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• 202 blog articles

  - by mprove

  All my blog articles under blogs.oracle.com since August 2005: 202 blog articles Apr 2012 blogs.oracle.com design patch Mar 2012 Interaction 12 - Critique Mar 2012 Typing. Clicking. Dancing. Feb 2012 Desktop Mobility in Hospitals with Oracle VDI /video Feb 2012 Interaction 12 in Dublin - Highlights of Day 3 Feb 2012 Interaction 12 in Dublin - Highlights of Day 2 Feb 2012 Interaction 12 in Dublin - Highlights of Day 1 Feb 2012 Shit Interaction Designers Say Feb 2012 Tips'n'Tricks for WebCenter #3: How to display custom page titles in Spaces Jan 2012 Tips'n'Tricks for WebCenter #2: How to create an Admin menu in Spaces and save a lot of time Jan 2012 Tips'n'Tricks for WebCenter #1: How to apply custom resources in Spaces Jan 2012 Merry XMas and a Happy 2012! Dec 2011 One Year Oracle SocialChat - The Movie Nov 2011 Frank Ludolph's Last Working Day Nov 2011 Hans Rosling at TED Oct 2011 200 Countries x 200 Years Oct 2011 Blog Aggregation for Desktop Virtualization Oct 2011 Oracle VDI at OOW 2011 Sep 2011 Design for Conversations & Conversations for Design Sep 2011 All Oracle UX Blogs Aug 2011 Farewell Loriot Aug 2011 Oracle VDI 3.3 Overview Aug 2011 Sutherland's Closing Remarks at HyperKult Aug 2011 Surface and Subface Aug 2011 Back to Childhood in UI Design Jul 2011 The Art of Engineering and The Engineering of Art Jul 2011 Oracle VDI Seminar - June-30 Jun 2011 SGD White Paper May 2011 TEDxHamburg Live Feed May 2011 Oracle VDI in 3 Minutes May 2011 Space Ship Earth 2011 May 2011 blog moving times Apr 2011 Frozen tag cloud Apr 2011 Oracle: Hardware Software Complete in 1953 Apr 2011 Interaction Design with Wireframes Apr 2011 A guide to closing down a project Feb 2011 Oracle VDI 3.2.2 Jan 2011 free VDI charts Jan 2011 Sun Founders Panel 2006 Dec 2010 Sutherland on Leadership Dec 2010 SocialChat: Efficiency of E20 Dec 2010 ALWAYS ON Desktop Virtualization Nov 2010 12,000 Desktops at JavaOne Nov 2010 SocialChat on Sharing Best Practices Oct 2010 Globe of Visitors Oct 2010 SocialChat about the Next Big Thing Oct 2010 Oracle VDI UX Story - Wireframes Oct 2010 What's a PC anyway? Oct 2010 SocialChat on Getting Things Done Oct 2010 SocialChat on Infoglut Oct 2010 IT Twenty Twenty Oct 2010 Desktop Virtualization Webcasts from OOW Oct 2010 Oracle VDI 3.2 Overview Sep 2010 Blog Usability Top 7 Sep 2010 100 and counting Aug 2010 Oracle'izing the VDI Blogs Aug 2010 SocialChat on Apple Aug 2010 SocialChat on Video Conferencing Aug 2010 Oracle VDI 3.2 - Features and Screenshots Aug 2010 SocialChat: Don't stop making waves Aug 2010 SocialChat: Giving Back to the Community Aug 2010 SocialChat on Learning in Meetings Aug 2010 iPAD's Natural User Interface Jul 2010 Last day for Sun Microsystems GmbH Jun 2010 SirValUse Celebration Snippets Jun 2010 10 years SirValUse - Happy Birthday! Jun 2010 Wim on Virtualization May 2010 New Home for Oracle VDI Apr 2010 Renaissance Slide Sorter Comments Apr 2010 Unboxing Sun Ray 3 Plus Apr 2010 Desktop Virtualisierung mit Sun VDI 3.1 Apr 2010 Blog Relaunch Mar 2010 Social Messaging Slides from CeBIT Mar 2010 Social Messaging Talk at CeBIT Feb 2010 Welcome Oracle Jan 2010 My last presentation at Sun Jan 2010 Ivan Sutherland on Leadership Jan 2010 Learning French with Sun VDI Jan 2010 Learning Danish with Sun Ray Jan 2010 VDI workshop in Nieuwegein Jan 2010 Happy New Year 2010 Jan 2010 On Creating Slides Dec 2009 Best VDI Ever Nov 2009 How to store the Big Bang Nov 2009 Social Enterprise Tools. Beipiel Sun. Nov 2009 Nov-19 Nov 2009 PDF and ODF links on your blog Nov 2009 Q&A on VDI and MySQL Cluster Nov 2009 Zürich next week: Swiss Intranet Summit 09 Nov 2009 Designing for a Sustainable World - World Usabiltiy Day, Nov-12 Nov 2009 How to export a desktop from VDI 3 Nov 2009 Virtualisation Roadshow in the UK Nov 2009 Project Wonderland at EDUCAUSE 09 Nov 2009 VDI Roadshow in Dublin, Nov-26, 2009 Nov 2009 Sun VDI at EDUCAUSE 09 Nov 2009 Sun VDI 3.1 Architecture and New Features Oct 2009 VDI 3.1 is Early-Access Sep 2009 Virtualization for MySQL on VMware Sep 2009 Silpion & 13. Stock Sommerparty Sep 2009 Sun Ray and VMware View 3.1.1 2009-08-31 New Set of Sun Ray Status Icons 2009-08-25 Virtualizing the VDI Core? 2009-08-23 World Usability Day Hamburg 2009 - CfP 2009-07-16 Rising Sun 2009-07-15 featuring twittermeme 2009-06-19 ISC09 Student Party on June-20 /Hamburg 2009-06-18 Before and behind the curtain of JavaOne 2009-06-09 20k desktops at JavaOne 2009-06-01 sweet microblogging 2009-05-25 VDI 3 - Why you need 3 VDI hosts and what you can do about that? 2009-05-21 IA Konferenz 2009 2009-05-20 Sun VDI 3 UX Story - Power of the Web 2009-05-06 Planet of Sun and Oracle User Experience Design 2009-04-22 Sun VDI 3 UX Story - User Research 2009-04-08 Sun VDI 3 UX Story - Concept Workshops 2009-04-06 Localized documentation for Sun Ray Connector for VMware View Manager 1.1 2009-04-03 Sun VDI 3 Press Release 2009-03-25 Sun VDI 3 launches today! 2009-03-25 Sun Ray Connector for VMware View Manager 1.1 Update 2009-03-11 desktop virtualization wiki relaunch 2009-03-06 VDI 3 at CeBIT hall 6, booth E36 2009-03-02 Keyboard layout problems with Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM 2009-02-23 wikis.sun.com tips & tricks 2009-02-23 Sun VDI 3 is in Early Access 2009-02-09 VirtualCenter unable to decrypt passwords 2009-02-02 Sun & VMware Desktop Training 2009-01-30 VDI at next09? 2009-01-16 Sun VDI: How to use virtual machines with multiple network adapters 2009-01-07 Sun Ray and VMware View 2009-01-07 Hamburg World Usability Day 2008 - Webcasts 2009-01-06 Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM slides 2008-12-15 mother of all demos 2008-12-08 Build your own Thumper 2008-12-03 Troubleshooting Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM 2008-12-02 My Roller Tag Cloud 2008-11-28 Sun Ray Connector: SSL connection to VDM 2008-11-25 Setting up SSL and Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM 2008-11-13 Inspiration for Today and Tomorrow 2008-10-23 Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM released 2008-10-14 From Sketchpad to ILoveSketch 2008-10-09 Desktop Virtualization on Xing 2008-10-06 User Experience Forum on Xing 2008-10-06 Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM certified 2008-09-17 Virtual Clouds over Las Vegas 2008-09-14 Bill Verplank sketches metaphors 2008-09-04 End of Early Access - Sun Ray Connector for VMware 2008-08-27 Early Access: Sun Ray Connector for VMware Virtual Desktop Manager 2008-08-12 Sun Virtual Desktop Connector - Insides on Recycling Part 2 2008-07-20 Sun Virtual Desktop Connector - Insides on Recycling Part 3 2008-07-20 Sun Virtual Desktop Connector - Insides on Recycling 2008-07-20 lost in wiki space 2008-07-07 Evolution of the Desktop 2008-06-17 Virtual Desktop Webcast 2008-06-16 Woodstock 2008-06-16 What's a Desktop PC anyway? 2008-06-09 Virtual-T-Box 2008-06-05 Virtualization Glossary 2008-05-06 Five User Experience Principles 2008-04-25 Virtualization News Feed 2008-04-21 Acetylcholinesterase - Second Season 2008-04-18 Acetylcholinesterase - End of Signal 2007-12-31 Produkt-Management ist... 2007-10-22 Usability Verbände, Verteiler und Netzwerke. 2007-10-02 The Meaning is the Message 2007-09-28 Visualization Methods 2007-09-10 Inhouse und Open Source Projekte – Usability verankern und Synergien nutzen 2007-09-03 Der Schwabe Darth Vader entdeckt das Virale Marketing 2007-08-29 Dick Hardt 3.0 on Identity 2.0 2007-08-27 quality of written text depends on the tool 2007-07-27 podcasts for reboot9 2007-06-04 It is the user's itch that need to be scratched 2007-05-25 A duel at reboot9 2007-05-14 Taxonomien und Folksonomien - Tagging als neues HCI-Element 2007-05-10 Dueling Interaction Models of Personal-Computing and Web-Computing 2007-03-01 22.März: Weizenbaum. Rebel at Work. /Filmpremiere Hamburg 2007-02-25 Bruce Sterling at UbiComp 2006 /webcast 2006-11-12 FSOSS 2006 /webcasts 2006-11-10 Highway 101 2006-11-09 User Experience Roundtable Hamburg: EuroGEL 2006 2006-11-08 Douglas Adams' Hyperland (BBC 1990) 2006-10-08 Taxonomien und Folksonomien – Tagging als neues HCI-Element 2006-09-13 Usability im Unternehmen 2006-09-13 Doug does HyperScope 2006-08-26 TED Talks and TechTalks 2006-08-21 Kai Krause über seine Freundschaft zu Douglas Adams 2006-07-20 Rebel At Work: Film Portrait on Weizenbaum 2006-07-04 Gabriele Fischer, mp3 2006-06-07 Dick Hardt at ETech 06 2006-06-05 Weinberger: From Control to Conversation 2006-04-16 Eye Tracking at User Experience Roundtable Hamburg 2006-04-14 dropping knowledge 2006-04-09 GEL 2005 2006-03-13 slide photos of reboot7 2006-03-04 Dick Hardt on Identity 2.0 2006-02-28 User Experience Newsletter #13: Versioning 2006-02-03 Ester Dyson on Choice and Happyness 2006-02-02 Requirements-Engineering im Spannungsfeld von Individual- und Produktsoftware 2006-01-15 User Experience Newsletter #12: Intuition Quiz 2005-11-30 User Experience und Requirements-Engineering für Software-Projekte 2005-10-31 Ivan Sutherland on "Research and Fun" 2005-10-18 Ars Electronica / Mensch und Computer 2005 2005-09-14 60 Jahre nach Memex: Über die Unvereinbarkeit von Desktop- und Web-Paradigma 2005-08-31 reboot 7 2005-06-30

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• Listing common SQL Code Smells.

  - by Phil Factor

  Once you’ve done a number of SQL Code-reviews, you’ll know those signs in the code that all might not be well. These ’Code Smells’ are coding styles that don’t directly cause a bug, but are indicators that all is not well with the code. . Kent Beck and Massimo Arnoldi seem to have coined the phrase in the "OnceAndOnlyOnce" page of www.C2.com, where Kent also said that code "wants to be simple". Bad Smells in Code was an essay by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler, published as Chapter 3 of the book ‘Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code’ (ISBN 978-0201485677) Although there are generic code-smells, SQL has its own particular coding habits that will alert the programmer to the need to re-factor what has been written. See Exploring Smelly Code   and Code Deodorants for Code Smells by Nick Harrison for a grounding in Code Smells in C# I’ve always been tempted by the idea of automating a preliminary code-review for SQL. It would be so useful to trawl through code and pick up the various problems, much like the classic ‘Lint’ did for C, and how the Code Metrics plug-in for .NET Reflector by Jonathan 'Peli' de Halleux is used for finding Code Smells in .NET code. The problem is that few of the standard procedural code smells are relevant to SQL, and we need an agreed list of code smells. Merrilll Aldrich made a grand start last year in his blog Top 10 T-SQL Code Smells.However, I'd like to make a start by discovering if there is a general opinion amongst Database developers what the most important SQL Smells are. One can be a bit defensive about code smells. I will cheerfully write very long stored procedures, even though they are frowned on. I’ll use dynamic SQL occasionally. You can only use them as an aid for your own judgment and it is fine to ‘sign them off’ as being appropriate in particular circumstances. Also, whole classes of ‘code smells’ may be irrelevant for a particular database. The use of proprietary SQL, for example, is only a ‘code smell’ if there is a chance that the database will have to be ported to another RDBMS. The use of dynamic SQL is a risk only with certain security models. As the saying goes,  a CodeSmell is a hint of possible bad practice to a pragmatist, but a sure sign of bad practice to a purist. Plamen Ratchev’s wonderful article Ten Common SQL Programming Mistakes lists some of these ‘code smells’ along with out-and-out mistakes, but there are more. The use of nested transactions, for example, isn’t entirely incorrect, even though the database engine ignores all but the outermost: but it does flag up the possibility that the programmer thinks that nested transactions are supported. If anything requires some sort of general agreement, the definition of code smells is one. I’m therefore going to make this Blog ‘dynamic, in that, if anyone twitters a suggestion with a #SQLCodeSmells tag (or sends me a twitter) I’ll update the list here. If you add a comment to the blog with a suggestion of what should be added or removed, I’ll do my best to oblige. In other words, I’ll try to keep this blog up to date. The name against each 'smell' is the name of the person who Twittered me, commented about or who has written about the 'smell'. it does not imply that they were the first ever to think of the smell! Use of deprecated syntax such as *= (Dave Howard) Denormalisation that requires the shredding of the contents of columns. (Merrill Aldrich) Contrived interfaces Use of deprecated datatypes such as TEXT/NTEXT (Dave Howard) Datatype mis-matches in predicates that rely on implicit conversion.(Plamen Ratchev) Using Correlated subqueries instead of a join   (Dave_Levy/ Plamen Ratchev) The use of Hints in queries, especially NOLOCK (Dave Howard /Mike Reigler) Few or No comments. Use of functions in a WHERE clause. (Anil Das) Overuse of scalar UDFs (Dave Howard, Plamen Ratchev) Excessive ‘overloading’ of routines. The use of Exec xp_cmdShell (Merrill Aldrich) Excessive use of brackets. (Dave Levy) Lack of the use of a semicolon to terminate statements Use of non-SARGable functions on indexed columns in predicates (Plamen Ratchev) Duplicated code, or strikingly similar code. Misuse of SELECT * (Plamen Ratchev) Overuse of Cursors (Everyone. Special mention to Dave Levy & Adrian Hills) Overuse of CLR routines when not necessary (Sam Stange) Same column name in different tables with different datatypes. (Ian Stirk) Use of ‘broken’ functions such as ‘ISNUMERIC’ without additional checks. Excessive use of the WHILE loop (Merrill Aldrich) INSERT ... EXEC (Merrill Aldrich) The use of stored procedures where a view is sufficient (Merrill Aldrich) Not using two-part object names (Merrill Aldrich) Using INSERT INTO without specifying the columns and their order (Merrill Aldrich) Full outer joins even when they are not needed. (Plamen Ratchev) Huge stored procedures (hundreds/thousands of lines). Stored procedures that can produce different columns, or order of columns in their results, depending on the inputs. Code that is never used. Complex and nested conditionals WHILE (not done) loops without an error exit. Variable name same as the Datatype Vague identifiers. Storing complex data  or list in a character map, bitmap or XML field User procedures with sp_ prefix (Aaron Bertrand)Views that reference views that reference views that reference views (Aaron Bertrand) Inappropriate use of sql_variant (Neil Hambly) Errors with identity scope using SCOPE_IDENTITY @@IDENTITY or IDENT_CURRENT (Neil Hambly, Aaron Bertrand) Schemas that involve multiple dated copies of the same table instead of partitions (Matt Whitfield-Atlantis UK) Scalar UDFs that do data lookups (poor man's join) (Matt Whitfield-Atlantis UK) Code that allows SQL Injection (Mladen Prajdic) Tables without clustered indexes (Matt Whitfield-Atlantis UK) Use of "SELECT DISTINCT" to mask a join problem (Nick Harrison) Multiple stored procedures with nearly identical implementation. (Nick Harrison) Excessive column aliasing may point to a problem or it could be a mapping implementation. (Nick Harrison) Joining "too many" tables in a query. (Nick Harrison) Stored procedure returning more than one record set. (Nick Harrison) A NOT LIKE condition (Nick Harrison) excessive "OR" conditions. (Nick Harrison) User procedures with sp_ prefix (Aaron Bertrand) Views that reference views that reference views that reference views (Aaron Bertrand) sp_OACreate or anything related to it (Bill Fellows) Prefixing names with tbl_, vw_, fn_, and usp_ ('tibbling') (Jeremiah Peschka) Aliases that go a,b,c,d,e... (Dave Levy/Diane McNurlan) Overweight Queries (e.g. 4 inner joins, 8 left joins, 4 derived tables, 10 subqueries, 8 clustered GUIDs, 2 UDFs, 6 case statements = 1 query) (Robert L Davis) Order by 3,2 (Dave Levy) MultiStatement Table functions which are then filtered 'Sel * from Udf() where Udf.Col = Something' (Dave Ballantyne) running a SQL 2008 system in SQL 2000 compatibility mode(John Stafford)

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• Best of Breed vs. Suite – Oracle’s SaaS Delivers Both

  - by yaldahhakim

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} The debate of which is better: “best of breed” business applications vs. an integrated suite is certainly not a new conversation. This has been argued between IT vendors and CIOs for years. It’s also important to clarify that “best of breed” does not necessarily translate into being the richest functionality; rather it’s often about just having the best fit solution to solve a specific business problem or need. So what does cloud have to do with the niche vs. suite debate? Consuming business applications in a cloud or SaaS deployment model can change the best of breed vs. suite discussion - if the cloud is done right. It’s having your cake and eating it too only better: you don’t have to gather all the ingredients or wait to bake your cake, and you can adjust how big of slice you take. Before you eat, it’s worth pausing to recall much of what we learned about IT over the last decade. These basic IT principles still hold true even though the financial model has changed from buying to renting. In other words, what’s under the technology hood still matters. Architecture and development methodologies like building an application based on open standards so it works with other systems - is still important. Data and information silos, complex integrations, and proprietary technologies that lock you in, are still bad. While some may argue that IT no longer matters with cloud, the opposite is actually true. If anything cloud can help return IT back to its rightful place as key strategic asset vs. a liability on the balance sheet. The “I” in CIO was never meant to stand for “integration” yet it’s amazing how much time and money is poured into these types of initiatives for most organizations each year. Rather the “I” needs to stand for “innovation”. This is where Oracle SaaS can uniquely help. Oracle’s application strategy has not really changed over the years. It’s always been about bringing the best and richest functionality across the enterprise to our customers while leveraging a common, standards-based, and enterprise-grade platform. So not jut best fit, but the best capabilities based on the input of thousands of enterprise customers across the globe. Oracle invests billions in R&D every year to add new capabilities to the broadest cloud portfolio in the industry, spanning across functional pillars like CRM, HCM, ERP, etc. And where it makes sense, Oracle combines key strategic acquisitions to complement organic functionality. The result is best of breed delivered in a suite. Again this is not something new. The game changer now with cloud is that it impacts HOW Oracle customers adopt the richest, most modern applications across the business – and continue on getting it. Consuming oracle applications in the cloud means you can adopt new capabilities and updates very quickly and easily. There’s no hardware to buy or software to manage. Oracle does it for you. Low upfront costs and an OpEx financial model is the easy part. Oracle Cloud Applications take it a big step further. For organizations that demand having the latest and richest functionality and accelerating the time to value from their IT investment, Oracle Cloud is the right path. It’s about holistically changing the “hows” and the “whys” of the organization by leveraging transformational innovations like social, mobile, and big data in a consistent and more powerful way. Not just about sales force automation or talent management. These technologies should impact all parts of the company and Oracle Cloud is the enterprise-grade delivery vehicle. Oracle SaaS helps break down barriers of adoption and is eases the headache of upgrades, investing in new supporting hardware, or adding internal expertise to manage it all. With Oracle Cloud, customers can get best of breed capabilities in either a full suite model or a la carte. And because it’s entirely built on open standards, it’s built to co-exist with existing IT investments. Updates can be automatic or delayed based on a customer’s requirements. And it’s complete – a full suite of cross pillar functionality. Even better, if you don’t like it, need more or less, just turn the dial up or down. Just like your utility bill, you pay for what you use, and can consume more or less power whenever you need it. Lower cost, lower investment risk, without compromising on functionality, security, or performance. Technology still matters in the cloud. So our cloud customers also like that when they adopt our cloud applications, they also get the best underlying technology, from the middleware and database platform down to infrastructure and Oracle’s engineered systems. Therefore it’s not just the greatest and latest in application functionality, but everything underneath that makes it work is also the latest and greatest. The best of breed technology stack powering best of breed business applications, and all delivered in a subscription based model. The best of both worlds. Yep, that’s the idea.

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• My Thoughts On the Xbox 180

  - by Chris Gardner

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2013/06/21/my-thoughts-on-the-xbox-180.aspx Everyone seems to be putting their 0.00237 cents into the wishing well over Microsoft's recent decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. However, there have been a few issues that nobody has touched. As such, I have decided to dig 0.00237 cents out of my pocket. First, let me be clear about this point. I do not support the decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. I wanted that point to be expressed first and unambiguously. I will say it again. I do not support the decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. Now that I have that out of the way, let me go into my rationale. This decision removes most of the cool features that enticed me to pre-order the console. No, I didn't cancel my pre-order. There is still five months before the release of the console, and there is still a plethora of information that we, as consumers, do not have. With that, it should be noted that much of the talk in this post is speculation and rhetoric. I do not have any insider information that you do not possess. The persistent connection would have allowed the console to do many of the functions for which we have been begging. That demo where someone was playing Ryse, seamlessly accepted a multiplayer challenge in Killer Instinct, played the match (and a rematch,) and then jumped back into Ryse. That's gone, if you bought the game on disc. The new, DRM free system will require the disc in the system to play a game. That bullet point where one Xbox Live account could have up to 10 slave accounts so families could play together, no matter where they were located. That's gone as well. The promise of huge, expansive, dynamically changing worlds that was brought to us with the power of cloud computing. Well, "the people" didn't want there to be a forced, persistent connection. As such, developers can't rely on a connection and, as such, that feature is gone. This is akin to the removal of the hard drive on the Xbox 360. The list continues, but the enthusiast press has enumerated the list far better than I wish. All of this is because the Xbox team saw the HUGE success of Steam and decided to borrow a few ideas. Yes, Steam. The service that everyone hated for the first six months (for the same reasons the Xbox One is getting flack.) There was an initial growing pain. However, it is now lauded as the way games distribution should be handled. Unless you are Microsoft. I do find it curious that many of the features were originally announced for the PS4 during its unveiling. However, much of that was left strangely absent for Sony's E3 press conference. Instead, we received a single, static slide that basically said the exact opposite of Microsoft's plans. It is not farfetched to believe that slide came into existence during the approximately seven hours between the two media briefings. The thing that majorly annoys me over this whole kerfuffle is that the single thing that caused the call to arms is, really, not an issue. Microsoft never said they were going to block used sales. They said it was up to the publisher to make that decision. This would have allowed publishers to reclaim some of the costs of development in subsequent sales of the product. If you sell your game to GameStop for 7 USD, GameStop is going to sell it for 55 USD. That is 48 USD pure profit for them. Some publishers asked GameStop for a small cut. Was this a huge, money grubbing scheme? Well, yes, but the idea was that they have to handle server infrastructure for dormant accounts, etc. Of course, GameStop flatly refused, and the Online Pass was born. Fortunately, this trend didn’t last, and most publishers have stopped the practice. The ability to sell "licenses" has already begun to be challenged. Are you living in the EU? If so, companies must allow you to sell digital property. With this precedent in place, it's only a matter of time before other areas follow suit. If GameStop were smart, they should have immediately contacted every publisher out there to get the rights to become a clearing house for these licenses. Then, they keep their business model and could reduce their brick and mortar footprint. The digital landscape is changing. We need to not block this process. As Seth MacFarlane best said "Some issues are so important that you should drag people kicking and screaming." I believe this was said on an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher about the issue of Gay Marriages. Much like the original source, this is an issue that we need to drag people to the correct, progressive position. Microsoft, as a company, actually has the resources to weather the transition period. They have a great pool of first and second party developers that can leverage this new framework to prove the validity. Over time, the third party developers will get excited to use these tools. As an old C++ guy, I resisted C# for years. Now, I think it's one of the best languages I've ever used. I have a server room and a Co-Lo full of servers, so I originally didn't see the value in Azure. Now, I wish I could move every one of my projects into the cloud. I still LOVE getting physical packaging, which my music and games collection will proudly attest. However, I have started to see the value in pure digital, and have found ways to integrate this into the ways I consume those products. I can, honestly, understand how some parts of the population would be very apprehensive about this new landscape. There were valid arguments about people with no internet access. There are ways to combat these problems. These methods do not require us to throw the baby out with the bathwater. However, the number of people in the computer industry that I have seen cry foul is truly appalling. We are the forward looking people that help show how technology can improve people's lives. If we can't see the value of the brief pain involved with an exciting new ecosystem, than who will?

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• Thoughts on the Nomination Committee Campaign 2014

  - by Testas

  Congratulations to Erin, Andy and Allen on making the Nomination Committee for 2014. As Mark Broadbent (@retracement) stated in his tweet, there’s a great set of individuals for the Nom Com, and I could not agree more. I know Erin and Allen, and I know how much value they will bring to the process. I don’t know Andy as well, but I am sure he will do a great job and I hope I can meet him at PASS soon. The final candidate appointed by the PASS board is Rick Bolesta, who brings a wealth of experience to the process. I also want to take the opportunity to thank all who have voted. Not just for me, but for all the candidates during the election. Your contribution is greatly appreciated. Would I apply for the Nom Com again?  Yes I would. My first election experience has been a learning experience in itself. So I accept the result and look forward to applying next year. Moving on from this, I do want to express my opinion about the lack of international representation in the election process. One of the tweets that I saw after the result was from Adam Machanic (@AdamMachanic) who commented on the lack of international members on the Nom Com. If truth be told, I was disappointed – when the candidate list was released -- that for the second time in recent elections there was a lack of international candidates on the candidate list. It feels that only Brits and Americans partake in such elections. This is a real shame, and I can’t help thinking why this is the case. Hugo Kornelis (@Hugo_Kornelis) wrote a blog here to express his thoughts. He did raise some valid points. I don’t know why there is an absence of international candidates. I know that the team at PASS are looking to improve the situation, so I do not want to give the impression that PASS are doing nothing. For reference please see Bill Graziano’ s article here to see how PASS are addressing the situation. There is a clear direction to change the rules within PASS to give greater inclusion of international members. In addition to this, I wanted to explore a couple of potential approaches to address the situation. I am not saying that they are the right answer, but when I see challenges, I like to bring potential solutions to the table. 1.       Use the PASS mission statement to define a tactical objective that engages community leaders into the election process. If you are not familiar with the PASS mission statement, let me provide it here as laid out on the PASS website. “Empower data professionals who leverage Microsoft technologies to connect, share, and learn through networking, knowledge sharing, and peer-based learning” PASS fulfil this mission statement regularly. Whether you attend SQL Saturday, SQLRally, SQLPASS and BA conference itself. The biggest value of PASS is the ability to bring our profession together. And the 24 hour hop allows you to learn from the comfort of your own office/home. This mission should be extended to define a tactical objectives that bring greater networking and knowledge sharing between PASS Chapter leaders/Regional Mentors and PASS HQ. It should help educate the leaders about the opportunities of elections and how leaders can become involved. I know PASS engage with Chapter leaders on a regular basis to discuss community matters for the benefit of PASS members. How could this be achieved? Perhaps PASS could perform a quarterly virtual meeting that specifically looks at helping leaders become more involved with the election process 2.       Evolve the Global Growth Strategy into a Global Engagement Strategy. One of the remits of the PASS board over the last couple of years is the Global Growth strategy. This has been very successful as we have seen the massive growth of events across the world. For that, I congratulate the board for this success. Perhaps the time is now right to look at solidifying this success, through a Global Engagement Strategy that starts with the collaboration of Chapter Leaders, Regional Mentors and Evangelists in their respective Countries or Regions. The engagement strategy should look at increasing collaboration between community leaders for the benefit of their respective communities. It should also provide a channel for encouraging leaders to put themselves forward for the elections. How could this be achieved? In the UK, there has been a big growth in PASS Chapters and SQL Server Events that was approaching saturation point. The introduction of the Community Engagement Day -- channelled through the SQLBits conference -- has enabled Chapter Leaders to collaborate, connect and share with PASS, Sponsors and Microsoft. It also provides the ability for Chapter Leaders to speak directly to the PASS representatives from PASSHQ. This brings with it the ability for PASS community evangelists to communicate PASS objectives. It has also been the event where we have found out; and/or encouraged, Chapter Leaders to put themselves forward for elections. People like encouragement and validation when going for something like an election, and being able to discuss this with peers at a dedicated event provides a useful platform. PASS has the people in place already to facilitate such an event. Regional Mentors could potentially help organise such events on an annual basis, with PASSHQ providing support in providing a room/Lync access for the event to take place. It would be really good if a PASSHQ representative could attend in person as well.   3.       Restrict candidates to serve only a limited number of terms. A frequent comment I saw on social networking was that the elections can be seen by some as a popularity conference. Perhaps by limiting the number of terms that an individual can serve on either the Nom Com or the BOD, other candidates may be encouraged to be more actively involved within the PASS election process. I don’t think that the current byelaws deal with this particular suggestion. I also saw a couple of tweets that stated that more active community members did not apply for the Nom Com. I struggled to understand how the individuals of the tweets measured “more active”. It just also further solidified the subjective nature of elections. In the absence of how candidates are put forward for the elections. Then a restriction of terms enables the opportunity to be extended to others. How could this be achieved? Set a resolution that is put to a community vote as to the viability of such a solution. For example, the questions for the vote could be: Should individuals in the Nom Com and BoD be limited to a certain number of terms?  Yes/No. What is the maximum number of terms a candidate could serve?   It would be simple to execute such a vote, and the community will have an opportunity to have a say in an important aspect of the PASS organisation. And is the change is successful, then add it as a byelaw.   So there are some of my thoughts. I am not saying they are right or wrong. But I do hope that there is a concerted effort to encourage more candidates from other reaches of the Globe to become involved with future elections.   It would be good to hear your thoughts   Thanks   Chris

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, November 02, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, November 02, 2012Popular ReleasesVST.NET: VST.NET 1.0: Long overdue, but here is version 1.0! The zip contains the Debug and Release binaries for x86 and x64 as well as .NET 2.0 and .NET 4.0. Note that the samples sources are not included in the release. Refer to "Building the Source Code" to get them working in the Visual Studio Express editions. The documentation will be uploaded later... Changes: Removed nuget and fixed samples copy operation (*.exe). Finalized build automation support. Bug fixes in VS templates. Compiled and Packaged n...DevTreks -social budgeting that improves lives and livelihoods: DevTreks Version 1.0: This is the first production release.Mouse Jiggler: MouseJiggle-1.3: This adds the much-requested minimize-to-tray feature to Mouse Jiggler.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.10.0 Release Candidate: This is a Release Candidate, which means that if we do not find any major issues in the next week, we will release this version as the final release of 4.10.0 on November 9th, 2012. The documentation for the MVC bits still lives in the Github version of the docs for now and will be updated on our.umbraco.org with the final release of 4.10.0. Browse the documentation here: https://github.com/umbraco/Umbraco4Docs/tree/4.8.0/Documentation/Reference/Mvc If you want to do only MVC then make sur...Skype Auto Recorder: SkypeAutoRecorder 1.3.4: New icon and images. Reworked settings window. Implemented high-quality sound encoding. Implemented a possibility to produce stereo records. Added buttons with system-wide hot keys for manual starting and canceling of recording. Added buttons for opening folder with records. Added Help button. Fixed an issue when recording is continuing after call end. Fixed an issue when recording doesn't start. Fixed several bugs and improved stability. Major refactoring and optimization...Access 2010 Application Platform - Build Your Own Database: Application Platform - 0.0.1: Initial Release This is the first version of the database. At the moment is all contained in one file to make development easier, but the obvious idea would be to split it into Front and Back End for a production version of the tool. The features it contains at the moment are the "Core" features.Python Tools for Visual Studio: Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.5: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.5 RTM. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, HPC, IPython, etc. support. For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this video There are a number of exciting improvement in this release comp...Devpad: 4.25: Whats new for Devpad 4.25: New Theme support New Export Wordpress Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsAssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.5: Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we try to package for those OSes. Try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your own for Linux (source included) Changelog: Fixed potential bot bugs: Map change, OpenAL...Edi: Edi 1.0 with DarkExpression: Added DarkExpression theme (dialogs and message boxes are not completely themed, yet)DirectX Tool Kit: October 30, 2012 (add WP8 support): October 30, 2012 Added project files for Windows Phone 8MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.6: Changelog for 2.3.6 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Fixed a bug in multichannel audio conversion failure. AAC does not support 6 channel audio, MCEBuddy now checks for it and force the output to 2 channel if AAC codec is specified 2. Fixed a bug in Original Broadcast Date and Time. Original Broadcast Date and Time is reported in UTC timezone in WTV metadata. TVDB and MovieDB dates are reported in network timezone. It is assumed the video is recorded and converted on the same machine, i.e. local timezone...MVVM Light Toolkit: MVVM Light Toolkit V4.1 for Visual Studio 2012: This version only supports Visual Studio 2012 (and all Express editions too). If you use Visual Studio 2010, please stay tuned, we will publish an update in a few days with support for VS10. V4.1 supports: Windows Phone 8 Windows 8 (Windows RT) Silverlight 5 Silverlight 4 WPF 4.5 WPF 4 WPF 3.5 And the following development environments: Visual Studio 2012 (Pro, Premium, Ultimate) Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8 Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Phone 8 Visual...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.73: Fix issue in Discussion #401101 (unreferenced var in a for-in statement was getting removed). add the grouping operator to the parsed output so that unminified parsed code is closer to the original. Will still strip unneeded parens later, if minifying. more cleaning of references as they are minified out of the code.RiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.03: changes NEW: Added Support for the phun.org forum FIXED: Kitty-Kats new Forum UrlLiberty: v3.4.0.1 Release 28th October 2012: Change Log -Fixed -H4 Fixed the save verification screen showing incorrect mission and difficulty information for some saves -H4 Hopefully fixed the issue where progress did not save between missions and saves would not revert correctly -H3 Fixed crashes that occurred when trying to load player information -Proper exception dialogs will now show in place of crashesPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 7): This release is compatible with the version of the Smooth Streaming SDK released today (10/26). Release 1 of the player framework is expected to be available next week. IMPROVEMENTS & FIXESIMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 6 Support for the latest smooth streaming SDK. Xaml only: Support for moving any of the UI elements outside the MediaPlayer (e.g. into the appbar). Note: Equivelent changes to the JS version due in coming week. Support for localizing all text used in t...Send multiple SMS via Way2SMS C#: SMS 1.1: Added support for 160by2Quick Launch: Quick Launch 1.0: A Lightweight and Fast Way to Manage and Launch Thousands of Tools and ApplicationsPress Win+Q and start to search and run. http://www.codeplex.com/Download?ProjectName=quicklaunch&DownloadId=523536Orchard Project: Orchard 1.6: Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.6: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-6-Release-Notes Please do not post questions as reviews. Questions should be posted in the Discussions tab, where they will usually get promptly responded to. If you post a question as a review, you will pollute the rating, and you won't get an answer.New ProjectsAnother Green World: Another Green WorldApplication Data across Web Farm: A library containing a new version of the HttpApplicationState class that allow the synchronization of data across a web farm. With this library, on the web farm Data can be: • Shared • Auto synchronized • Locked for a useras3 game: it's as3 framework . Context: UIFramework,GameFrameworkBit Moose: Bit Moose is a bitcoin mining assistant program. It allows miners to run under a background windows service. Includes a GUI and console host.BUMO: A TFS Build MOnitoring Tool: BUMO is short name of Build Monitoring tool for TFS. BUMO provides a platform to Monitor TFS builds, Statistics of Builds,View Build History, Clone Builds.cantinho: cantinhoCMTS: CMTSCP866U Encoding: A simple implementation of cp866u encoding class written in C#.D3D9Client: This is a DirectX 9 Graphics Client for Orbiter SpaceFlight SimulatorDatabase Exporter for DotNetNuke By IowaComputerGurus Inc.: Database Exporter is a customized SQL module designed for selects and supports export to XML/CSV of query resultsDistributed Systems at TUM: The initial project is a simple client connecting to a server through sockets. The client may send a message and the server will echo back that message.Enneract Project: Enneract makes it easier for LDS Leadership works in theirs responsibilities through BI techniques.EntityFramework Reverse POCO Code First Generator: Reverse engineers an existing database and generates EntityFramework Code First POCO classes, DbContext and Configuration mappingsfastCSharp: ?????????????????，????????????????????，??????。 ??：????????????????，???????????，???????????。 ??? http://www.51nod.com/topic/index.html#!topicId=100000056Fault Logger!: Fault Logger is a simple web application ideal for schools and small business which allows staff to report computer faults and allows technicians to keep logs.Flow Sequencer: Simple task sequencer using Johnson's algorithm for two and three machines. Client side is made in wpf technology. Free Template Filler (FTF): Tool for generating text from templates, when given parameters. Good for generating code, etc.GameTrakXNA: This project aims to create a simple library to use the unique GameTrak controller within XNA and Flash.Greg DNN Task Manager: This is a test project that I am using to learn about DNN Module Development.GroupToolbar: A Toolbar that can group your items and is totally templatable :)Helper Project: Helpdesk project, using C# .NET, Linq, with Nhibernate ORM and interface written using ExtJS 4.HIPO Legacy Systems Flowcharter: Creates Visio HIPO flowcharts from legacy system batch files.huangli1101: jabbr projectHusqvarna Svishtov: The idea is to create content management system for web site of a small town store.Hybrid Lab Workflow: This workflow allows you to incorporate snapshots into a Build-Deploy-Test using a Standard Environment that is composed of Virtual Machines in TFS 2012.jas: Project to make an application for Jeugdondernemingen Aartselaar Service...keleyi: MD5 C# WinFormKnockout.js Declarations for TypeScript: A set of declarations for intellisense and type completion for Knockout.js in TypeScript. Last edited Today at 8:39 AM by jnosek, version 2List Rollup web part: Hi I was wondering that how to show a list from other site on my home page. But I didn’t get any proper & free solution. So I decided to create a Cross Site LisMidlands Community Management Solution (MCMS): This project is to develop an open source residential community management solution. This initiative has been taken by the IT guys of Srijan Midlands Community.MultipartHttpClient for Windows Phone 7: This is a simple MultipartHttpClient for windows phone 7MyGProject: GprojectN2F Yverdon FirePHP Extension: Extension to add FirePHP support to your N2F Yverdon projects.netbee: ???Over Look Pa Controller: Real World Application for the Collection of Credit Card, Gift Card and Driver License information. Controls access to an Observation Tower via a turnstile.PureSystems DotNetNuke GoSquared tracking module: A DotNetNuke module which adds the GoSquared tracking code to your pages.Quiz Module for DotNetNuke by IowaComputerGurus Inc.: The IowaComputerGurus DotNetNuke Quiz Module is a free extension that allows users to quickly and easily create custom quizzes for their site.RadioSmart: ? ??d??a? t?? radiosmartRSA ID Validation for SQL Server: Solution for validating South African identity numbers. Provides SQL Server CLR bindings which allow identity numbers to be efficiently validated within T-SQLSales Visualization Web App: Sales VisualizationsSonar Connector (Wagga Wagga Christian College Network connector): A network settings manager for Wagga Wagga christian college. Supports switching back and forth settings and can be used for personal use.Stopwatch - Windows Phone: This project is a Stopwatch for windows phone app. Now, it had published in Windows phone store.Study: Study for ExtJS! Come on!Team Foundation Server Test Management Tools: Team Foundation Server Test Management Tools ? Team Foundation Server ???? ???? Visual Studio ??????????????????????????。testdd11012012git01: ttesttom11012012tfs02: gdgf dgf dTimBazinga EVoting: Undergrad project - designing an e-voting software system.TNT Scripts: TNT ScriptsTrombone: Trombone makes it easier for Windows Mobile Professional users to automate status reply through SMS. It's developed in Visual C# 2008.TurbofilmTV: Turbofilm metro is the greate metro app for turbofilm users.VinculacionMicrosoft: Vinculacion Microsoft is a project for distributing Dreamsparks and Faculty Connection codes to students and professors. It is developed in ASP .Net and designed for Universities in Mexico interested in the different benefits that Microsoft has for them. Visual Studio Reference Swap: Winforms app and Nant task that will handle swapping out project references to file references.??????: ??????????: ??

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• The True Cost of a Solution

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I had a Twitter chat recently with someone suggesting Oracle and SQL Server were losing out to OSS (Open Source Software) in the enterprise due to their issues with scaling or being too generic (one size fits all). I challenged that a bit, as my experience with enterprise sized clients has been different – adverse to OSS but receptive to an established vendor. The response I got was: Found it easier to influence change by showing how X can’t solve our problems or X is extremely costly to scale. Money talks. I think this is definitely the right approach for anyone pitching an alternate or alien technology as part of a solution: identify the issue, identify the solution, then present pros and cons including a cost/benefit analysis. What can happen though is we get tunnel vision and don’t present a full view of the costs associated with a solution. An “Acura”te Example (I’m so clever…) This is my dream vehicle, a Crystal Black Pearl coloured Acura MDX with the SH-AWD package! We’re a family of 4 (5 if my daughters ever get their wish of adding a dog), and I’ve always wanted a luxury type of vehicle, so this is a perfect replacement in a few years when our Rav 4 has hit the 8 – 10 year mark. MSRP – $62,890 But as we all know, that’s not *really* the cost of the vehicle. There’s taxes and fees added on, there’s the extended warranty if I choose to purchase it, there’s the finance rate that needs to be factored in… MSRP –   $62,890 Taxes –      $7,546 Warranty - $2,500 SubTotal – $72,936 Finance Charge – $ 1094.04 Grand Total – $74,030 Well! Glad we did that exercise – we discovered an extra $11k added on to the MSRP! Well now we have our true price…or do we? Lifetime of the Vehicle I’m expecting to have this vehicle for 7 – 10 years. While the hard cost of the vehicle is known and dealt with, the costs to run and maintain the vehicle are on top of this. I did some research, and here’s what I’ve found: Fuel and Mileage Gas prices are high as it is for regular fuel, but getting into an MDX will require that I *only* purchase premium fuel, which comes at a premium price. I need to expect my bill at the pump to be higher. Comparing the MDX to my 2007 Rav4 also shows I’ll be gassing up more often. The Rav4 has a city MPG of 21, while the MDX plummets to 16! The MDX does have a bigger fuel tank though, so all in all the number of times I hit the pumps might even out. Still, I estimate I’ll be spending approximately $8000 – $10000 more on gas over a 10 year period than my current Rav4. Service Options Limited Although I have options with my Toyota here in Winnipeg (we have 4 Toyota dealerships), I do go to my original dealer for any service work. Still, I like the fact that I have options. However, there’s only one Acura dealership in all of Winnipeg! So if, for whatever reason, I’m not satisfied with the level of service I’m stuck. Non Warranty Service Work Also let’s not forget that there’s a bulk of work required every year that is *not* covered under warranty – oil changes, tire rotations, brake pads, etc. I expect I’ll need to get new tires at the 5 years mark as well, which can easily be $1200 – $1500 (I just paid $1000 for new tires for the Rav4 and we’re at the 5 year mark). Now these aren’t going to be *new* costs that I’m not used to from our existing vehicles, but they should still be factored in. I’d budget $500/year, or $5000 over the 10 years I’ll own the vehicle. Final Assessment So let’s re-assess the true cost of my dream MDX: MSRP                    $62,890 Taxes                       $7,546 Warranty                 $2,500 Finance Charge         $1094 Gas                        $10,000 Service Work            $5000 Grand Total           $89,030 So now I have a better idea of 10 year cost overall, and I’ve identified some concerns with local service availability. And there’s now much more to consider over the original $62,890 price tag. Tying This Back to Technology Solutions The process that we just went through is no different than what organizations do when considering implementing a new system, technology, or technology based solution, within their environments. It’s easy to tout the short term cost savings of particular product/platform/technology in a vacuum. But its when you consider the wider impact that the true cost comes into play. Let’s create a scenario: A company is not happy with its current data reporting suite. An employee suggests moving to an open source solution. The selling points are: - Because its open source its free - The organization would have access to the source code so they could alter it however they wished - It provided features not available with the current reporting suite At first this sounds great to the management and executive, but then they start asking some questions and uncover more information: - The OSS product is built on a technology not used anywhere within the organization - There are no vendors offering product support for the OSS product - The OSS product requires a specific server platform to operate on, one that’s not standard in the organization All of a sudden, the true cost of implementing this solution is starting to become clearer. The company might save money on licensing costs, but their training costs would increase significantly – developers would need to learn how to develop in the technology the OSS solution was built on, IT staff must learn how to set up and maintain a new server platform within their existing infrastructure, and if a problem was found there was no vendor to contact for support. The true cost of implementing a “free” OSS solution is actually spinning up a project to implement it within the organization – no small cost. And that’s just the short-term cost. Now the organization must ensure they maintain trained staff who can make changes to the OSS reporting solution and IT staff that will stay knowledgeable in the new server platform. If those skills are very niche, then higher labour costs could be incurred if those people are hard to find or if trained employees use that knowledge as leverage for higher pay. Maybe a vendor exists that will contract out support, but then there are those costs to consider as well. And let’s not forget end-user training – in our example, anyone that runs reports will need to be trained on how to use the new system. Here’s the Point We still tend to look at software in an “off the shelf” kind of way. It’s very easy to say “oh, this product is better than vendor x’s product – and its free because its OSS!” but the reality is that implementing any new technology within an organization has a cost regardless of the retail price of the product. Training, integration, support – these are real costs that impact an organization and span multiple departments. Whether you’re pitching an improved business process, a new system, or a new technology, you need to consider the bigger picture costs of implementation. What you define as success (in our example, having better reporting functionality) might not be what others define as success if implementing your solution causes them issues. A true enterprise solution needs to consider the entire enterprise.

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• Passing a comparator syntax help in Java

  - by Crystal

  I've tried this a couple ways, the first is have a class that implements comparator at the bottom of the following code. When I try to pass the comparat in sortListByLastName, I get a constructor not found error and I am not sure why import java.util.*; public class OrganizeThis implements WhoDoneIt { /** Add a person to the organizer @param p A person object */ public void add(Person p) { staff.put(p.getEmail(), p); //System.out.println("Person " + p + "added"); } /** * Remove a Person from the organizer. * * @param email The email of the person to be removed. */ public void remove(String email) { staff.remove(email); } /** * Remove all contacts from the organizer. * */ public void empty() { staff.clear(); } /** * Find the person stored in the organizer with the email address. * Note, each person will have a unique email address. * * @param email The person email address you are looking for. * */ public Person findByEmail(String email) { Person aPerson = staff.get(email); return aPerson; } /** * Find all persons stored in the organizer with the same last name. * Note, there can be multiple persons with the same last name. * * @param lastName The last name of the persons your are looking for. * */ public Person[] find(String lastName) { ArrayList<Person> names = new ArrayList<Person>(); for (Person s : staff.values()) { if (s.getLastName() == lastName) { names.add(s); } } // Convert ArrayList back to Array Person nameArray[] = new Person[names.size()]; names.toArray(nameArray); return nameArray; } /** * Return all the contact from the orgnizer in * an array sorted by last name. * * @return An array of Person objects. * */ public Person[] getSortedListByLastName() { PersonLastNameComparator comp = new PersonLastNameComparator(); Map<String, Person> sorted = new TreeMap<String, Person>(comp); ArrayList<Person> sortedArrayList = new ArrayList<Person>(); for (Person s: sorted.values()) { sortedArrayList.add(s); } Person sortedArray[] = new Person[sortedArrayList.size()]; sortedArrayList.toArray(sortedArray); return sortedArray; } private Map<String, Person> staff = new HashMap<String, Person>(); public static void main(String[] args) { OrganizeThis testObj = new OrganizeThis(); Person person1 = new Person("J", "W", "111-222-3333", "[email protected]"); Person person2 = new Person("K", "W", "345-678-9999", "[email protected]"); Person person3 = new Person("Phoebe", "Wang", "322-111-3333", "[email protected]"); Person person4 = new Person("Nermal", "Johnson", "322-342-5555", "[email protected]"); Person person5 = new Person("Apple", "Banana", "123-456-1111", "[email protected]"); testObj.add(person1); testObj.add(person2); testObj.add(person3); testObj.add(person4); testObj.add(person5); System.out.println(testObj.findByEmail("[email protected]")); System.out.println("------------" + '\n'); Person a[] = testObj.find("W"); for (Person p : a) System.out.println(p); System.out.println("------------" + '\n'); a = testObj.find("W"); for (Person p : a) System.out.println(p); System.out.println("SORTED" + '\n'); a = testObj.getSortedListByLastName(); for (Person b : a) { System.out.println(b); } System.out.println(testObj.getAuthor()); } } class PersonLastNameComparator implements Comparator<Person> { public int compare(Person a, Person b) { return a.getLastName().compareTo(b.getLastName()); } } And then when I tried doing it by creating an anonymous inner class, I also get a constructor TreeMap cannot find symbol error. Any thoughts? inner class method: public Person[] getSortedListByLastName() { //PersonLastNameComparator comp = new PersonLastNameComparator(); Map<String, Person> sorted = new TreeMap<String, Person>(new Comparator<Person>() { public int compare(Person a, Person b) { return a.getLastName().compareTo(b.getLastName()); } }); ArrayList<Person> sortedArrayList = new ArrayList<Person>(); for (Person s: sorted.values()) { sortedArrayList.add(s); } Person sortedArray[] = new Person[sortedArrayList.size()]; sortedArrayList.toArray(sortedArray); return sortedArray; }

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• Introducing… SharePress!

  - by Bil Simser

  For those that follow me I’ve been away from blogging and twittering for a couple of months. This is the reason. For the last few months I’ve been working with a cross-functional team putting together a new product from the people that run WordPress, the free premiere blogging platform. The result is a new product we call SharePress, a highly extensible blogging and content management platform with the usability of WordPress and the power of SharePoint combined into a single product. SharePress gives you SharePoint sites that are SEO-friendly delivered with a Web 2.0 ease of use, leveraging all of the existing abilities of SharePoint and WordPress that we know today. The Reason Back in December I was approached by the WordPress team about building a new platform that took advantage of the power of SharePoint but the ease of WordPress. I’m no stranger to WordPress and it’s 5 minute no-holds-barred install (I’ve always wanted SharePoint to do this!) and I run my personal blog on WordPress as does my better half, Princess Jenn. There’s always been a pitch by so-called Web 2.0 applications to deliver the power of SharePoint but the ease of [insert product here] over the past year or so. I checked each and every one of them out, but they fell woefully short when it came to SharePoint’s document management, versioning, and customization. They try, but it’s never been up to par in my books. On the flipside, SharePoint has always been tops in collaboration in the Enterprise but it’s painful to develop web parts, UI customization can be tricky, and there’s just no user community for something as simple as themes and designs. The Product Enter SharePress. Is it SharePoint? Is it WordPress? It’s both, and neither. Everything you like about both products are there but this is a bold new product that is positioned to bring SharePoint to the masses while maintaining the fidelity of an Enterprise 2.0 collaboration platform. SharePress delivers on all fronts including: The ability to leverage any WordPress/Joomla/Drupal/DotNetNuke themes and skins inside of SharePoint Run any WordPress/Drupal/Joomla/DotNetNuke/SharePoint plug-in/module/web part/feature works out of the box with SharePress SEO-friendly URLs and pages Permalinks for all content All the features of SharePoint Server 2010 (including InfoPath, Excel, and Access services) included in the price Small deployment footprint. You decide how much to deploy and where. Independent Database Abstraction Layer (iDal) that allows you to deploy to SQL Server 2005/2008, MySQL, and PostgreSQL Portable Rendering Engine Layer (PREL) so you host .NET or PHP on Apache or IIS (version 7 or higher). The install feature is built around WordPress and it’s famous 5-minute install (actually, it’s never taken me more than 1 minute). SharePress installs with two screens after the files are uploaded to your server (which can be done entirely using FTP): After you enter two fields of information click “Install SharePress” and you’ll be done: No mess, no fuss, no complicated dependencies, and no server access required! How simpler could this be? The Technology WordPress plug-ins and themes working with SharePoint? Of course! The answer is IronPython which has now reached a maturity level capable of doing on the fly code language conversions. SharePress is a brand new product not built on top of any previous platform but leverages all the power of each of those applications through a patent pending technique called SharePress Multi-plAtfoRm Technology (SMART). SMART will convert PHP code on the fly into Python (using SWIG as an intermediate processor) which is then compiled to MSIL and then delivered back as an ASP.NET MVC application (output is C# or VB.NET, but you can build your own SMART converter to output a different language). Sound complicated? It is, but it’s all behind the scenes and you don’t have to worry about a thing. This image illustrates the technology stack and process: So users can load up out of the box PHP themes and plug-ins from the WordPress/Joomla/Drupal community into the SMART converter and output MSIL that is used by the SharePress engine and rendered on the fly to the end user. Supported PHP versions are 4.xx and 5.xx with version 6 support to come when it’s released. Similarly you can take any .NET application, DotNetNuke Module, SharePoint Web Part or event handler and feed it into the converter to output the same. Everything is reverse compiled into MSIL so it becomes technology agnostic. No source code access is needed and the SMART converter can handle obfuscated .NET assemblies that were built with .NET 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.5, and 4.0. With this technology you can also with the flip of a switch have the output create PHP pages for you. This allows you to run SharePress on Unix based systems running PHP and MySQL, allowing you to deliver your SharePoint like experience to your users with a $0 infrastructure footprint. Here’s SharePress with the default WordPress post imported then a stock SharePoint collaboration site was imported. The site was then applied with the default Kubrick theme from WordPress. The Features Deploy any of the freely available 100,000 WordPress/Joomla/Drupal themes instantly to your runtime SharePress environment and preview or activate them right from your browser. Built-in Web 2.0 jQuery Enabled End User and Administrator Web Interface. Never have to remote into a server again! Run any SharePoint Web Part or Event Handler directly without modification or access to source code in SharePress. Use any WordPress/Joomla/Drupal plug-in directly in SharePress, no local admin or access to server. Just upload and activate. Upload and Activate any SharePoint Solution Package to any site remotely. No rebuilding. Changes made to sites require no compiling or rebuilding and are published immediately. Password Protected Content. You can give passwords to individual posts, articles, pages, documents, forms, and list items. A powerful polymorphic Captcha system backs the security interface and vendors can easily tie into smart card readers, fingerprint readers, and retina scanners for authorization and identification. OpenID, Windows Live, and Windows Authentication are supported out of the box. Infinitely customizable and extensible. You can leverage plug-ins from the open source community to do practically anything, all configured and uploaded via the browser. Additionally the developer API (available soon) allows you to build extensions in .NET, PHP, and Python with little effort. Easy Importing. We have importers for Blogger, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, DotNetNuke, and SharePoint so you can populate your site quickly and easily with full metadata modeling and creation. Banner Management. It’s easy to setup banners for your web site complete with impression numbers, special URLs, and more. Menu Manager. The Menu Manager allows you to create as many menus as you want, each one can be associated to specific audiences or roles and then be styled across multiple contexts including the same menu delivered as a fly out, rollover, drop down, and just about any navigation you can think of. Collaborative ShareBook. Our exclusive book feature allows you to setup a “book” and then authorize individuals to contribute content. Permalinks. All content in SharePress has a permanent or “perma link” associated with it so people can link to it freely without fear of broken links. Apache or IIS, Unix / Linux / BSD / Solaris / Windows / Mac OS X support. Deliver SharePress the way *you* want from the platform *you* decide. Database Independence. We know people wanted to run on any database platform so SharePress is built on top of a database abstraction layer that allows you to run on SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL. Other databases can be supported by writing a supporting database script consisting of fourteen function calls. The script can be written in Perl, Python, AWK, PowerShell, Unix Shell scripts, VBA, or simple DOS batch files. The Team SharePress is the work of a lot of people in both the WordPress and SharePoint community. I worked with a lot of SharePoint MVPs to create this new product as we really wanted to deliver the most compatible and feature rich system in a product that we would be proud of. Many thanks go out to Eli Bleeker, Todd Robillard, Scot Larson, Daniel Hillier, Shane Fox, Box Peran, Amanda English, and Bill Murray for doing the heavy lifting and all of their expertise and innovative thinking to get this product out. Licensing and Pricing SharePress is still in the final stages for pricing but we’re looking at a price point somewhere between $99-$100 to make it affordable for everyone. We plan to announce final pricing sometime in the next few weeks. There are no additional charges for Enterprise versions or additional features. Everything you see is what’s available and it’s just a matter of lighting up your site with whatever feature you want to enable. The product will not be open source but source code licenses will be available to ISVs who are interested in interfacing with the API at a low level. Cost will be $25,000 USD per developer and gives you complete access to the source code to the SharePress Foundation System and the .NET 4.0 Framework source code. Conclusion We hope you enjoy the launch of SharePress as the new premium blogging and content management platform for both Intranets and the Internet. We think we’ve build the best of breed solutions here and made it easy for anyone to get started with a minimal of infrastructure but allow the scalability of SharePress to shine through in the Enterprise 2.0 world. We encourage your feedback so please leave comments as to what you’re looking for in this system as we’re always evolving it to make it a better product for everyone.

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• Building services with .Net Part 1

  - by Allan Rwakatungu

  On the 26th of May 2010 , I made a presentation to the .NET user group meeting (thanks to Malisa Ncube for organizing this event every month … ). If you missed my presentation , we talked about why we should all be building services … better still using the .NET framework. This blog post is an introduction to services , why you would want to build services and how you can build services using the .NET framework. What is a service? OASIS defines service as "a mechanism to enable access to one or more capabilities, where the access is provided using a prescribed interface and is exercised consistent with constraints and policies as specified by the service description." [1]. If the above definition sounds to academic , you can also define a service as loosely coupled units of functionality that have no calls to each other embedded in the. Instead of services embedding calls to each other in their service code they use defined protocols that describe how services pass and parse messages. This is a good way to think about services if you’re from an objected oriented background. While in object oriented programming functions make calls to each other, in service oriented programming, functions pass messages between each other. Why would you want to use services? 1. If your enterprise architecture looks like this   Services are the building blocks for SOA . With SOA you can move away from the sphaggetti infrastructure that is common in most enterprises. The complexity or lack of visibility of the integration points in your enterprises makes it difficult and costly to implement new initiatives and changes into the business - and even impossible in some cases - as it is not possible to identify the impact a change in one system might have to other systems. With services you can move to an architecture like this Your building blocks from Spaghetti infrastructure to something that is more well-defined and manageable to achieve cost efficiency and not least business agility - enabling you to react to changes in the market with speed and achieve operational efficiency and control are services. 2. If you want to become the Gates or Zuckerburger. Have you heard about Web 2.0 ? Mashups? Software as a service (SAAS) ? Cloud computing ?   They all offer you the opportunity to have scalable but low cost business models and they built using services.  Some of my favorite companies that leverage services for their business models include  https://www.salesforce.com/ (cloud CRM) http://www. twitter.com (more people use twitter clients built by 3rd parties than their official clients) http://www.kayak.com/ (compares data from other travel sites to give information to users in one location) Services with the .NET framework      If you are a .NET developer and you want to develop services, Windows Communication Framework (WCF) is the tool for you. WCF is Microsoft’s unified programming model (service model) for building service oriented applications. ( Before .NET 3.0 you had several models for programming services in .NET including .NET remoting, Web services (ASMX), COM +, Microsoft Messaging queuing (MSMQ) etc, after .NET 3.0 the programming model was unified into one i.e. WCF ). Windows Communication Framework (WCF) provides you 1. An Software Development Kit (SDK) for creating SOA applications 2. A runtime for running services on the Windows platform Why should you use Windows Communication Foundation if you’re programming services?   1. It supports interoperable and open standards e.g. WS* protocols for programming SOAP services 2. It has a unified programming model. Whether you use TCP or Http or Pipes or transmitting using Messaging Queues, programmers need to learn just one way to program. Previously you had .NET remoting, MSMQ, Web services, COM+ and they were all done differently 3. Productive programming model You don’t have to worry about all the plumbing involved to write services. You have a rich declarative programming model to add stuff like logging, transactions, and reliable messages in-built in the Windows Communication Framework. Understanding services in WCF The basic principles of WCF are as easy as ABC A – Address This is where the service is located B- Binding This describes how you communicate with the service e.g. Use TCP, HTTP or both. How to exchange security information with the service etc. C – Contract This defines what the service can do. E.g. Pay water bill, Make a phone call A - Addresses In WCF, an address is a combination of transport, server name, port and path Example addresses may include http://localhost:8001 net.tcp://localhost:8002/MyService net.pipe://localhost/MyPipe net.msmq://localhost/private/MyService net.msmq://localhost/MyService B- Binding   There are numerous ways to communicate with services , different ways that a message can be formatted/sent/secured, that allows you to tailor your service for the compatibility/performance you require for your solution. Transport You can use HTTP TCP MSMQ , Named pipes, Your own custom transport etc Message You  can send a plain text binary, Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM) message Communication security No security Transport security Message security Authenticating and authorizing callers etc Behaviour You service can support Transactions Be reliable Use queues Support ajax etc C - Contract You define what your service can do using Service contracts :- Define operations that your service can do, communications and behaviours Data contracts :- Define the messages that are passed from and into your service and how they are formatted Fault contracts :- Defines errors types in your service   As an example, suppose your service service shows money. You define your service contract using a interface [ServiceContract] public interface IShowMeTheMoney {   [OperationContract]    Money Show(); } You define the data contract by annotating a class it with the Data Contract attribute and fields you want to pass in the message as Data Members. (Note:- In the latest versions of WCF you dont have to use attributes if you passing all the objects properties in the message) [DataContract] public Money {   [DataMember]   public string Currency { get; set; }   [DataMember]   public Decimal Amount { get; set; }   public string Comment { get; set; } } Features of Windows Communication Foundation Windows Communication Foundation is not only simple but feature rich , offering you several options to tweak your service to fit your business requirements. Some of the features of WCF include 1. Workflow services You can combine WCF with Windows WorkFlow Foundation (WWF) to write workflow type services 2. Control how your data (messages) are transferred and serialized e.g. you can serialize your business objects as XML or binary 3. control over session management , instance creation and concurrency management without writing code if you like 4. Queues and reliable sessions. You can store messages from the sending client and later forward them to the receiving application. You can also guarantee that messages will arrive at their destincation. 5.Transactions:  You can have different services participate in a transaction operations that can be rolled back if needed 6. Security. WCF has rich features for authorization and authentication  as well as keep audit trails 7. Web programming model. WCF allows developers to expose services as non SOAP endpoints 8. Inbuilt features that you can use to write JSON and services that support AJAX applications And lots more In my next blog I will show you how you can use WCF features to write a real world business service.               Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Windows Azure Evolution &ndash; Preview Developer Portal

  - by Shaun

  With the MEET Windows Azure event on 7th June, there are many new features and updates in windows azure platform. In the coming several posts I will try to cover some of them. And in the first post here I would like to just have a quick walkthrough of the new preview developer portal.   History of the Developer Portal If you have been working with windows azure since 2009 or 2010, you should remember the first version of the developer portal. It was built in HTML with very limited features. I have the impression when I was using is old one. The layout is not that attractive and you have very limited features. On November, 2010 alone with the SDK 1.3 release, the developer portal was getting a big jump. In order to give more usability and features this it turned to be built on Silverlight. Hence it runs like a desktop application with many windows, lists, commands and context menus. From 2010 till now many features were involved into this portal, such as the remote desktop, co-admin, virtual connect, VM role, etc.. And the portal itself became more and more complicated. But it brought some problems by using the Silverlight. The first one is the browser capability. As you know in most mobile and tablet device the browser doesn’t allow the rich content plugin, such as Flash and Silverlight. This means people cannot open and configure their azure services from their iPad, iPhone and Windows Phone, etc., even though what they need may just be restart a hosted service, or view the status of their databases. Another problem is the performance. Silverlight provides rich experience to the users, but also needs more bandwidth. So in this upgrade the preview developer portal will be back to use HTML, with JavaScript, as a mobile friendly, cross browser, interactively web site.   Preview Portal vs. Silverlight Portal Before I started to talk about the new preview portal I’d better highlight that, this preview portal is a PREVIEW version, which means even though you can do almost all features that already in the old one, as long as some cool new features I will mention in the coming several posts, there are something still under developed and migrated. So sometimes you need to switch back to the old one. For example, in preview portal there is no co-admin manage function, no remote desktop function and the SQL database manage function will take you back to the old SQL Azure Manage Portal. But as Microsoft said these missing features will be moved in the preview portal in the couple of next few months. Since the public URL of the developer portal, https://windows.azure.com/, had been changed to point to this preview one, you need to click to preview button on top of the page and click the “Take me to the previous portal” link.   Overview There are four parts in the preview portal. On the top is the header which shows the account you are currently logging in. If you click on the header it will show the top menu of windows azure, where you can navigate to the windows azure home page, the price information page, community and account, etc.. The navigation bar is on the left hand side, with the categories listed below. ALL ITEMS All items in your windows azure account, includes the web sites, services, databases, etc.. WEB SITES The web sites in your windows azure account. It will only show the web sites you have. The linked resources will be shown if you drill down into a web site. VIRTUAL MACHINES The virtual machines that you had been deployed to azure. CLOUD SERVICES All windows azure hosted services in your account. SQL DATABASES All SQL databases (SQL Azure) in your account. STORAGE All windows azure storage services in your account. NETWORKS The virtual network (Windows Azure Connect) you had been created. The available items will be listed in the main part of the page based on which category your currently selected. If there’s no item it will show the link to you to quick create. At the bottom of the page there will be the command and information bar. Based on what is selected and what is performed by the user, it will show the related information and commands. For example, in the image below when I was creating a new web site, the information bar told me that my web site is being provisioned; and there are two commands in the command bar. And once it ready the command bar will show some commands that I can do to my new web site. The “Web Sites” is a new feature introduced alone with this upgrade. It gives us an easier and quicker way to establish a website from the scratch or from some existing library. I will introduce it more details in the coming next post. Also in the command bar you can create a service by clicking the NEW button. It will slide the creation panel up to you.   Where’s My Hosted Services The Windows Azure Hosted Services had been renamed to the Cloud Services. Create a new service would be very easy. Just click the NEW button at the bottom of the page, and select the CLOUD SERVICE and QIUICK CREATE. This will create a blank hosted service without deployment and certificate. It just needs you to specify the service URL and the affinity/region. Then the service will be shown in the list. If you clicked the item all information will be shown in the main part. Since there’s no package deployed to this service so currently we cannot see any information about it. But we can upload the package by using the command at the bottom. And as you can see, we could manage the configuration, instances, certificates and we can scale up and down (change the VM size), in and out (increase and decrease the instance count) to our service. Assuming I had created an ASP.NET MVC 3 web role project in Visual Studio and completed the package. Then I can click the UPLOAD button in this page to deploy my package. In the popping up window I just specify my deployment name, package file and configure file. Also I can check the box below so that it will NOT warn me if only one instance of this deployment. Once we clicked the OK button our package will be uploaded and provisioned by the platform. After a while we can see the service was ready from the information bar. We can have the basic information about this service and deployment if we to the dashboard page. For example the usage overview diagram, status, URL, public IP address, etc.. In the configure page we can view and change the CSCFG content such as the monitor setting, connection strings, OS family. In scale page we can increase and decrease the count of the instances. And in the instances page we can view all instances status. And, if your services is using some SQL databases and storages they will be shown as the linked resources under the linked resources page. And you can manage the certificates of this service as well under the certificates page.   How About My Storage Services The storage service can be managed by clicking into the STORAGES link in the navigation bar. And we can create a new storage service from the NEW button. After specify the storage name and region it will be previsioned by the platform. If you want to copy or manage the storage key you can just click the Manage Keys button at the bottom, which is very easy. What I want to highlight here is that, you can monitor your storage service by enabling the monitor configuration. Click the storage item in the list and navigate to the configure page. As you can see in the page you can enable the monitoring for blob, table and queue. And you can also enable the logging when any requests come to the storage. But as the tooltip shown in the page, enabling the monitoring and logging will increase the usage of the storage, which means increase the bill of them. So make sure you enable them properly.   And My SQL Databases (SQL Azure) The last thing I want to quick introduce is the SQL databases, which was formally named SQL Azure. You can create a new SQL Database Server and a new database by clicking the ADD button under the SQL Database navigation item. In the popping up windows just specify the database name, the edition, size, collation and the server. You can select an existing SQL Database Server if you have, or cerate a new one. If you selected to create a new server, there will be another step you need to do, which is specify the server login, password and the region. Once it ready you can mange your databases as well as the servers in the portal. In a particular server you can update the firewall settings in its Configure page. So, What Else There are some other area on the preview portal I didn’t cover, such as the virtual machines, virtual network and web sites. Regarding the virtual machines and web sites I will talk about them in the future separated post. Regarding the virtual network, it the Windows Azure Connect we are familiar with. But as I mention in the beginning of this post, the preview portal is still under developed. Some features are not available here. For example, you cannot manage the co-admin of your subscriptions, you cannot open the remote desktop on your hosted services, and you cannot navigate to the Windows Azure Service Bus, Access Control and Caching, which formally named Windows Azure AppFabric directly. In these cases you need to navigate back to the old portal. So in the coming several months we might need to use both these two sites.   Summary In this post I quick introduced the new windows azure developer portal. Since it had been rearranged and renamed I demonstrated some features that existing in the old portal, such as how to create and deploy a hosted service, how to provision a storage service and SQL database. All features in the old portal had been, is being and will be migrated into this new portal, but some of them were in a different category and page we need to figure out.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #039

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 FQL – Facebook Query Language Facebook list following advantages of FQL: Condensed XML reduces bandwidth and parsing costs. More complex requests can reduce the number of requests necessary. Provides a single consistent, unified interface for all of your data. It’s fun! UDF – Get the Day of the Week Function The day of the week can be retrieved in SQL Server by using the DatePart function. The value returned by the function is between 1 (Sunday) and 7 (Saturday). To convert this to a string representing the day of the week, use a CASE statement. UDF – Function to Get Previous And Next Work Day – Exclude Saturday and Sunday While reading ColdFusion blog of Ben Nadel Getting the Previous Day In ColdFusion, Excluding Saturday And Sunday, I realize that I use similar function on my SQL Server Database. This function excludes the Weekends (Saturday and Sunday), and it gets previous as well as next work day. Complete Series of SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Introduction Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 1 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 2 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 3 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers Complete List Download 2008 Introduction to Log Viewer In SQL Server all the windows event logs can be seen along with SQL Server logs. Interface for all the logs is same and can be launched from the same place. This log can be exported and filtered as well. DBCC SHRINKFILE Takes Long Time to Run If you are DBA who are involved with Database Maintenance and file group maintenance, you must have experience that many times DBCC SHRINKFILE operations takes a long time but any other operations with Database are relatively quicker. mssqlsystemresource – Resource Database The purpose of resource database is to facilitates upgrading to the new version of SQL Server without any hassle. In previous versions whenever version of SQL Server was upgraded all the previous version system objects needs to be dropped and new version system objects to be created. 2009 Puzzle – Write Script to Generate Primary Key and Foreign Key In SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), there is no option to script all the keys. If one is required to script keys they will have to manually script each key one at a time. If database has many tables, generating one key at a time can be a very intricate task. I want to throw a question to all of you if any of you have scripts for the same purpose. Maximizing View of SQL Server Management Studio – Full Screen – New Screen I had explained the following two different methods: 1) Open Results in Separate Tab - This is a very interesting method as result pan shows up in a different tab instead of the splitting screen horizontally. 2) Open SSMS in Full Screen - This works always and to its best. Not many people are aware of this method; hence, very few people use it to enhance performance. 2010 Find Queries using Parallelism from Cached Plan T-SQL script gets all the queries and their execution plan where parallelism operations are kicked up. Pay attention there is TOP 10 is used, if you have lots of transactional operations, I suggest that you change TOP 10 to TOP 50 This is the list of the all the articles in the series of computed columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Storage This article talks about how computed columns are created and why they take more storage space than before. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Performance This article talks about how PERSISTED columns give better performance than non-persisted columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Performance – Part 2 This article talks about how non-persisted columns give better performance than PERSISTED columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column and Performance – Part 3 This article talks about how Index improves the performance of Computed Columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Storage – Part 2 This article talks about how creating index on computed column does not grow the row length of table. SQL SERVER – Computed Columns – Index and Performance This article summarized all the articles related to computed columns. 2011 SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 21 of 31 What is Data Warehousing? What is Business Intelligence (BI)? What is a Dimension Table? What is Dimensional Modeling? What is a Fact Table? What are the Fundamental Stages of Data Warehousing? What are the Different Methods of Loading Dimension tables? Describes the Foreign Key Columns in Fact Table and Dimension Table? What is Data Mining? What is the Difference between a View and a Materialized View? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 22 of 31 What is OLTP? What is OLAP? What is the Difference between OLTP and OLAP? What is ODS? What is ER Diagram? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 23 of 31 What is ETL? What is VLDB? Is OLTP Database is Design Optimal for Data Warehouse? If denormalizing improves Data Warehouse Processes, then why is the Fact Table is in the Normal Form? What are Lookup Tables? What are Aggregate Tables? What is Real-Time Data-Warehousing? What are Conformed Dimensions? What is a Conformed Fact? How do you Load the Time Dimension? What is a Level of Granularity of a Fact Table? What are Non-Additive Facts? What is a Factless Facts Table? What are Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD)? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 24 of 31 What is Hybrid Slowly Changing Dimension? What is BUS Schema? What is a Star Schema? What Snow Flake Schema? Differences between the Star and Snowflake Schema? What is Difference between ER Modeling and Dimensional Modeling? What is Degenerate Dimension Table? Why is Data Modeling Important? What is a Surrogate Key? What is Junk Dimension? What is a Data Mart? What is the Difference between OLAP and Data Warehouse? What is a Cube and Linked Cube with Reference to Data Warehouse? What is Snapshot with Reference to Data Warehouse? What is Active Data Warehousing? What is the Difference between Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence? What is MDS? Explain the Paradigm of Bill Inmon and Ralph Kimball. SQL SERVER – Azure Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Paras Doshi – Day 25 of 31 Paras Doshi has submitted 21 interesting question and answers for SQL Azure. 1.What is SQL Azure? 2.What is cloud computing? 3.How is SQL Azure different than SQL server? 4.How many replicas are maintained for each SQL Azure database? 5.How can we migrate from SQL server to SQL Azure? 6.Which tools are available to manage SQL Azure databases and servers? 7.Tell me something about security and SQL Azure. 8.What is SQL Azure Firewall? 9.What is the difference between web edition and business edition? 10.How do we synchronize On Premise SQL server with SQL Azure? 11.How do we Backup SQL Azure Data? 12.What is the current pricing model of SQL Azure? 13.What is the current limitation of the size of SQL Azure DB? 14.How do you handle datasets larger than 50 GB? 15.What happens when the SQL Azure database reaches Max Size? 16.How many databases can we create in a single server? 17.How many servers can we create in a single subscription? 18.How do you improve the performance of a SQL Azure Database? 19.What is code near application topology? 20.What were the latest updates to SQL Azure service? 21.When does a workload on SQL Azure get throttled? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Malathi Mahadevan – Day 26 of 31 Malachi had asked a simple question which has several answers. Each answer makes you think and ponder about the reality of the IT world. Look at the simple question – ‘What is the toughest challenge you have faced in your present job and how did you handle it’? and its various answers. Each answer has its own story. SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Rick Morelan – Day 27 of 31 Rick Morelan of Joes2Pros has written an excellent blog post on the subject how to find top N values. Most people are fully aware of how the TOP keyword works with a SELECT statement. After years preparing so many students to pass the SQL Certification I noticed they were pretty well prepared for job interviews too. Yes, they would do well in the interview but not great. There seemed to be a few questions that would come up repeatedly for almost everyone. Rick addresses similar questions in his lucid writing skills. 2012 Observation of Top with Index and Order of Resultset SQL Server has lots of things to learn and share. It is amazing to see how people evaluate and understand different techniques and styles differently when implementing. The real reason may be absolutely different but we may blame something totally different for the incorrect results. Read the blog post to learn more. How do I Record Video and Webcast How to Convert Hex to Decimal or INT Earlier I asked regarding a question about how to convert Hex to Decimal. I promised that I will post an answer with Due Credit to the author but never got around to post a blog post around it. Read the original post over here SQL SERVER – Question – How to Convert Hex to Decimal. Query to Get Unique Distinct Data Based on Condition – Eliminate Duplicate Data from Resultset The natural reaction will be to suggest DISTINCT or GROUP BY. However, not all the questions can be solved by DISTINCT or GROUP BY. Let us see the following example, where a user wanted only latest records to be displayed. Let us see the example to understand further. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Variant Management– Which Approach fits for my Product?

  - by C. Chadwick

  Jürgen Kunz – Director Product Development – Oracle ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG Introduction In a difficult economic environment, it is important for companies to understand the customer requirements in detail and to address them in their products. Customer specific products, however, usually cause increased costs. Variant management helps to find the best combination of standard components and custom components which balances customer’s product requirements and product costs. Depending on the type of product, different approaches to variant management will be applied. For example the automotive product “car” or electronic/high-tech products like a “computer”, with a pre-defined set of options to be combined in the individual configuration (so called “Assembled to Order” products), require a different approach to products in heavy machinery, which are (at least partially) engineered in a customer specific way (so-called “Engineered-to Order” products). This article discusses different approaches to variant management. Starting with the simple Bill of Material (BOM), this article presents three different approaches to variant management, which are provided by Agile PLM. Single level BOM and Variant BOM The single level BOM is the basic form of the BOM. The product structure is defined using assemblies and single parts. A particular product is thus represented by a fixed product structure. As soon as you have to manage product variants, the single level BOM is no longer sufficient. A variant BOM will be needed to manage product variants. The variant BOM is sometimes referred to as 150% BOM, since a variant BOM contains more parts and assemblies than actually needed to assemble the (final) product – just 150% of the parts You can evolve the variant BOM from the single level BOM by replacing single nodes with a placeholder node. The placeholder in this case represents the possible variants of a part or assembly. Product structure nodes, which are part of any product, are so-called “Must-Have” parts. “Optional” parts can be omitted in the final product. Additional attributes allow limiting the quantity of parts/assemblies which can be assigned at a certain position in the Variant BOM. Figure 1 shows the variant BOM of Agile PLM. Figure 1 Variant BOM in Agile PLM During the instantiation of the Variant BOM, the placeholders get replaced by specific variants of the parts and assemblies. The selection of the desired or appropriate variants is either done step by step by the user or by applying pre-defined configuration rules. As a result of the instantiation, an independent BOM will be created (Figure 2). Figure 2 Instantiated BOM in Agile PLM This kind of Variant BOM  can be used for „Assembled –To-Order“ type products as well as for „Engineered-to-Order“-type products. In case of “Assembled –To-Order” type products, typically the instantiation is done automatically with pre-defined configuration rules. For „Engineered- to-Order“-type products at least part of the product is selected manually to make use of customized parts/assemblies, that have been engineered according to the specific custom requirements. Template BOM The Template BOM is used for „Engineered-to-Order“-type products. It is another type of variant BOM. The engineer works in a flexible environment which allows him to build the most creative solutions. At the same time the engineer shall be guided to re-use existing solutions and it shall be assured that product variants of the same product family share the same base structure. The template BOM defines the basic structure of products belonging to the same product family. Let’s take a gearbox as an example. The customer specific configuration of the gearbox is influenced by several parameters (e.g. rpm range, transmitted torque), which are defined in the customer’s requirement document.  Figure 3 shows part of a Template BOM (yellow) and its relation to the product family hierarchy (blue).  Figure 3 Template BOM Every component of the Template BOM has links to the variants that have been engineeried so far for the component (depending on the level in the Template BOM, they are product variants, Assembly Variant or single part variants). This library of solutions, the so-called solution space, can be used by the engineers to build new product variants. In the best case, the engineer selects an existing solution variant, such as the gearbox shown in figure 3. When the existing variants do not fulfill the specific requirements, a new variant will be engineered. This new variant must be compliant with the given Template BOM. If we look at the gearbox in figure 3  it must consist of a transmission housing, a Connecting Plate, a set of Gears and a Planetary transmission – pre-assumed that all components are must have components. The new variant will enhance the solution space and is automatically available for re-use in future variants. The result of the instantiation of the Template BOM is a stand-alone BOM which represents the customer specific product variant. Modular BOM The concept of the modular BOM was invented in the automotive industry. Passenger cars are so-called „Assembled-to-Order“-products. The customer first selects the specific equipment of the car (so-called specifications) – for instance engine, audio equipment, rims, color. Based on this information the required parts will be determined and the customer specific car will be assembled. Certain combinations of specification are not available for the customer, because they are not feasible from technical perspective (e.g. a convertible with sun roof) or because the combination will not be offered for marketing reasons (e.g. steel rims with a sports line car). The modular BOM (yellow structure in figure 4) is defined in the context of a specific product family (in the sample it is product family „Speedstar“). It is the same modular BOM for the different types of cars of the product family (e.g. sedan, station wagon). The assembly or single parts of the car (blue nodes in figure 4) are assigned at the leaf level of the modular BOM. The assignment of assembly and parts to the modular BOM is enriched with a configuration rule (purple elements in figure 4). The configuration rule defines the conditions to use a specific assembly or single part. The configuration rule is valid in the context of a type of car (green elements in figure 4). Color specific parts are assigned to the color independent parts via additional configuration rules (grey elements in figure 4). The configuration rules use Boolean operators to connect the specifications. Additional consistency rules (constraints) may be used to define invalid combinations of specification (so-called exclusions). Furthermore consistency rules may be used to add specifications to the set of specifications. For instance it is important that a car with diesel engine always is build using the high capacity battery.  Figure 4 Modular BOM The calculation of the car configuration consists of several steps. First the consistency rules (constraints) are applied. Resulting from that specification might be added automatically. The second step will determine the assemblies and single parts for the complete structure of the modular BOM, by evaluating the configuration rules in the context of the current type of car. The evaluation of the rules for one component in the modular BOM might result in several rules being fulfilled. In this case the most specific rule (typically the longest rule) will win. Thanks to this approach, it is possible to add a specific variant to the modular BOM without the need to change any other configuration rules.  As a result the whole set of configuration rules is easy to maintain. Finally the color specific assemblies respective parts will be determined and the configuration is completed. Figure 5 Calculated Car Configuration The result of the car configuration is shown in figure 5. It shows the list of assemblies respective single parts (blue components in figure 5), which are required to build the customer specific car. Summary There are different approaches to variant management. Three different approaches have been presented in this article. At the end of the day, it is the type of the product which decides about the best approach.  For „Assembled to Order“-type products it is very likely that you can define the configuration rules and calculate the product variant automatically. Products of type „Engineered-to-Order“ ,however, need to be engineered. Nevertheless in the majority of cases, part of the product structure can be generated automatically in a similar way to „Assembled to Order“-tape products.  That said it is important first to analyze the product portfolio, in order to define the best approach to variant management.

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• MVC 2 Ajax.Beginform passes returned Html to javascript function

  - by Joe

  Hi, I have a small partial Create Person form in a page above a table of results. I want to be able to post the form to the server, which I can do no problem with ajax.Beginform. <% using (Ajax.BeginForm("Create", new AjaxOptions { OnComplete = "ProcessResponse" })) {%> <fieldset> <legend>Fields</legend> <div class="editor-label"> <%=Html.LabelFor(model => model.FirstName)%> </div> <div class="editor-field"> <%=Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.FirstName)%> <%=Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.FirstName)%> </div> <div class="editor-label"> <%=Html.LabelFor(model => model.LastName)%> </div> <div class="editor-field"> <%=Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.LastName)%> <%=Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.LastName)%> </div> <p> <input type="submit" /> </p> </fieldset> <% } %> Then in my controller I want to be able to post back a partial which is just a table row if the create is successful and append it to the table, which I can do easily with jquery. $('#personTable tr:last').after(data); However, if server validation fails I want to pass back my partial create person form with the validation errors and replace the existing Create Person form. I have tried returning a Json array Controller: return Json(new { Success = true, Html= this.RenderViewToString("PersonSubform",person) }); Javascript: var json_data = response.get_response().get_object(); with a pass/fail flag and the partial rendered as a string using the solition below but that doesnt render the mvc validation controls when the form fails. SO RenderPartialToString So, is there any way I can hand my javascript the out of the box PartialView("PersonForm") as its returned from my ajax.form? Can I pass some addition info as a Json array so I can tell if its pass or fail and maybe add a message? UPDATE I can now pass the HTML of a PartialView to my javascript but I need to pass some additional data pairs like ServerValidation : true/false and ActionMessage : "you have just created a Person Bill". Ideally I would pass a Json array rather than hidden fields in my partial. function ProcessResponse(response) { var html = response.get_data(); $("#campaignSubform").html(html); } Many thanks in advance

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• Converting hierarchial data into an unordered list Programmatically using asp.net/C#

  - by kranthi

  hi everyone, I've data which looks something like this. | id | name | depth | itemId | +-----+----------------------+-------+-------+ | 0 | ELECTRONICS | 0 | NULL | | 1 | TELEVISIONS | 1 | NULL | | 400 | Tube | 2 | NULL | | 432 | LCD | 3 | 1653 | | 422 | Plasma | 3 | 1633 | | 416 | Portable electronics | 3 | 1595 | | 401 | MP3 Player | 3 | 1249 | | 191 | Flash | 2 | NULL | | 555 | CD Players | 3 | 2198 | | 407 | 2 Way Radio | 3 | 1284 | | 388 | I've a problem with | 3 | 1181 | | 302 | What is your bill pa | 3 | 543 | | 203 | Where can I find my | 3 | 299 | | 201 | I would like to make | 3 | 288 | | 200 | Do you have any job | 3 | 284 | | 192 | About Us | 3 | NULL | | 199 | What can you tell me | 4 | 280 | | 198 | Do you help pr | 4 | 276 | | 197 | would someone help co| 4 | 272 | | 196 | can you help ch | 4 | 268 | | 195 | What awards has Veri | 4 | 264 | | 194 | What's the latest ne | 4 | 260 | | 193 | Can you tell me more | 4 | 256 | | 180 | Site Help | 2 | NULL | | 421 | Where are the | 3 | 1629 | | 311 | How can I access My | 3 | 557 | | 280 | Why isn't the page a | 3 | 512 | To convert the above data into unordered list based on depth, I'm using the following code int lastDepth = -1; int numUL = 0; StringBuilder output = new StringBuilder(); foreach (DataRow row in ds.Tables[0].Rows) { int currentDepth = Convert.ToInt32(row["Depth"]); if (lastDepth < currentDepth) { if (currentDepth == 0) { output.Append("<ul class=\"simpleTree\">"); output.AppendFormat("<li class=\"root\"><span><a href=\"#\" title=\"root\">root</a></span><ul><li class=\"open\" ><span><a href=\"#\" title={1}>{0}</a></span>", row["name"],row["id"]); } else { output.Append("<ul>"); if(currentDepth==1) output.AppendFormat("<li><span>{0}</span>", row["name"]); else output.AppendFormat("<li><span class=\"text\"><a href=\"#\" title={1}>{0}</a></span>", row["name"], row["id"]); } numUL++; } else if (lastDepth > currentDepth) { output.Append("</li></ul></li>"); if(currentDepth==1) output.AppendFormat("<li><span>{0}</span>", row["name"]); else output.AppendFormat("<li><span class=\"text\"><a href=\"#\" title={1}>{0}</a></span>", row["name"], row["id"]); numUL--; } else if (lastDepth > -1) { output.Append("</li>"); output.AppendFormat("<li><span class=\"text\"><a href=\"#\" title={1}>{0}</a></span>", row["name"],row["id"]); } lastDepth = currentDepth; } for (int i = 1; i <= numUL+1; i++) { output.Append("</li></ul>"); } myliteral.text=output.ToString(); But the resulting unordered list doesnt seem to be forming properly(using which i am constructing a tree).For example "Site Help" with id '180' is supposed to appear as a direct child of "Televisions" with id '1',is appearing as a direct child of 'Flash' with id '191' using my code.so in addition to considering depth,I've decided to consider itemid as well in order to get the treeview properly.Those rows of the table with itemId not equal to null are not supposed to have a child node(i.e.,they are the leaf nodes in the tree) and all the other nodes can have child nodes. Please could someone help me in constructing a proper unordered list based on my depth,itemid coulumns? Thanks.

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• swfobject weird behavior

  - by David

  Hi All, I'm using swfobject to embed my flash. It's doing weird things. I've created a simple textfield using FlexBuilder. It's an AS3 project, which extends Sprite. I've set its width to be 640 and height to 450. Then, in the swfobject parameters of the page, I've also set 640 x 450. I've made the background nice and red and ugly so you can see it. :) http://www.brighttext.com/flash/TextFieldSetFormat.html It seems to be the right dimensions. BUT I've got a textfield which is supposed to be almost the same size and height. This runs fine in FlexBuilder (is the right size) but is all messed up once I add swfobject Can anyone see what is happening? EDIT NOTE: I just looked at it and it looks ok. But then I refreshed the page and the textfield is postage-stamp size (again -- this is the original behavior I saw.) It's now looking OK in firefox but not in IE8. Flash is supposed to look the same in all browsers !!?? AS3 code: package { import flash.display.Sprite; import flash.text.TextField; import flash.text.TextFormat; import flash.text.Font; [SWF(width="640", height="450", backgroundColor="#FFFFFF", frameRate="30")] public class TextFieldSetFormat extends Sprite { [Embed(source='C:/WINDOWS/Fonts/ArialBD.TTF', fontWeight = 'bold', fontName='ArialBold')] [Embed(source='C:/WINDOWS/Fonts/Arial.TTF', fontWeight = 'regular', fontName='Arial')] public function TextFieldSetFormat() { var tf2:TextFormat = new TextFormat(); tf2.size = 16; tf2.font = "Arial"; Font.registerFont(_VerdanaFontBold); Font.registerFont(_VerdanaFont); var pad:Number = 10; var brightTextField:TextField = new TextField; brightTextField.backgroundColor = 0xDDF3B2; brightTextField.background = true; brightTextField.embedFonts = true; brightTextField.border = true; brightTextField.defaultTextFormat = tf2; brightTextField.wordWrap = true; brightTextField.multiline = true; brightTextField.width = stage.stageWidth - (4 * pad); brightTextField.height = stage.stageHeight - (3 * pad); brightTextField.x = 2*pad; brightTextField.y = 2*pad; brightTextField.text = "Dear Senators, I have become concerned over the idea that some in the Senate will oppose the public option because of a group of wild-eyed, overbearing but misinformed ideologues. These people mistakenly equate insurance reform with Socialism and call our first African-American President unprintable epithets. This is unacceptable. The public option is the choice of more than 70% of Americans, a majority of the House and a great many opinion leaders. Passing insurance reform without a public option persists the current broken system. I am aware that many Senators would prefer to pass a reform bill with bipartisan support. But we cannot allow this critical debate to be hijacked by extremists or corporate profiteers. Thank you, and I look forward to hearing from you."; addChild(brightTextField); } } }

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• Overriding Object.Equals() instance method in C#; now Code Analysis / FxCop warning CA2218: "should

  - by Chris W. Rea

  I've got a complex class in my C# project on which I want to be able to do equality tests. It is not a trivial class; it contains a variety of scalar properties as well as references to other objects and collections (e.g. IDictionary). For what it's worth, my class is sealed. To enable a performance optimization elsewhere in my system (an optimization that avoids a costly network round-trip), I need to be able to compare instances of these objects to each other for equality – other than the built-in reference equality – and so I'm overriding the Object.Equals() instance method. However, now that I've done that, Visual Studio 2008's Code Analysis a.k.a. FxCop, which I keep enabled by default, is raising the following warning: warning : CA2218 : Microsoft.Usage : Since 'MySuperDuperClass' redefines Equals, it should also redefine GetHashCode. I think I understand the rationale for this warning: If I am going to be using such objects as the key in a collection, the hash code is important. i.e. see this question. However, I am not going to be using these objects as the key in a collection. Ever. Feeling justified to suppress the warning, I looked up code CA2218 in the MSDN documentation to get the full name of the warning so I could apply a SuppressMessage attribute to my class as follows: [SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Naming", "CA2218:OverrideGetHashCodeOnOverridingEquals", Justification="This class is not to be used as key in a hashtable.")] However, while reading further, I noticed the following: How to Fix Violations To fix a violation of this rule, provide an implementation of GetHashCode. For a pair of objects of the same type, you must ensure that the implementation returns the same value if your implementation of Equals returns true for the pair. When to Suppress Warnings ----- Do not suppress a warning from this rule. [arrow & emphasis mine] So, I'd like to know: Why shouldn't I suppress this warning as I was planning to? Doesn't my case warrant suppression? I don't want to code up an implementation of GetHashCode() for this object that will never get called, since my object will never be the key in a collection. If I wanted to be pedantic, instead of suppressing, would it be more reasonable for me to override GetHashCode() with an implementation that throws a NotImplementedException? Update: I just looked this subject up again in Bill Wagner's good book Effective C#, and he states in "Item 10: Understand the Pitfalls of GetHashCode()": If you're defining a type that won't ever be used as the key in a container, this won't matter. Types that represent window controls, web page controls, or database connections are unlikely to be used as keys in a collection. In those cases, do nothing. All reference types will have a hash code that is correct, even if it is very inefficient. [...] In most types that you create, the best approach is to avoid the existence of GetHashCode() entirely. ... that's where I originally got this idea that I need not be concerned about GetHashCode() always.

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• RegEx to ignore / skip everything in html tags

  - by Scott Sumpter

  Looking for a way to combine two Regular Expressions. One to catch the urls and the other to ensure is skips text within html tags. See sample text below functions. Need to pass a block of news text and format text by wrapping urls and email addresses in html tags so users don't have to. The below code works great until there are already html tags within the text. In that case it doubles the html tags. There are plenty of examples to strip html, but I want to just ignore it since the url is already linkified. Also - if there is an easier was to accomplish this, with or without Regex, please let me know. none of my attempts to combine Regexs have worked. coding in ASP.NET VB but will take any workable example/direction. Thanks! ===== Functions ============= Public Shared Function InsertHyperlinks(ByVal inText As String) As String Dim strBuf As String Dim objMatches As Object Dim iStart, iEnd As Integer strBuf = "" iStart = 1 iEnd = 1 Dim strRegUrlEmail As String = "\b(www|http|\S+@)\S+\b" 'RegEx to find urls and email addresses Dim objRegExp As New Regex(strRegUrlEmail, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase) 'Match URLs and emails Dim MatchList As MatchCollection = objRegExp.Matches(inText) If MatchList.Count <> 0 Then objMatches = objRegExp.Matches(inText) For Each Match In MatchList iEnd = Match.Index strBuf = strBuf & Mid(inText, iStart, iEnd - iStart + 1) If InStr(1, Match.Value, "@") Then strBuf = strBuf & HrefGet(Match.Value, "EMAIL", "_BLANK") Else strBuf = strBuf & HrefGet(Match.Value, "WEB", "_BLANK") End If iStart = iEnd + Match.Length + 1 Next strBuf = strBuf & Mid(inText, iStart) InsertHyperlinks = strBuf Else 'No hyperlinks to replace InsertHyperlinks = inText End If End Function Shared Function HrefGet(ByVal url As String, ByVal urlType As String, ByVal Target As String) As String Dim strBuf As String strBuf = "<a href=""" If UCase(urlType) = "WEB" Then If LCase(Left(url, 3)) = "www" Then strBuf = "<a href=""http://" & url & """ Target=""" & _ Target & """>" & url & "</a>" Else strBuf = "<a href=""" & url & """ Target=""" & _ Target & """>" & url & "</a>" End If ElseIf UCase(urlType) = "EMAIL" Then strBuf = "<a href=""mailto:" & url & """ Target=""" & _ Target & """>" & url & "</a>" End If HrefGet = strBuf End Function ===== Sample Text ============= This would be the inText parameter. Midway through the ride, we see a Skip this too. But sometimes we go here [insert normal www dot link dot com]. If you'd like to join us contact Bill Smith at [email protected]. Thanks! sorry stack overflow won't allow multiple hyperlinks to be added. ===== End Sample Text =============

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• evaluating cost/benefits of using extension methods in C# => 3.0

  - by BillW

  Hi, In what circumstances (usage scenarios) would you choose to write an extension rather than sub-classing an object ? < full disclosure : I am not an MS employee; I do not know Mitsu Furota personally; I do know the author of the open-source Componax library mentioned here, but I have no business dealings with him whatsoever; I am not creating, or planning to create any commercial product using extensions : in sum : this post is from pure intellectal curiousity related to my trying to (continually) become aware of "best practices" I find the idea of extension methods "cool," and obviously you can do "far-out" things with them as in the many examples you can in Mitsu Furota's (MS) blog postslink text. A personal friend wrote the open-source Componax librarylink text, and there's some remarkable facilities in there; but he is in complete command of his small company with total control over code guidelines, and every line of code "passes through his hands." While this is speculation on my part : I think/guess other issues might come into play in a medium-to-large software team situation re use of Extensions. Looking at MS's guidelines at link text, you find : In general, you will probably be calling extension methods far more often than implementing your own. ... In general, we recommend that you implement extension methods sparingly and only when you have to. Whenever possible, client code that must extend an existing type should do so by creating a new type derived from the existing type. For more information, see Inheritance (C# Programming Guide). ... When the compiler encounters a method invocation, it first looks for a match in the type's instance methods. If no match is found, it will search for any extension methods that are defined for the type, and bind to the first extension method that it finds. And at Ms's link text : Extension methods present no specific security vulnerabilities. They can never be used to impersonate existing methods on a type, because all name collisions are resolved in favor of the instance or static method defined by the type itself. Extension methods cannot access any private data in the extended class. Factors that seem obvious to me would include : I assume you would not write an extension unless you expected it be used very generally and very frequently. On the other hand : couldn't you say the same thing about sub-classing ? Knowing we can compile them into a seperate dll, and add the compiled dll, and reference it, and then use the extensions : is "cool," but does that "balance out" the cost inherent in the compiler first having to check to see if instance methods are defined as described above. Or the cost, in case of a "name clash," of using the Static invocation methods to make sure your extension is invoked rather than the instance definition ? How frequent use of Extensions would affect run-time performance or memory use : I have no idea. So, I'd appreciate your thoughts, or knowing about how/when you do, or don't do, use Extensions, compared to sub-classing. thanks, Bill

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• How to find minimum weight with maximum cost in 0-1 Knapsack algorithm?

  - by Nitin9791

  I am trying to solve a spoj problem Party Schedule the problem statement is- You just received another bill which you cannot pay because you lack the money. Unfortunately, this is not the first time to happen, and now you decide to investigate the cause of your constant monetary shortness. The reason is quite obvious: the lion's share of your money routinely disappears at the entrance of party localities. You make up your mind to solve the problem where it arises, namely at the parties themselves. You introduce a limit for your party budget and try to have the most possible fun with regard to this limit. You inquire beforehand about the entrance fee to each party and estimate how much fun you might have there. The list is readily compiled, but how do you actually pick the parties that give you the most fun and do not exceed your budget? Write a program which finds this optimal set of parties that offer the most fun. Keep in mind that your budget need not necessarily be reached exactly. Achieve the highest possible fun level, and do not spend more money than is absolutely necessary. Input The first line of the input specifies your party budget and the number n of parties. The following n lines contain two numbers each. The first number indicates the entrance fee of each party. Parties cost between 5 and 25 francs. The second number indicates the amount of fun of each party, given as an integer number ranging from 0 to 10. The budget will not exceed 500 and there will be at most 100 parties. All numbers are separated by a single space. There are many test cases. Input ends with 0 0. Output For each test case your program must output the sum of the entrance fees and the sum of all fun values of an optimal solution. Both numbers must be separated by a single space. Example Sample input: 50 10 12 3 15 8 16 9 16 6 10 2 21 9 18 4 12 4 17 8 18 9 50 10 13 8 19 10 16 8 12 9 10 2 12 8 13 5 15 5 11 7 16 2 0 0 Sample output: 49 26 48 32 now I know that it is an advance version of 0/1 knapsack problem where along with maximum cost we also have to find minimum weight that is less than a a given weight and have maximum cost. so I have used dp to solve this problem but still get a wrong awnser on submission while it is perfectly fine with given test cases. My code is typedef vector<int> vi; #define pb push_back #define FOR(i,n) for(int i=0;i<n;i++) int main() { //freopen("input.txt","r",stdin); while(1) { int W,n; cin>>W>>n; if(W==0 && n==0) break; int K[n+1][W+1]; vi val,wt; FOR(i,n) { int x,y; cin>>x>>y; wt.pb(x); val.pb(y); } FOR(i,n+1) { FOR(w,W+1) { if(i==0 || w==0) { K[i][w]=0; } else if (wt[i-1] <= w) { if(val[i-1] + K[i-1][w-wt[i-1]]>=K[i-1][w]) { K[i][w]=val[i-1] + K[i-1][w-wt[i-1]]; } else { K[i][w]=K[i-1][w]; } } else { K[i][w] = K[i-1][w]; } } } int a1=K[n][W],a2; for(int j=0;j<W;j++) { if(K[n][j]==a1) { a2=j; break; } } cout<<a2<<" "<<a1<<"\n"; } return 0; } Could anyone suggest what am I missing??

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• jQuery - I'm getting unexpected outputs from a basic math formula.

  - by OllieMcCarthy

  Hi I would like to start by saying I'd greatly appreciate anyones help on this. I have built a small caculator to calculate the amount a consumer can save annually on energy by installing a ground heat pump or solar panels. As far as I can tell the mathematical formulas are correct and my client verified this yesterday when I showed him the code. Two problems. The first is that the calculator is outputting ridiculously large numbers for the first result. The second problem is that the solar result is only working when there are no zeros in the fields. Are there some quirks as to how one would write mathematical formulas in JS or jQuery? Any help greatly appreciated. Here is the link - http://www.olliemccarthy.com/test/johncmurphy/?page_id=249 And here is the code for the entire function - $jq(document).ready(function(){ // Energy Bill Saver // Declare Variables var A = ""; // Input for Oil var B = ""; // Input for Storage Heater var C = ""; // Input for Natural Gas var D = ""; // Input for LPG var E = ""; // Input for Coal var F = ""; // Input for Wood Pellets var G = ""; // Input for Number of Occupants var J = ""; var K = ""; var H = ""; var I = ""; // Declare Constants var a = "0.0816"; // Rate for Oil var b = "0.0963"; // Rate for NightRate var c = "0.0558"; // Rate for Gas var d = "0.1579"; // Rate for LPG var e = "0.121"; // Rate for Coal var f = "0.0828"; // Rate for Pellets var g = "0.02675"; // Rate for Heat Pump var x = "1226.4"; // Splittin up I to avoid error var S1 = ""; // Splitting up the calcuation for I var S2 = ""; // Splitting up the calcuation for I var S3 = ""; // Splitting up the calcuation for I var S4 = ""; // Splitting up the calcuation for I var S5 = ""; // Splitting up the calcuation for I var S6 = ""; // Splitting up the calcuation for I // Calculate H (Ground Sourced Heat Pump) $jq(".es-calculate").click(function(){ $jq(".es-result-wrap").slideDown(300); A = $jq("input.es-oil").val(); B = $jq("input.es-storage").val(); C = $jq("input.es-gas").val(); D = $jq("input.es-lpg").val(); E = $jq("input.es-coal").val(); F = $jq("input.es-pellets").val(); G = $jq("input.es-occupants").val(); J = ( A / a ) + ( B / b ) + ( C / c ) + ( D / d ) + ( E / e ) + ( F / f ) ; H = A + B + C + D + E + F - ( J * g ) ; K = ( G * x ) ; if ( A !== "0" ) { S1 = ( ( ( A / a ) / J ) * K * a ) ; } else { S1 = "0" ; } if ( B !== "0" ) { S2 = ( ( ( B / b ) / J ) * K * b ) ; } else { S2 = "0" ; } if ( C !== "0" ) { S3 = ( ( ( C / c ) / J ) * K * c ) ; } else { S3 = "0" ; } if ( D !== "0" ) { S4 = ( ( ( D / d ) / J ) * K * d ) ; } else { S4 = "0" ; } if ( E !== "0" ) { S5 = ( ( ( E / e ) / J ) * K * e ) ; } else { S5 = "0" ; } if ( F !== "0" ) { S6 = ( ( ( F / f ) / J ) * K * f ) ; } else { S6 = "0" ; } I = S1 + S2 + S3 + S4 + S5 + S6 ; if(!isNaN(H)) {$jq("span.es-result-span-h").text(H.toFixed(2));} else{$jq("span.es-result-span-h").text('Error: Please enter numerals only');} if(!isNaN(I)) {$jq("span.es-result-span-i").text(I.toFixed(2));} else{$jq("span.es-result-span-i").text('Error: Please enter numerals only');} }); });

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• Custom Online Backup Solution Advice

  - by Martín Marconcini

  I have to implement a way so our customers can backup their SQL 2000/5/8 databasase online. The application they use is a C#/.NET35 Winforms application that connects to a SQL Server (can be 2000/2005/2008, sometimes express editions). The SQL Server is on the same LAN. Our application has a very specific UI and we must code each form following those guidelines. There’s lots of GDI+ to give it the look and feel we want. For that reason, using a 3rd party application is not a very good idea. We need to charge the customer on a monthly/annual basis for the service. Preferably, the customer doesn’t need to care about bandwidth and storage space. It must be transparent. Given the above reqs., my first thoughts are: Solution 1: Code some sort of FTP basic functionality with behind the scenes SQL Backup mechanism, then hire a Hosting service and compress-transfer the .BAK to the Hosting. Maintain a series of Folders (for each customer). They won’t see what’s happening. They will just see a list of their files and a big “Backup now” button that will perform the SQL backup, compress it and upload it (and update the file list) ;) Pros: Not very complicated to implement, simple to use, fairly simple to configure (could have a dedicated ftp user/pass) Cons: Finding a “ftp” only hosting plan is not probably going to be easy, they usually come with a bunch of stuff. FTP is not always the best protocol. more? Solution 2: Similar to 1, but instead of FTP, find a cloud computing service like Amazon S3, Mosso or similar. Pros: Cloud Storage is fast, reliable, etc. It’s kind of easy to implement (specially if there are APIs like AWS or Mosso). Cons: I have been unable to come up with a service optimized for resellers where I can give multiple sub-accounts (one for each customer). Billing is going to be a nightmare cuz these services bill per/GB and with One account it’s impossible to differentiate each customer. Solution 3: Similar to 2, but letting the user create their own account on Amazon S3 (for example). Pros: You forget about billing and such. Cons: A mess for the customer who has to open the Amazon (or whatever) account, will be charged for that and not from you. You can’t really charge the customer (since you’re just not doing anything). Solution 4: Use one of the many backup online solutions that use the tech in cloud storage. Pros: many of these include SQL Server backup, and a lot of features that we’d have to implement. Plus web access and stuff like that will come included. Cons: Still have the billing problem described in number 2. Little of these companies (if any) offers “reseller” accounts. You have to eventually use their software (some offer certain branding). Any better approach? Summary: You have a software (.NET Winapp). You want your users to be able to backup their SQL Server databases online (and be able to retrieve the backups if needed). You ideally would like to charge the customer for this service (i.e. XX € a year).

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• MVC 2 Ajax.Beginform passes returned Html + Json to javascript function

  - by Joe

  Hi, I have a small partial Create Person form in a page above a table of results. I want to be able to post the form to the server, which I can do no problem with ajax.Beginform. <% using (Ajax.BeginForm("Create", new AjaxOptions { OnComplete = "ProcessResponse" })) {%> <fieldset> <legend>Fields</legend> <div class="editor-label"> <%=Html.LabelFor(model => model.FirstName)%> </div> <div class="editor-field"> <%=Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.FirstName)%> <%=Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.FirstName)%> </div> <div class="editor-label"> <%=Html.LabelFor(model => model.LastName)%> </div> <div class="editor-field"> <%=Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.LastName)%> <%=Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.LastName)%> </div> <p> <input type="submit" /> </p> </fieldset> <% } %> Then in my controller I want to be able to post back a partial which is just a table row if the create is successful and append it to the table, which I can do easily with jquery. $('#personTable tr:last').after(data); However, if server validation fails I want to pass back my partial create person form with the validation errors and replace the existing Create Person form. I have tried returning a Json array Controller: return Json(new { Success = true, Html= this.RenderViewToString("PersonSubform",person) }); Javascript: var json_data = response.get_response().get_object(); with a pass/fail flag and the partial rendered as a string using the solition below but that doesnt render the mvc validation controls when the form fails. SO RenderPartialToString So, is there any way I can hand my javascript the out of the box PartialView("PersonForm") as its returned from my ajax.form? Can I pass some addition info as a Json array so I can tell if its pass or fail and maybe add a message? UPDATE I can now pass the HTML of a PartialView to my javascript but I need to pass some additional data pairs like ServerValidation : true/false and ActionMessage : "you have just created a Person Bill". Ideally I would pass a Json array rather than hidden fields in my partial. function ProcessResponse(response) { var html = response.get_data(); $("#campaignSubform").html(html); } Many thanks in advance

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• xslt cookbook example not working

  - by Liza dawson

  Hi I am working on this from xslt cookbook type my.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <people> <person name="Al Zehtooney" age="33" sex="m" smoker="no"/> <person name="Brad York" age="38" sex="m" smoker="yes"/> <person name="Charles Xavier" age="32" sex="m" smoker="no"/> <person name="David Williams" age="33" sex="m" smoker="no"/> <person name="Edward Ulster" age="33" sex="m" smoker="yes"/> <person name="Frank Townsend" age="35" sex="m" smoker="no"/> <person name="Greg Sutter" age="40" sex="m" smoker="no"/> <person name="Harry Rogers" age="37" sex="m" smoker="no"/> <person name="John Quincy" age="43" sex="m" smoker="yes"/> <person name="Kent Peterson" age="31" sex="m" smoker="no"/> <person name="Larry Newell" age="23" sex="m" smoker="no"/> <person name="Max Milton" age="22" sex="m" smoker="no"/> <person name="Norman Lamagna" age="30" sex="m" smoker="no"/> <person name="Ollie Kensington" age="44" sex="m" smoker="no"/> <person name="John Frank" age="24" sex="m" smoker="no"/> <person name="Mary Williams" age="33" sex="f" smoker="no"/> <person name="Jane Frank" age="38" sex="f" smoker="yes"/> <person name="Jo Peterson" age="32" sex="f" smoker="no"/> <person name="Angie Frost" age="33" sex="f" smoker="no"/> <person name="Betty Bates" age="33" sex="f" smoker="no"/> <person name="Connie Date" age="35" sex="f" smoker="no"/> <person name="Donna Finster" age="20" sex="f" smoker="no"/> <person name="Esther Gates" age="37" sex="f" smoker="no"/> <person name="Fanny Hill" age="33" sex="f" smoker="yes"/> <person name="Geta Iota" age="27" sex="f" smoker="no"/> <person name="Hillary Johnson" age="22" sex="f" smoker="no"/> <person name="Ingrid Kent" age="21" sex="f" smoker="no"/> <person name="Jill Larson" age="20" sex="f" smoker="no"/> <person name="Kim Mulrooney" age="41" sex="f" smoker="no"/> <person name="Lisa Nevins" age="21" sex="f" smoker="no"/> </people> type generic-attr-to-csv.xslt <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:csv="http://www.ora.com/XSLTCookbook/namespaces/csv"> <xsl:param name="delimiter" select=" ',' "/> <xsl:output method="text" /> <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:for-each select="$columns"> <xsl:value-of select="@name"/> <xsl:if test="position( ) != last( )"> <xsl:value-of select="$delimiter/> </xsl:if> </xsl:for-each> <xsl:text>&#xa;</xsl:text> <xsl:apply-templates/> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="/*/*"> <xsl:variable name="row" select="."/> <xsl:for-each select="$columns"> <xsl:apply-templates select="$row/@*[local-name(.)=current( )/@attr]" mode="csv:map-value"/> <xsl:if test="position( ) != last( )"> <xsl:value-of select="$delimiter"/> </xsl:if> </xsl:for-each> <xsl:text>&#xa;</xsl:text> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="@*" mode="map-value"> <xsl:value-of select="."/> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> type my.xsl <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:csv="http://www.ora.com/XSLTCookbook/namespaces/csv"> <xsl:import href="generic-attr-to-csv.xslt"/> <!--Defines the mapping from attributes to columns --> <xsl:variable name="columns" select="document('')/*/csv:column"/> <csv:column name="Name" attr="name"/> <csv:column name="Age" attr="age"/> <csv:column name="Gender" attr="sex"/> <csv:column name="Smoker" attr="smoker"/> <!-- Handle custom attribute mappings --> <xsl:template match="@sex" mode="csv:map-value"> <xsl:choose> <xsl:when test=".='m'">male</xsl:when> <xsl:when test=".='f'">female</xsl:when> <xsl:otherwise>error</xsl:otherwise> </xsl:choose> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> using the apache xalan parser D:\Test>java org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process -in my.xml -xsl my.xsl -out my.csv [Fatal Error] generic-attr-to-csv.xslt:15:6: The value of attribute "select" associated with an element type "xsl:v alue-of" must not contain the '<' character. file:///D:/Test/generic-attr-to-csv.xslt; Line #15; Column #6; org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: The value of attribut e "select" associated with an element type "xsl:value-of" must not contain the '<' character. java.lang.NullPointerException at org.apache.xalan.transformer.TransformerImpl.createSerializationHandler(TransformerImpl.java:1171) at org.apache.xalan.transformer.TransformerImpl.createSerializationHandler(TransformerImpl.java:1060) at org.apache.xalan.transformer.TransformerImpl.transform(TransformerImpl.java:1268) at org.apache.xalan.transformer.TransformerImpl.transform(TransformerImpl.java:1251) at org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process.main(Process.java:1048) Exception in thread "main" java.lang.RuntimeException at org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process.doExit(Process.java:1155) at org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process.main(Process.java:1128) Any ideas what am i doing wrong

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• Sorting in Hash Maps in Java

  - by Crystal

  I'm trying to get familiar with Collections. I have a String which is my key, email address, and a Person object (firstName, lastName, telephone, email). I read in the Java collections chapter on Sun's webpages that if you had a HashMap and wanted it sorted, you could use a TreeMap. How does this sort work? Is it based on the compareTo() method you have in your Person class? I overrode the compareTo() method in my Person class to sort by lastName. But it isn't working properly and was wondering if I have the right idea or not. getSortedListByLastName at the bottom of this code is where I try to convert to a TreeMap. Also, if this is the correct way to do it, or one of the correct ways to do it, how do I then sort by firstName since my compareTo() is comparing by lastName. import java.util.*; public class OrganizeThis { /** Add a person to the organizer @param p A person object */ public void add(Person p) { staff.put(p.getEmail(), p); //System.out.println("Person " + p + "added"); } /** * Remove a Person from the organizer. * * @param email The email of the person to be removed. */ public void remove(String email) { staff.remove(email); } /** * Remove all contacts from the organizer. * */ public void empty() { staff.clear(); } /** * Find the person stored in the organizer with the email address. * Note, each person will have a unique email address. * * @param email The person email address you are looking for. * */ public Person findByEmail(String email) { Person aPerson = staff.get(email); return aPerson; } /** * Find all persons stored in the organizer with the same last name. * Note, there can be multiple persons with the same last name. * * @param lastName The last name of the persons your are looking for. * */ public Person[] find(String lastName) { ArrayList<Person> names = new ArrayList<Person>(); for (Person s : staff.values()) { if (s.getLastName() == lastName) { names.add(s); } } // Convert ArrayList back to Array Person nameArray[] = new Person[names.size()]; names.toArray(nameArray); return nameArray; } /** * Return all the contact from the orgnizer in * an array sorted by last name. * * @return An array of Person objects. * */ public Person[] getSortedListByLastName() { Map<String, Person> sorted = new TreeMap<String, Person>(staff); ArrayList<Person> sortedArrayList = new ArrayList<Person>(); for (Person s: sorted.values()) { sortedArrayList.add(s); } Person sortedArray[] = new Person[sortedArrayList.size()]; sortedArrayList.toArray(sortedArray); return sortedArray; } private Map<String, Person> staff = new HashMap<String, Person>(); public static void main(String[] args) { OrganizeThis testObj = new OrganizeThis(); Person person1 = new Person("J", "W", "111-222-3333", "[email protected]"); Person person2 = new Person("K", "W", "345-678-9999", "[email protected]"); Person person3 = new Person("Phoebe", "Wang", "322-111-3333", "[email protected]"); Person person4 = new Person("Nermal", "Johnson", "322-342-5555", "[email protected]"); Person person5 = new Person("Apple", "Banana", "123-456-1111", "[email protected]"); testObj.add(person1); testObj.add(person2); testObj.add(person3); testObj.add(person4); testObj.add(person5); System.out.println(testObj.findByEmail("[email protected]")); System.out.println("------------" + '\n'); Person a[] = testObj.find("W"); for (Person p : a) System.out.println(p); System.out.println("------------" + '\n'); a = testObj.find("W"); for (Person p : a) System.out.println(p); System.out.println("SORTED" + '\n'); a = testObj.getSortedListByLastName(); for (Person b : a) { System.out.println(b); } } } Person class: public class Person implements Comparable { String firstName; String lastName; String telephone; String email; public Person() { firstName = ""; lastName = ""; telephone = ""; email = ""; } public Person(String firstName) { this.firstName = firstName; } public Person(String firstName, String lastName, String telephone, String email) { this.firstName = firstName; this.lastName = lastName; this.telephone = telephone; this.email = email; } public String getFirstName() { return firstName; } public void setFirstName(String firstName) { this.firstName = firstName; } public String getLastName() { return lastName; } public void setLastName(String lastName) { this.lastName = lastName; } public String getTelephone() { return telephone; } public void setTelephone(String telephone) { this.telephone = telephone; } public String getEmail() { return email; } public void setEmail(String email) { this.email = email; } public int compareTo(Object o) { String s1 = this.lastName + this.firstName; String s2 = ((Person) o).lastName + ((Person) o).firstName; return s1.compareTo(s2); } public boolean equals(Object otherObject) { // a quick test to see if the objects are identical if (this == otherObject) { return true; } // must return false if the explicit parameter is null if (otherObject == null) { return false; } if (!(otherObject instanceof Person)) { return false; } Person other = (Person) otherObject; return firstName.equals(other.firstName) && lastName.equals(other.lastName) && telephone.equals(other.telephone) && email.equals(other.email); } public int hashCode() { return this.email.toLowerCase().hashCode(); } public String toString() { return getClass().getName() + "[firstName = " + firstName + '\n' + "lastName = " + lastName + '\n' + "telephone = " + telephone + '\n' + "email = " + email + "]"; } }

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