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• User Experience Highlights in PeopleSoft and PeopleTools: Direct from Jeff Robbins

  - by mvaughan

  By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience  This is the fifth in a series of blog posts on the user experience (UX) highlights in various Oracle product families. The last posted interview was with Nadia Bendjedou, Senior Director, Product Strategy on upcoming Oracle E-Business Suite user experience highlights. You’ll see themes around productivity and efficiency, and get an early look at the latest mobile offerings coming through these product lines. Today’s post is on the user experience in PeopleSoft and PeopleTools. To learn more about what’s ahead, attend PeopleSoft or PeopleTools OpenWorld presentations.This interview is with Jeff Robbins, Senior Director, PeopleSoft Development. Jeff Robbins Q: How would you describe the vision you have for the user experience of PeopleSoft?A: Intuitive – Specifically, customers use PeopleSoft to help their employees do their day-to-day work, and the UI (user interface) has been helpful and assistive in that effort. If it’s not obvious what they need to do a task, then the UI isn’t working. So the application needs to make it simple for users to find information they need, complete a task, do all the things they are responsible for, and it really helps when the UI just makes sense. Productive – PeopleSoft is a tool used to support people to do their work, and a lot of users are measured by how much work they’re able to get done per hour, per day, etc. The UI needs to help them be as productive as possible, and can’t make them waste time or energy. The UI needs to reflect the type of work necessary for a task -- if it's data entry, the UI needs to assist the user to get information into the system. For analysts, the UI needs help users assess or analyze information in a particular way. Innovative – The concept of the UI being innovative is something we’ve been working on for years. It’s not just that we want to be seen as innovative, the fact is that companies are asking their employees to do more than they’ve ever asked before. More often companies want to roll out processes as employee or manager self-service, where an employee is responsible to review and maintain their own data. So we’ve had to reinvent, and ask,  “How can we modify the ways an employee interacts with our applications so that they can be more productive and efficient – even with tasks that are entirely unfamiliar?”  Our focus on innovation has forced us to design new ways for users to interact with the entire application.Q: How are the UX features you have delivered so far resonating with customers?  A: Resonating very well. We’re hearing tremendous responses from users, managers, decision-makers -- who are very happy with the improved user experience. Many of the individual features resonate well. Some have really hit home, others are better than they used to be but show us that there’s still room for improvement.A couple innovations really stand out; features that have a significant effect on how users interact with PeopleSoft.First, the deployment of PeopleSoft in a way that’s more like a consumer website with the PeopleSoft Home page and Dashboards.  This new approach is very web-centric, where users feel they’re coming to a website rather than logging into an enterprise application.  There’s lots of information from all around the organization collected in a way that feels very familiar to users. In order to do your job, you can come to this web site rather than having to learn how to log into an application and figure out a complicated menu. Companies can host these really rich web sites for employees that are home pages for accessing critical tasks and information. The UI elements of incorporating search into the whole navigation process is another hit. Rather than having to log in and choose a task from a menu, users come to the web site and begin a task by simply searching for data: themselves, another employee, a customer record, whatever.  The search results include the data along with a set of actions the user might take, completely eliminating the need to hunt through a complicated system menu. Search-centric navigation is really sitting well with customers who are trying to deploy an intuitive set of systems. Q: Are any UX highlights more popular than you expected them to be?  A: We introduced a feature called Pivot Grid in the last release, which is a combination of an interactive grid, like an Excel Pivot Table, along with a dynamic visual chart that automatically graphs the data. I wasn’t certain at first how extensively this would be used. It looked like an innovative tool, but it wasn’t clear how it would be incorporated in business process applications. The fact is that everyone who sees Pivot Grids is thrilled with that kind of interactivity.  It reflects the amount of analytical thinking customers are asking employees to do. Employees can’t just enter data any more. They must interact with it, analyze it, and make decisions. Pivot Grids fit into this way of working. Q: What can you tell us about PeopleSoft’s mobile offerings?A: A lot of customers are finding that mobile is the chief priority in their organization.  They tell us they want their employees to be able to access company information from their mobile devices.  Of course, not everyone has the same requirements, so we’re working to make sure we can help our customers accomplish what they’re trying to do.  We’ve already delivered a number of mobile features.  For instance, PeopleSoft home pages, dashboards and workcenters all work well on an iPad, straight out of the box.  We’ve delivered a number of key functions and tasks for mobile workers – those who are responsible for using a mobile device to manage inventory, for example.  Customers tell us they also need a holistic strategy, one that allows their employees to access nearly every task from a mobile device.  While we don’t expect users to do extensive data entry from their smartphone, it makes sense that they have access to company information and systems while away from their desk.  That’s where our strategy is going now.  We plan to unveil a number of new mobile offerings at OpenWorld.  Some will be available then, some shortly after. Q: What else are you working on now that you think is going to be exciting to customers at Oracle OpenWorld?A: Our next release -- the big thing is PeopleSoft 9.2, and we’ll be talking about the huge amount of work that’s gone into the next versions. A new toolset, 8.53, will be coming, and there’s a lot to talk about there, and the next generation of PeopleSoft 9.2.  We have a ton of new stuff coming.Q: What do you want PeopleSoft customers to know? A: We have been focusing on the user experience in PeopleSoft as a very high priority for the last 4 years, and it’s had interesting effects. One thing is that the application is better, more usable.  We’ve made visible improvements. Another aspect is that in customers’ minds, the PeopleSoft brand is being reinvigorated. Customers invested in PeopleSoft years ago, and then they weren’t sure where PeopleSoft was going.  This investment in the UI and overall user experience keeps PeopleSoft current, innovative and fresh.  Customers  are able to take advantage of a lot of new features, even on the older applications, simply by upgrading their PeopleTools. The interest in that ability has been tremendous. Knowing they have a lot of these features available -- right now, that’s pretty huge. There’s been a tremendous amount of positive response, just on the fact that we’re focusing on the user experience. Editor’s note: For more on PeopleSoft and PeopleTools user experience highlights, visit the Usable Apps web site.To find out more about these enhancements at Openworld, be sure to check out these sessions: GEN8928     General Session: PeopleSoft Update and Product RoadmapCON9183     PeopleSoft PeopleTools Technology Roadmap CON8932     New Functional PeopleSoft PeopleTools Capabilities for the Line-of-Business UserCON9196     PeopleSoft PeopleTools Roadmap: Mobile ApplicationsCON9186     Case Study: Delivering a Groundbreaking User Interface with PeopleSoft PeopleTools

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• Making Sense of ASP.NET Paths

  - by Renso

  Making Sense of ASP.NET Paths ASP.Net includes quite a plethora of properties to retrieve path information about the current request, control and application. There's a ton of information available about paths on the Request object, some of it appearing to overlap and some of it buried several levels down, and it can be confusing to find just the right path that you are looking for. To keep things straight I thought it a good idea to summarize the path options along with descriptions and example paths. I wrote a post about this a long time ago in 2004 and I find myself frequently going back to that page to quickly figure out which path I’m looking for in processing the current URL. Apparently a lot of people must be doing the same, because the original post is the second most visited even to this date on this blog to the tune of nearly 500 hits per day. So, I decided to update and expand a bit on the original post with a little more information and clarification based on the original comments. Request Object Paths Available Here's a list of the Path related properties on the Request object (and the Page object). Assume a path like http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/admin/paths.aspx for the paths below where webstore is the name of the virtual. Request Property Description and Value ApplicationPath Returns the web root-relative logical path to the virtual root of this app. /webstore/ PhysicalApplicationPath Returns local file system path of the virtual root for this app. c:\inetpub\wwwroot\webstore PhysicalPath Returns the local file system path to the current script or path. c:\inetpub\wwwroot\webstore\admin\paths.aspx Path FilePath CurrentExecutionFilePath All of these return the full root relative logical path to the script page including path and scriptname. CurrentExcecutionFilePath will return the ‘current’ request path after a Transfer/Execute call while FilePath will always return the original request’s path. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath Returns an ASP.NET root relative virtual path to the script or path for the current request. If in  a Transfer/Execute call the transferred Path is returned. ~/admin/paths.aspx PathInfo Returns any extra path following the script name. If no extra path is provided returns the root-relative path (returns text in red below). string.Empty if no PathInfo is available. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx/ExtraPathInfo RawUrl Returns the full root relative URL including querystring and extra path as a string. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx?sku=wwhelp40 Url Returns a fully qualified URL including querystring and extra path. Note this is a Uri instance rather than string. http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/admin/paths.aspx?sku=wwhelp40 UrlReferrer The fully qualified URL of the page that sent the request. This is also a Uri instance and this value is null if the page was directly accessed by typing into the address bar or using an HttpClient based Referrer client Http header. http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/default.aspx?Info Control.TemplateSourceDirectory Returns the logical path to the folder of the page, master or user control on which it is called. This is useful if you need to know the path only to a Page or control from within the control. For non-file controls this returns the Page path. /webstore/admin/ As you can see there’s a ton of information available there for each of the three common path formats: Physical Path is an OS type path that points to a path or file on disk. Logical Path is a Web path that is relative to the Web server’s root. It includes the virtual plus the application relative path. ~/ (Root-relative) Path is an ASP.NET specific path that includes ~/ to indicate the virtual root Web path. ASP.NET can convert virtual paths into either logical paths using Control.ResolveUrl(), or physical paths using Server.MapPath(). Root relative paths are useful for specifying portable URLs that don’t rely on relative directory structures and very useful from within control or component code. You should be able to get any necessary format from ASP.NET from just about any path or script using these mechanisms. ~/ Root Relative Paths and ResolveUrl() and ResolveClientUrl() ASP.NET supports root-relative virtual path syntax in most of its URL properties in Web Forms. So you can easily specify a root relative path in a control rather than a location relative path: <asp:Image runat="server" ID="imgHelp" ImageUrl="~/images/help.gif" /> ASP.NET internally resolves this URL by using ResolveUrl("~/images/help.gif") to arrive at the root-relative URL of /webstore/images/help.gif which uses the Request.ApplicationPath as the basepath to replace the ~. By convention any custom Web controls also should use ResolveUrl() on URL properties to provide the same functionality. In your own code you can use Page.ResolveUrl() or Control.ResolveUrl() to accomplish the same thing: string imgPath = this.ResolveUrl("~/images/help.gif"); imgHelp.ImageUrl = imgPath; Unfortunately ResolveUrl() is limited to WebForm pages, so if you’re in an HttpHandler or Module it’s not available. ASP.NET Mvc also has it’s own more generic version of ResolveUrl in Url.Decode: <script src="<%= Url.Content("~/scripts/new.js") %>" type="text/javascript"></script> which is part of the UrlHelper class. In ASP.NET MVC the above sort of syntax is actually even more crucial than in WebForms due to the fact that views are not referencing specific pages but rather are often path based which can lead to various variations on how a particular view is referenced. In a Module or Handler code Control.ResolveUrl() unfortunately is not available which in retrospect seems like an odd design choice – URL resolution really should happen on a Request basis not as part of the Page framework. Luckily you can also rely on the static VirtualPathUtility class: string path = VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute("~/admin/paths.aspx"); VirtualPathUtility also many other quite useful methods for dealing with paths and converting between the various kinds of paths supported. One thing to watch out for is that ToAbsolute() will throw an exception if a query string is provided and doesn’t work on fully qualified URLs. I wrote about this topic with a custom solution that works fully qualified URLs and query strings here (check comments for some interesting discussions too). Similar to ResolveUrl() is ResolveClientUrl() which creates a fully qualified HTTP path that includes the protocol and domain name. It’s rare that this full resolution is needed but can be useful in some scenarios. Mapping Virtual Paths to Physical Paths with Server.MapPath() If you need to map root relative or current folder relative URLs to physical URLs or you can use HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(). Inside of a Page you can do the following: string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("~/scripts/ww.jquery.js")); MapPath is pretty flexible and it understands both ASP.NET style virtual paths as well as plain relative paths, so the following also works. string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("scripts/silverlight.js"); as well as dot relative syntax: string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("../scripts/jquery.js"); Once you have the physical path you can perform standard System.IO Path and File operations on the file. Remember with physical paths and IO or copy operations you need to make sure you have permissions to access files and folders based on the Web server user account that is active (NETWORK SERVICE, ASPNET typically). Note the Server.MapPath will not map up beyond the virtual root of the application for security reasons. Server and Host Information Between these settings you can get all the information you may need to figure out where you are at and to build new Url if necessary. If you need to build a URL completely from scratch you can get access to information about the server you are accessing: Server Variable Function and Example SERVER_NAME The of the domain or IP Address wwww.west-wind.com or 127.0.0.1 SERVER_PORT The port that the request runs under. 80 SERVER_PORT_SECURE Determines whether https: was used. 0 or 1 APPL_MD_PATH ADSI DirectoryServices path to the virtual root directory. Note that LM typically doesn’t work for ADSI access so you should replace that with LOCALHOST or the machine’s NetBios name. /LM/W3SVC/1/ROOT/webstore Request.Url and Uri Parsing If you still need more control over the current request URL or  you need to create new URLs from an existing one, the current Request.Url Uri property offers a lot of control. Using the Uri class and UriBuilder makes it easy to retrieve parts of a URL and create new URLs based on existing URL. The UriBuilder class is the preferred way to create URLs – much preferable over creating URIs via string concatenation. Uri Property Function Scheme The URL scheme or protocol prefix. http or https Port The port if specifically specified. DnsSafeHost The domain name or local host NetBios machine name www.west-wind.com or rasnote LocalPath The full path of the URL including script name and extra PathInfo. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx Query The query string if any ?id=1 The Uri class itself is great for retrieving Uri parts, but most of the properties are read only if you need to modify a URL in order to change it you can use the UriBuilder class to load up an existing URL and modify it to create a new one. Here are a few common operations I’ve needed to do to get specific URLs: Convert the Request URL to an SSL/HTTPS link For example to take the current request URL and converted  it to a secure URL can be done like this: UriBuilder build = new UriBuilder(Request.Url); build.Scheme = "https"; build.Port = -1; // don't inject portUri newUri = build.Uri; string newUrl = build.ToString(); Retrieve the fully qualified URL without a QueryString AFAIK, there’s no native routine to retrieve the current request URL without the query string. It’s easy to do with UriBuilder however: UriBuilder builder = newUriBuilder(Request.Url); builder.Query = ""; stringlogicalPathWithoutQuery = builder.ToString();

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, December 19, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, December 19, 2010Popular ReleasesTeam Foundation Server Administration Tool: 2.1: TFS Administration Tool 2.1, is the first version of the TFS Administration Tool which is built on top of the Team Foundation Server 2010 object model. TFS Administration Tool 2.1 can be installed on machines that are running either Team Explorer 2010, or Team Foundation Server 2010.SQL Monitor: SQL Monitor 3.0 alpha 5: 1. fix a problem with not expanding nodes in object explorer, sorryHacker Passwords: HackerPasswords.zip: Source code, executable and documentationWatchersNET.SiteMap: WatchersNET.SiteMap 01.03.03: Whats NewSkin Object: You can now filter by Terms for Example use: <object id="dnnSITEMAPSL" codetype="dotnetnuke/server" codebase="SITEMAPSL"> <param name="TaxMode" value="terms" /> <param name="TaxTerms" value="TermName1,TermName2" /> </object> changes Tax Term Filter should work correct nowSubtitleTools: SubtitleTools 1.3: - Added .srt FileAssociation & Win7 ShowRecentCategory feature. - Applied UnifiedYeKe to fix Persian search problems. - Reduced file size of Persian subtitles for uploading @OSDB.EnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.3 ALPHA: 2.2.3 ALPHAThis release adds in the changes for 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in th...Facebook C# SDK: 4.1.0: - Lots of bug fixes - Removed Dynamic Runtime Language dependencies from non-dynamic platforms. - Samples included in release for ASP.NET, MVC, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, WPF, WinForms, and one Visual Basic Sample - Changed internal serialization to use Json.net - BREAKING CHANGE: Canvas Session is no longer support. Use Signed Request instead. Canvas Session has been deprecated by Facebook. - BREAKING CHANGE: Some renames and changes with Authorizer, CanvasAuthorizer, and Authorization ac...NuGet (formerly NuPack): NuGet 1.0 build 11217.102: Note: this release is slightly newer than RC1, and fixes a couple issues relating to updating packages to newer versions. NuGet is a free, open source developer focused package management system for the .NET platform intent on simplifying the process of incorporating third party libraries into a .NET application during development. This release is a Visual Studio 2010 extension and contains the the Package Manager Console and the Add Package Dialog. This new build targets the newer feed (h...WCF Community Site: WCF Web APIs 10.12.17: Welcome to the second release of WCF Web APIs on codeplex Here is what is new in this release. WCF Support for jQuery - create WCF web services that are easy to consume from JavaScript clients, in particular jQuery. Better support for using JsonValue as dynamic Support for JsonValue change notification events for databinding and other purposes Support for going between JsonValue and CLR types WCF HTTP - create HTTP / REST based web services. This is a minor release which contains fixe...Orchard Project: Orchard 0.9: Orchard Release Notes Build: 0.9.253 Published: 12/16/2010 How to Install OrchardTo install the Orchard tech preview using Web PI, follow these instructions: http://www.orchardproject.net/docs/Installing-Orchard-Using-Web-PI.ashx Web PI will detect your hardware environment and install the application. --OR-- Alternatively, to install the release manually, download the Orchard.Web.0.9.253.zip file. The zip contents are pre-built and ready-to-run. Simply extract the contents of the Orch...Pyxis 2: Beta 2.2: An issue stopping the Checkbox from working properly has been resolved (gradient background has also been added) A TabDialog control has been added NumericUpDown control added A driver for the VS1053 has been added (not yet in use) PyxisAPI.OpenFile now works with all its features PyxisAPI.SaveFile now works with all features Settings window is now available from the Pyxis menu You can now connect using Static IP or DHCP You can now set your system time from the Settings windo...sgMotion Animation Library: sgMotion v1.3 for SunBurn 2.0.9 [Includes Sample]: sgMotion 1.3 release for use with SunBurn 2.0.9 (all editions). Includes example project with assets, and full Windows and Xbox support. (tested on all platforms)DotSpatial: DotSpatial 12-15-2010: This release contains a few minor bug fixes and hopefully the GDAL libraries for the 3.5 x86 build actually built to the correct directory this time.DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.01 Beta: This is the initial Beta of DotNetNuke 5.6.1. See the DotNetNuke Roadmap a full list of changes in this release.MSBuild Extension Pack: December 2010: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack December 2010 release provides a collection of over 380 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GU...TweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 5: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 5 ChangesMaintenance release with user reported fixes Preview 4 ChangesReintroduced fluent interface support via satellite assembly Added entities support, entity segmentation, and ITweetable/ITweeter interfaces for client development Numerous fixes reported by preview users Preview 3 ChangesNumerous ...Silverlight Contrib: Silverlight Contrib 2010.1.0: 2010.1.0 New FeaturesCompatibility Release for Silverlight 4 and Visual Studio 2010FlickrNet API Library: 3.1.4000: Newest release. Now contains dedicated Windows Phone 7 DLL as well as all previous DLLs. Also contains Windows Help file documentation now as standard.mojoPortal: 2.3.5.8: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2358-released.aspx Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code. To download the source code see the Source Code Tab I recommend getting the latest source code using TortoiseHG, you can get the source code corresponding to this release here.Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2010 Code Samples 2010-12-13: Code samples for Visual Studio 2010New ProjectsANLP - Another .NET Lexer Parser: This project aims to have a lexer/parser working in Silverlight and help people to write their own grammar and make the lexer/parser available in Silverlight.Better App Tab Shortcuts Firefox Extension: An extension for Firefox 4.0 which improves the shortcuts for selecting tabs.BizTalk Map Converter: Converts BizTalk Maps into ExcelCampo Minado: Campo minado em SilverlightCSharpHASH: Hash project is an college project conserning business software development. Written in C#.DS_HW1: hw1DynamicViewModel: MVVM using POCOs with .NET 4.0: This project aims to provide a way to implement the Model View ViewModel (MVVM) architectural pattern using Plain Old CLR Objects (POCOs) while taking full advantage of .NET 4.0 DynamicObject Class.Evolution Game: Evolution game that uses genetic algorithms to visualize life of different species.Fluent Parser: Fluent Parser is a library allowing to build a syntaxic analyser in C#. The grammar is built using only .NET objects into the form of a Parsing Expression Grammar (PEG).GoogleMusic Player: Choose and play music from newly launched google Music http://www.google.co.in/music create and save playlists Using C#Gracefully update SharePoint 2010 document metadata: Users want to update the metadata for a document in a document library, for which they don’t have access or if they wanted to update some read-only fields. Hacker Passwords: Hacker Passwords generator - free open sourceHTML5 Canvas FlowView: FlowView is a simple to use API for creating/implementing a flowview style element in HTML5/Canvas. The FlowView looks much like something from Apple's cover view.L#: A F# program to provide similar functionalities offered by Prolog for F# oriented applications.MapInfo Tools: Utilities for working with MapInfo files.Notepad X: Notepad X is an alternative open source text editor for Microsoft Windows, with a lot of customization options created to help users managing text documents, featuring tab navigation.OpenFlyClient: An educational open source of a client written in C# for FlyFF. This is for educational and evaluation purposes only. Using this for private servers is not allowed.Orkut API Library: Orkut API Library (more of a wrapper) for .NET makes it easier for .NET developers creating web and/or desktop applications to leverage Orkut OpenSocial API from within the familiar Visual Studio environment. PasteHtml.NET: PasteHtml.NET is a .NET API for using the PasteHtml.com service.Photon: Silverlight MVVM Framework RSATasync: Running analyses in RiskSpectrum PSA Professional software is a time-consuming task. RSATasync is a middleware, which uses .NET4 Parallel Extensions to parallelize analyses sent by the editor to the analyzer in the RiskSpectrum software.The Killie01 Project: all killie01 projects (opensource)United Nations News for Windows Phone 7: Open source project for United Nations News for Windows Phone 7. WCF SIP Stack: WCF SIPWordpress .NET: WPDotnet is a library to ease the Wordpress integration with ASP.NET. Some Server controls are implemented. If you don't want to use them, you can just use the classes.

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• When Your Boss Doesn't Want you to Succeed

  - by Phil Factor

  You're working hard to get an application finished. You are programming long into the evenings sometimes, and eating sandwiches at your desk instead of taking a lunch break. Then one day you glance up at the IT manager, serene in his mysterious round of meetings, and think 'Does he actually care whether this project succeeds or not?'. The question may seem absurd. Of course the project must succeed. The truth, as always, is often far more complex. Your manager may even be doing his best to make sure you don't succeed. Why? There have always been rich pickings for the unscrupulous in IT.  In extreme cases, where administrators struggle with scarcely-comprehended technical issues, huge sums of money can be lost and gained without any perceptible results. In a very few cases can fraud be proven: most of the time, the intricacies of the 'game' are such that one can do little more than harbor suspicion.  Where does over-enthusiastic salesmanship end and fraud begin? The Business of Information Technology provides rich opportunities for White-collar crime. The poor developer has his, or her, hands full with the task of wrestling with the sheer complexity of building an application. He, or she, has no time for following the complexities of the chicanery of the management that is directing affairs.  Most likely, the developers wouldn't even suspect that their company management had ulterior motives. I'll illustrate what I mean with an entirely fictional, hypothetical, example. The Opportunist and the Aged Charities often do good, unexciting work that is funded by the income from a bequest that dates back maybe hundreds of years.  In our example, it isn't exciting work, for it involves the welfare of elderly people who have fallen on hard times.  Volunteers visit, giving a smile and a chat, and check that they are all right, but are able to spend a little money on their discretion to ameliorate any pressing needs for these old folk.  The money is made to work very hard and the charity averts a great deal of suffering and eases the burden on the state. Daisy hears the garden gate creak as Mrs Rainer comes up the path. She looks forward to her twice-weekly visit from the nice lady from the trust. She always asked ‘is everything all right, Love’. Cheeky but nice. She likes her cheery manner. She seems interested in hearing her memories, and talking about her far-away family. She helps her with those chores in the house that she couldn’t manage and once even paid to fill the back-shed with coke, the other year. Nice, Mrs. Rainer is, she thought as she goes to open the door. The trustees are getting on in years themselves, and worry about the long-term future of the charity: is it relevant to modern society? Is it likely to attract a new generation of workers to take it on. They are instantly attracted by the arrival to the board of a smartly dressed University lecturer with the ear of the present Government. Alain 'Stalin' Jones is earnest, persuasive and energetic. The trustees welcome him to the board and quickly forgive his humorless political-correctness. He talks of 'diversity', 'relevance', 'social change', 'equality' and 'communities', but his eye is on that huge bequest. Alain first came to notice as a Trotskyite union official, who insinuated himself into one of the duller Trades Unions and turned it, through his passionate leadership, into a radical, headline-grabbing organization.  Middle age, and the rise of European federal socialism, had brought him quiet prosperity and charcoal suits, an ear in the current government, and a wide influence as a member of various Quangos (government bodies staffed by well-paid unelected courtiers).  He was employed as a 'consultant' by several organizations that relied on government contracts. After gaining the confidence of the trustees, and showing a surprising knowledge of mundane processes and the regulatory framework of charities, Alain launches his plan.  The trust will expand their work by means of a bold IT initiative that will coordinate the interventions of several 'caring agencies', and provide  emergency cover, a special Website so anxious relatives can see how their elderly charges are doing, and a vastly more efficient way of coordinating the work of the volunteer carers. It will also provide a special-purpose site that gives 'social networking' facilities, rather like Facebook, to the few elderly folk on the lists with access to the internet. The trustees perk up. Their own experience of the internet is restricted to the occasional scanning of railway timetables, but they can see that it is 'relevant'. In his next report to the other trustees, Alain proudly announces that all this glamorous and exciting technology can be paid for by a grant from the government. He admits darkly that he has influence. True to his word, the government promises a grant of a size that is an order of magnitude greater than any budget that the trustees had ever handled. There was the understandable proviso that the company that would actually do the IT work would have to be one of the government's preferred suppliers and the work would need to be tendered under EU competition rules. The only company that tenders, a multinational IT company with a long track record of government work, quotes ten million pounds for the work. A trustee questions the figure as it seems enormous for the reasonably trivial internet facilities being built, but the IT Salesmen dazzle them with presentations and three-letter acronyms until they subside into quiescent acceptance. After all, they can’t stay locked in the Twentieth century practices can they? The work is put in hand with a large project team, in a splendid glass building near west London. The trustees see rooms of programmers working diligently at screens, and who talk with enthusiasm of the project. Paul, the project manager, looked through his resource schedule with growing unease. His initial excitement at being given his first major project hadn’t lasted. He’d been allocated a lackluster team of developers whose skills didn’t seem right, and he was allowed only a couple of contractors to make good the deficit. Strangely, the presentation he’d given to his management, where he’d saved time and resources with a OTS solution to a great deal of the development work, and a sound conservative architecture, hadn’t gone down nearly as big as he’d hoped. He almost got the feeling they wanted a more radical and ambitious solution. The project starts slipping its dates. The costs build rapidly. There are certain uncomfortable extra charges that appear, such as the £600-a-day charge by the 'Business Manager' appointed to act as a point of liaison between the charity and the IT Company.  When he appeared, his face permanently split by a 'Mr Sincerity' smile, they'd thought he was provided at the cost of the IT Company. Derek, the DBA, didn’t have to go to the server room quite some much as he did: but It got him away from the poisonous despair of the development group. Wave after wave of events had conspired to delay the project.  Why the management had imposed hideous extra bureaucracy to cover ISO 9000 and 9001:2008 accreditation just as the project was struggling to get back on-schedule was  beyond belief.  Then  the Business manager was coming back with endless changes in scope, sorrowing saying that the Trustees were very insistent, though hopelessly out in touch with the reality of technical challenges. Suddenly, the costs mount to the point of consuming the government grant in its entirety. The project remains tantalizingly just out of reach. Alain Jones gives an emotional rallying speech at the trustees review meeting, urging them not to lose their nerve. Sadly, the trustees dip into the accumulated capital of the trust, the seed-corn of all their revenues, in order to save the IT project. A few months later it is all over. The IT project is never delivered, even though it had seemed so incredibly close.  With the trust's capital all gone, the activities it funded have to be terminated and the trust becomes just a shell. There aren't even the funds to mount a legal challenge against the IT company, even had the trust's solicitor advised such a foolish thing. Alain leaves as suddenly as he had arrived, only to pop up a few months later, bronzed and rested, at another charity. The IT workers who were permanent employees are dispersed to other projects, and the contractors leave to other contracts. Within months the entire project is but a vague memory. One or two developers remain  puzzled that their managers had been so obstructive when they should have welcomed progress toward completion of the project, but they put it down to incompetence and testosterone. Few suspected that they were actively preventing the project from getting finished. The relationships between the IT consultancy, and the government of the day are intricate, and made more complex by the Private Finance initiatives and political patronage.  The losers in this case were the taxpayers, and the beneficiaries of the trust, and, perhaps the soul of the original benefactor of the trust, whose bid to give his name some immortality had been scuppered by smooth-talking white-collar political apparatniks.  Even now, nobody is certain whether a crime was ever committed. The perfect heist, I guess. Where’s the victim? "I hear that Daisy’s cottage is up for sale. She’s had to go into a care home.  She didn’t want to at all, but then there is nobody to keep an eye on her since she had that minor stroke a while back.  A charity used to help out. The ‘social’ don’t have the funding, evidently for community care. Yes, her old cat was put down. There was a good clearout, and now the house is all scrubbed and cleared ready for sale. The skip was full of old photos and letters, memories. No room in her new ‘home’."

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• C#: String Concatenation vs Format vs StringBuilder

  - by James Michael Hare

  I was looking through my groups’ C# coding standards the other day and there were a couple of legacy items in there that caught my eye.  They had been passed down from committee to committee so many times that no one even thought to second guess and try them for a long time.  It’s yet another example of how micro-optimizations can often get the best of us and cause us to write code that is not as maintainable as it could be for the sake of squeezing an extra ounce of performance out of our software. So the two standards in question were these, in paraphrase: Prefer StringBuilder or string.Format() to string concatenation. Prefer string.Equals() with case-insensitive option to string.ToUpper().Equals(). Now some of you may already know what my results are going to show, as these items have been compared before on many blogs, but I think it’s always worth repeating and trying these yourself.  So let’s dig in. The first test was a pretty standard one.  When concattenating strings, what is the best choice: StringBuilder, string concattenation, or string.Format()? So before we being I read in a number of iterations from the console and a length of each string to generate.  Then I generate that many random strings of the given length and an array to hold the results.  Why am I so keen to keep the results?  Because I want to be able to snapshot the memory and don’t want garbage collection to collect the strings, hence the array to keep hold of them.  I also didn’t want the random strings to be part of the allocation, so I pre-allocate them and the array up front before the snapshot.  So in the code snippets below: num – Number of iterations. strings – Array of randomly generated strings. results – Array to hold the results of the concatenation tests. timer – A System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch() instance to time code execution. start – Beginning memory size. stop – Ending memory size. after – Memory size after final GC. So first, let’s look at the concatenation loop: 1: // build num strings using concattenation. 2: for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) 3: { 4: results[i] = "This is test #" + i + " with a result of " + strings[i]; 5: } Pretty standard, right?  Next for string.Format(): 1: // build strings using string.Format() 2: for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) 3: { 4: results[i] = string.Format("This is test #{0} with a result of {1}", i, strings[i]); 5: }   Finally, StringBuilder: 1: // build strings using StringBuilder 2: for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) 3: { 4: var builder = new StringBuilder(); 5: builder.Append("This is test #"); 6: builder.Append(i); 7: builder.Append(" with a result of "); 8: builder.Append(strings[i]); 9: results[i] = builder.ToString(); 10: } So I take each of these loops, and time them by using a block like this: 1: // get the total amount of memory used, true tells it to run GC first. 2: start = System.GC.GetTotalMemory(true); 3:  4: // restart the timer 5: timer.Reset(); 6: timer.Start(); 7:  8: // *** code to time and measure goes here. *** 9:  10: // get the current amount of memory, stop the timer, then get memory after GC. 11: stop = System.GC.GetTotalMemory(false); 12: timer.Stop(); 13: other = System.GC.GetTotalMemory(true); So let’s look at what happens when I run each of these blocks through the timer and memory check at 500,000 iterations: 1: Operator + - Time: 547, Memory: 56104540/55595960 - 500000 2: string.Format() - Time: 749, Memory: 57295812/55595960 - 500000 3: StringBuilder - Time: 608, Memory: 55312888/55595960 – 500000   Egad!  string.Format brings up the rear and + triumphs, well, at least in terms of speed.  The concat burns more memory than StringBuilder but less than string.Format().  This shows two main things: StringBuilder is not always the panacea many think it is. The difference between any of the three is miniscule! The second point is extremely important!  You will often here people who will grasp at results and say, “look, operator + is 10% faster than StringBuilder so always use StringBuilder.”  Statements like this are a disservice and often misleading.  For example, if I had a good guess at what the size of the string would be, I could have preallocated my StringBuffer like so:   1: for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) 2: { 3: // pre-declare StringBuilder to have 100 char buffer. 4: var builder = new StringBuilder(100); 5: builder.Append("This is test #"); 6: builder.Append(i); 7: builder.Append(" with a result of "); 8: builder.Append(strings[i]); 9: results[i] = builder.ToString(); 10: }   Now let’s look at the times: 1: Operator + - Time: 551, Memory: 56104412/55595960 - 500000 2: string.Format() - Time: 753, Memory: 57296484/55595960 - 500000 3: StringBuilder - Time: 525, Memory: 59779156/55595960 - 500000   Whoa!  All of the sudden StringBuilder is back on top again!  But notice, it takes more memory now.  This makes perfect sense if you examine the IL behind the scenes.  Whenever you do a string concat (+) in your code, it examines the lengths of the arguments and creates a StringBuilder behind the scenes of the appropriate size for you. But even IF we know the approximate size of our StringBuilder, look how much less readable it is!  That’s why I feel you should always take into account both readability and performance.  After all, consider all these timings are over 500,000 iterations.   That’s at best  0.0004 ms difference per call which is neglidgable at best.  The key is to pick the best tool for the job.  What do I mean?  Consider these awesome words of wisdom: Concatenate (+) is best at concatenating.  StringBuilder is best when you need to building. Format is best at formatting. Totally Earth-shattering, right!  But if you consider it carefully, it actually has a lot of beauty in it’s simplicity.  Remember, there is no magic bullet.  If one of these always beat the others we’d only have one and not three choices. The fact is, the concattenation operator (+) has been optimized for speed and looks the cleanest for joining together a known set of strings in the simplest manner possible. StringBuilder, on the other hand, excels when you need to build a string of inderterminant length.  Use it in those times when you are looping till you hit a stop condition and building a result and it won’t steer you wrong. String.Format seems to be the looser from the stats, but consider which of these is more readable.  Yes, ignore the fact that you could do this with ToString() on a DateTime.  1: // build a date via concatenation 2: var date1 = (month < 10 ? string.Empty : "0") + month + '/' 3: + (day < 10 ? string.Empty : "0") + '/' + year; 4:  5: // build a date via string builder 6: var builder = new StringBuilder(10); 7: if (month < 10) builder.Append('0'); 8: builder.Append(month); 9: builder.Append('/'); 10: if (day < 10) builder.Append('0'); 11: builder.Append(day); 12: builder.Append('/'); 13: builder.Append(year); 14: var date2 = builder.ToString(); 15:  16: // build a date via string.Format 17: var date3 = string.Format("{0:00}/{1:00}/{2:0000}", month, day, year); 18:  So the strength in string.Format is that it makes constructing a formatted string easy to read.  Yes, it’s slower, but look at how much more elegant it is to do zero-padding and anything else string.Format does. So my lesson is, don’t look for the silver bullet!  Choose the best tool.  Micro-optimization almost always bites you in the end because you’re sacrificing readability for performance, which is almost exactly the wrong choice 90% of the time. I love the rules of optimization.  They’ve been stated before in many forms, but here’s how I always remember them: For Beginners: Do not optimize. For Experts: Do not optimize yet. It’s so true.  Most of the time on today’s modern hardware, a micro-second optimization at the sake of readability will net you nothing because it won’t be your bottleneck.  Code for readability, choose the best tool for the job which will usually be the most readable and maintainable as well.  Then, and only then, if you need that extra performance boost after profiling your code and exhausting all other options… then you can start to think about optimizing.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, December 27, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, December 27, 2010Popular ReleasesRocket Framework (.Net 4.0): Rocket Framework for Windows V 1.0.0: Architecture is reviewed and adjusted in a way so that I can introduce the Web version and WPF version of this framework next. - Rocket.Core is introduced - Controller button functions revisited and updated - DB is renewed to suite the implemented features - Create New button functionality is changed - Add Question Handling featuresVCC: Latest build, v2.1.31226.0: Automatic drop of latest buildFxCop Integrator for Visual Studio 2010: FxCop Integrtor 1.1.0: New FeatureSearch violation information FxCop Integrator provides the violation search feature. You can find out specific violation information by simple search expression.Analyze with FxCop project file FxCop Integrator supports code analysis with FxCop project file. You can customize code analysis behavior (e.g. analyze specifid types only, use specific rules only, and so on). ImprovementImproved the code analysis result list to show more information (added Proejct and File column). Change...Flickr Wallpaper Rotator (for Windows desktop): Wallpaper Flickr 1.1: Some minor bugfixes (mostly covering when network connection is flakey, so I discovered them all while at my parents' house for Christmas).Mcopy API: McopyAPI v.1.0.0.2: changed display help "mcopyapi /?" and a few minor changedOPSM: OPSM v2.0: Updated version, 30%-40% faster than v1.0. Requires .NET Framework 2.0People's Note: People's Note 0.19: Added touch scrolling to the note view screen. To install: copy the appropriate CAB file onto your WM device and run it.HSS Core Framework: HSS Core v4.0.700.10: Release v4.0.700.10 December 25th, 2010 Upgrade Instructions from v4.0.700 to v4.0.700.10: (patch release) Uninstall v4.0.700 Install the new v4.0.700.10 Upgrade Instructions: (full upgrade from a version prior to v4.0.700) Uninstall your old version Update the Log Configuration, by changing the logging from Database to Machine Backup and then Truncate the hss logging tables Uninstall the HSSLOG Database using the HSSLOG Database install wizard Uninstall the HSS Core Framework Ins...NoSimplerAccounting: NoSimplerAccounting 6.0: -Fixed a bug in expense category report.NHibernate Mapping Generator: NHibernate Mapping Generator 2.0: Added support for Postgres (Thanks to Angelo)NewLife XCode: XCode v6.5.2010.1223 ????（????v3.5??）: XCode v6.5.2010.1223 ????，??： NewLife.Core ??? NewLife.Net ??? XControl ??? XTemplate ????，??C#?????? XAgent ???? NewLife.CommonEnitty ??????（???，XCode??????） XCode?? ?????????，??????????????????，?????95% XCode v3.5.2009.0714 ??，?v3.5?v6.0???????????????，?????????。v3.5???????????，??????????????。 XCoder ??XTemplate?????????，????????XCode??? XCoder_Src ???????（????XTemplate????），??????????????????MiniTwitter: 1.64: MiniTwitter 1.64 ???? ?? 1.63 ??? URL ??????????????VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.0: Please see changes: http://support.vivoware.com/project/ChangeLog.aspx?PROJID=48Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.6 Beta - codename JUNO: The Umbraco 4.6 beta (codename JUNO) release contains many new features focusing on an improved installation experience, a number of robust developer features, and contains more than 89 bug fixes since the 4.5.2 release. Improved installer experience Updated Starter Kits (Simple, Blog, Personal, Business) Beautiful, free, customizable skins included Skinning engine and Skin customization (see Skinning Documentation Kit) Default dashboards on install with hide option Updated Login t...SSH.NET Library: 2010.12.23: This release includes some bug fixes and few new fetures. Fixes Allow to retrieve big directory structures ssh-dss algorithm is fixed Populate sftp file attributes New Features Support for passhrase when private key is used Support added for diffie-hellman-group14-sha1,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256 and diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1 key exchange algorithms Allow to provide multiple key files for authentication Add support for "keyboard-interactive" authentication method...ASP.NET MVC SiteMap provider: MvcSiteMapProvider 2.3.0: Using NuGet?MvcSiteMapProvider is also listed in the NuGet feed. Learn more... Like the project? Consider a donation!Donate via PayPal via PayPal. Release notesThis will be the last release targeting ASP.NET MVC 2 and .NET 3.5. MvcSiteMapProvider 3.0.0 will be targeting ASP.NET MVC 3 and .NET 4 Web.config setting skipAssemblyScanOn has been deprecated in favor of excludeAssembliesForScan and includeAssembliesForScan ISiteMapNodeUrlResolver is now completely responsible for generating th...Media Companion: Media Companion 3.400: Extract the entire archive to a folder which has user access rights, eg desktop, documents etc. A manual is included to get you startedMulticore Task Framework: MTF 1.0.1: Release 1.0.1 of Multicore Task Framework.SQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQL Monitor 3.0 alpha 7: 1. added script save/load in user query window 2. fixed problem with connection dialog when choosing windows auth but still ask for user name 3. auto open user table when double click one table node 4. improved alert message, added log only methodEnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.6 ALPHA: 2.2.6 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Fixing up some r...New ProjectsActiveDirectory Object Model Library: The ActiveDirectory Object Model Library, which can operate the AD easily.Allspark: Allspark is an BI focused sharing space.Calendar Control for WP7: Calendar Control for Wp7 (Windows Phone 7). I needed a calendar control for my WP7 app and since WP7 did not have any and I couldn't find anything on the internet I decided to write my own. Please feel free to use it in your project and share if you have improved on it.CryptoPad: CryptoPad is a simple notepad like application that works with encrypted files. Users can open,edit and save encrypted files using CrypoPad without andy other application, everythning is easy and transparent.Entity Visualizer: Entity Framework Debugger VisualizerHTML-IDEx: HTML-IDEx is meant to be an open-source lightweight WYSIWYG HTML editor in which the user can see what they are doing in realtime. Comparable to my other project, Brandons HTML IDE, I'm hoping this to be a huge success.IL Inject: Aspect-oriented programming based on the injection of IL instruction in the methods of an assembly that is marked by attributesIntegração no Trabalho: Este projeto será desenvolvido para ser possível a integração entre funcionarios de uma empresa. O programa funcionará em rede e através dele será possível cadastrar projetos, atividades e seus colegas poderão comentar, criticar e dar dicas nos outros projetos .Knexsys Project: Knexsys, also know as KKD (Knexsys Knowledge Discovery), is a research program that aims to study the capabilities of SQL Server and the .NET framework to implement a rule production engine to mine real-time data. It's developed in C#.mysvn: This project host including some of my own projects. I am interested in WPF and RIA. Furthermore, I want to learn more about C, C++, Java, PHP, Python.OpenTwitter: Twitter clone made with C# and LINQ. this is only a webservice, there is no client for it, the main idea behind opentwitter is to provide a framework that you can use with your own clients ( mobile devices, web pages, etc ) and data provider ( xml, sql server, oracle, etc ).OPSM: OPSM Miner & information projectOutlook UI Tools: Changes to the Outlook UI to make it more usable: * Allow reply to address a recipient instead of the sender * Keep meeting reminders from popping up when overdue many daysSimpleUploadTo: Simple UploadToTFS 4 FPSE: Allow the ability for FrontPage Server Extensions to use TFS as a source control repository.TFS CheckInNotifier: Team Foundation Server 2010 Check-in event notifier desktop application.Universe.WCF.Behaviors: Universe.WCF.Behaviors provides behaviors: - Easy migration from Remoting - Transparent delivery - Traffic Statistics - WCF Streaming Adaptor for BinaryWriter and TextWriter - etc vebshop2: vebshop2Windows Weibo all in one for Sina Sohu and QQ: Windows Weibo all in one for Sina Sohu and QQ.

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• Video on Architecture and Code Quality using Visual Studio 2012&ndash;interview with Marcel de Vries and Terje Sandstrom by Adam Cogan

  - by terje

  Find the video HERE. Adam Cogan did a great Web TV interview with Marcel de Vries and myself on the topics of architecture and code quality.  It was real fun participating in this session.  Although we know each other from the MVP ALM community,  Marcel, Adam and I haven’t worked together before. It was very interesting to see how we agreed on so many terms, and how alike we where thinking.  The basics of ensuring you have a good architecture and how you could document it is one thing.  Also, the same agreement on the importance of having a high quality code base, and how we used the Visual Studio 2012 tools, and some others (NDepend for example)  to measure and ensure that the code quality was where it should be.  As the tools, methods and thinking popped up during the interview it was a lot of “Hey !  I do that too!”.  The tools are not only for “after the fact” work, but we use them during the coding.  That way the tools becomes an integrated part of our coding work, and helps us to find issues we may have overlooked.  The video has a bunch of call outs, pinpointing important things to remember. These are also listed on the corresponding web page. I haven’t seen that touch before, but really liked this way of doing it – it makes it much easier to spot the highlights.  Titus Maclaren and Raj Dhatt from SSW have done a terrific job producing this video.  And thanks to Lei Xu for doing the camera and recording job.  Thanks guys ! Also, if you are at TechEd Amsterdam 2012, go and listen to Adam Cogan in his session on “A modern architecture review: Using the new code review tools” Friday 29th, 10.15-11.30 and Marcel de Vries session on “Intellitrace, what is it and how can I use it to my benefit” Wednesday 27th, 5-6.15 The highlights points out some important practices.  I’ll elaborate on a few of them here: Add instructions on how to compile the solution.  You do this by adding a text file with instructions to the solution, and keep it under source control.  These instructions should contain what is needed on top of a standard install of Visual Studio.  I do a lot of code reviews, and more often that not, I am not even able to compile the program, because they have used some tool or library that needs to be installed.  The same applies to any new developer who enters into the team, so do this to increase your productivity when the team changes, or a team member switches computer. Don’t forget to document what you have to configure on the computer, the IIS being a common one. The more automatic you can do this, the better.  Use NuGet to get down libraries. When the text document gets more than say, half a page, with a bunch of different things to do, convert it into a powershell script instead.  The metrics warning levels.  These are very conservatively set by Microsoft.  You rarely see anything but green, and besides, you should have color scales for each of the metrics.  I have a blog post describing a more appropriate set of levels, based on both research work and industry “best practices”.  The essential limits are: Cyclomatic complexity and coupling:  Higher numbers are worse On method levels: Green :  From 0 to 10 Yellow:  From 10 to 20  (some say 15).   Acceptable, but have a look to see if there is something unneeded here. Red: From 20 to 40:   Action required, get these down. Bleeding Red: Above 40   This is the real red alert.  Immediate action!  (My invention, as people have asked what do I do when I have cyclomatic complexity of 150.  The only answer I could think of was: RUN! ) Maintainability index:  Lower numbers are worse, scale from 0 to 100. On method levels: Green:  60 to 100 Yellow:  40 – 60.    You will always have methods here too, accept the higher ones, take a look at those who are down to the lower limit.  Check up against the other metrics.) Red:  20 – 40:  Action required, fix these. Bleeding red:  Below 20.  Immediate action required. When doing metrics analysis, you should leave the generated code out.  You do this by adding attributes, unfortunately Microsoft has “forgotten” to add these to all their stuff, so you might have to add them to some of the code.  It most cases it can be done so that it is not overwritten by a new round of code generation.  Take a look a my blog post here for details on how to do that. Class level metrics might also be useful, at least for coupling and maintenance.  But it is much more difficult to set any fixed limits on those.  Any metric aggregations on higher level tend to be pretty useless, as the number of methods vary pretty much, and there are little science on what number of methods can be regarded as good or bad.  NDepend have a recommendation, but they say it may vary too.  And in these days of data binding, the number might be pretty high, as properties counts as methods.  However, if you take the worst case situations, classes with more than 20 methods are suspicious, and coupling and cyclomatic complexity go red above 20, so any classes with more than 20x20 = 400 for these measures should be checked over. In the video we mention the SOLID principles, coined by “Uncle Bob” (Richard Martin). One of them, the Dependency Inversion principle we discuss in the video.  It is important to note that this principle is NOT on whether you should use a Dependency Inversion Container or not, it is about how you design the interfaces and interactions between your classes.  The Dependency Inversion Container is just one technique which is based on this principle, but which main purpose is to isolate things you would like to change at runtime, for example if you implement a plug in architecture.  Overuse of a Dependency Inversion Container is however, NOT a good thing.  It should be used for a purpose and not as a general DI solution.  The general DI solution and thinking however is useful far beyond the DIC.   You should always “program to an abstraction”, and not to the concreteness.  We also talk a bit about the GRASP patterns, a term coined by Craig Larman in his book Applying UML and design patterns. GRASP patterns stand for General Responsibility Assignment Software Patterns and describe fundamental principles of object design and responsibility assignment.  What I find great with these patterns is that they is another way to focus on the responsibility of a class.  One of the things I most often found that is broken in software designs, is that the class lack responsibility, and as a result there are a lot of classes mucking around in the internals of the other classes.  We also discuss the term “Code Smells”.  This term was invented by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler when they worked with Fowler’s “Refactoring” book. A code smell is a set of “bad” coding practices, which are the drivers behind a corresponding set of refactorings.  Here is a good list of the smells, and their corresponding refactor patterns. See also this.

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• All downloads being interrupted

  - by Jake

  System: Windows 7 Professional 64bit. 8GB RAM, Intel i5-2400 CPU, +300GB free on the hard drive. AVG Internet Security 2012 (enabled & disabled, with firewall enabled and disabled - no effect for either). This computer is less than a year old. Network: This problem is occurring on a single computer on a network with multiple computers. The router is a Motorola Netopia 3347-02 (DSL Modem/Wireless Router combined). The computer is plugged in directly to the modem, other computers are using the wireless successfully. The router has been reset. The only thing odd about the connection between the router and computer is that it is configured to allow RDP through, so it is assigned a static IP by the router and port forwarding is enabled for port 3389. Also, though I doubt it matters, a second wireless router is active behind this router providing a second network that some computers in the area use without issues. Details: All downloads initiated on this specific computer eventually fail, this includes streaming from youtube, specialized downloads (itunes), downloads from websites, FTP downloads, etc. Failure occurs with all browsers, but in chrome this is the process it takes: 1) Download begins normally, 2) At some point between (observed) 7MBs and 229MBs the download stops progressing (at this point, if watching chrome's task manager, you can see the network activity for the downloading tab drop to 0kps), 3) for some time the download sits there still attempting to complete, but will eventually display "123,049,871/0 B, Interrupted" (where the number is whatever it actually got to). The file I am using to test this is a very large .zip file located on a server I control, but the problem seems to occur on any site. The amount downloaded is completely random, and seems to be more time-based than anything (if I start a download immediately after the last one fails, it tends to get further than the last one). Small files can get through for this reason, though they can fail as well. In a test where I simultaneously downloaded the same file via HTTP (chrome) and FTP (windows explorer), both downloads failed at the same instant, though explorer displayed "Connection timed out" several minutes before chrome finally showed the download as interrupted. Other things I have tried based on advice given to people with similar/identical problems: Setting my MTU to 1492 (as described here: http://blog.thecompwiz.com/2011/08/networking-issues.html) Disabling write caching to the hard drive storing the download on an external device successfully transmitted +1GB file from one computer on the same network to this computer disabling indexing in the folder the download was being stored in disabling all security software checked to make sure all drivers were up to date read about 50 accounts with nearly exact descriptions of what I'm experiencing, none of which had a solution given Running Processes: Image Name PID Session Name Session# Mem Usage ========================= ======== ================ =========== ============ System Idle Process 0 Services 0 24 K System 4 Services 0 104,836 K smss.exe 332 Services 0 1,276 K csrss.exe 764 Services 0 5,060 K wininit.exe 820 Services 0 4,748 K csrss.exe 844 Console 1 23,764 K services.exe 876 Services 0 11,856 K lsass.exe 892 Services 0 14,420 K lsm.exe 900 Services 0 7,820 K winlogon.exe 944 Console 1 7,716 K svchost.exe 428 Services 0 12,744 K svchost.exe 796 Services 0 12,240 K svchost.exe 1036 Services 0 22,372 K svchost.exe 1084 Services 0 174,132 K svchost.exe 1112 Services 0 56,144 K svchost.exe 1288 Services 0 18,640 K svchost.exe 1404 Services 0 29,616 K spoolsv.exe 1576 Services 0 25,924 K svchost.exe 1616 Services 0 12,788 K AppleMobileDeviceService. 1728 Services 0 9,796 K avgwdsvc.exe 1820 Services 0 8,268 K mDNSResponder.exe 1844 Services 0 5,832 K w3dbsmgr.exe 1108 Services 0 43,760 K QBCFMonitorService.exe 1336 Services 0 16,408 K svchost.exe 2404 Services 0 28,240 K taskhost.exe 3020 Console 1 12,372 K dwm.exe 2280 Console 1 5,968 K explorer.exe 2964 Console 1 152,476 K WUDFHost.exe 3316 Services 0 6,740 K svchost.exe 3408 Services 0 5,556 K RAVCpl64.exe 3684 Console 1 13,864 K igfxtray.exe 3700 Console 1 7,804 K hkcmd.exe 3772 Console 1 7,868 K igfxpers.exe 3788 Console 1 10,940 K sidebar.exe 3836 Console 1 84,400 K chrome.exe 3964 Console 1 19,640 K pptd40nt.exe 4068 Console 1 5,156 K acrotray.exe 3908 Console 1 14,676 K avgtray.exe 3872 Console 1 9,508 K jusched.exe 4076 Console 1 4,412 K iTunesHelper.exe 1532 Console 1 87,308 K SearchIndexer.exe 3492 Services 0 36,948 K iPodService.exe 4136 Services 0 7,944 K BrccMCtl.exe 4276 Console 1 18,132 K splwow64.exe 4380 Console 1 32,600 K qbupdate.exe 4836 Console 1 24,236 K svchost.exe 4288 Services 0 20,700 K wmpnetwk.exe 3112 Services 0 9,516 K FNPLicensingService.exe 5248 Services 0 5,852 K QBW32.EXE 5508 Console 1 127,068 K QBDBMgrN.exe 5600 Services 0 42,252 K EXCEL.EXE 2512 Console 1 99,100 K LMS.exe 3188 Services 0 5,616 K UNS.exe 1600 Services 0 7,308 K axlbridge.exe 5260 Console 1 5,132 K chrome.exe 5888 Console 1 200,336 K chrome.exe 3536 Console 1 26,076 K chrome.exe 1952 Console 1 20,168 K chrome.exe 4596 Console 1 24,696 K chrome.exe 4292 Console 1 48,096 K chrome.exe 2796 Console 1 23,520 K Acrobat.exe 1240 Console 1 87,252 K 123w.exe 4892 Console 1 22,728 K calc.exe 1700 Console 1 12,636 K chrome.exe 1328 Console 1 28,888 K chrome.exe 3696 Console 1 47,012 K rundll32.exe 6320 Console 1 7,104 K chrome.exe 4928 Console 1 44,248 K AVGIDSAgent.exe 260 Services 0 12,940 K avgfws.exe 6052 Services 0 26,912 K avgnsa.exe 5064 Services 0 2,496 K avgrsa.exe 3088 Services 0 2,200 K avgcsrva.exe 2596 Services 0 380 K avgcsrva.exe 6948 Services 0 408 K StikyNot.exe 452 Console 1 14,772 K chrome.exe 4580 Console 1 28,200 K chrome.exe 4016 Console 1 57,756 K svchost.exe 7140 Services 0 4,500 K chrome.exe 6264 Console 1 56,824 K chrome.exe 7008 Console 1 56,896 K chrome.exe 2224 Console 1 38,032 K taskhost.exe 612 Console 1 7,228 K chrome.exe 6000 Console 1 10,928 K chrome.exe 2568 Console 1 43,052 K chrome.exe 272 Console 1 75,988 K chrome.exe 7328 Console 1 53,240 K PaprPort.exe 7976 Console 1 137,152 K pplinks.exe 7500 Console 1 14,052 K ppscanmg.exe 5744 Console 1 18,996 K taskeng.exe 7388 Console 1 6,308 K SearchProtocolHost.exe 8024 Services 0 8,804 K SearchFilterHost.exe 7232 Services 0 7,848 K chrome.exe 8016 Console 1 37,440 K cmd.exe 7692 Console 1 3,096 K conhost.exe 7516 Console 1 5,872 K tasklist.exe 8160 Console 1 5,772 K WmiPrvSE.exe 7684 Services 0 6,400 K Any help with this would be greatly appreciated, I've been beating my head against a wall over this all day. This computer serves dual purpose as the main company document server and the Owner's work computer, it's fairly important it be fully functional and I cannot figure this out.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, April 03, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, April 03, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET MVC Demo: aspnetmvcdemoClasslessInterDomainRouting: ClasslessInterDomainRouting provides a class that is designed to detail with CIDR requests and ranges, it is developed within the C# Langauge and f...ClientSideRefactor: Plugin for Visual Studio.ColinTest: ColinTestePMS: An educational project to learn ASP.Net MVC, entity framework using vs 2010Extensible ASP.NET: Extensible Framework on top of ASP.NET - infrastructure level. Uses MEF for extensibility.Franchise Computing Model: Franchise Computing is a client-centric, contract-oriented, consumption-based computing model. Its framework allows service providers and consumers...GameEngine ReactorFX: Set of tools and code snippets for creation DirectX based games. Also provides a number of ideas, algorythms and problem-solutions.It's All Just Ones And Zeros: Utility code libraries for Vault API developers.Live Writer Picasa Plugin: Live Writer Picasa Plugin is a plugin for Windows Live Writer that allows you to embed photos from your Picasa Web Albums into your blog posts. Liv...Managed SDK for Meizu Cell Phone: The goal of this project is to deliver an open source managed SDK for Meizu cell phones, currently for M8. Media Player Field Type: Display a media player in a column of you document library. The library can contain movie files of diferent formats. The player will appear in the ...praca magisterska: This is my thesis: Algebraical aspects of modern cryptography,Pyx: An experimental programming language for statistics.SharpHydroLiDAR: A C# version of Lidar Hydrographic ExtractionSql Server Mds Destination: SSIS destination transform component for SQL Server Master Data ServicesStackOverflow.Net: A C# library for the StackOverflow API (currently in beta). Provides methods for every call currently in the StackOverflow API.TRX Merger Utility: People working on test projects that involve test management and execution from Visual Studio Team System 2008 and who do not have a TFS server for...UniPlanner: The UniPlanner project goal is to develop a web application able to visualize and schedule a university timetable.WikiNETParser: Wiki .NET Parser, Open Source project powered by ANTLR. Syntax defined in 3(4) files Lexer, Grammar, AST Parser.New ReleasesaaronERP builder - a framework to create customized ERP solutions: aaronERP_0.4.0.0: Changes (compared to version 0.3.0.0) : Businesslayer : - Caching of data-tables - ITranslatable Interface for mutli-language DAOs Web-Frontend: ...BatterySaver: Version 0.5: Add support for executing a power state event manually (Issue) Add support for battery percentage thresholds (Issue)ColinTest: asdfzxcv: asdfasdfComposer: V1.0.402.2001 Beta: Minor bug fixes Minor changes in interfaces Added documentation to the setup packageDynamic Configuration: Dynamic Configuration Release 2: Added ConfigurationChanged event fired whenever changes in .config file detected. Improved file watching filtering.Facebook Developer Toolkit: Version 3.1 BETA: Lots of bug fixes. Issues addressed: http://facebooktoolkit.codeplex.com/WorkItem/View.aspx?WorkItemId=14808 http://facebooktoolkit.codeplex.com/W...iExporter - iTunes playlist exporting: iExporter gui v2.5.0.0 - console v1.2.1.0: Paypal donate! New features and redesign for iExporter Gui You can now select/deselect all visible items with one click in the overview When yo...Line Counter: 1.5.5: The Line Counter is a tool to calculate lines of your code files. The tool was written in .NET 2.0. Line Counter 1.5.5 Fixed bugs in C# counter an...Live Writer Picasa Plugin: Live Writer Picasa Plugin 1.0.0: Changelog Since this is the first version there are no changes.Media Player Field Type: Media Player Field Type v1.0: Display a media player in a column of you document library. The library can contain movie files of diferent formats. The player will appear in the ...Numina Application/Security Framework: Numina.Framework Core 49601: Added .LESS library for CSS Updated default style and logo Added a few methods and method overloads to the .NET libraryOver Store: OverStore 1.16.0.0: Version 1.16.0.0 Runtime components uses PersistingRuntimeException instead of many exception types. PersistingRuntimeException message includes...patterns & practices Web Client Developer Guidance: Web Client Software Factory 2010 beta source code: The Web Client Software Factory 2010 provides an integrated set of guidance that assists architects and developers in creating web client applicati...SCSI Interface for Multimedia and Block Devices: Release 12 - View CD-DVD Drive Features: Changes in this version: - Added the ability to view the features of a CD/DVD device (e.g.: what discs it supports, whether it supports Mount Raini...SharePoint Labs: SPLab5006A-FRA-Level100: SPLab5006A-FRA-Level100 This SharePoint Lab will teach you how to create a Feature within Visual Studio, how to brand it, how to incorporate ressou...SharePoint Labs: SPLab5007A-FRA-Level300: SPLab5007A-FRA-Level300 This SharePoint Lab will teach you how to create a reusable and distributable project model for developping Features within...SharePoint Labs: SPLab5008A-FRA-Level100: SPLab5008A-FRA-Level100 This SharePoint Lab will teach you how to add an option in the ECB menu (Edit Control Block) only for specific file types w...SharePoint Labs: SPLab5009A-FRA-Level100: SPLab5009A-FRA-Level100 This SharePoint Lab will teach you the "Site Pages" model and the differences between customized/uncustomized pages (ghoste...SharePoint Labs: SPLab5010A-FRA-Level100: SPLab5010A-FRA-Level100 This SharePoint Lab will teach you the "Application Pages" model and the differences between "Site Pages" and "Application ...SharePoint Labs: SPLab5011A-FRA-Level100: SPLab5011A-FRA-Level100 This SharePoint Lab will teach you how to create a basic Application Page in the 12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS. Lab Language : French...sPATCH: sPatch v0.9b: + Fixed: an issue most webservers need leading slash to return filestreamsTASKedit: sTASKedit (pre-Alpha Release): This release is only for playing around, currently not useful Supported Files:Open 1.3.6 client tasks.data Export to 1.3.6 client tasks.data E...TRX Merger Utility: TRX Merger v1.0: First versionttgLib: ttgLib-0.01-beta1: In beta-version we've implemented basic functionality of ttgLib - now it can solve various problems using CPU+GPU bundle. Most important things: ...WikiNETParser: Wiki .NET Parser 2.5: Wiki .NET Parser 2.5 The documentation, binaries and source code could be downloaded from http://catarsa.com portal The latest release to downloa...WPF Zen Garden: Release 1.0: This is the first release.XNA 3D World Studio Content Pipeline: XNA 3DWS Content Pipeline - R2: This version adds terrains and brush based modelsMost Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseASP.NET Ajax LibrarySilverlight ToolkitAJAX Control ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesDotNetNuke® Community EditionMost Active ProjectsGraffiti CMSRawrjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesFacebook Developer ToolkitBlogEngine.NETN2 CMSBase Class LibrariesFarseer Physics EngineLINQ to TwitterMicrosoft Biology Foundation

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• New Bundling and Minification Support (ASP.NET 4.5 Series)

  - by ScottGu

  This is the sixth in a series of blog posts I'm doing on ASP.NET 4.5. The next release of .NET and Visual Studio include a ton of great new features and capabilities.  With ASP.NET 4.5 you'll see a bunch of really nice improvements with both Web Forms and MVC - as well as in the core ASP.NET base foundation that both are built upon. Today’s post covers some of the work we are doing to add built-in support for bundling and minification into ASP.NET - which makes it easy to improve the performance of applications.  This feature can be used by all ASP.NET applications, including both ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Forms solutions. Basics of Bundling and Minification As more and more people use mobile devices to surf the web, it is becoming increasingly important that the websites and apps we build perform well with them. We’ve all tried loading sites on our smartphones – only to eventually give up in frustration as it loads slowly over a slow cellular network.  If your site/app loads slowly like that, you are likely losing potential customers because of bad performance.  Even with powerful desktop machines, the load time of your site and perceived performance can make an enormous customer perception. Most websites today are made up of multiple JavaScript and CSS files to separate the concerns and keep the code base tight. While this is a good practice from a coding point of view, it often has some unfortunate consequences for the overall performance of the website.  Multiple JavaScript and CSS files require multiple HTTP requests from a browser – which in turn can slow down the performance load time.  Simple Example Below I’ve opened a local website in IE9 and recorded the network traffic using IE’s built-in F12 developer tools. As shown below, the website consists of 5 CSS and 4 JavaScript files which the browser has to download. Each file is currently requested separately by the browser and returned by the server, and the process can take a significant amount of time proportional to the number of files in question. Bundling ASP.NET is adding a feature that makes it easy to “bundle” or “combine” multiple CSS and JavaScript files into fewer HTTP requests. This causes the browser to request a lot fewer files and in turn reduces the time it takes to fetch them.   Below is an updated version of the above sample that takes advantage of this new bundling functionality (making only one request for the JavaScript and one request for the CSS): The browser now has to send fewer requests to the server. The content of the individual files have been bundled/combined into the same response, but the content of the files remains the same - so the overall file size is exactly the same as before the bundling.   But notice how even on a local dev machine (where the network latency between the browser and server is minimal), the act of bundling the CSS and JavaScript files together still manages to reduce the overall page load time by almost 20%.  Over a slow network the performance improvement would be even better. Minification The next release of ASP.NET is also adding a new feature that makes it easy to reduce or “minify” the download size of the content as well.  This is a process that removes whitespace, comments and other unneeded characters from both CSS and JavaScript. The result is smaller files, which will download and load in a browser faster.  The graph below shows the performance gain we are seeing when both bundling and minification are used together: Even on my local dev box (where the network latency is minimal), we now have a 40% performance improvement from where we originally started.  On slow networks (and especially with international customers), the gains would be even more significant. Using Bundling and Minification inside ASP.NET The upcoming release of ASP.NET makes it really easy to take advantage of bundling and minification within projects and see performance gains like in the scenario above. The way it does this allows you to avoid having to run custom tools as part of your build process –  instead ASP.NET has added runtime support to perform the bundling/minification for you dynamically (caching the results to make sure perf is great).  This enables a really clean development experience and makes it super easy to start to take advantage of these new features. Let’s assume that we have a simple project that has 4 JavaScript files and 6 CSS files: Bundling and Minifying the .css files Let’s say you wanted to reference all of the stylesheets in the “Styles” folder above on a page.  Today you’d have to add multiple CSS references to get all of them – which would translate into 6 separate HTTP requests: The new bundling/minification feature now allows you to instead bundle and minify all of the .css files in the Styles folder – simply by sending a URL request to the folder (in this case “styles”) with an appended “/css” path after it.  For example:    This will cause ASP.NET to scan the directory, bundle and minify the .css files within it, and send back a single HTTP response with all of the CSS content to the browser.  You don’t need to run any tools or pre-processor to get this behavior.  This enables you to cleanly separate your CSS into separate logical .css files and maintain a very clean development experience – while not taking a performance hit at runtime for doing so.  The Visual Studio designer will also honor the new bundling/minification logic as well – so you’ll still get a WYSWIYG designer experience inside VS as well. Bundling and Minifying the JavaScript files Like the CSS approach above, if we wanted to bundle and minify all of our JavaScript into a single response we could send a URL request to the folder (in this case “scripts”) with an appended “/js” path after it:   This will cause ASP.NET to scan the directory, bundle and minify the .js files within it, and send back a single HTTP response with all of the JavaScript content to the browser.  Again – no custom tools or builds steps were required in order to get this behavior.  And it works with all browsers. Ordering of Files within a Bundle By default, when files are bundled by ASP.NET they are sorted alphabetically first, just like they are shown in Solution Explorer. Then they are automatically shifted around so that known libraries and their custom extensions such as jQuery, MooTools and Dojo are loaded before anything else. So the default order for the merged bundling of the Scripts folder as shown above will be: Jquery-1.6.2.js Jquery-ui.js Jquery.tools.js a.js By default, CSS files are also sorted alphabetically and then shifted around so that reset.css and normalize.css (if they are there) will go before any other file. So the default sorting of the bundling of the Styles folder as shown above will be: reset.css content.css forms.css globals.css menu.css styles.css The sorting is fully customizable, though, and can easily be changed to accommodate most use cases and any common naming pattern you prefer.  The goal with the out of the box experience, though, is to have smart defaults that you can just use and be successful with. Any number of directories/sub-directories supported In the example above we just had a single “Scripts” and “Styles” folder for our application.  This works for some application types (e.g. single page applications).  Often, though, you’ll want to have multiple CSS/JS bundles within your application – for example: a “common” bundle that has core JS and CSS files that all pages use, and then page specific or section specific files that are not used globally. You can use the bundling/minification support across any number of directories or sub-directories in your project – this makes it easy to structure your code so as to maximize the bunding/minification benefits.  Each directory by default can be accessed as a separate URL addressable bundle.  Bundling/Minification Extensibility ASP.NET’s bundling and minification support is built with extensibility in mind and every part of the process can be extended or replaced. Custom Rules In addition to enabling the out of the box - directory-based - bundling approach, ASP.NET also supports the ability to register custom bundles using a new programmatic API we are exposing.  The below code demonstrates how you can register a “customscript” bundle using code within an application’s Global.asax class.  The API allows you to add/remove/filter files that go into the bundle on a very granular level:     The above custom bundle can then be referenced anywhere within the application using the below <script> reference:     Custom Processing You can also override the default CSS and JavaScript bundles to support your own custom processing of the bundled files (for example: custom minification rules, support for Saas, LESS or Coffeescript syntax, etc). In the example below we are indicating that we want to replace the built-in minification transforms with a custom MyJsTransform and MyCssTransform class. They both subclass the CSS and JavaScript minifier respectively and can add extra functionality:     The end result of this extensibility is that you can plug-into the bundling/minification logic at a deep level and do some pretty cool things with it. 2 Minute Video of Bundling and Minification in Action Mads Kristensen has a great 90 second video that shows off using the new Bundling and Minification feature.  You can watch the 90 second video here. Summary The new bundling and minification support within the next release of ASP.NET will make it easier to build fast web applications.  It is really easy to use, and doesn’t require major changes to your existing dev workflow.  It is also supports a rich extensibility API that enables you to customize it however you want. You can easily take advantage of this new support within ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET Web Pages based applications. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I use Twitter to-do quick posts and share links. My Twitter handle is: @scottgu

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• SQL SERVER – A Quick Look at Logging and Ideas around Logging

  - by pinaldave

  This blog post is written in response to the T-SQL Tuesday post on Logging. When someone talks about logging, personally I get lots of ideas about it. I have seen logging as a very generic term. Let me ask you this question first before I continue writing about logging. What is the first thing comes to your mind when you hear word “Logging”? Now ask the same question to the guy standing next to you. I am pretty confident that you will get  a different answer from different people. I decided to do this activity and asked 5 SQL Server person the same question. Question: What is the first thing comes to your mind when you hear the word “Logging”? Strange enough I got a different answer every single time. Let me just list what answer I got from my friends. Let us go over them one by one. Output Clause The very first person replied output clause. Pretty interesting answer to start with. I see what exactly he was thinking. SQL Server 2005 has introduced a new OUTPUT clause. OUTPUT clause has access to inserted and deleted tables (virtual tables) just like triggers. OUTPUT clause can be used to return values to client clause. OUTPUT clause can be used with INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE to identify the actual rows affected by these statements. Here are some references for Output Clause: OUTPUT Clause Example and Explanation with INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE Reasons for Using Output Clause – Quiz Tips from the SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Output Clause in Simple Examples Error Logs I was expecting someone to mention Error logs when it is about logging. The error log is the most looked place when there is any error either with the application or there is an error with the operating system. I have kept the policy to check my server’s error log every day. The reason is simple – enough time in my career I have figured out that when I am looking at error logs I find something which I was not expecting. There are cases, when I noticed errors in the error log and I fixed them before end user notices it. Other common practices I always tell my DBA friends to do is that when any error happens they should find relevant entries in the error logs and document the same. It is quite possible that they will see the same error in the error log  and able to fix the error based on the knowledge base which they have created. There can be many different kinds of error log files exists in SQL Server as well – 1) SQL Server Error Logs 2) Windows Event Log 3) SQL Server Agent Log 4) SQL Server Profile Log 5) SQL Server Setup Log etc. Here are some references for Error Logs: Recycle Error Log – Create New Log file without Server Restart SQL Error Messages Change Data Capture I got surprised with this answer. I think more than the answer I was surprised by the person who had answered me this one. I always thought he was expert in HTML, JavaScript but I guess, one should never assume about others. Indeed one of the cool logging feature is Change Data Capture. Change Data Capture records INSERTs, UPDATEs, and DELETEs applied to SQL Server tables, and makes a record available of what changed, where, and when, in simple relational ‘change tables’ rather than in an esoteric chopped salad of XML. These change tables contain columns that reflect the column structure of the source table you have chosen to track, along with the metadata needed to understand the changes that have been made. Here are some references for Change Data Capture: Introduction to Change Data Capture (CDC) in SQL Server 2008 Tuning the Performance of Change Data Capture in SQL Server 2008 Download Script of Change Data Capture (CDC) CDC and TRUNCATE – Cannot truncate table because it is published for replication or enabled for Change Data Capture Dynamic Management View (DMV) I like this answer. If asked I would have not come up with DMV right away but in the spirit of the original question, I think DMV does log the data. DMV logs or stores or records the various data and activity on the SQL Server. Dynamic management views return server state information that can be used to monitor the health of a server instance, diagnose problems, and tune performance. One can get plethero of information from DMVs – High Availability Status, Query Executions Details, SQL Server Resources Status etc. Here are some references for Dynamic Management View (DMV): SQL SERVER – Denali – DMV Enhancement – sys.dm_exec_query_stats – New Columns DMV – sys.dm_os_windows_info – Information about Operating System DMV – sys.dm_os_wait_stats Explanation – Wait Type – Day 3 of 28 DMV sys.dm_exec_describe_first_result_set_for_object – Describes the First Result Metadata for the Module Transaction Log Impact Detection Using DMV – dm_tran_database_transactions Log Files I almost flipped with this final answer from my friend. This should be probably the first answer. Yes, indeed log file logs the SQL Server activities. One can write infinite things about log file. SQL Server uses log file with the extension .ldf to manage transactions and maintain database integrity. Log file ensures that valid data is written out to database and system is in a consistent state. Log files are extremely useful in case of the database failures as with the help of full backup file database can be brought in the desired state (point in time recovery is also possible). SQL Server database has three recovery models – 1) Simple, 2) Full and 3) Bulk Logged. Each of the model uses the .ldf file for performing various activities. It is very important to take the backup of the log files (along with full backup) as one never knows when backup of the log file come into the action and save the day! How to Stop Growing Log File Too Big Reduce the Virtual Log Files (VLFs) from LDF file Log File Growing for Model Database – model Database Log File Grew Too Big master Database Log File Grew Too Big SHRINKFILE and TRUNCATE Log File in SQL Server 2008 Can I just say I loved this month’s T-SQL Tuesday Question. It really provoked very interesting conversation around me. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Optimization, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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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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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 03, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 03, 2010New ProjectsAlbatross: Albatross framework. We are still working on the documentation, more details will be available soon.ApiChange: ApiChange is the Swiss army knife for inspecting your assemblies from the command line. Now you can do basic operations like diff, who uses (method...BaseCalendar: BaseCalendar is a server-side ASP.NET web control (WebForms or MVC) that renders a calendar while giving you full control over the generated HTML. ...CESAVE: Proyectos para el Comité Estatal de Sanidad Vegetal.Closure Compiler w/ Annotations Visual Studio 2010 Snippets: This is an attempt to create reusable Visual Studio snippets to make working with closure compiler annotated JavaScript more productive. VS2010 ...Common Service Host: Common Service Host is a generic Windows Communication Service Host and factory that uses the Common Service Locator to create Service objects. ...DarkLight: DarkLight is a 2D Lighting Engine written in XNA, and allows developers to create 2D shadowing effects in their 2D games easily. It supports poi...Earn Burn Tracker: A tool to track earned value against a given release, initiative, feature set, and objects.eOfficeAACS: eOffice is an open source access control and attendance management system developed by e-bird Innovation (www.ebirdinfo.com).Its flexible design al...FLV Video conversion library for .Net 3.5: This is a component created to call the ffmpeg tool to convert various video formats to the Adobe Flash FLV output format. The component also takes...Google Moderator: .NET client library for the Google Moderator API.linq to jquery: provides support for linq to jquery objectsMobile Vikings Data: App to view your data usage RefBrowser: RefBrowserRESX Translator with Bing (from Microsoft Consulting Services, UK): A Windows Form application that automatically translates RESX files using Bing web servicesRhyduino - Remote Arduino Control via Managed Code: Rhyduino makes it easy for Visual Studio / Windows devs to control the Arduino using a computer. It's like supercharging your Arduino with all the ...SharePoint 2010 CSV Bulk Term Set Importer: Allows for multiple import of *.csv files to a given term group in SharePoint 2010 Term Store. It will create new term group based on the name pr...SharePoint Feature - Export history version to Excel: Add a function to list the action button, the ability to export history version of the item sheet to Excel from the specified date. Features suppo...SwEntry: A system that allows people to open doors by using a Bluetooth enabled phone. Things to Do with the DLR: This project is about ideas and sample code around the Dynamic Language Runtime.Work Recorder - Hold on own time!: Work Recorder is a office aid software which can recorde the time used on PC for researchers, office workers and students. And it is also a good he...xuezhixu: xuezhixu foundYaget: Yet Another Game Engine TechnologyNew ReleasesBackUpAnyWhere: backupanywhere RC1: this is the RC of our programBaseCalendar: BaseControls 1.0: BaseControls 1.0 contains the BaseCalendar ASP.NET control.BizTalk Server Pipeline Component Wizard: 2.20: Version suitable for 2010 release.CheckHeader: CheckHeader v0.8.6: The Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 is needed to run this program.Chirpy - VS Add In For Handling Js, Css, and DotLess Files: Chirpy Installer for VS 2010 (Ver-1.0.0.2): VS 2010 Installer for the Chirpy AddIn. Version 1.0.0.2Christoc's DotNetNuke C# Module Development Template: 00.00.01: This is the initial release of Christoc's DotNetNuke C# Module Development Template. You can use the Template as-is, or you can customize the VSTem...Closure Compiler w/ Annotations Visual Studio 2010 Snippets: v1 release: The initial release of the projectCommunity Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V22: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V23: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V24: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...DarkLight: DarkLight Engine v1.0: This is the first version of the DarkLight engine and currently supports point, spot and area lights with no upper limit on the number of lights. ...DotNetNuke® Skin Collaborate: Collaborate Package 1.1.0: Newer version of Collaborate included fixes: - removed conditional code to display control panel - changed background color to match with backgroun...dotSpatial: System.Spatial.Projection Zip June 2, 2010: This version tries to fix a problem with reprojecting to UTM zones. It is still being tested though.Entity Framework Repository & Unit of Work Template: 1.0.1: This version has more than just the T4 template. I have added a new template that has a RepositoryHelper class for use with StructureMap. Also th...FLV Video conversion library for .Net 3.5: Beta 1: This is the first release of this project. Improvements may be added if necessary.HERB.IQ: Alpha 0.1 Preview: Only clone tab works, just setting up the GUI and getting the XML data handling working correctlyJetfire - Workflow DSL: V1.2.0: The complete source code required for a Jetfire system (server and client nexus) is included in the release. Highlights of Changes Full programmat...linq to jquery: linq to jquery alpha: beta development projectMapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 June 2, 2010: This version fixes a problem with projecting to UTM zones. I'm not sure that this works perfectly yet. It seemed to require a zone adjustment by ...patterns & practices Web Client Developer Guidance: Developing Web Apps May 2010 Beta: This RelesaeThis drop includes updated documentation, links, and graphics. We are still looking for feedback on this release. Plans going forward...patterns & practices: Composite WPF and Silverlight: Prism 4.0 Drop 1: Prism 4.0 Drop 1 Welcome to the first drop of Prism 4.0 (formally known as the Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight). This drop i...Powershell4SQL: Version 1.3: Changes from version 1.2 Added support for -Confirm and -WhatIf parameters Added support for -Verbose mode. Includes SQL Batch text, parameters ...RESX Translator with Bing (from Microsoft Consulting Services, UK): v1.0: This is the initial release of the toolRhyduino - Remote Arduino Control via Managed Code: Beta Release (v0.80): LibraryAuto-detects connected Arduino devices. Uses system resources intelligently to take advantage of multiple CPU cores when present. Firmata ...SharePoint Feature - Export history version to Excel: Export Item List Version: - multilanguage support Czech, English Install: "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN\stsadm.exe" -o addsol...Simulo: Simulo v2.5: That's the third release of Simulo (v2.5). For detailed info on what's new, read the changes log block at the project's home page. System requirem...Site Directory for SharePoint 2010 (from Microsoft Consulting Services, UK): v1.5: Please carefully follow the Installation Guideas there are additional actions that need to be undertaken in this release. As 1.4 with the followin...Spackle.NET: 4.1.0.0 Release: Added IEquatable<T> to Range<T>StreamInsight Samples: Microsoft StreamInsight Product Team Samples: This is the current snapshot of the samples created by the Streaminsight Product Team.Touch Mice: 0.1: Initial release of Touch MiceVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30602.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.2.0: Version 7.2.0 of VivoSocial has been released. If you experienced any issues with the previous version, please update your modules to the 7.2.0 rel...Work Recorder - Hold on own time!: WorkRecorder 1.0: +Finished Version 1.0Most Popular ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeOutSyncASP.NET MVC Time PlannerNeatUploadMoonyDesk (windows desktop widgets)Mute4eXpress Persistent Objects (XPO) ToolkitAgUnit - Silverlight unit testing with ReSharperASP.NET MVC ExtensionsAviva Solutions C# Coding GuidelinesMost Active ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationRawrIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterN2 CMSpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryBlogEngine.NETGameSetFarseer Physics EngineMirror Testing System

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, December 26, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, December 26, 2010Popular ReleasesNoSimplerAccounting: NoSimplerAccounting 6.0: -Fixed a bug in expense category report.Temporary Data Storage Folder: TDS Folder source code: This is latest version 0.2 Beta code. To know the password request at neutron.request@gmail.comNHibernate Mapping Generator: NHibernate Mapping Generator 2.0: Added support for Postgres (Thanks to Angelo)NewLife XCode: XCode v6.5.2010.1223 ????（????v3.5??）: XCode v6.5.2010.1223 ????，??： NewLife.Core ??? NewLife.Net ??? XControl ??? XTemplate ????，??C#?????? XAgent ???? NewLife.CommonEnitty ??????（???，XCode??????） XCode?? ?????????，??????????????????，?????95% XCode v3.5.2009.0714 ??，?v3.5?v6.0???????????????，?????????。v3.5???????????，??????????????。 XCoder ??XTemplate?????????，????????XCode??? XCoder_Src ???????（????XTemplate????），??????????????????Windows Workflow Foundation on Codeplex: Microsoft.Activities.UnitTesting 1.71: New in this release Episode as Tasks using the Task Parallel Library CHM Help file now included in release. StyleCop compliance is resulting in massive refatoring but should not cause breaking changes Breaking Change DefaultTimeout is now a TimeSpan Removed default parameters using int timeout = DefaultTimeout and added overloads insteadMiniTwitter: 1.64: MiniTwitter 1.64 ???? ?? 1.63 ??? URL ??????????????Ajax ASP.Net Forum: InSeCla Forum Software v0.1.9: *VERSION: 0.1.9* HAPPY CHRISTMAS FEATURES ADDED Added features customizabled per category level (Customize at ADMIN/Categories Tab) Allow Anonymous Threads, Allow Anonymous Post Virtual URLs (friendly urls) has finally added And you can have some forum (category) using virtual urls and other using normal urls. Check !, as this improve the SEO indexing results Moderation Instant On: Delete Thread, Move Thread Available to users being members of moderators or administrators InstantO...VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.0: Please see changes: http://support.vivoware.com/project/ChangeLog.aspx?PROJID=48Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.6 Beta - codename JUNO: The Umbraco 4.6 beta (codename JUNO) release contains many new features focusing on an improved installation experience, a number of robust developer features, and contains more than 89 bug fixes since the 4.5.2 release. Improved installer experience Updated Starter Kits (Simple, Blog, Personal, Business) Beautiful, free, customizable skins included Skinning engine and Skin customization (see Skinning Documentation Kit) Default dashboards on install with hide option Updated Login t...SSH.NET Library: 2010.12.23: This release includes some bug fixes and few new fetures. Fixes Allow to retrieve big directory structures ssh-dss algorithm is fixed Populate sftp file attributes New Features Support for passhrase when private key is used Support added for diffie-hellman-group14-sha1,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256 and diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1 key exchange algorithms Allow to provide multiple key files for authentication Add support for "keyboard-interactive" authentication method...ASP.NET MVC SiteMap provider: MvcSiteMapProvider 2.3.0: Using NuGet?MvcSiteMapProvider is also listed in the NuGet feed. Learn more... Like the project? Consider a donation!Donate via PayPal via PayPal. Release notesThis will be the last release targeting ASP.NET MVC 2 and .NET 3.5. MvcSiteMapProvider 3.0.0 will be targeting ASP.NET MVC 3 and .NET 4 Web.config setting skipAssemblyScanOn has been deprecated in favor of excludeAssembliesForScan and includeAssembliesForScan ISiteMapNodeUrlResolver is now completely responsible for generating th...SuperSocket, an extensible socket application framework: SuperSocket 1.3 beta 2: Compared with SuperSocket 1.3 beta 1, the changes listed below have been done in SuperSocket 1.3 beta 2: added supports for .NET 3.5 replaced Logging Application Block of EntLib with Log4Net improved the code about logging fixed a bug in QuickStart sample project added IPv6 supportTibiaPinger: TibiaPinger v1.0: TibiaPinger v1.0Media Companion: Media Companion 3.400: Extract the entire archive to a folder which has user access rights, eg desktop, documents etc. A manual is included to get you startedMulticore Task Framework: MTF 1.0.1: Release 1.0.1 of Multicore Task Framework.SQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQL Monitor 3.0 alpha 7: 1. added script save/load in user query window 2. fixed problem with connection dialog when choosing windows auth but still ask for user name 3. auto open user table when double click one table node 4. improved alert message, added log only methodEnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.6 ALPHA: 2.2.6 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Fixing up some r...ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome (jQuery Ajax helpers): 1.4.3: Helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager new stuff: Improvements for confirm, popup, popup form RenderView controller extension the user experience for crud in live demo has been substantially improved + added search all the features are shown in the live demoGanttPlanner: GanttPlanner V1.0: GanttPlanner V1.0 include GanttPlanner.dll and also a Demo application.N2 CMS: 2.1 release candidate 3: * Web platform installer support available N2 is a lightweight CMS framework for ASP.NET. It helps you build great web sites that anyone can update. Major Changes Support for auto-implemented properties ({get;set;}, based on contribution by And Poulsen) A bunch of bugs were fixed File manager improvements (multiple file upload, resize images to fit) New image gallery Infinite scroll paging on news Content templates First time with N2? Try the demo site Download one of the templ...New ProjectsA.I. Semantic Net Tests: A test using "semantic net" artificial intelligence developed in C++.Awesome.ClientID: Awesome.ClientID is a HTTPModule which serializes the ClientID of server controls, and page/usercontrol properties to a Json to make working with JavaScript easier without the need for outputting ClientID's. It's a solution for clean ClientIDs for .NET 2.0/3.5BitTweet: BitTweet is a fast, simple and easy to use Twitter client with tweeting, reading and writing functions included. It is know for being the most secure and fast Twitter client out there! It is written in Visual Basic .NET 2008. ~Tweet in a bit!CarRental001: carCrudo: CRUDO - The MCG (Model-Controller-Generator) CGF (Code Generation Framework) Visit The Project HomePage: http://adityayadav.com/CRUDO_The_MCG_Model_Controller_Generator_CGF_Code_Generation_Framework.aspx Licenses: 1) GPL v2 2) Commercial (contact us for information)Effeks: FX trading sample application sing prismEnhanced WebPart: Enhanced Webpart is a webpart with enhanced properties editor. It allows you display properties of most common types, and provides easy way to add custom controls to display your own types in webpart properties editor. Enhanced Webpart fully supports localization.Esteffin's graphic: Esercitazioni grafica 2010farasun: Source code Repository for farasun.wordpress.comGCTF: Desafio .NET Realizado na FACISAImgshow Plugin for Windows Live Writer: By using Imgshow Query you are able to publish multimedia content such as Youtube, Facebook Video, PDF, and other Imgshow supported service.Instant Messenger Using WPF and WCF: instant messenger using wcf and wpfjMenu: Create a dotnetnuke module that cover all kind of jquery menu pluginsMcopy API: Copy all files and directores in windows shell. Support long path (less then 32000 chars) and network path (eg. \\server\share or \\127.0.0.1\share)MOSSWebServices: This project contains code for interacting with the 21 web services provided by MOSS. This is targeted towards WSS developers This currently contains code to interact with "UserGroups" web service. I will keep adding code to interact with other MOSS web services soon. Nest Hub - Twitter Client: Nest Hub is a free Twitter client for PC. It's developed in VB.NET.Neural Networks Library: Neural networks Library by SefnajParallelism: Parallelism- Unified Parallel & Concurrency Framework Visit the Project HomePage: http://adityayadav.com/Parallelism.aspx Licenses: 1) GPL v2 2) Commercial (contact us for information)PDF IRM Protector For SharePoint 2007 And 2010: The PDF IRM Protector controls the conversion of PDF documents to their encrypted, rights-managed format and the decryption of PDF documents from their rights-managed format back to their original format. The project targets both SharePoint 2007 and 2010. PHP Form Validator - Isis: Project Isis simplifies the process of form validation for PHP. Offering a robust flag and function system, allowing you to encode the forms with the correct validation data and be done.Recycle Me: Open Source Project is to help and educate people in regarding reuse and recycling of daily life items. This is a Social project so we need funds for research and surveys. Volunteers are most welcome to contribute and certifications for their participation are available. ThanksSencha ExtJS Import Library for Script#: Script# import library for Sencha Ext JS Javascript Framework Separating Vertices: Given a graph as a collection of edges and vertices, it identifies the separating vertices, biconnected components, and edges. SIG - SISTEMA DE GESTÃO INTERNA: Projeto feito para a empresa MODEMTELECOM, consultoria em telecomunicoções.Smart Card COM: Smart Card COM Library, useful to access smart cards from a Web page in Internet ExplorerSocial Hub: Social HubStock Research: Test project for stocke researchtaokeba: ????????????????????，???????????。Temporary Data Storage Folder: This software creates a folder that stores temporary data that you want to store for temporary tasks. Temporary tasks such as storing a file that is to be deleted after some time. It automatically deleted those files on exit. Learn more at www.neutronsoftwares.weebly.comTukUI Updater: A OpenSource Windows Updater tool for the World of Warcraft(R) addon TukUI Developed in .NET 3.5 Discusion thread are found at the official TukUI forums: http://www.tukui.org/v2/forums/topic.php?id=4982 WebUtil: This is a project for using all of features by the web.

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• The fastest way to resize images from ASP.NET. And it’s (more) supported-ish.

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  I’ve shown before how to resize images using GDI, which is fairly common but is explicitly unsupported because we know of very real problems that this can cause. Still, many sites still use that method because those problems are fairly rare, and because most people assume it’s the only way to get the job done. Plus, it works in medium trust. More recently, I’ve shown how you can use WPF APIs to do the same thing and get JPEG thumbnails, only 2.5 times faster than GDI (even now that GDI really ultimately uses WIC to read and write images). The boost in performance is great, but it comes at a cost, that you may or may not care about: it won’t work in medium trust. It’s also just as unsupported as the GDI option. What I want to show today is how to use the Windows Imaging Components from ASP.NET APIs directly, without going through WPF. The approach has the great advantage that it’s been tested and proven to scale very well. The WIC team tells me you should be able to call support and get answers if you hit problems. Caveats exist though. First, this is using interop, so until a signed wrapper sits in the GAC, it will require full trust. Second, the APIs have a very strong smell of native code and are definitely not .NET-friendly. And finally, the most serious problem is that older versions of Windows don’t offer MTA support for image decoding. MTA support is only available on Windows 7, Vista and Windows Server 2008. But on 2003 and XP, you’ll only get STA support. that means that the thread safety that we so badly need for server applications is not guaranteed on those operating systems. To make it work, you’d have to spin specialized threads yourself and manage the lifetime of your objects, which is outside the scope of this article. We’ll assume that we’re fine with al this and that we’re running on 7 or 2008 under full trust. Be warned that the code that follows is not simple or very readable. This is definitely not the easiest way to resize an image in .NET. Wrapping native APIs such as WIC in a managed wrapper is never easy, but fortunately we won’t have to: the WIC team already did it for us and released the results under MS-PL. The InteropServices folder, which contains the wrappers we need, is in the WicCop project but I’ve also included it in the sample that you can download from the link at the end of the article. In order to produce a thumbnail, we first have to obtain a decoding frame object that WIC can use. Like with WPF, that object will contain the command to decode a frame from the source image but won’t do the actual decoding until necessary. Getting the frame is done by reading the image bytes through a special WIC stream that you can obtain from a factory object that we’re going to reuse for lots of other tasks: var photo = File.ReadAllBytes(photoPath); var factory = (IWICComponentFactory)new WICImagingFactory(); var inputStream = factory.CreateStream(); inputStream.InitializeFromMemory(photo, (uint)photo.Length); var decoder = factory.CreateDecoderFromStream( inputStream, null, WICDecodeOptions.WICDecodeMetadataCacheOnLoad); var frame = decoder.GetFrame(0); We can read the dimensions of the frame using the following (somewhat ugly) code: uint width, height; frame.GetSize(out width, out height); This enables us to compute the dimensions of the thumbnail, as I’ve shown in previous articles. We now need to prepare the output stream for the thumbnail. WIC requires a special kind of stream, IStream (not implemented by System.IO.Stream) and doesn’t directlyunderstand .NET streams. It does provide a number of implementations but not exactly what we need here. We need to output to memory because we’ll want to persist the same bytes to the response stream and to a local file for caching. The memory-bound version of IStream requires a fixed-length buffer but we won’t know the length of the buffer before we resize. To solve that problem, I’ve built a derived class from MemoryStream that also implements IStream. The implementation is not very complicated, it just delegates the IStream methods to the base class, but it involves some native pointer manipulation. Once we have a stream, we need to build the encoder for the output format, which could be anything that WIC supports. For web thumbnails, our only reasonable options are PNG and JPEG. I explored PNG because it’s a lossless format, and because WIC does support PNG compression. That compression is not very efficient though and JPEG offers good quality with much smaller file sizes. On the web, it matters. I found the best PNG compression option (adaptive) to give files that are about twice as big as 100%-quality JPEG (an absurd setting), 4.5 times bigger than 95%-quality JPEG and 7 times larger than 85%-quality JPEG, which is more than acceptable quality. As a consequence, we’ll use JPEG. The JPEG encoder can be prepared as follows: var encoder = factory.CreateEncoder( Consts.GUID_ContainerFormatJpeg, null); encoder.Initialize(outputStream, WICBitmapEncoderCacheOption.WICBitmapEncoderNoCache); The next operation is to create the output frame: IWICBitmapFrameEncode outputFrame; var arg = new IPropertyBag2[1]; encoder.CreateNewFrame(out outputFrame, arg); Notice that we are passing in a property bag. This is where we’re going to specify our only parameter for encoding, the JPEG quality setting: var propBag = arg[0]; var propertyBagOption = new PROPBAG2[1]; propertyBagOption[0].pstrName = "ImageQuality"; propBag.Write(1, propertyBagOption, new object[] { 0.85F }); outputFrame.Initialize(propBag); We can then set the resolution for the thumbnail to be 96, something we weren’t able to do with WPF and had to hack around: outputFrame.SetResolution(96, 96); Next, we set the size of the output frame and create a scaler from the input frame and the computed dimensions of the target thumbnail: outputFrame.SetSize(thumbWidth, thumbHeight); var scaler = factory.CreateBitmapScaler(); scaler.Initialize(frame, thumbWidth, thumbHeight, WICBitmapInterpolationMode.WICBitmapInterpolationModeFant); The scaler is using the Fant method, which I think is the best looking one even if it seems a little softer than cubic (zoomed here to better show the defects): Cubic Fant Linear Nearest neighbor We can write the source image to the output frame through the scaler: outputFrame.WriteSource(scaler, new WICRect { X = 0, Y = 0, Width = (int)thumbWidth, Height = (int)thumbHeight }); And finally we commit the pipeline that we built and get the byte array for the thumbnail out of our memory stream: outputFrame.Commit(); encoder.Commit(); var outputArray = outputStream.ToArray(); outputStream.Close(); That byte array can then be sent to the output stream and to the cache file. Once we’ve gone through this exercise, it’s only natural to wonder whether it was worth the trouble. I ran this method, as well as GDI and WPF resizing over thirty twelve megapixel images for JPEG qualities between 70% and 100% and measured the file size and time to resize. Here are the results: Size of resized images   Time to resize thirty 12 megapixel images Not much to see on the size graph: sizes from WPF and WIC are equivalent, which is hardly surprising as WPF calls into WIC. There is just an anomaly for 75% for WPF that I noted in my previous article and that disappears when using WIC directly. But overall, using WPF or WIC over GDI represents a slight win in file size. The time to resize is more interesting. WPF and WIC get similar times although WIC seems to always be a little faster. Not surprising considering WPF is using WIC. The margin of error on this results is probably fairly close to the time difference. As we already knew, the time to resize does not depend on the quality level, only the size does. This means that the only decision you have to make here is size versus visual quality. This third approach to server-side image resizing on ASP.NET seems to converge on the fastest possible one. We have marginally better performance than WPF, but with some additional peace of mind that this approach is sanctioned for server-side usage by the Windows Imaging team. It still doesn’t work in medium trust. That is a problem and shows the way for future server-friendly managed wrappers around WIC. The sample code for this article can be downloaded from: http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bleroy/Samples/WicResize.zip The benchmark code can be found here (you’ll need to add your own images to the Images directory and then add those to the project, with content and copy if newer in the properties of the files in the solution explorer): http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bleroy/Samples/WicWpfGdiImageResizeBenchmark.zip WIC tools can be downloaded from: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wictools To conclude, here are some of the resized thumbnails at 85% fant:

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• Generate Strongly Typed Observable Events for the Reactive Extensions for .NET (Rx)

  - by Bobby Diaz

  I must have tried reading through the various explanations and introductions to the new Reactive Extensions for .NET before the concepts finally started sinking in.  The article that gave me the ah-ha moment was over on SilverlightShow.net and titled Using Reactive Extensions in Silverlight.  The author did a good job comparing the "normal" way of handling events vs. the new "reactive" methods. Admittedly, I still have more to learn about the Rx Framework, but I wanted to put together a sample project so I could start playing with the new Observable and IObservable<T> constructs.  I decided to throw together a whiteboard application in Silverlight based on the Drawing with Rx example on the aforementioned article.  At the very least, I figured I would learn a thing or two about a new technology, but my real goal is to create a fun application that I can share with the kids since they love drawing and coloring so much! Here is the code sample that I borrowed from the article: var mouseMoveEvent = Observable.FromEvent<MouseEventArgs>(this, "MouseMove"); var mouseLeftButtonDown = Observable.FromEvent<MouseButtonEventArgs>(this, "MouseLeftButtonDown"); var mouseLeftButtonUp = Observable.FromEvent<MouseButtonEventArgs>(this, "MouseLeftButtonUp");       var draggingEvents = from pos in mouseMoveEvent                              .SkipUntil(mouseLeftButtonDown)                              .TakeUntil(mouseLeftButtonUp)                              .Let(mm => mm.Zip(mm.Skip(1), (prev, cur) =>                                  new                                  {                                      X2 = cur.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).X,                                      X1 = prev.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).X,                                      Y2 = cur.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).Y,                                      Y1 = prev.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).Y                                  })).Repeat()                          select pos;       draggingEvents.Subscribe(p =>     {         Line line = new Line();         line.Stroke = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Black);         line.StrokeEndLineCap = PenLineCap.Round;         line.StrokeLineJoin = PenLineJoin.Round;         line.StrokeThickness = 5;         line.X1 = p.X1;         line.Y1 = p.Y1;         line.X2 = p.X2;         line.Y2 = p.Y2;         this.LayoutRoot.Children.Add(line);     }); One thing that was nagging at the back of my mind was having to deal with the event names as strings, as well as the verbose syntax for the Observable.FromEvent<TEventArgs>() method.  I came up with a couple of static/helper classes to resolve both issues and also created a T4 template to auto-generate these helpers for any .NET type.  Take the following code from the above example: var mouseMoveEvent = Observable.FromEvent<MouseEventArgs>(this, "MouseMove"); var mouseLeftButtonDown = Observable.FromEvent<MouseButtonEventArgs>(this, "MouseLeftButtonDown"); var mouseLeftButtonUp = Observable.FromEvent<MouseButtonEventArgs>(this, "MouseLeftButtonUp"); Turns into this with the new static Events class: var mouseMoveEvent = Events.Mouse.Move.On(this); var mouseLeftButtonDown = Events.Mouse.LeftButtonDown.On(this); var mouseLeftButtonUp = Events.Mouse.LeftButtonUp.On(this); Or better yet, just remove the variable declarations altogether:     var draggingEvents = from pos in Events.Mouse.Move.On(this)                              .SkipUntil(Events.Mouse.LeftButtonDown.On(this))                              .TakeUntil(Events.Mouse.LeftButtonUp.On(this))                              .Let(mm => mm.Zip(mm.Skip(1), (prev, cur) =>                                  new                                  {                                      X2 = cur.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).X,                                      X1 = prev.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).X,                                      Y2 = cur.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).Y,                                      Y1 = prev.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).Y                                  })).Repeat()                          select pos; The Move, LeftButtonDown and LeftButtonUp members of the Events.Mouse class are readonly instances of the ObservableEvent<TTarget, TEventArgs> class that provide type-safe access to the events via the On() method.  Here is the code for the class: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq;   namespace System.Linq {     /// <summary>     /// Represents an event that can be managed via the <see cref="Observable"/> API.     /// </summary>     /// <typeparam name="TTarget">The type of the target.</typeparam>     /// <typeparam name="TEventArgs">The type of the event args.</typeparam>     public class ObservableEvent<TTarget, TEventArgs> where TEventArgs : EventArgs     {         /// <summary>         /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="ObservableEvent"/> class.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="eventName">Name of the event.</param>         protected ObservableEvent(String eventName)         {             EventName = eventName;         }           /// <summary>         /// Registers the specified event name.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="eventName">Name of the event.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         public static ObservableEvent<TTarget, TEventArgs> Register(String eventName)         {             return new ObservableEvent<TTarget, TEventArgs>(eventName);         }           /// <summary>         /// Creates an enumerable sequence of event values for the specified target.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="target">The target.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         public IObservable<IEvent<TEventArgs>> On(TTarget target)         {             return Observable.FromEvent<TEventArgs>(target, EventName);         }           /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the name of the event.         /// </summary>         /// <value>The name of the event.</value>         public string EventName { get; private set; }     } } And this is how it's used:     /// <summary>     /// Categorizes <see cref="ObservableEvents"/> by class and/or functionality.     /// </summary>     public static partial class Events     {         /// <summary>         /// Implements a set of predefined <see cref="ObservableEvent"/>s         /// for the <see cref="System.Windows.System.Windows.UIElement"/> class         /// that represent mouse related events.         /// </summary>         public static partial class Mouse         {             /// <summary>Represents the MouseMove event.</summary>             public static readonly ObservableEvent<UIElement, MouseEventArgs> Move =                 ObservableEvent<UIElement, MouseEventArgs>.Register("MouseMove");               // additional members omitted...         }     } The source code contains a static Events class with prefedined members for various categories (Key, Mouse, etc.).  There is also an Events.tt template that you can customize to generate additional event categories for any .NET type.  All you should have to do is add the name of your class to the types collection near the top of the template:     types = new Dictionary<String, Type>()     {         //{ "Microsoft.Maps.MapControl.Map, Microsoft.Maps.MapControl", null }         { "System.Windows.FrameworkElement, System.Windows", null },         { "Whiteboard.MainPage, Whiteboard", null }     }; The template is also a bit rough at this point, but at least it generates code that *should* compile.  Please let me know if you run into any issues with it.  Some people have reported errors when trying to use T4 templates within a Silverlight project, but I was able to get it to work with a little black magic...  You can download the source code for this project or play around with the live demo.  Just be warned that it is at a very early stage so don't expect to find much today.  I plan on adding alot more options like pen colors and sizes, saving, printing, etc. as time permits.  HINT: hold down the ESC key to erase! Enjoy! Additional Resources Using Reactive Extensions in Silverlight DevLabs: Reactive Extensions for .NET (Rx) Rx Framework Part III - LINQ to Events - Generating GetEventName() Wrapper Methods using T4

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 27, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 27, 2010New ProjectsAlter gear SQL index Management: SQL Index management displays a list of indexes available for the chosen database and allows you to select an individual / group of indexes to be r...ASP League Ladder System: An ASP ladder / league system for online gaming league or real life leagues also.Augmented Reality Strategy Simulator: Augmented Reality Strategy Simulator is a software suite to promote computer aided strategy planning. Sports team can visualize their strategy usin...Boo syntax highlighting for Visual Studio 2010: Simple syntax hightlighting VSX add-in for Boo language in Visual Studio 2010.easySan: easySan zur einfachen Mitgliedsverwaltung im BRKFsUnit: FsUnit makes unit-testing with F# more enjoyable. It adds a special syntax to your favorite .NET testing framework.Laughing Dog XNA Framework: Laughing Dog is a simple to use, component based 2D framework for XNA game development. At present it is very early in development and as such is f...miniTodo: WPFでMVVMの練習にてきとうに作ったTODOアプリ 実用は無理です。My Common Library on .NET with CSharp: My Common Library on .NET with CSharp, it conclude database assecc, encrypt string, data caching, StringUtility, thank you for your view.Native code wrapping using c# : fsutil sparse commands: Ever thought about creating HUGE FILES for future use but felt bad for the wasted memory? Well, SPARSE FILES are the ANSWER! This FSUTIL SPARSE CO...Open SOA Platform: A centralized system for administering applications throught a SOA Enterprise Service Bus: Runtime environment (PROD, DEV, ...) , application and s...P-DBMS: Network and Database ProjectPraiseSight: PraiseSight is supposed to become a practical tool for churches to catalog an present their songs, lyrics and presentations on a beamer. The soluti...Pretty Good Frontend: Pretty Good Frontend is a sample frontend for ConfigMgr (SCCM) 2007 and MDT 2010 Zero Touch. S3Appender (Appender for Log4Net that Uses Amazon S3 For Storing Log Files): The S3Appender is a log4net appender that stores log events in either a MemoryStream or FileStream and sends them to S3 based on time intervals and...sEmit: sEmit (sms emitter) is an application written in C# which was built to send text messages. The project was founded in May 2009 by cansik. It works ...Silverlight RIA Tools: A tool set that generates a full RIA Solutions in Silverlightthommo cannon: Cannon for shooting down ThommosTianjin Polytechnic University Online Judge: Online Judge System Built on Microsoft technologies. Vision & Scope: A distributed OJ Solution on Windows and Cloud. Technologies used or planed...Tinare: Tinare is an byte encryption and decryption alogrithm. The input key is a string password.TinyPlug: Small Plugin Manager, written in C# Allows a project to define supported interfaces, and at runtime add plugins which support (inherit) these in...Utility niconv helps to convert text from one encoding to another: .NET implementation of GUN iconv console converter utility. The niconv program converts text from one encoding to another encoding. In the future r...WareFeed - Software Business Analytics: WareFeed is a simple but effective Software Business Analytics tool written in PHP and compatible others languages such as .NET, Java or Python. It...Y36API1: Semestralni projekt na Y36APINew ReleasesAlter gear SQL index Management: Setup 1.0.0: setup for first alpha releaseASP League Ladder System: ASPLeagueRelease_0_4_1: Release v 0.41Augmented Reality Strategy Simulator: Augmented Reality Strategy Simulator: Version 1.0 InstallerAutoAudit: AutoAudit 1.10e: Version 1.10e will be the final iteration of version 1 development. Version 2 will begin adding switches and options. Pleae email your suggestio...Boo syntax highlighting for Visual Studio 2010: Boo syntax VS 2010 - alpha: First release TODO: Multiline comments!Chargify.NET: Chargify.NET 0.6: Updated library, using Metered Components and updated Product information.Composer: V1.0.326.1000 Alpha: Initial Alpha release. Should be stable, with minor issues.CoNatural Components: CoNatural Components 1.6: Code fixes: Created helper classes to generate source code for type mapper/materializer. Fixed issue in optimized type materializer when loading ...CRM External View: 1.2: New Features in v1.2 release Password protected views. No more using Web Data Access role from v1. Filtering capabilities Caching for performan...Designit Video Embed Package: Release 1.1.0 beta1: You can now either have the video embeded directly in the template or have a preview in template that opens the video in a lightbox window.FsUnit: FsUnit 0.9.0 for NUnit: This release is for F# 2.0 and NUnit 2.5+.Laughing Dog XNA Framework: Laughing Dog 0.0.1: Laughing Dog - Alpla - v 0.0.1 First released version of the Laughing Dog framework.LiveUpload to Facebook: LiveUpload to Facebook 3.2: Version 3.2Become a fan on Facebook! Features Quickly and easily upload your photos and videos to Facebook, including any people tags added in Win...MapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 msi March 26: This version adds the Join feature for creating a new "featureset" with attributes that are joined with attributes from a Excel data label named 'D...Mobile Broadband Logging Monitor: Mobile Broadband Logging Monitor 1.2.2: This edition supports: Newer and older editions of Birdstep Technology's EasyConnect HUAWEI Mobile Partner MWConn User defined location for s...Multiplayer Quiz: Release 1_6_351_0: A beta release of the next version. Please leave any errors in discussions or comments.Native code wrapping using c# : fsutil sparse commands: Fsutil sparse file native code - c sharp wrapper: Project Description A C# code wrapping a native code-Sparse files1 The code is about SPARSE files- the abillity to create huge files (for future us...Nice Libraries: 1.30 build 50325.01: Release 1.30 build 50325.01Pretty Good Frontend: Pretty Good Frontend binaries v1.0: This is the first public release of the Pretty Good Frontend binariesPylor: Pylor 0.1 alpha: This is the very first published version. I hope I can put a sample project soon.Quick Performance Monitor: Version 1.1 refresh: There was a typo or two in the sample batch file. Corrected now.Rapidshare Episode Downloader: RED v0.8.3: 0.8.1 introduced the ability to advance to the next episode. In 0.8.2 a bug was found that if episode number is less then 10, then the preceding 0...RapidWebDev - .NET Enterprise Software Development Infrastructure: RapidWebDev 1.52: RapidWebDev is an infrastructure helps to develop enterprise software solutions in Microsoft .NET easily and productively. This is the release vers...thommo cannon: game: gamethommo cannon: setup: setupthommo cannon: test: testTinare: Tinare DLL: Tinare DLL is a dynamic-link library written in C# which provides the functions to encrypt and decrypt a byte stream with tinare.WeatherBar: WeatherBar 2.1 [No Installation]: Minor changes to release 2.0 (http://weatherbar.codeplex.com/releases/view/42490). Fixed the bug that caused an exception to be thrown if the user...Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerASP.NET Ajax LibrarySilverlight ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitLiveUpload to FacebookWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMost Active ProjectsRawrjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETMicrosoft Biology FoundationFarseer Physics Enginepatterns & practices: Composite WPF and SilverlightLINQ to TwitterTable2ClassFluent Ribbon Control SuiteNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module

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• New Features in ASP.NET Web API 2 - Part I

  - by dwahlin

  I’m a big fan of ASP.NET Web API. It provides a quick yet powerful way to build RESTful HTTP services that can easily be consumed by a variety of clients. While it’s simple to get started using, it has a wealth of features such as filters, formatters, and message handlers that can be used to extend it when needed. In this post I’m going to provide a quick walk-through of some of the key new features in version 2. I’ll focus on some two of my favorite features that are related to routing and HTTP responses and cover additional features in a future post.   Attribute Routing Routing has been a core feature of Web API since it’s initial release and something that’s built into new Web API projects out-of-the-box. However, there are a few scenarios where defining routes can be challenging such as nested routes (more on that in a moment) and any situation where a lot of custom routes have to be defined. For this example, let’s assume that you’d like to define the following nested route:   /customers/1/orders   This type of route would select a customer with an Id of 1 and then return all of their orders. Defining this type of route in the standard WebApiConfig class is certainly possible, but it isn’t the easiest thing to do for people who don’t understand routing well. Here’s an example of how the route shown above could be defined:   public static class WebApiConfig { public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config) { config.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "CustomerOrdersApiGet", routeTemplate: "api/customers/{custID}/orders", defaults: new { custID = 0, controller = "Customers", action = "Orders" } ); config.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "DefaultApi", routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}", defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional } ); GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters.Insert(0, new JsonpFormatter()); } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }   With attribute based routing, defining these types of nested routes is greatly simplified. To get started you first need to make a call to the new MapHttpAttributeRoutes() method in the standard WebApiConfig class (or a custom class that you may have created that defines your routes) as shown next:   public static class WebApiConfig { public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config) { // Allow for attribute based routes config.MapHttpAttributeRoutes(); config.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "DefaultApi", routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}", defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional } ); } } Once attribute based routes are configured, you can apply the Route attribute to one or more controller actions. Here’s an example:   [HttpGet] [Route("customers/{custId:int}/orders")] public List<Order> Orders(int custId) { var orders = _Repository.GetOrders(custId); if (orders == null) { throw new HttpResponseException(new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.NotFound)); } return orders; }   This example maps the custId route parameter to the custId parameter in the Orders() method and also ensures that the route parameter is typed as an integer. The Orders() method can be called using the following route: /customers/2/orders   While this is extremely easy to use and gets the job done, it doesn’t include the default “api” string on the front of the route that you might be used to seeing. You could add “api” in front of the route and make it “api/customers/{custId:int}/orders” but then you’d have to repeat that across other attribute-based routes as well. To simply this type of task you can add the RoutePrefix attribute above the controller class as shown next so that “api” (or whatever the custom starting point of your route is) is applied to all attribute routes: [RoutePrefix("api")] public class CustomersController : ApiController { [HttpGet] [Route("customers/{custId:int}/orders")] public List<Order> Orders(int custId) { var orders = _Repository.GetOrders(custId); if (orders == null) { throw new HttpResponseException(new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.NotFound)); } return orders; } }   There’s much more that you can do with attribute-based routing in ASP.NET. Check out the following post by Mike Wasson for more details.   Returning Responses with IHttpActionResult The first version of Web API provided a way to return custom HttpResponseMessage objects which were pretty easy to use overall. However, Web API 2 now wraps some of the functionality available in version 1 to simplify the process even more. A new interface named IHttpActionResult (similar to ActionResult in ASP.NET MVC) has been introduced which can be used as the return type for Web API controller actions. To return a custom response you can use new helper methods exposed through ApiController such as: Ok NotFound Exception Unauthorized BadRequest Conflict Redirect InvalidModelState Here’s an example of how IHttpActionResult and the helper methods can be used to cleanup code. This is the typical way to return a custom HTTP response in version 1:   public HttpResponseMessage Delete(int id) { var status = _Repository.DeleteCustomer(id); if (status) { return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.OK); } else { throw new HttpResponseException(HttpStatusCode.NotFound); } } With version 2 we can replace HttpResponseMessage with IHttpActionResult and simplify the code quite a bit:   public IHttpActionResult Delete(int id) { var status = _Repository.DeleteCustomer(id); if (status) { //return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.OK); return Ok(); } else { //throw new HttpResponseException(HttpStatusCode.NotFound); return NotFound(); } } You can also cleanup post (insert) operations as well using the helper methods. Here’s a version 1 post action:   public HttpResponseMessage Post([FromBody]Customer cust) { var newCust = _Repository.InsertCustomer(cust); if (newCust != null) { var msg = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.Created); msg.Headers.Location = new Uri(Request.RequestUri + newCust.ID.ToString()); return msg; } else { throw new HttpResponseException(HttpStatusCode.Conflict); } } This is what the code looks like in version 2:   public IHttpActionResult Post([FromBody]Customer cust) { var newCust = _Repository.InsertCustomer(cust); if (newCust != null) { return Created<Customer>(Request.RequestUri + newCust.ID.ToString(), newCust); } else { return Conflict(); } } More details on IHttpActionResult and the different helper methods provided by the ApiController base class can be found here. Conclusion Although there are several additional features available in Web API 2 that I could cover (CORS support for example), this post focused on two of my favorites features. If you have .NET 4.5.1 available then I definitely recommend checking the new features out. Additional articles that cover features in ASP.NET Web API 2 can be found here.

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• API Message Localization

  - by Jesse Taber

  In my post, “Keep Localizable Strings Close To Your Users” I talked about the internationalization and localization difficulties that can arise when you sprinkle static localizable strings throughout the different logical layers of an application. The main point of that post is that you should have your localizable strings reside as close to the user-facing modules of your application as possible. For example, if you’re developing an ASP .NET web forms application all of the localizable strings should be kept in .resx files that are associated with the .aspx views of the application. In this post I want to talk about how this same concept can be applied when designing and developing APIs. An API Facilitates Machine-to-Machine Interaction You can typically think about a web, desktop, or mobile application as a collection “views” or “screens” through which users interact with the underlying logic and data. The application can be designed based on the assumption that there will be a human being on the other end of the screen working the controls. You are designing a machine-to-person interaction and the application should be built in a way that facilitates the user’s clear understanding of what is going on. Dates should be be formatted in a way that the user will be familiar with, messages should be presented in the user’s preferred language, etc. When building an API, however, there are no screens and you can’t make assumptions about who or what is on the other end of each call. An API is, by definition, a machine-to-machine interaction. A machine-to-machine interaction should be built in a way that facilitates a clear and unambiguous understanding of what is going on. Dates and numbers should be formatted in predictable and standard ways (e.g. ISO 8601 dates) and messages should be presented in machine-parseable formats. For example, consider an API for a time tracking system that exposes a resource for creating a new time entry. The JSON for creating a new time entry for a user might look like: 1: { 2: "userId": 4532, 3: "startDateUtc": "2012-10-22T14:01:54.98432Z", 4: "endDateUtc": "2012-10-22T11:34:45.29321Z" 5: }   Note how the parameters for start and end date are both expressed as ISO 8601 compliant dates in UTC. Using a date format like this in our API leaves little room for ambiguity. It’s also important to note that using ISO 8601 dates is a much, much saner thing than the \/Date(<milliseconds since epoch>)\/ nonsense that is sometimes used in JSON serialization. Probably the most important thing to note about the JSON snippet above is the fact that the end date comes before the start date! The API should recognize that and disallow the time entry from being created, returning an error to the caller. You might inclined to send a response that looks something like this: 1: { 2: "errors": [ {"message" : "The end date must come after the start date"}] 3: }   While this may seem like an appropriate thing to do there are a few problems with this approach: What if there is a user somewhere on the other end of the API call that doesn’t speak English?  What if the message provided here won’t fit properly within the UI of the application that made the API call? What if the verbiage of the message isn’t consistent with the rest of the application that made the API call? What if there is no user directly on the other end of the API call (e.g. this is a batch job uploading time entries once per night unattended)? The API knows nothing about the context from which the call was made. There are steps you could take to given the API some context (e.g.allow the caller to send along a language code indicating the language that the end user speaks), but that will only get you so far. As the designer of the API you could make some assumptions about how the API will be called, but if we start making assumptions we could very easily make the wrong assumptions. In this situation it’s best to make no assumptions and simply design the API in such a way that the caller has the responsibility to convey error messages in a manner that is appropriate for the context in which the error was raised. You would work around some of these problems by allowing callers to add metadata to each request describing the context from which the call is being made (e.g. accepting a ‘locale’ parameter denoting the desired language), but that will add needless clutter and complexity. It’s better to keep the API simple and push those context-specific concerns down to the caller whenever possible. For our very simple time entry example, this can be done by simply changing our error message response to look like this: 1: { 2: "errors": [ {"code": 100}] 3: }   By changing our error error from exposing a string to a numeric code that is easily parseable by another application, we’ve placed all of the responsibility for conveying the actual meaning of the error message on the caller. It’s best to have the caller be responsible for conveying this meaning because the caller understands the context much better than the API does. Now the caller can see error code 100, know that it means that the end date submitted falls before the start date and take appropriate action. Now all of the problems listed out above are non-issues because the caller can simply translate the error code of ‘100’ into the proper action and message for the current context. The numeric code representation of the error is a much better way to facilitate the machine-to-machine interaction that the API is meant to facilitate. An API Does Have Human Users While APIs should be built for machine-to-machine interaction, people still need to wire these interactions together. As a programmer building a client application that will consume the time entry API I would find it frustrating to have to go dig through the API documentation every time I encounter a new error code (assuming the documentation exists and is accurate). The numeric error code approach hurts the discoverability of the API and makes it painful to integrate with. We can help ease this pain by merging our two approaches: 1: { 2: "errors": [ {"code": 100, "message" : "The end date must come after the start date"}] 3: }   Now we have an easily parseable numeric error code for the machine-to-machine interaction that the API is meant to facilitate and a human-readable message for programmers working with the API. The human-readable message here is not intended to be viewed by end-users of the API and as such is not really a “localizable string” in my opinion. We could opt to expose a locale parameter for all API methods and store translations for all error messages, but that’s a lot of extra effort and overhead that doesn’t add a lot real value to the API. I might be a bit of an “ugly American”, but I think it’s probably fine to have the API return English messages when the target for those messages is a programmer. When resources are limited (which they always are), I’d argue that you’re better off hard-coding these messages in English and putting more effort into building more useful features, improving security, tweaking performance, etc.

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• Software Engineering Practices &ndash; Different Projects should have different maturity levels

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve had a lot of discussions at the office lately about the drastically different sets of software engineering practices used on our various projects, if what we are doing is appropriate, and what factors should you be considering when determining what practices are most appropriate in a given context. I wanted to write up my thoughts in a little more detail on this subject, so here we go: If you compare any two software projects (specifically comparing their codebases) you’ll often see very different levels of maturity in the software engineering practices employed. By software engineering practices, I’m specifically referring to the quality of the code and the amount of technical debt present in the project. Things such as Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Behavior Driven Development, proper adherence to the SOLID principles, etc. are all practices that you would expect at the mature end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum would be the quick-and-dirty solutions that are done using something like an Access Database, Excel Spreadsheet, or maybe some quick “drag-and-drop coding”. For this blog post I’m going to refer to this as the Software Engineering Maturity Spectrum (SEMS). I believe there is a time and a place for projects at every part of that SEMS. The risks and costs associated with under-engineering solutions have been written about a million times over so I won’t bother going into them again here, but there are also (unnecessary) costs with over-engineering a solution. Sometimes putting multiple layers, and IoC containers, and abstracting out the persistence, etc is complete overkill if a one-time use Access database could solve the problem perfectly well. A lot of software developers I talk to seem to automatically jump to the very right-hand side of this SEMS in everything they do. A common rationalization I hear is that it may seem like a small trivial application today, but these things always grow and stick around for many years, then you’re stuck maintaining a big ball of mud. I think this is a cop-out. Sure you can’t always anticipate how an application will be used or grow over its lifetime (can you ever??), but that doesn’t mean you can’t manage it and evolve the underlying software architecture as necessary (even if that means having to toss the code out and re-write it at some point…maybe even multiple times). My thoughts are that we should be making a conscious decision around the start of each project approximately where on the SEMS we want the project to exist. I believe this decision should be based on 3 factors: 1. Importance - How important to the business is this application? What is the impact if the application were to suddenly stop working? 2. Complexity - How complex is the application functionality? 3. Life-Expectancy - How long is this application expected to be in use? Is this a one-time use application, does it fill a short-term need, or is it more strategic and is expected to be in-use for many years to come? Of course this isn’t an exact science. You can’t say that Project X should be at the 73% mark on the SEMS and expect that to be helpful. My point is not that you need to precisely figure out what point on the SEMS the project should be at then translate that into some prescriptive set of practices and techniques you should be using. Rather my point is that we need to be aware that there is a spectrum, and that not everything is going to be (or should be) at the edges of that spectrum, indeed a large number of projects should probably fall somewhere within the middle; and different projects should adopt a different level of software engineering practices and maturity levels based on the needs of that project. To give an example of this way of thinking from my day job: Every couple of years my company plans and hosts a large event where ~400 of our customers all fly in to one location for a multi-day event with various activities. We have some staff whose job it is to organize the logistics of this event, which includes tracking which flights everybody is booked on, arranging for transportation to/from airports, arranging for hotel rooms, name tags, etc The last time we arranged this event all these various pieces of data were tracked in separate spreadsheets and reconciliation and cross-referencing of all the data was literally done by hand using printed copies of the spreadsheets and several people sitting around a table going down each list row by row. Obviously there is some room for improvement in how we are using software to manage the event’s logistics. The next time this event occurs we plan to provide the event planning staff with a more intelligent tool (either an Excel spreadsheet or probably an Access database) that can track all the information in one location and make sure that the various pieces of data are properly linked together (so for example if a person cancels you only need to delete them from one place, and not a dozen separate lists). This solution would fall at or near the very left end of the SEMS meaning that we will just quickly create something with very little attention paid to using mature software engineering practices. If we examine this project against the 3 criteria I listed above for determining it’s place within the SEMS we can see why: Importance – If this application were to stop working the business doesn’t grind to a halt, revenue doesn’t stop, and in fact our customers wouldn’t even notice since it isn’t a customer facing application. The impact would simply be more work for our event planning staff as they revert back to the previous way of doing things (assuming we don’t have any data loss). Complexity – The use cases for this project are pretty straightforward. It simply needs to manage several lists of data, and link them together appropriately. Precisely the task that access (and/or Excel) can do with minimal custom development required. Life-Expectancy – For this specific project we’re only planning to create something to be used for the one event (we only hold these events every 2 years). If it works well this may change (see below). Let’s assume we hack something out quickly and it works great when we plan the next event. We may decide that we want to make some tweaks to the tool and adopt it for planning all future events of this nature. In that case we should examine where the current application is on the SEMS, and make a conscious decision whether something needs to be done to move it further to the right based on the new objectives and goals for this application. This may mean scrapping the access database and re-writing it as an actual web or windows application. In this case, the life-expectancy changed, but let’s assume the importance and complexity didn’t change all that much. We can still probably get away with not adopting a lot of the so-called “best practices”. For example, we can probably still use some of the RAD tooling available and might have an Autonomous View style design that connects directly to the database and binds to typed datasets (we might even choose to simply leave it as an access database and continue using it; this is a decision that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis). At Anvil Digital we have aspirations to become a primarily product-based company. So let’s say we use this tool to plan a handful of events internally, and everybody loves it. Maybe a couple years down the road we decide we want to package the tool up and sell it as a product to some of our customers. In this case the project objectives/goals change quite drastically. Now the tool becomes a source of revenue, and the impact of it suddenly stopping working is significantly less acceptable. Also as we hold focus groups, and gather feedback from customers and potential customers there’s a pretty good chance the feature-set and complexity will have to grow considerably from when we were using it only internally for planning a small handful of events for one company. In this fictional scenario I would expect the target on the SEMS to jump to the far right. Depending on how we implemented the previous release we may be able to refactor and evolve the existing codebase to introduce a more layered architecture, a robust set of automated tests, introduce a proper ORM and IoC container, etc. More likely in this example the jump along the SEMS would be so large we’d probably end up scrapping the current code and re-writing. Although, if it was a slow phased roll-out to only a handful of customers, where we collected feedback, made some tweaks, and then rolled out to a couple more customers, we may be able to slowly refactor and evolve the code over time rather than tossing it out and starting from scratch. The key point I’m trying to get across is not that you should be throwing out your code and starting from scratch all the time. But rather that you should be aware of when and how the context and objectives around a project changes and periodically re-assess where the project currently falls on the SEMS and whether that needs to be adjusted based on changing needs. Note: There is also the idea of “spectrum decay”. Since our industry is rapidly evolving, what we currently accept as mature software engineering practices (the right end of the SEMS) probably won’t be the same 3 years from now. If you have a project that you were to assess at somewhere around the 80% mark on the SEMS today, but don’t touch the code for 3 years and come back and re-assess its position, it will almost certainly have changed since the right end of the SEMS will have moved farther out (maybe the project is now only around 60% due to decay). Developer Skills Another important aspect to this whole discussion is around the skill sets of your architects and lead developers. When talking about the progression of a developers skills from junior->intermediate->senior->… they generally start by only being able to write code that belongs on the left side of the SEMS and as they gain more knowledge and skill they become capable of working at a higher and higher level along the SEMS. We all realize that the learning never stops, but eventually you’ll get to the point where you can comfortably develop at the right-end of the SEMS (the exact practices and techniques that translates to is constantly changing, but that’s not the point here). A critical skill that I’d love to see more evidence of in our industry is the most senior guys not only being able to work at the right-end of the SEMS, but more importantly be able to consciously work at any point along the SEMS as project needs dictate. An even more valuable skill would be if you could make the conscious decision to move a projects code further right on the SEMS (based on changing needs) and do so in an incremental manner without having to start from scratch. An exercise that I’m planning to go through with all of our projects here at Anvil in the near future is to map out where I believe each project currently falls within this SEMS, where I believe the project *should* be on the SEMS based on the business needs, and for those that don’t match up (i.e. most of them) come up with a plan to improve the situation.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 06, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 06, 2010New ProjectsActive Worlds Dot Net Wrapper (Based on AwSdk): Active Worlds Dot Net Wrapper (Based on AwSdk)Combina: Smart calculator for large combinatorial calculations.Concurrent Cache: ConcurrentCache is a smart output cache library extending OutputCacheProvider. It consists of in memory, cache files and compressed files modes and...Decay: Personal use. For learningFazTalk: FazTalk is a suite of tools and products that are designed to improve collaboration and workflow interactions. FazTalk takes an innovative approach...grouped: A peer to peer text editor, written in C# [update] I wrote this little thing a while back and even forgot about it, I stopped coding for more tha...HitchARide MVC 2 Sample: An MVC 2 sample written as part of the Microsoft 2010 London Web Camp based on the wireframes at http://schematics.earthware.co.uk/hitcharide. Not...Inspiration.Web: Description: A simple (but entertaining) ASP.NET MVC (C#) project to suggest random code names for projects. Intended audience: People who ne...NetFileBrowser - TinyMCE: tinyMCE file plugin with asp.netOil Slick Live Feeds: All live feeds from BP's Remotely Operated VehiclesParticle Lexer: Parser and Tokenizer libraryPdf Form Tool: Pdf Form Tool demonstrates how the iTextSharp library could be used to fill PDF forms. The input data is provided as a csv file. The application ...Planning Poker Windows Mobile 7: This project is a Planning Poker application for Windows Mobile 7 (and later?). RandomRat: RandomRat is a program for generating random sets that meet specific criteriaScience.NET: A scientific library written in managed code. It supports advanced mathematics (algebra system, sequences, statistics, combinatorics...), data stru...Spider Compiler: Spider Compiler parses the input of a spider programming source file and compiles it (with help of csc.exe; the C#-Compiler) to an exe-file. This p...Sununpro: sunun's project for study by team foundation server.TFS Buddy: An application that manipulates your I-Buddy whenever something happens in your Team Foundation ServerValveSoft: ValveSysWiiMote Physics: WiiMote Physics is an application that allows you to retrieve data from your WiiMote or Balance Board and display it in real-time. It has a number...WinGet: WinGet is a download manager for Windows. You can drag links onto the WinGet Widget and it will download a file on the selected folder. It is dev...XProject.NET: A project management and team collaboration platformNew Releases.NET DiscUtils: Version 0.9 Preview: This release is still under development. New features available in this release: Support for accessing short file names stored in WIM files Incr...Active Worlds Dot Net Wrapper (Based on AwSdk): Active World Dot Net Wrapper (0.0.1.85): Based on AwSdk 85AwSdk UnOfficial Wrapper Howto Use: C# using AwWrapper; VB.Net Import AwWrapperAjaxControlToolkit additional extenders: ZhecheAjaxControls for .NET3.5: Used AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - April 12th 2010 Release Version 40412. Fixed deadlock in long operation canceling Some other fixesAnyCAD: AnyCAD.v1.2.ENU.Install: http://www.anycad.net Parametric Modeling *3D: Sphere, Box, Cylinder, Cone •2D: Line, Rectangle, Arc, Arch, Circle, Spline, Polygon •Feature: Extr...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V29: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...Concurrent Cache: 1.0: This is the first release for the ConcurrentCache library.Configuration Section Designer: 2.0.0: This is the first Beta Release for VS 2010 supportDoxygen Browser Addin for VS: Doxygen Browser Addin - v0.1.4 Beta: Support for Visual Studio 2010 improved the logging of errors (Event Logs) Fixed some issues/bugs Hot key for navigation "Control + F1, Contr...Folder Bookmarks: Folder Bookmarks 1.6.2: The latest version of Folder Bookmarks (1.6.2), with new UI changes. Once you have extracted the file, do not delete any files/folders. They are n...HERB.IQ: Beta 0.1 Source code release 5: Beta 0.1 Source code release 5Inspiration.Web: Initial release (deployment package): Initial release (deployment package)NetFileBrowser - TinyMCE: Demo Project: Demo ProjectNetFileBrowser - TinyMCE: NetFileBrowser: NetImageBrowserNLog - Advanced .NET Logging: Nightly Build 2010.06.05.001: Changes since the last build:2010-06-04 23:29:42 Jarek Kowalski Massive update to documentation generator. 2010-05-28 15:41:42 Jarek Kowalski upda...Oil Slick Live Feeds: Oil Slick Live Feeds 0.1: A the first release, with feeds from the MS Skandi, Boa Deep C, Enterprise and Q4000. They are live streams from the ROV's monitoring the damaged...Pcap.Net: Pcap.Net 0.7.0 (46671): Pcap.Net - June 2010 Release Pcap.Net is a .NET wrapper for WinPcap written in C++/CLI and C#. It Features almost all WinPcap features and includes...sqwarea: Sqwarea 0.0.289.0 (alpha): API supportTFS Buddy: TFS Buddy First release (Beta 1): This is the first release of the TFS Buddy.Visual Studio DSite: Looping Animation (Visual C++ 2008): A solider firing a bullet that loops and displays an explosion everytime it hits the edge of the form.WiiMote Physics: WiiMote Physics v4.0: v4.0.0.1 Recovered from existing compiled assembly after hard drive failure Now requires .NET 4.0 (it seems to make it run faster) Added new c...WinGet: Alpha 1: First Alpha of WinGet. It includes all the planned features but it contains many bugs. Packaged using 7-Zip and ClickOnce.Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)PHPExcelpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NETMost Active ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeRawrpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationN2 CMSIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterStyleCopsmark C# LibraryFarseer Physics Enginepatterns & practices: Composite WPF and Silverlight

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• DHCPv6: Provide IPv6 information in your local network

  Even though IPv6 might not be that important within your local network it might be good to get yourself into shape, and be able to provide some details of your infrastructure automatically to your network clients. This is the second article in a series on IPv6 configuration: Configure IPv6 on your Linux system DHCPv6: Provide IPv6 information in your local network Enabling DNS for IPv6 infrastructure Accessing your web server via IPv6 Piece of advice: This is based on my findings on the internet while reading other people's helpful articles and going through a couple of man-pages on my local system. IPv6 addresses for everyone (in your network) Okay, after setting up the configuration of your local system, it might be interesting to enable all your machines in your network to use IPv6. There are two options to solve this kind of requirement... Either you're busy like a bee and you go around to configure each and every system manually, or you're more the lazy and effective type of network administrator and you prefer to work with Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). Obviously, I'm of the second type. Enabling dynamic IPv6 address assignments can be done with a new or an existing instance of a DHCPd. In case of Ubuntu-based installation this might be isc-dhcp-server. The isc-dhcp-server allows address pooling for IP and IPv6 within the same package, you just have to run to independent daemons for each protocol version. First, check whether isc-dhcp-server is already installed and maybe running your machine like so: $ service isc-dhcp-server6 status In case, that the service is unknown, you have to install it like so: $ sudo apt-get install isc-dhcp-server Please bear in mind that there is no designated installation package for IPv6. Okay, next you have to create a separate configuration file for IPv6 address pooling and network parameters called /etc/dhcp/dhcpd6.conf. This file is not automatically provided by the package, compared to IPv4. Again, use your favourite editor and put the following lines: $ sudo nano /etc/dhcp/dhcpd6.conf authoritative;default-lease-time 14400; max-lease-time 86400;log-facility local7;subnet6 2001:db8:bad:a55::/64 {    option dhcp6.name-servers 2001:4860:4860::8888, 2001:4860:4860::8844;    option dhcp6.domain-search "ios.mu";    range6 2001:db8:bad:a55::100 2001:db8:bad:a55::199;    range6 2001:db8:bad:a55::/64 temporary;} Next, save the file and start the daemon as a foreground process to see whether it is going to listen to requests or not, like so: $ sudo /usr/sbin/dhcpd -6 -d -cf /etc/dhcp/dhcpd6.conf eth0 The parameters are explained quickly as -6 we want to run as a DHCPv6 server, -d we are sending log messages to the standard error descriptor (so you should monitor your /var/log/syslog file, too), and we explicitely want to use our newly created configuration file (-cf). You might also use the command switch -t to test the configuration file prior to running the server. In my case, I ended up with a couple of complaints by the server, especially reporting that the necessary lease file wouldn't exist. So, ensure that the lease file for your IPv6 address assignments is present: $ sudo touch /var/lib/dhcp/dhcpd6.leases$ sudo chown dhcpd:dhcpd /var/lib/dhcp/dhcpd6.leases Now, you should be good to go. Stop your foreground process and try to run the DHCPv6 server as a service on your system: $ sudo service isc-dhcp-server6 startisc-dhcp-server6 start/running, process 15883 Check your log file /var/log/syslog for any kind of problems. Refer to the man-pages of isc-dhcp-server and you might check out Chapter 22.6 of Peter Bieringer's IPv6 Howto. The instructions regarding DHCPv6 on the Ubuntu Wiki are not as complete as expected and it might not be as helpful as this article or Peter's HOWTO. But see for yourself. Does the client get an IPv6 address? Running a DHCPv6 server on your local network surely comes in handy but it has to work properly. The following paragraphs describe briefly how to check the IPv6 configuration of your clients, Linux - ifconfig or ip command First, you have enable IPv6 on your Linux by specifying the necessary directives in the /etc/network/interfaces file, like so: $ sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces iface eth1 inet6 dhcp Note: Your network device might be eth0 - please don't just copy my configuration lines. Then, either restart your network subsystem, or enable the device manually using the dhclient command with IPv6 switch, like so: $ sudo dhclient -6 You would either use the ifconfig or (if installed) the ip command to check the configuration of your network device like so: $ sudo ifconfig eth1eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1d:09:5d:8d:98            inet addr:192.168.160.147  Bcast:192.168.160.255  Mask:255.255.255.0          inet6 addr: 2001:db8:bad:a55::193/64 Scope:Global          inet6 addr: fe80::21d:9ff:fe5d:8d98/64 Scope:Link          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1 Looks good, the client has an IPv6 assignment. Now, let's see whether DNS information has been provided, too. $ less /etc/resolv.conf # Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8)#     DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTENnameserver 2001:4860:4860::8888nameserver 2001:4860:4860::8844nameserver 192.168.1.2nameserver 127.0.1.1search ios.mu Nicely done. Windows - netsh Per description on TechNet the netsh is defined as following: "Netsh is a command-line scripting utility that allows you to, either locally or remotely, display or modify the network configuration of a computer that is currently running. Netsh also provides a scripting feature that allows you to run a group of commands in batch mode against a specified computer. Netsh can also save a configuration script in a text file for archival purposes or to help you configure other servers." And even though TechNet states that it applies to Windows Server (only), it is also available on Windows client operating systems, like Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. In order to get or even set information related to IPv6 protocol, we have to switch the netsh interface context prior to our queries. Open a command prompt in Windows and run the following statements: C:\Users\joki>netshnetsh>interface ipv6netsh interface ipv6>show interfaces Select the device index from the Idx column to get more details about the IPv6 address and DNS server information (here: I'm going to use my WiFi device with device index 11), like so: netsh interface ipv6>show address 11 Okay, address information has been provided. Now, let's check the details about DNS and resolving host names: netsh interface ipv6> show dnsservers 11 Okay, that looks good already. Our Windows client has a valid IPv6 address lease with lifetime information and details about the configured DNS servers. Talking about DNS server... Your clients should be able to connect to your network servers via IPv6 using hostnames instead of IPv6 addresses. Please read on about how to enable a local named with IPv6.

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• The APEX of Business Value...or...the Business Value of APEX? Oracle Cloud Takes Oracle APEX to New Heights!

  - by Gene Eun

  The attraction of Oracle Application Express (APEX) has increased tremendously with the recent launch of the Oracle Cloud. APEX already supported departmental development and deployment of business applications with minimal involvement from the IT department. Positioned as the ideal replacement for MS Access, APEX probably has managed better to capture the eye of developers and was used for enterprise application development at least as much as for the kind of tactical applications that Oracle strategically positioned it for. With APEX as PaaS from the Oracle Cloud, a leap is made to a much higher level of business value. Now the IT department is not even needed to make infrastructure available with a database running  on it. All the business needs is a credit card. And the business application that is developed, managed and used from the cloud through a standard browser can now just as easily be accessed by users from around the world as by users from the business department itself. As a bonus – the development of the APEX application is also done in the cloud – with no special demands on the location or the enterprise access privileges of the developers. To sum it up: APEX from Oracle Cloud Database Service get the development environment up and running in minutes no involvement from the internal IT department required (not for infrastructure, platform, or development) superior availability and scalability is offered by Oracle users from anywhere in the world can be invited to access the application developers from anywhere in the world can participate in creating and maintaining the application In addition: because the Oracle Cloud platform is the same as the on-premise platform, you can still decide to move the APEX application between the cloud and the local environment – and back again. The REST-ful services that are available through APEX allow programmatic interaction with the database under the APEX application. That means that this database can be synchronized with on premise databases or data stores in (other) clouds. Through the Oracle Cloud Messaging Service, the APEX application can easily enter into asynchronous conversations with other APEX applications, Fusion Middleware applications (ADF, SOA, BPM) and any other type of REST-enabled application. In my opinion, now, for the first time perhaps, APEX offers the attraction to the business that has been suggested before: because of the cloud, all the business needs is  a credit card (a budget of $175 per month), an internet-connection and a browser. Not like before, with a PC hidden under a desk or a database running somewhere in the data center. No matter how unattended: equipment is needed, power is consumed, the database needs to be kept running and if Oracle Database XE does not suffice, software licenses are required as well. And this set up always has a security challenge associated with it. The cloud fee for the Oracle Cloud Database Service includes infrastructure, power, licenses, availability, platform upgrades, a collection of reusable application components and the development and runtime environments containing the APEX platform. Of course this not only means that business departments can move quickly without having to convince their IT colleagues to move along – it also means that small organizations that do not even have IT colleagues can do the same. Getting tailored applications or applications up and running to get in touch with users and customers all over the world is now within easy reach for small outfits – without any investment. My misunderstanding For a long time, I was under the impression that the essence of APEX was that the business could create applications themselves – meaning that business ‘people’ would actually go into APEX to create the application. To me APEX was too much of a developers’ tool to see that happen – apart from the odd business analyst who missed his or her calling as an IT developer. Having looked at various other cloud based development offerings – including Force.com, Mendix, WaveMaker, WorkXpress, OrangeScape, Caspio and Cordys- I have come to realize my mistake. All these platforms are positioned for 'the business' but require a fair amount of coding and technical expertise. However, they make the business happy nevertheless, because they allow the  business to completely circumvent the IT department. That is the essence. Not having to go through the red tape, not having to wait for IT staff who (justifiably) need weeks or months to provide an environment, not having to deal with administrators (again, justifiably) refusing to take on that 'strange environment'. Being able to think of an initiative and turn into action right away. The business does not have to build the application - it can easily hire some external developers or even that nerdy boy next door. They can get started, get an application up and running and invite users in – especially external users such as customers. They will worry later about upgrades and life cycle management and integration. To get applications up and running quickly and start turning ideas into action and results rightaway. That is the key selling point for all these cloud offerings, including APEX from the Cloud. And it is a compelling story. For APEX probably even more so than for the others. While I consider APEX a somewhat proprietary framework compared with ‘regular’ Java/JEE web development (or even .NET and PHP  development), it is still far more open than most cloud environments. APEX is SQL and PL/SQL based – nothing special about those languages – and can run just as easily on site as in the cloud. It has been around since 2004 (that is not including several predecessors that fed straight into APEX) so it can be considered pretty mature. Oracle as a company seems pretty stable – so investments in its technology are bound to last for some time to come. By the way: neither APEX nor the other Cloud DevaaS offerings are targeted at creating applications with enormous life times. They fit into a trend of agile development and rapid life cycle management, with fairly light weight user interfaces that quickly adapt to taste, technology trends and functional requirements and that are easily replaced. APEX and ADF – a match made in heaven?! (or at least in the sky) Note that using APEX only for cloud based database with REST-ful Services is also a perfectly viable scenario: any UI – mobile or browser based – capable of consuming REST-ful services can be created against such a business tier. Creating an ADF Mobile application for example that runs aginst REST-ful services is a best practice for mobile development. Such REST-ful services can be consumed from any service provider – including the Cloud based APEX powered REST-ful services running against the Oracle Cloud Database Service! The ADF Mobile architecture overview can easily be morphed to fit the APEX services in – allowing for a cloud based mobile app: Want to learn more about Oracle Database Cloud Service or Oracle Cloud, just visit cloud.oracle.com  or oracle.com/cloud. Repost of a blog entry by Rick Greenwald, Director of Product Management, Oracle Database Cloud Service.

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• VS 2010 Debugger Improvements (BreakPoints, DataTips, Import/Export)

  - by ScottGu

  This is the twenty-first in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the VS 2010 and .NET 4 release.  Today’s blog post covers a few of the nice usability improvements coming with the VS 2010 debugger.  The VS 2010 debugger has a ton of great new capabilities.  Features like Intellitrace (aka historical debugging), the new parallel/multithreaded debugging capabilities, and dump debuging support typically get a ton of (well deserved) buzz and attention when people talk about the debugging improvements with this release.  I’ll be doing blog posts in the future that demonstrate how to take advantage of them as well.  With today’s post, though, I thought I’d start off by covering a few small, but nice, debugger usability improvements that were also included with the VS 2010 release, and which I think you’ll find useful. Breakpoint Labels VS 2010 includes new support for better managing debugger breakpoints.  One particularly useful feature is called “Breakpoint Labels” – it enables much better grouping and filtering of breakpoints within a project or across a solution.  With previous releases of Visual Studio you had to manage each debugger breakpoint as a separate item. Managing each breakpoint separately can be a pain with large projects and for cases when you want to maintain “logical groups” of breakpoints that you turn on/off depending on what you are debugging.  Using the new VS 2010 “breakpoint labeling” feature you can now name these “groups” of breakpoints and manage them as a unit. Grouping Multiple Breakpoints Together using a Label Below is a screen-shot of the breakpoints window within Visual Studio 2010.  This lists all of the breakpoints defined within my solution (which in this case is the ASP.NET MVC 2 code base): The first and last breakpoint in the list above breaks into the debugger when a Controller instance is created or released by the ASP.NET MVC Framework. Using VS 2010, I can now select these two breakpoints, right-click, and then select the new “Edit labels…” menu command to give them a common label/name (making them easier to find and manage): Below is the dialog that appears when I select the “Edit labels” command.  We can use it to create a new string label for our breakpoints or select an existing one we have already defined.  In this case we’ll create a new label called “Lifetime Management” to describe what these two breakpoints cover: When we press the OK button our two selected breakpoints will be grouped under the newly created “Lifetime Management” label: Filtering/Sorting Breakpoints by Label We can use the “Search” combobox to quickly filter/sort breakpoints by label.  Below we are only showing those breakpoints with the “Lifetime Management” label: Toggling Breakpoints On/Off by Label We can also toggle sets of breakpoints on/off by label group.  We can simply filter by the label group, do a Ctrl-A to select all the breakpoints, and then enable/disable all of them with a single click: Importing/Exporting Breakpoints VS 2010 now supports importing/exporting breakpoints to XML files – which you can then pass off to another developer, attach to a bug report, or simply re-load later.  To export only a subset of breakpoints, you can filter by a particular label and then click the “Export breakpoint” button in the Breakpoints window: Above I’ve filtered my breakpoint list to only export two particular breakpoints (specific to a bug that I’m chasing down).  I can export these breakpoints to an XML file and then attach it to a bug report or email – which will enable another developer to easily setup the debugger in the correct state to investigate it on a separate machine.  Pinned DataTips Visual Studio 2010 also includes some nice new “DataTip pinning” features that enable you to better see and track variable and expression values when in the debugger.  Simply hover over a variable or expression within the debugger to expose its DataTip (which is a tooltip that displays its value)  – and then click the new “pin” button on it to make the DataTip always visible: You can “pin” any number of DataTips you want onto the screen.  In addition to pinning top-level variables, you can also drill into the sub-properties on variables and pin them as well.  Below I’ve “pinned” three variables: “category”, “Request.RawUrl” and “Request.LogonUserIdentity.Name”.  Note that these last two variable are sub-properties of the “Request” object.   Associating Comments with Pinned DataTips Hovering over a pinned DataTip exposes some additional UI within the debugger: Clicking the comment button at the bottom of this UI expands the DataTip - and allows you to optionally add a comment with it: This makes it really easy to attach and track debugging notes: Pinned DataTips are usable across both Debug Sessions and Visual Studio Sessions Pinned DataTips can be used across multiple debugger sessions.  This means that if you stop the debugger, make a code change, and then recompile and start a new debug session - any pinned DataTips will still be there, along with any comments you associate with them.  Pinned DataTips can also be used across multiple Visual Studio sessions.  This means that if you close your project, shutdown Visual Studio, and then later open the project up again – any pinned DataTips will still be there, along with any comments you associate with them. See the Value from Last Debug Session (Great Code Editor Feature) How many times have you ever stopped the debugger only to go back to your code and say: $#@! – what was the value of that variable again??? One of the nice things about pinned DataTips is that they keep track of their “last value from debug session” – and you can look these values up within the VB/C# code editor even when the debugger is no longer running.  DataTips are by default hidden when you are in the code editor and the debugger isn’t running.  On the left-hand margin of the code editor, though, you’ll find a push-pin for each pinned DataTip that you’ve previously setup: Hovering your mouse over a pinned DataTip will cause it to display on the screen.  Below you can see what happens when I hover over the first pin in the editor - it displays our debug session’s last values for the “Request” object DataTip along with the comment we associated with them: This makes it much easier to keep track of state and conditions as you toggle between code editing mode and debugging mode on your projects. Importing/Exporting Pinned DataTips As I mentioned earlier in this post, pinned DataTips are by default saved across Visual Studio sessions (you don’t need to do anything to enable this). VS 2010 also now supports importing/exporting pinned DataTips to XML files – which you can then pass off to other developers, attach to a bug report, or simply re-load later. Combined with the new support for importing/exporting breakpoints, this makes it much easier for multiple developers to share debugger configurations and collaborate across debug sessions. Summary Visual Studio 2010 includes a bunch of great new debugger features – both big and small.  Today’s post shared some of the nice debugger usability improvements. All of the features above are supported with the Visual Studio 2010 Professional edition (the Pinned DataTip features are also supported in the free Visual Studio 2010 Express Editions)  I’ll be covering some of the “big big” new debugging features like Intellitrace, parallel/multithreaded debugging, and dump file analysis in future blog posts.  Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Windows 8.1 Will Start Encrypting Hard Drives By Default: Everything You Need to Know

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Windows 8.1 will automatically encrypt the storage on modern Windows PCs. This will help protect your files in case someone steals your laptop and tries to get at them, but it has important ramifications for data recovery. Previously, “BitLocker” was available on Professional and Enterprise editions of Windows, while “Device Encryption” was available on Windows RT and Windows Phone. Device encryption is included with all editions of Windows 8.1 — and it’s on by default. When Your Hard Drive Will Be Encrypted Windows 8.1 includes “Pervasive Device Encryption.” This works a bit differently from the standard BitLocker feature that has been included in Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions of Windows for the past few versions. Before Windows 8.1 automatically enables Device Encryption, the following must be true: The Windows device “must support connected standby and meet the Windows Hardware Certification Kit (HCK) requirements for TPM and SecureBoot on ConnectedStandby systems.”  (Source) Older Windows PCs won’t support this feature, while new Windows 8.1 devices you pick up will have this feature enabled by default. When Windows 8.1 installs cleanly and the computer is prepared, device encryption is “initialized” on the system drive and other internal drives. Windows uses a clear key at this point, which is removed later when the recovery key is successfully backed up. The PC’s user must log in with a Microsoft account with administrator privileges or join the PC to a domain. If a Microsoft account is used, a recovery key will be backed up to Microsoft’s servers and encryption will be enabled. If a domain account is used, a recovery key will be backed up to Active Directory Domain Services and encryption will be enabled. If you have an older Windows computer that you’ve upgraded to Windows 8.1, it may not support Device Encryption. If you log in with a local user account, Device Encryption won’t be enabled. If you upgrade your Windows 8 device to Windows 8.1, you’ll need to enable device encryption, as it’s off by default when upgrading. Recovering An Encrypted Hard Drive Device encryption means that a thief can’t just pick up your laptop, insert a Linux live CD or Windows installer disc, and boot the alternate operating system to view your files without knowing your Windows password. It means that no one can just pull the hard drive from your device, connect the hard drive to another computer, and view the files. We’ve previously explained that your Windows password doesn’t actually secure your files. With Windows 8.1, average Windows users will finally be protected with encryption by default. However, there’s a problem — if you forget your password and are unable to log in, you’d also be unable to recover your files. This is likely why encryption is only enabled when a user logs in with a Microsoft account (or connects to a domain). Microsoft holds a recovery key, so you can gain access to your files by going through a recovery process. As long as you’re able to authenticate using your Microsoft account credentials — for example, by receiving an SMS message on the cell phone number connected to your Microsoft account — you’ll be able to recover your encrypted data. With Windows 8.1, it’s more important than ever to configure your Microsoft account’s security settings and recovery methods so you’ll be able to recover your files if you ever get locked out of your Microsoft account. Microsoft does hold the recovery key and would be capable of providing it to law enforcement if it was requested, which is certainly a legitimate concern in the age of PRISM. However, this encryption still provides protection from thieves picking up your hard drive and digging through your personal or business files. If you’re worried about a government or a determined thief who’s capable of gaining access to your Microsoft account, you’ll want to encrypt your hard drive with software that doesn’t upload a copy of your recovery key to the Internet, such as TrueCrypt. How to Disable Device Encryption There should be no real reason to disable device encryption. If nothing else, it’s a useful feature that will hopefully protect sensitive data in the real world where people — and even businesses — don’t enable encryption on their own. As encryption is only enabled on devices with the appropriate hardware and will be enabled by default, Microsoft has hopefully ensured that users won’t see noticeable slow-downs in performance. Encryption adds some overhead, but the overhead can hopefully be handled by dedicated hardware. If you’d like to enable a different encryption solution or just disable encryption entirely, you can control this yourself. To do so, open the PC settings app — swipe in from the right edge of the screen or press Windows Key + C, click the Settings icon, and select Change PC settings. Navigate to PC and devices -> PC info. At the bottom of the PC info pane, you’ll see a Device Encryption section. Select Turn Off if you want to disable device encryption, or select Turn On if you want to enable it — users upgrading from Windows 8 will have to enable it manually in this way. Note that Device Encryption can’t be disabled on Windows RT devices, such as Microsoft’s Surface RT and Surface 2. If you don’t see the Device Encryption section in this window, you’re likely using an older device that doesn’t meet the requirements and thus doesn’t support Device Encryption. For example, our Windows 8.1 virtual machine doesn’t offer Device Encryption configuration options. This is the new normal for Windows PCs, tablets, and devices in general. Where files on typical PCs were once ripe for easy access by thieves, Windows PCs are now encrypted by default and recovery keys are sent to Microsoft’s servers for safe keeping. This last part may be a bit creepy, but it’s easy to imagine average users forgetting their passwords — they’d be very upset if they lost all their files because they had to reset their passwords. It’s also an improvement over Windows PCs being completely unprotected by default.     

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