them), action management etc. - that is, things that most Swing applications will need. It's cool to get such framework to be standard part of Java. The only problem is to learn how it's intended to be used. Update 3: For the interested, there was just some discussion at the project's forum regarding the current state and future of JSR 296. Shortly: the current version 1.03 is considered to be quite usable, but the API is not stable and it will change to the final version in Java 7. The package name will also change so Java 7 will not break current applications made on SAF. Update 4: Karsten Lentzsch stated at the above mentioned forum: "I doubt that it can be included in Java 7; and I'll vote against it.". I would rather not question the sincerity of this great guru, and it's certainly wise not to let anything flawed to slip into the core JDK, but frankly it's a strange situation - he is the author of JGoodies Swing Suite which is partly a commercial competitor of JSR 296, and he is sitting in the committee that will decide whether this JSR will be included to standard Java. It was the same thing with JSR 295 Beans Binding which I wrote about earlier. Given the current state of SAF, I think the best solution is to wrap the current implementation into a "homebrew" framework, which can then accommodate possible changes to the existing API.

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• Reliable and fast way to convert a zillion ODT files in PDF?

  - by Marco Mariani

  I need to pre-produce a million or two PDF files from a simple template (a few pages and tables) with embedded fonts. Usually, I would stay low level in a case like this, and compose everything with a library like ReportLab, but I joined late in the project. Currently, I have a template.odt and use markers in the content.xml files to fill with data from a DB. I can smoothly create the ODT files, they always look rigth. For the ODT to PDF conversion, I'm using openoffice in server mode (and PyODConverter w/ named pipe), but it's not very reliable: in a batch of documents, there is eventually a point after which all the processed files are converted into garbage (wrong fonts and letters sprawled all over the page). Problem is not predictably reproducible (does not depend on the data), happens in OOo 2.3 and 3.2, in Ubuntu, XP, Server 2003 and Windows 7. My Heisenbug detector is ticking. I tried to reduce the size of batches and restarting OOo after each one; still, a small percentage of the documents are messed up. Of course I'll write about this on the Ooo mailing lists, but in the meanwhile, I have a delivery and lost too much time already. Where do I go? Completely avoid the ODT format and go for another template system. Suggestions? Anything that takes a few seconds to run is way too slow. OOo takes around a second and it sums to 15 days of processing time. I had to write a program for clustering the jobs over several clients. Keep the format but go for another tool/program for the conversion. Which one? There are many apps in the shareware or commercial repositories for windows, but trying each one is a daunting task. Some are too slow, some cannot be run in batch without buying it first, some cannot work from command line, etc. Open source tools tend not to reinvent the wheel and often depend on openoffice. Converting to an intermediate .DOC format could help to avoid the OOo bug, but it would double the processing time and complicate a task that is already too hairy. Try to produce the PDFs twice and compare them, discarding the whole batch if there's something wrong. Although the documents look equal, I know of no way to compare the binary content. Restart OOo after processing each document. it would take a lot more time to produce them it would lower the percentage of the wrong files, and make it very hard to identify them. Go for ReportLab and recreate the pages programmatically. This is the approach I'm going to try in a few minutes. Learn to properly format bulleted lists Thanks a lot.

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• What facets have I missed for creating a 3 person guerilla dev team?

  - by Penguinix

  Sorry for the Windows developers out there, this solution is for Macs only. This set of applications accounts for: Usability Testing, Screen Capture (Video and Still), Version Control, Task Lists, Bug Tracking, a Developer IDE, a Web Server, A Blog, Shared Doc Editing on the Web, Team and individual Chat, Email, Databases and Continuous Integration. This does assume your team members provide their own machines, and one person has a spare old computer to be the Source Repository and Web Server. All for under $200 bucks. Usability Silverback Licenses = 3 x $49.95 "Spontaneous, unobtrusive usability testing software for designers and developers." Source Control Server and Clients (multiple options) Subversion = Free Subversion is an open source version control system. Versions (Currently in Beta) = Free Versions provides a pleasant work with Subversion on your Mac. Diffly = Free "Diffly is a tool for exploring Subversion working copies. It shows all files with changes and, clicking on a file, shows a highlighted view of the changes for that file. When you are ready to commit Diffly makes it easy to select the files you want to check-in and assemble a useful commit message." Bug/Feature/Defect Tracking (multiple options) Bugzilla = Free Bugzilla is a "Defect Tracking System" or "Bug-Tracking System". Defect Tracking Systems allow individual or groups of developers to keep track of outstanding bugs in their product effectively. Most commercial defect-tracking software vendors charge enormous licensing fees. Trac = Free Trac is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects. Database Server & Clients MySQL = Free CocoaMySQL = Free Web Server Apache = Free Development and Build Tools XCode = Free CruiseControl = Free CruiseControl is a framework for a continuous build process. It includes, but is not limited to, plugins for email notification, Ant, and various source control tools. A web interface is provided to view the details of the current and previous builds. Collaboration Tools Writeboard = Free Ta-da List = Free Campfire Chat for 4 users = Free WordPress = Free "WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time." Gmail = Free "Gmail is a new kind of webmail, built on the idea that email can be more intuitive, efficient, and useful." Screen Capture (Video / Still) Jing = Free "The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere." Lots of great responses: TeamCity [Yo|||] Skype [Eric DeLabar] FogBugz [chakrit] IChatAV and Screen Sharing (built-in to OS) [amrox] Google Docs [amrox]

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• Do you feel underappreciated or resent the geek/nerd stigma?

  - by dotnetdev

  At work we have a piece of A4 paper with the number of everyone in the office. The structure of this document is laid out in rectangles, by department. I work for the department that does all the technical stuff. That includes support—bear in mind that the support staff isn't educated in IT but just has experience in PC maintenance and providing support to a system we resell but don't have source code access to, project manager, team leader, a network administrator, a product manager, and me, a programmer. Anyway, on this paper, we are labelled as nerds and geeks. I did take a little offence to this, as much as it is light hearted (but annoying and old) humour. I have a vivid image that a geek is someone who doesn't go out but codes all day. I code all day at home and at work (when I have something to code...), but I keep balance by going out. I don't know why it is only people who work with computers that get such a stigma. No other profession really gets the same stigma—skilled, technical, or whatever. An account manager (and this is hardly a skilled job) says, "Perhaps [MY NAME HERE] could write some geeky code tomorrow to add this functionality to the website." It is funny how I get such an unfair stigma but I am so pivotal. In fact, if it wasn't for me, the company would have nothing to sell so the account managers would be redundant! I make systems, they get sold, and this is what pays the wages. It's funny how the account managers get a commission for how many systems they sell, or manage to make clients resubscribe to. Yet I built the thing in the first place! On top of that, my brother says all I do is type stuff on a keyboard all day. Surely if I did, I'd be typing at my normal typing speed of 100wpm+ as if I am writing a blog entry. Instead, I plan as I code along on the fly if commercial pressures and time prohibit proper planning. I never type as if I'm writing normal English. There is more to our jobs than just typing code. And my brother is a pipe fitter with no formal qualifications in his name. I could easily, and perhaps more justifiably, say he just manipulates a spanner or something. Does you feel underappreciated or that a geek/nerd stigma is undeserved or unfair?

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• html transparent background

  - by amarsh-anand

  I want to create a webpage with transparent background, a table and some text. I have seen posts related to this, but due to my lack of familiarity with css, I somehow cant get my code to work. I just want a transparent background, while this code is making everything transparent. Can someone kindly help. <html> <head><style type="text/css"> div.transbg {background-color:#4a6c9b; opacity:0.6;} </style></head> <div class="transbg"> <body><Center><font color="#FFFFFF"> <b>Toll Charges</b> <table bgcolor="#000000" cellspacing=3> <tr> <td bgcolor="#009900"><font color="#FFFFFF" align="left"> &nbsp; &nbsp;Class 2 inc Private&nbsp;</font></td> <td bgcolor="#009900"><font color="#FFFFFF" align="right"> &nbsp;A$ 4.95 &nbsp;</font></td> </tr> <tr> <td bgcolor="#009900"><font color="#FFFFFF" align="left"> &nbsp; &nbsp;Class 2 inc Commercial&nbsp;</font></td> <td bgcolor="#009900"><font color="#FFFFFF" align="right"> &nbsp;A$ 13.95 &nbsp;</font></td> </tr> </table> <br> Toll has to be paid within 48 hrs of passage, else an additional A$ 13.95 of administration charges would be added </font></Center> </div> </body> </html>

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• Can I call make runtime decided method calls in Java?

  - by Catalin Marin

  I know there is an invoke function that does the stuff, I am overall interested in the "correctness" of using such a behavior. My issue is this: I have a Service Object witch contains methods which I consider services. What I want to do is alter the behavior of those services without later intrusion. For example: class MyService { public ServiceResponse ServeMeDonuts() { do stuff... return new ServiceResponse(); } after 2 months I find out that I need to offer the same service to a new client app and I also need to do certain extra stuff like setting a flag, or make or updating certain data, or encode the response differently. What I can do is pop it up and throw down some IFs. In my opinion this is not good as it means interaction with tested code and may result in un wanted behaviour for the previous service clients. So I come and add something to my registry telling the system that the "NewClient" has a different behavior. So I'll do something like this: public interface Behavior { public void preExecute(); public void postExecute(); } public class BehaviorOfMyService implements Behavior{ String method; String clientType; public void BehaviorOfMyService(String method,String clientType) { this.method = method; this.clientType = clientType; } public void preExecute() { Method preCall = this.getClass().getMethod("pre" + this.method + this.clientType); if(preCall != null) { return preCall.invoke(); } return false; } ...same for postExecute(); public void preServeMeDonutsNewClient() { do the stuff... } } when the system will do something like this if(registrySaysThereIs different behavior set for this ServiceObject) { Class toBeCalled = Class.forName("BehaviorOf" + usedServiceObjectName); Object instance = toBeCalled.getConstructor().newInstance(method,client); instance.preExecute(); ....call the service... instance.postExecute(); .... } I am not particularly interested in correctness of code as in correctness of thinking and approach. Actually I have to do this in PHP, witch I see as a kind of Pop music of programming which I have to "sing" for commercial reasons, even though I play POP I really want to sing by the book, so putting aside my more or less inspired analogy I really want to know your opinion on this matter for it's practical necessity and technical approach. Thanks

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• Accessing a web service and a HTTP interface using certificate authentication

  - by ADC

  It is the first time I have to use certificate authentication. A commercial partner expose two services, a XML Web Service and a HTTP service. I have to access both of them with .NET clients. What I have tried 0. Setting up the environment I have installed the SSLCACertificates (on root and two intermediate) and the client certificate in my local machine (win 7 professional) using certmgr.exe. 1. For the web service I have the client certificate (der). The service will be consumed via a .NET proxy. Here's the code: OrderWSService proxy = new OrderWSService(); string CertFile = "ClientCert_DER.cer"; proxy.ClientCertificates.Add(new System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate(CertFile)); orderTrackingTO ot = new orderTrackingTO() { order_id = "80", tracking_id = "82", status = stateOrderType.IN_PREPARATION }; resultResponseTO res = proxy.insertOrderTracking(ot); Exception reported at last statement: The request failed with an empty response. 2. For the HTTP interface it is a HTTPS interface I have to call through POST method. The HTTPS request will be send from a .NET client using HTTPWebRequest. Here's the code: string PostData = "MyPostData"; //setting the request HttpWebRequest req; req = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(url); req.UserAgent = "MyUserAgent"; req.Method = "POST"; req.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"; req.ClientCertificates.Add(new System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate(CertFile, "MyPassword")); //setting the request content byte[] byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(PostData); Stream dataStream = req.GetRequestStream(); dataStream.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length); dataStream.Close(); //obtaining the response WebResponse res = req.GetResponse(); r = new StreamReader(res.GetResponseStream()); Exception reported at last statement: The request was aborted: Could not create SSL/TLS secure channel. 3. Last try: using the browser In Chrome, after installing the certificates, if I try to access both urls I get a 107 error: Error 107 (net::ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR) I am stuck.

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• Akka framework support for finding duplicate messages

  - by scala_is_awesome

  I'm trying to build a high-performance distributed system with Akka and Scala. If a message requesting an expensive (and side-effect-free) computation arrives, and the exact same computation has already been requested before, I want to avoid computing the result again. If the computation requested previously has already completed and the result is available, I can cache it and re-use it. However, the time window in which duplicate computation can be requested may be arbitrarily small. e.g. I could get a thousand or a million messages requesting the same expensive computation at the same instant for all practical purposes. There is a commercial product called Gigaspaces that supposedly handles this situation. However there seems to be no framework support for dealing with duplicate work requests in Akka at the moment. Given that the Akka framework already has access to all the messages being routed through the framework, it seems that a framework solution could make a lot of sense here. Here is what I am proposing for the Akka framework to do: 1. Create a trait to indicate a type of messages (say, "ExpensiveComputation" or something similar) that are to be subject to the following caching approach. 2. Smartly (hashing etc.) identify identical messages received by (the same or different) actors within a user-configurable time window. Other options: select a maximum buffer size of memory to be used for this purpose, subject to (say LRU) replacement etc. Akka can also choose to cache only the results of messages that were expensive to process; the messages that took very little time to process can be re-processed again if needed; no need to waste precious buffer space caching them and their results. 3. When identical messages (received within that time window, possibly "at the same time instant") are identified, avoid unnecessary duplicate computations. The framework would do this automatically, and essentially, the duplicate messages would never get received by a new actor for processing; they would silently vanish and the result from processing it once (whether that computation was already done in the past, or ongoing right then) would get sent to all appropriate recipients (immediately if already available, and upon completion of the computation if not). Note that messages should be considered identical even if the "reply" fields are different, as long as the semantics/computations they represent are identical in every other respect. Also note that the computation should be purely functional, i.e. free from side-effects, for the caching optimization suggested to work and not change the program semantics at all. If what I am suggesting is not compatible with the Akka way of doing things, and/or if you see some strong reasons why this is a very bad idea, please let me know. Thanks, Is Awesome, Scala

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• Technical non-terminating condition in a loop

  - by Snarfblam

  Most of us know that a loop should not have a non-terminating condition. For example, this C# loop has a non-terminating condition: any even value of i. This is an obvious logic error. void CountByTwosStartingAt(byte i) { // If i is even, it never exceeds 254 for(; i < 255; i += 2) { Console.WriteLine(i); } } Sometimes there are edge cases that are extremely unlikeley, but technically constitute non-exiting conditions (stack overflows and out-of-memory errors aside). Suppose you have a function that counts the number of sequential zeros in a stream: int CountZeros(Stream s) { int total = 0; while(s.ReadByte() == 0) total++; return total; } Now, suppose you feed it this thing: class InfiniteEmptyStream:Stream { // ... Other members ... public override int Read(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count) { Array.Clear(buffer, offset, count); // Output zeros return count; // Never returns -1 (end of stream) } } Or more realistically, maybe a stream that returns data from external hardware, which in certain cases might return lots of zeros (such as a game controller sitting on your desk). Either way we have an infinite loop. This particular non-terminating condition stands out, but sometimes they don't. A completely real-world example as in an app I'm writing. An endless stream of zeros will be deserialized into infinite "empty" objects (until the collection class or GC throws an exception because I've exceeded two billion items). But this would be a completely unexpected circumstance (considering my data source). How important is it to have absolutely no non-terminating conditions? How much does this affect "robustness?" Does it matter if they are only "theoretically" non-terminating (is it okay if an exception represents an implicit terminating condition)? Does it matter whether the app is commercial? If it is publicly distributed? Does it matter if the problematic code is in no way accessible through a public interface/API? Edit: One of the primary concerns I have is unforseen logic errors that can create the non-terminating condition. If, as a rule, you ensure there are no non-terminating conditions, you can identify or handle these logic errors more gracefully, but is it worth it? And when? This is a concern orthogonal to trust.

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• South Florida Code Camp 2010 &ndash; VI &ndash; 2010-02-27

  - by Dave Noderer

  Catching up after our sixth code camp here in the Ft Lauderdale, FL area. Website at: http://www.fladotnet.com/codecamp. For the 5th time, DeVry University hosted the event which makes everything else really easy! Statistics from 2010 South Florida Code Camp: 848 registered (we use Microsoft Group Events) ~ 600 attended (516 took name badges) 64 speakers (including speaker idol) 72 sessions 12 parallel tracks Food 400 waters 600 sodas 900 cups of coffee (it was cold!) 200 pounds of ice 200 pizza's 10 large salad trays 900 mouse pads Photos on facebook Dave Noderer: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/album.php?aid=190812&id=693530361 Joe Healy: http://www.facebook.com/devfish?ref=mf#!/album.php?aid=202787&id=720054950 Will Strohl:http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/album.php?aid=2045553&id=1046966128&ref=mf Veronica Gonzalez: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/album.php?aid=150954&id=672439484 Florida Speaker Idol One of the sessions at code camp was the South Florida Regional speaker idol competition. After user group level competitions there are five competitors. I acted as MC and score keeper while Ed Hill, Bob O’Connell, John Dunagan and Shervin Shakibi were judges. This statewide competition is being run by Roy Lawsen in Lakeland and the winner, Jeff Truman from Naples will move on to the state finals to be held at the Orlando Code Camp on 3/27/2010: http://www.orlandocodecamp.com/. Each speaker has 10 minutes. The participants were: Alex Koval Jeff Truman Jared Nielsen Chris Catto Venkat Narayanasamy They all did a great job and I’m working with each to make sure they don’t stop there and start speaking at meetings. Thanks to everyone involved! Volunteers As always events like this don’t happen without a lot of help! The key people were: Ed Hill, Bob O’Connell – DeVry For the months leading up to the event, Ed collects all of the swag, books, etc and stores them. He holds meeting with various DeVry departments to coordinate the day, he works with the students in the days  before code camp to stuff bags, print signs, arrange tables and visit BJ’s for our supplies (I go and pay but have a small car!). And of course the day of the event he is there at 5:30 am!! We took two SUV’s to BJ’s, i was really worried that the 36 cases of water were going to break his rear axle! He also helps with the students and works very hard before and after the event. Rainer Haberman – Speakers and Volunteer of the Year Rainer has helped over the past couple of years but this time he took full control of arranging the tracks. I did some preliminary work solicitation speakers but he took over all communications after that. We have tried various organizations around speakers, chair per track, central team but having someone paying attention to the details is definitely the way to go! This was the first year I did not have to jump in at the last minute and re-arrange everything. There were lots of kudo’s from the speakers too saying they felt it was more organized than they have experienced in the past from any code camp. Thanks Rainer! Ray Alamonte – Book Swap We saw the idea of a book swap from the Alabama Code Camp and thought we would give it a try. Ray jumped in and took control. The idea was to get people to bring their old technical books to swap or for others to buy. You got a ticket for each book you brought that you could then turn in to buy another book. If you did not have a ticket you could buy a book for $1. Net proceeds were $153 which I rounded up and donated to the Red Cross. There is plenty going on in Haiti and Chile! I don’t think we really got a count of how many books came in. I many cases the books barely hit the table before being picked up again. At the end we were left with a dozen books which we donated to the DeVry library. A great success we will definitely do again! Jace Weiss / Ratchelen Hut – Coffee and Snacks Wow, this was an eye opener. In past years a few of us would struggle to give some attention to coffee, snacks, etc. But it was always tenuous and always ended up running out of coffee. In the past we have tried buying Dunkin Donuts coffee, renting urns, borrowing urns, etc. This year I actually purchased 2 – 100 cup Westbend commercial brewers plus a couple of small urns (30 and 60 cup we used for decaf). We got them both started early (although i forgot to push the on button on one!) and primed it with 10 boxes of Joe from Dunkin. then Jace and Rachelen took over.. once a batch was brewed they would refill the boxes, keep the area clean and at one point were filling cups. We never ran out of coffee and served a few hundred more than last  year. We did look but next year I’ll get a large insulated (like gatorade) dispensing container. It all went very smoothly and having help focused on that one area was a big win. Thanks Jace and Rachelen! Ken & Shirley Golding / Roberta Barbosa – Registration Ken & Shirley showed up and took over registration. This year we printed small name tags for everyone registered which was great because it is much easier to remember someone’s name when they are labeled! In any case it went the smoothest it has ever gone. All three were actively pulling people through the registration, answering questions, directing them to bags and information very quickly. I did not see that there was too big a line at any time. Thanks!! Scott Katarincic / Vishal Shukla – Website For the 3rd?? year in a row, Scott was in charge of the website starting in August or September when I start on code camp. He handles all the requests, makes changes to the site and admin. I think two years ago he wrote all the backend administration and tunes it and the website a bit but things are pretty stable. The only thing I do is put up the sponsors. It is a big pressure off of me!! Thanks Scott! Vishal jumped into the web end this year and created a new Silverlight agenda page to replace the old ajax page. We will continue to enhance this but it is definitely a good step forward! Thanks! Alex Funkhouser – T-shirts/Mouse pads/tables/sponsors Alex helps in many areas. He helps me bring in sponsors and handles all the logistics for t-shirts, sponsor tables and this year the mouse pads. He is also a key person to help promote the event as well not to mention the after after party which I did not attend and don’t want to know much about! Students There were a number of student volunteers but don’t have all of their names. But thanks to them, they stuffed bags, patrolled pizza and helped with moving things around. Sponsors We had a bunch of great sponsors which allowed us to feed people and give a way a lot of great swag. Our major sponsors of DeVry, Microsoft (both DPE and UGSS), Infragistics, Telerik, SQL Share (End to End, SQL Saturdays), and Interclick are very much appreciated. The other sponsors Applied Innovations (also supply code camp hosting), Ultimate Software (a great local SW company), Linxter (reliable cloud messaging we are lucky to have here!), Mediascend (a media startup), SoftwareFX (another local SW company we are happy to have back participating in CC), CozyRoc (if you do SSIS, check them out), Arrow Design (local DNN and Silverlight experts),Boxes and Arrows (a local SW consulting company) and Robert Half. One thing we did this year besides a t-shirt was a mouse pad. I like it because it will be around for a long time on many desks. After much investigation and years of using mouse pad’s I’ve determined that the 1/8” fabric top is the best and that is what we got!   So now I get a break for a few months before starting again!

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• SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Architecting Data Warehouse – Niraj Bhatt

  - by pinaldave

  Niraj Bhatt works as an Enterprise Architect for a Fortune 500 company and has an innate passion for building / studying software systems. He is a top rated speaker at various technical forums including Tech·Ed, MCT Summit, Developer Summit, and Virtual Tech Days, among others. Having run a successful startup for four years Niraj enjoys working on – IT innovations that can impact an enterprise bottom line, streamlining IT budgets through IT consolidation, architecture and integration of systems, performance tuning, and review of enterprise applications. He has received Microsoft MVP award for ASP.NET, Connected Systems and most recently on Windows Azure. When he is away from his laptop, you will find him taking deep dives in automobiles, pottery, rafting, photography, cooking and financial statements though not necessarily in that order. He is also a manager/speaker at BDOTNET, Asia’s largest .NET user group. Here is the guest post by Niraj Bhatt. As data in your applications grows it’s the database that usually becomes a bottleneck. It’s hard to scale a relational DB and the preferred approach for large scale applications is to create separate databases for writes and reads. These databases are referred as transactional database and reporting database. Though there are tools / techniques which can allow you to create snapshot of your transactional database for reporting purpose, sometimes they don’t quite fit the reporting requirements of an enterprise. These requirements typically are data analytics, effective schema (for an Information worker to self-service herself), historical data, better performance (flat data, no joins) etc. This is where a need for data warehouse or an OLAP system arises. A Key point to remember is a data warehouse is mostly a relational database. It’s built on top of same concepts like Tables, Rows, Columns, Primary keys, Foreign Keys, etc. Before we talk about how data warehouses are typically structured let’s understand key components that can create a data flow between OLTP systems and OLAP systems. There are 3 major areas to it: a) OLTP system should be capable of tracking its changes as all these changes should go back to data warehouse for historical recording. For e.g. if an OLTP transaction moves a customer from silver to gold category, OLTP system needs to ensure that this change is tracked and send to data warehouse for reporting purpose. A report in context could be how many customers divided by geographies moved from sliver to gold category. In data warehouse terminology this process is called Change Data Capture. There are quite a few systems that leverage database triggers to move these changes to corresponding tracking tables. There are also out of box features provided by some databases e.g. SQL Server 2008 offers Change Data Capture and Change Tracking for addressing such requirements. b) After we make the OLTP system capable of tracking its changes we need to provision a batch process that can run periodically and takes these changes from OLTP system and dump them into data warehouse. There are many tools out there that can help you fill this gap – SQL Server Integration Services happens to be one of them. c) So we have an OLTP system that knows how to track its changes, we have jobs that run periodically to move these changes to warehouse. The question though remains is how warehouse will record these changes? This structural change in data warehouse arena is often covered under something called Slowly Changing Dimension (SCD). While we will talk about dimensions in a while, SCD can be applied to pure relational tables too. SCD enables a database structure to capture historical data. This would create multiple records for a given entity in relational database and data warehouses prefer having their own primary key, often known as surrogate key. As I mentioned a data warehouse is just a relational database but industry often attributes a specific schema style to data warehouses. These styles are Star Schema or Snowflake Schema. The motivation behind these styles is to create a flat database structure (as opposed to normalized one), which is easy to understand / use, easy to query and easy to slice / dice. Star schema is a database structure made up of dimensions and facts. Facts are generally the numbers (sales, quantity, etc.) that you want to slice and dice. Fact tables have these numbers and have references (foreign keys) to set of tables that provide context around those facts. E.g. if you have recorded 10,000 USD as sales that number would go in a sales fact table and could have foreign keys attached to it that refers to the sales agent responsible for sale and to time table which contains the dates between which that sale was made. These agent and time tables are called dimensions which provide context to the numbers stored in fact tables. This schema structure of fact being at center surrounded by dimensions is called Star schema. A similar structure with difference of dimension tables being normalized is called a Snowflake schema. This relational structure of facts and dimensions serves as an input for another analysis structure called Cube. Though physically Cube is a special structure supported by commercial databases like SQL Server Analysis Services, logically it’s a multidimensional structure where dimensions define the sides of cube and facts define the content. Facts are often called as Measures inside a cube. Dimensions often tend to form a hierarchy. E.g. Product may be broken into categories and categories in turn to individual items. Category and Items are often referred as Levels and their constituents as Members with their overall structure called as Hierarchy. Measures are rolled up as per dimensional hierarchy. These rolled up measures are called Aggregates. Now this may seem like an overwhelming vocabulary to deal with but don’t worry it will sink in as you start working with Cubes and others. Let’s see few other terms that we would run into while talking about data warehouses. ODS or an Operational Data Store is a frequently misused term. There would be few users in your organization that want to report on most current data and can’t afford to miss a single transaction for their report. Then there is another set of users that typically don’t care how current the data is. Mostly senior level executives who are interesting in trending, mining, forecasting, strategizing, etc. don’t care for that one specific transaction. This is where an ODS can come in handy. ODS can use the same star schema and the OLAP cubes we saw earlier. The only difference is that the data inside an ODS would be short lived, i.e. for few months and ODS would sync with OLTP system every few minutes. Data warehouse can periodically sync with ODS either daily or weekly depending on business drivers. Data marts are another frequently talked about topic in data warehousing. They are subject-specific data warehouse. Data warehouses that try to span over an enterprise are normally too big to scope, build, manage, track, etc. Hence they are often scaled down to something called Data mart that supports a specific segment of business like sales, marketing, or support. Data marts too, are often designed using star schema model discussed earlier. Industry is divided when it comes to use of data marts. Some experts prefer having data marts along with a central data warehouse. Data warehouse here acts as information staging and distribution hub with spokes being data marts connected via data feeds serving summarized data. Others eliminate the need for a centralized data warehouse citing that most users want to report on detailed data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Best Practices, Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Mocking the Unmockable: Using Microsoft Moles with Gallio

  - by Thomas Weller

  Usual opensource mocking frameworks (like e.g. Moq or Rhino.Mocks) can mock only interfaces and virtual methods. In contrary to that, Microsoft’s Moles framework can ‘mock’ virtually anything, in that it uses runtime instrumentation to inject callbacks in the method MSIL bodies of the moled methods. Therefore, it is possible to detour any .NET method, including non-virtual/static methods in sealed types. This can be extremely helpful when dealing e.g. with code that calls into the .NET framework, some third-party or legacy stuff etc… Some useful collected resources (links to website, documentation material and some videos) can be found in my toolbox on Delicious under this link: http://delicious.com/thomasweller/toolbox+moles A Gallio extension for Moles Originally, Moles is a part of Microsoft’s Pex framework and thus integrates best with Visual Studio Unit Tests (MSTest). However, the Moles sample download contains some additional assemblies to also support other unit test frameworks. They provide a Moled attribute to ease the usage of mole types with the respective framework (there are extensions for NUnit, xUnit.net and MbUnit v2 included with the samples). As there is no such extension for the Gallio platform, I did the few required lines myself – the resulting Gallio.Moles.dll is included with the sample download. With this little assembly in place, it is possible to use Moles with Gallio like that: [Test, Moled] public void SomeTest() {     ... What you can do with it Moles can be very helpful, if you need to ‘mock’ something other than a virtual or interface-implementing method. This might be the case when dealing with some third-party component, legacy code, or if you want to ‘mock’ the .NET framework itself. Generally, you need to announce each moled type that you want to use in a test with the MoledType attribute on assembly level. For example: [assembly: MoledType(typeof(System.IO.File))] Below are some typical use cases for Moles. For a more detailed overview (incl. naming conventions and an instruction on how to create the required moles assemblies), please refer to the reference material above.  Detouring the .NET framework Imagine that you want to test a method similar to the one below, which internally calls some framework method:   public void ReadFileContent(string fileName) {     this.FileContent = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(fileName); } Using a mole, you would replace the call to the File.ReadAllText(string) method with a runtime delegate like so: [Test, Moled] [Description("This 'mocks' the System.IO.File class with a custom delegate.")] public void ReadFileContentWithMoles() {     // arrange ('mock' the FileSystem with a delegate)     System.IO.Moles.MFile.ReadAllTextString = (fname => fname == FileName ? FileContent : "WrongFileName");       // act     var testTarget = new TestTarget.TestTarget();     testTarget.ReadFileContent(FileName);       // assert     Assert.AreEqual(FileContent, testTarget.FileContent); } Detouring static methods and/or classes A static method like the below… public static string StaticMethod(int x, int y) {     return string.Format("{0}{1}", x, y); } … can be ‘mocked’ with the following: [Test, Moled] public void StaticMethodWithMoles() {     MStaticClass.StaticMethodInt32Int32 = ((x, y) => "uups");       var result = StaticClass.StaticMethod(1, 2);       Assert.AreEqual("uups", result); } Detouring constructors You can do this delegate thing even with a class’ constructor. The syntax for this is not all  too intuitive, because you have to setup the internal state of the mole, but generally it works like a charm. For example, to replace this c’tor… public class ClassWithCtor {     public int Value { get; private set; }       public ClassWithCtor(int someValue)     {         this.Value = someValue;     } } … you would do the following: [Test, Moled] public void ConstructorTestWithMoles() {     MClassWithCtor.ConstructorInt32 =            ((@class, @value) => new MClassWithCtor(@class) {ValueGet = () => 99});       var classWithCtor = new ClassWithCtor(3);       Assert.AreEqual(99, classWithCtor.Value); } Detouring abstract base classes You can also use this approach to ‘mock’ abstract base classes of a class that you call in your test. Assumed that you have something like that: public abstract class AbstractBaseClass {     public virtual string SaySomething()     {         return "Hello from base.";     } }      public class ChildClass : AbstractBaseClass {     public override string SaySomething()     {         return string.Format(             "Hello from child. Base says: '{0}'",             base.SaySomething());     } } Then you would set up the child’s underlying base class like this: [Test, Moled] public void AbstractBaseClassTestWithMoles() {     ChildClass child = new ChildClass();     new MAbstractBaseClass(child)         {                 SaySomething = () => "Leave me alone!"         }         .InstanceBehavior = MoleBehaviors.Fallthrough;       var hello = child.SaySomething();       Assert.AreEqual("Hello from child. Base says: 'Leave me alone!'", hello); } Setting the moles behavior to a value of  MoleBehaviors.Fallthrough causes the ‘original’ method to be called if a respective delegate is not provided explicitly – here it causes the ChildClass’ override of the SaySomething() method to be called. There are some more possible scenarios, where the Moles framework could be of much help (e.g. it’s also possible to detour interface implementations like IEnumerable<T> and such…). One other possibility that comes to my mind (because I’m currently dealing with that), is to replace calls from repository classes to the ADO.NET Entity Framework O/R mapper with delegates to isolate the repository classes from the underlying database, which otherwise would not be possible… Usage Since Moles relies on runtime instrumentation, mole types must be run under the Pex profiler. This only works from inside Visual Studio if you write your tests with MSTest (Visual Studio Unit Test). While other unit test frameworks generally can be used with Moles, they require the respective tests to be run via command line, executed through the moles.runner.exe tool. A typical test execution would be similar to this: moles.runner.exe <mytests.dll> /runner:<myframework.console.exe> /args:/<myargs> So, the moled test can be run through tools like NCover or a scripting tool like MSBuild (which makes them easy to run in a Continuous Integration environment), but they are somewhat unhandy to run in the usual TDD workflow (which I described in some detail here). To make this a bit more fluent, I wrote a ReSharper live template to generate the respective command line for the test (it is also included in the sample download – moled_cmd.xml). - This is just a quick-and-dirty ‘solution’. Maybe it makes sense to write an extra Gallio adapter plugin (similar to the many others that are already provided) and include it with the Gallio download package, if  there’s sufficient demand for it. As of now, the only way to run tests with the Moles framework from within Visual Studio is by using them with MSTest. From the command line, anything with a managed console runner can be used (provided that the appropriate extension is in place)… A typical Gallio/Moles command line (as generated by the mentioned R#-template) looks like that: "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Moles\bin\moles.runner.exe" /runner:"%ProgramFiles%\Gallio\bin\Gallio.Echo.exe" "Gallio.Moles.Demo.dll" /args:/r:IsolatedAppDomain /args:/filter:"ExactType:TestFixture and Member:ReadFileContentWithMoles" -- Note: When using the command line with Echo (Gallio’s console runner), be sure to always include the IsolatedAppDomain option, otherwise the tests won’t use the instrumentation callbacks! -- License issues As I already said, the free mocking frameworks can mock only interfaces and virtual methods. if you want to mock other things, you need the Typemock Isolator tool for that, which comes with license costs (Although these ‘costs’ are ridiculously low compared to the value that such a tool can bring to a software project, spending money often is a considerable gateway hurdle in real life...).  The Moles framework also is not totally free, but comes with the same license conditions as the (closely related) Pex framework: It is free for academic/non-commercial use only, to use it in a ‘real’ software project requires an MSDN Subscription (from VS2010pro on). The demo solution The sample solution (VS 2008) can be downloaded from here. It contains the Gallio.Moles.dll which provides the here described Moled attribute, the above mentioned R#-template (moled_cmd.xml) and a test fixture containing the above described use case scenarios. To run it, you need the Gallio framework (download) and Microsoft Moles (download) being installed in the default locations. Happy testing…

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