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• Oracle Database 12c Spatial: Vector Performance Acceleration

  - by Okcan Yasin Saygili-Oracle

  Most business information has a location component, such as customer addresses, sales territories and physical assets. Businesses can take advantage of their geographic information by incorporating location analysis and intelligence into their information systems. This allows organizations to make better decisions, respond to customers more effectively, and reduce operational costs – increasing ROI and creating competitive advantage. Oracle Database, the industry’s most advanced database,  includes native location capabilities, fully integrated in the kernel, for fast, scalable, reliable and secure spatial and massive graph applications. It is a foundation for deploying enterprise-wide spatial information systems and locationenabled business applications. Developers can extend existing Oracle-based tools and applications, since they can easily incorporate location information directly in their applications, workflows, and services. Spatial Features The geospatial data features of Oracle Spatial and Graph option support complex geographic information systems (GIS) applications, enterprise applications and location services applications. Oracle Spatial and Graph option extends the spatial query and analysis features included in every edition of Oracle Database with the Oracle Locator feature, and provides a robust foundation for applications that require advanced spatial analysis and processing in the Oracle Database. It supports all major spatial data types and models, addressing challenging business-critical requirements from various industries, including transportation, utilities, energy, public sector, defense and commercial location intelligence. Network Data Model Graph Features The Network Data Model graph explicitly stores and maintains a persistent data model withnetwork connectivity and provides network analysis capability such as shortest path, nearest neighbors, within cost and reachability. It loads partitioned networks into memory on demand, overcomingthe limitations of in-memory analysis. Partitioning massive networks into manageable sub-networkssimplifies the network analysis. RDF Semantic Graph Features RDF Semantic Graph has native support for World Wide Web Consortium standards. It has open, scalable, and secure features for storing RDF/OWL ontologies anddata; native inference with OWL 2, SKOS and user-defined rules; and querying RDF/OWL data withSPARQL 1.1, Java APIs, and SPARQLgraph patterns in SQL. Video: Oracle Spatial and Graph Overview Oracle spatial is embeded on oracle database product. So ,we can use oracle installer (OUI).The Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) is used to install Oracle Database software. OUI is a graphical user interface utility that enables you to view the Oracle software that is installed on your machine, install new Oracle Database software, and delete Oracle software that you no longer need to use. Online Help is available to guide you through the installation process. One of the installation options is to create a database. If you select database creation, OUI automatically starts Oracle Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) to guide you through the process of creating and configuring a database. If you do not create a database during installation, you must invoke DBCA after you have installed the software to create a database. You can also use DBCA to create additional databases. For installing Oracle Database 12c you may check the Installing Oracle Database Software and Creating a Database tutorial under the Oracle Database 12c 2-Day DBA Series.You can always check if spatial is available in your database using  "select comp_id, version, status, comp_name from dba_registry where comp_id='SDO';"   One of the most notable improvements with Oracle Spatial and Graph 12c can be seen in performance increases in vector data operations. Enabling the Spatial Vector Acceleration feature (available with the Spatial option) dramatically improves the performance of commonly used vector data operations, such as sdo_distance, sdo_aggr_union, and sdo_inside. With 12c, these operations also run more efficiently in parallel than in prior versions through the use of metadata caching. For organizations that have been facing processing limitations, these enhancements enable developers to make a small set of configuration changes and quickly realize significant performance improvements. Results include improved index performance, enhanced geometry engine performance, optimized secondary filter optimizations for Spatial operators, and improved CPU and memory utilization for many advanced vector functions. Vector performance acceleration is especially beneficial when using Oracle Exadata Database Machine and other large-scale systems. Oracle Spatial and Graph vector performance acceleration builds on general improvements available to all SDO_GEOMETRY operations in these areas: Caching of index metadata, Concurrent update mechanisms, and Optimized spatial predicate selectivity and cost functions. These optimizations enable more efficient use of: CPU, Memory, and Partitioning Resulting in substantial query performance improvements.UsageTo accelerate the performance of spatial operators, it is recommended that you set the SPATIAL_VECTOR_ACCELERATION database system parameter to the value TRUE. (This parameter is authorized for use only by licensed Oracle Spatial users, and its default value is FALSE.) You can set this parameter for the whole system or for a single session. To set the value for the whole system, do either of the following:Enter the following statement from a suitably privileged account:   ALTER SYSTEM SET SPATIAL_VECTOR_ACCELERATION = TRUE;Add the following to the database initialization file (xxxinit.ora):   SPATIAL_VECTOR_ACCELERATION = TRUE;To set the value for the current session, enter the following statement from a suitably privileged account:   ALTER SESSION SET SPATIAL_VECTOR_ACCELERATION = TRUE; Checkout the complete list of new features on Oracle.com @ http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/options/spatialandgraph/overview/index.html Spatial and Graph Data Sheet (PDF) Spatial and Graph White Paper (PDF)

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• Entity Framework Batch Update and Future Queries

  - by pwelter34

  Entity Framework Extended Library A library the extends the functionality of Entity Framework. Features Batch Update and Delete Future Queries Audit Log Project Package and Source NuGet Package PM> Install-Package EntityFramework.Extended NuGet: http://nuget.org/List/Packages/EntityFramework.Extended Source: http://github.com/loresoft/EntityFramework.Extended Batch Update and Delete A current limitations of the Entity Framework is that in order to update or delete an entity you have to first retrieve it into memory. Now in most scenarios this is just fine. There are however some senerios where performance would suffer. Also, for single deletes, the object must be retrieved before it can be deleted requiring two calls to the database. Batch update and delete eliminates the need to retrieve and load an entity before modifying it. Deleting //delete all users where FirstName matches context.Users.Delete(u => u.FirstName == "firstname"); Update //update all tasks with status of 1 to status of 2 context.Tasks.Update( t => t.StatusId == 1, t => new Task {StatusId = 2}); //example of using an IQueryable as the filter for the update var users = context.Users .Where(u => u.FirstName == "firstname"); context.Users.Update( users, u => new User {FirstName = "newfirstname"}); Future Queries Build up a list of queries for the data that you need and the first time any of the results are accessed, all the data will retrieved in one round trip to the database server. Reducing the number of trips to the database is a great. Using this feature is as simple as appending .Future() to the end of your queries. To use the Future Queries, make sure to import the EntityFramework.Extensions namespace. Future queries are created with the following extension methods... Future() FutureFirstOrDefault() FutureCount() Sample // build up queries var q1 = db.Users .Where(t => t.EmailAddress == "[email protected]") .Future(); var q2 = db.Tasks .Where(t => t.Summary == "Test") .Future(); // this triggers the loading of all the future queries var users = q1.ToList(); In the example above, there are 2 queries built up, as soon as one of the queries is enumerated, it triggers the batch load of both queries. // base query var q = db.Tasks.Where(t => t.Priority == 2); // get total count var q1 = q.FutureCount(); // get page var q2 = q.Skip(pageIndex).Take(pageSize).Future(); // triggers execute as a batch int total = q1.Value; var tasks = q2.ToList(); In this example, we have a common senerio where you want to page a list of tasks. In order for the GUI to setup the paging control, you need a total count. With Future, we can batch together the queries to get all the data in one database call. Future queries work by creating the appropriate IFutureQuery object that keeps the IQuerable. The IFutureQuery object is then stored in IFutureContext.FutureQueries list. Then, when one of the IFutureQuery objects is enumerated, it calls back to IFutureContext.ExecuteFutureQueries() via the LoadAction delegate. ExecuteFutureQueries builds a batch query from all the stored IFutureQuery objects. Finally, all the IFutureQuery objects are updated with the results from the query. Audit Log The Audit Log feature will capture the changes to entities anytime they are submitted to the database. The Audit Log captures only the entities that are changed and only the properties on those entities that were changed. The before and after values are recorded. AuditLogger.LastAudit is where this information is held and there is a ToXml() method that makes it easy to turn the AuditLog into xml for easy storage. The AuditLog can be customized via attributes on the entities or via a Fluent Configuration API. Fluent Configuration // config audit when your application is starting up... var auditConfiguration = AuditConfiguration.Default; auditConfiguration.IncludeRelationships = true; auditConfiguration.LoadRelationships = true; auditConfiguration.DefaultAuditable = true; // customize the audit for Task entity auditConfiguration.IsAuditable<Task>() .NotAudited(t => t.TaskExtended) .FormatWith(t => t.Status, v => FormatStatus(v)); // set the display member when status is a foreign key auditConfiguration.IsAuditable<Status>() .DisplayMember(t => t.Name); Create an Audit Log var db = new TrackerContext(); var audit = db.BeginAudit(); // make some updates ... db.SaveChanges(); var log = audit.LastLog;

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• Answers to “What source control system do you use?” (and some winners)

  - by jamiet

  About a month ago I posed a question here on my blog SQL Server devs–what source control system do you use, if any? (answer and maybe win free stuff) in which I asked SQL Server developers to answer the following questions: Are you putting your SQL Server code into a source control system? If so, what source control server software (e.g. TFS, Git, SVN, Mercurial, SourceSafe, Perforce) are you using? What source control client software are you using (e.g. TFS Team Explorer, Tortoise, Red Gate SQL Source Control, Red Gate SQL Connect, Git Bash, etc…)? Why did you make those particular software choices? Any interesting anecdotes to share in regard to your use of source control and SQL Server? I had some really great responses (I highly recommend going and reading them). I promised that the five best, most thought-provoking, responses (as determined by me) would win one of five pairs of licenses for Red Gate SQL Source Control and Red Gate SQL Connect; here are the five that I chose (note that if you responded but did not leave a means of getting in touch then you weren’t considered for one of the prizes – sorry): In general, I don't think the management overhead and licensing cost associated with TFS is worthwhile if all you're doing is using source control. To get value from TFS, at a minimum you need to be using team build, and possibly other stuff as well, such as the sharepoint integration. If that's all you need, then svn with Tortoise would be my first choice. If you want to add build automation later, you can do this with cruisecontrol (is it still called that?), JetBrains, etc. For a long time I thought that Redgate's claims about "bridging the SSMS-VS divide" were a load of hot air, since in my experience anyone who knew what they were doing was using Visual Studio, in particular SSDT and its predecessors. However, on a recent client I was putting in source control for the first time, and I discovered that the "divide" really does exist. That client has ended up using svn with Redgate SQL Source Control, with no build automation, but with scope to add it in the future. Gavin Campbell I think putting the DB under source control is a great idea.  I have issues with the earlier versions of SQL Source Control in that it provides little help in versioning the DB. I think the latest version merges SQL Compare and SQL Source Control together.  Which is how it should have been all along. Sure I have the DB scripts in SVN, but I can't automate DB builds and changes without more tools.  Frankly I'm surprised databases don't have some sort of versioning built into them. Nick Portelli Source control has been immensely useful and saved me from a lot of rework on more than one occasion.  I have learned that you have to be extremely careful checking in data.  Our system is internal only so during the system production run once a week, if there is a problem that I can fix easily(for example, a control table points to a file in the wrong environment), I'll do it directly in production so the run can continue as soon as possible since we have a specified time window.  We do full test runs to minimize this but it has come up once or twice.  We use Red-Gate source control to "push" from the test environment to the production environment.  There have been a couple of occasions where the test environment with the wrong setting was pushed back over the production environment because the change was made only in production.  Gotta keep an eye on that. Alan Dykes Goodness is it manual.  And can be extremely painful at times.  Not only are we running thin, we are constrained on the tools we can get ($$ must mean free).  Certainly no excuse, and a great opportunity to improve my skills by learning new things.  But...  Getting buy in a on a proven process or methodology is hard, takes time, and diverts us from development.  If SQL Source Control is easy to use and proven oh boy could you get some serious fans around here!  Seriously though, as the "accidental dba" of this shop any new ideas / easy to implement tools can make a world of difference in productivity and most importantly accuracy.  Manual = bad. :) John Hennesey (who left his email address) The one thing I would love to know more about is the unique challenges of working with databases as source code - you can store scripts, but are they written as deployment scripts with all the logic about how to apply them to an existing DB? Where is that baseline DB? Where's the data? How does a team share the data and the code? It's a real challenge. Merrill Aldrich Congratulations to the five of you. Red Gate will be in touch with you soon about your free licenses. Thank you to all those that responded. And again, go and check out all the responses – those above are only small proportion from what is a very interesting comment thread. @Jamiet

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• How to install iodbc in Ubuntu 12.10

  - by Hanynowsky

  I need to install the library iodbc (depends on libodbc2) in my Quantal machine. Yet there is creepy dependency problem. This was replaced somehow by unixodbc which I don't have, installed. Here is what I get when I try to install : sudo apt-get install libiodbc2-dev Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: libiodbc2-dev : Depends: libiodbc2 (= 3.52.7-2build2) but it is not going to be installed Depends: iodbc (= 3.52.7-2build2) but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. I can tell that iodbc conflicts with odbcinst. Yet, I cannot remove it due to the following: sudo apt-get remove odbcinst Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: akonadi-backend-mysql calligra-l10n-engb kde-l10n-engb kdevelop-l10n kdevelop-php-docs-l10n kdevelop-php-l10n libakonadi-kabc4 libakonadi-notes4 libakonadiprotocolinternals1 libboost-thread1.49.0 libdmtx0a libgpgme++2 libkcalcore4 libkdgantt2 libkholidays4 libkimap4 libkldap4 libkmbox4 libkmime4 libkolabxml0 libkpgp4 libkresources4 libksieve4 libprison0 libqgpgme1 libqrencode3 libxerces-c3.1 Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following packages will be REMOVED: akonadi-server k3b k3b-i18n katepart kde-runtime kdelibs-bin kdelibs5-plugins kdepim-runtime kdepim-strigi-plugins kdepimlibs-kio-plugins kdoctools kget kmag kmail kmix kmousetool ksystemlog kubuntu-debug-installer language-pack-kde-ar language-pack-kde-en libakonadi-calendar4 libakonadi-contact4 libakonadi-kcal4 libakonadi-kde4 libakonadi-kmime4 libcalendarsupport4 libincidenceeditorsng4 libk3b6 libkabc4 libkactivities-bin libkactivities6 libkalarmcal2 libkatepartinterfaces4 libkcal4 libkcalutils4 libkcddb4 libkde3support4 libkdepim4 libkdepimdbusinterfaces4 libkdewebkit5 libkemoticons4 libkfile4 libkgapi0 libkhtml5 libkio5 libkleo4 libkmanagesieve4 libkmediaplayer4 libknewstuff3-4 libknotifyconfig4 libkolab0 libkonq-common libkonq5abi1 libkontactinterface4 libkparts4 libkpimidentities4 libkpimtextedit4 libkpimutils4 libkprintutils4 libksieveui4 libktexteditor4 libktnef4 libktorrent4 libkworkspace4abi2 libkxmlrpcclient4 libmailcommon4 libmailimporter4 libmailtransport4 libmessagecomposer4 libmessagecore4 libmessagelist4 libmessageviewer4 libmicroblog4 libnepomuk4 libnepomukcore4abi1 libnepomukquery4a libnepomuksync4 libnepomukutils4 libplasma3 libsoprano4 libtemplateparser4 libvirtodbc0 nepomuk-core odbcinst odbcinst1debian2 plasma-scriptengine-javascript qapt-batch soprano-daemon virtuoso-minimal 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 89 to remove and 0 not upgraded. After this operation, 126 MB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Other info: Why do the "iodbc" and "libmyodbc" packages conflict with each other? The root problem is that I need to use a new feature introduced in the latest MySQL Workbench builds (DB Migration) which uses odbc for that matter. Here is what Mysql doc says about it : Linux The Migration Wizard uses iODBC as a driver manager for all of its ODBC connections in Linux. This may give you some troubles because most Linux distributions provide ODBC drivers compiled against unixODBC. This is another driver manager not supported by MySQL Workbench so you won’t be able to use those drivers unless you compile them against iODBC. Here’s what you should do. Make sure that you have iODBC installed. If you are using Debian, Ubuntu or another Debian based distro, type this command in your terminal: $ sudo apt-get install iodbc libiodbc2-dev libpq-dev libssl-dev For RPM based distros (RedHat, Fedora, etc.) type this command instead of the previous one: $ sudo yum install iodbc iodbc-dev libpqxx-devel openssl-devel Now we need to install the PostgreSQL ODBC drivers. Download the psqlODBC source tarball from here. Use the latest version available for download. As of this writing the latest version corresponds to the file psqlodbc-09.01.0200.tar.gz. Extract this tarball to a directory in your hard drive and open a terminal and cd into that directory. Type this in the terminal window: $ ./configure --with-iodbc --enable-pthreads $ make $ sudo make install Verify that you have the file psqlodbcw.so in the /usr/local/lib directory. This package seems to pose the problem probably: dpkg -s odbcinst1debian2 Package: odbcinst1debian2 Status: install ok installed Priority: optional Section: libs Installed-Size: 241 Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <[email protected]> Architecture: amd64 Multi-Arch: same Source: unixodbc Version: 2.2.14p2-5ubuntu4 Replaces: unixodbc (<< 2.1.1-2) Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14), libltdl7 (>= 2.4.2), odbcinst Pre-Depends: multiarch-support Breaks: libiodbc2, libmyodbc (<< 5.1.6-2), odbc-postgresql (<< 1:09.00.0310-1.1), tdsodbc (<< 0.82-8) Conflicts: odbcinst1, odbcinst1debian1 Description: Support library for accessing odbc ini files This package contains the libodbcinst library from unixodbc, a library used by ODBC drivers for reading their configuration settings from /etc/odbc.ini and ~/.odbc.ini. . Also contained in this package are the driver setup plugins, which describe the features supported by individual ODBC drivers. Homepage: http://www.unixodbc.org/ Original-Maintainer: Steve Langasek <[email protected]> I have no broken packages:

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• Some notes on Reflector 7

  - by CliveT

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

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• In the Mobile and Tablet World, How Much is Too Much?

  - by andrewbrust

  The week of April 26th was a huge one in the world of mobile and tablet devices,  There were so many individual developments, announcements and solidifications of strategy, it’s almost impossible to believe they occurred in the same month, let alone the same week. Things started with Apple and Gizmodo having a Law and Order moment over the latter’s procurement of what appears to be the former’s 4th gen iPhone prototype.  We found out on the 26th that Gizmodo blogger Jason Chen’s apartment was raided by police and, honestly, that was a bit much. But Apple didn’t stop there.  They also published Steve Job’s critique of Adobe Flash and his explanation of Cupertino’s embargo of Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads.  If you ask me, this too, was a bit much. Apple finished up the week by releasing the 3G version of its iPad product to the US market. I like (iLike?) my WiFi iPad.  The idea of getting a version of it that required a second 3G service monthly subscription, is, well, a bit  much. Microsoft was in the news too.  It killed a project it hadn’t even acknowledged the existence of: the Courier tablet.  That’s a bit much too.  If a tree falls in the woods, and Microsoft says they can’t hear it anyway, could they really have chopped it down? Maybe Microsoft Research should have licensed some of Courier’s technology from other parts of Microsoft.  Then maybe they could have kept the product alive.  Ask HTC: they’re going to be licensing technology from Microsoft because Redmond insists that Google’s Android operating system infringes on certain of their patents.  And since HTC now builds a number of handsets on Android, instead of being beholden, as they once were, to Windows Mobile, that means they can keep making their products.  Why does HTC have to pay the royalties, and not Google?  Maybe Microsoft decided that going after GOOG would have been a bit much, even for them. The agreement came not a moment to soon: HTC released their “Droid Incredible” (that name’s a bit much), an Android 2.1 handset with amazing hardware and HTC’s own Sense UI, on April 30th (this past Friday). This phone is very well-reviewed.  Maybe that’s why Google basically decided to beg off introducing a version of its Nexus One phone (also manufactured by HTC) on the Verizon Wireless network.  Google backing down?  That’s incredible, if not also a bit much. And that brings us to HP.  Which this week announced its acquisition of Palm and its webOS mobile phone touch-oriented operating system.  HP also killed its own Slate initiative.  Apparently HP realized that Windows 7, even with a proprietary HP touch UI added on top, is no match for the iPad.  I’m guessing they think webOS might work a bit better,  And I’m wondering if HP even wants to use webOS for phone handsets, beyond the Pre and Pixi.  Using it just for slate devices would be a bit extreme, but maybe not too much. Honestly, this was not Microsoft’s best week.  It killed a project and a close partner did likewise.  Then that same partner bought a competing OS product, while another partner released their new product that uses yet another competing OS platform. What did Microsoft actually produce this past week? An update to its Windows Phone 7 developer tools that actually works with the version of Visual Studio 2010 released on April 12th, and the version of Silverlight released three days later. That took three weeks to get synced up, and that’s a bit much too. But at least it happened. Windows Phone 7 is Microsoft’s best hope for a comeback in the SmartPhone market and to offer a credible touch-based tablet device.  This week, two of Microsoft’s slate initiatives died, and its only mobile phone victory was around its competitor’s operating system.  I hope the new platform gets Redmond out of the PC ghetto and into the classes of device that get people really excited today.  If it can’t, that would be a bit much; probably too much.  And, as the signs at the Lonestar Cafe in NYC used to say, too much ain’t enough.

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• Creating Property Set Expression Trees In A Developer Friendly Way

  - by Paulo Morgado

  In a previous post I showed how to create expression trees to set properties on an object. The way I did it was not very developer friendly. It involved explicitly creating the necessary expressions because the compiler won’t generate expression trees with property or field set expressions. Recently someone contacted me the help develop some kind of command pattern framework that used developer friendly lambdas to generate property set expression trees. Simply putting, given this entity class: public class Person { public string Name { get; set; } } The person in question wanted to write code like this: var et = Set((Person p) => p.Name = "me"); Where et is the expression tree that represents the property assignment. So, if we can’t do this, let’s try the next best thing that is splitting retrieving the property information from the retrieving the value to assign o the property: var et = Set((Person p) => p.Name, () => "me"); And this is something that the compiler can handle. The implementation of Set receives an expression to retrieve the property information from and another expression the retrieve the value to assign to the property: public static Expression<Action<TEntity>> Set<TEntity, TValue>( Expression<Func<TEntity, TValue>> propertyGetExpression, Expression<Func<TValue>> valueExpression) The implementation of this method gets the property information form the body of the property get expression (propertyGetExpression) and the value expression (valueExpression) to build an assign expression and builds a lambda expression using the same parameter of the property get expression as its parameter: public static Expression<Action<TEntity>> Set<TEntity, TValue>( Expression<Func<TEntity, TValue>> propertyGetExpression, Expression<Func<TValue>> valueExpression) { var entityParameterExpression = (ParameterExpression)(((MemberExpression)(propertyGetExpression.Body)).Expression); return Expression.Lambda<Action<TEntity>>( Expression.Assign(propertyGetExpression.Body, valueExpression.Body), entityParameterExpression); } And now we can use the expression to translate to another context or just compile and use it: var et = Set((Person p) => p.Name, () => name); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); // Prints: p => (p.Name = “me”) var d = et.Compile(); d(person); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); // Prints: me It can even support closures: var et = Set((Person p) => p.Name, () => name); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); // Prints: p => (p.Name = value(<>c__DisplayClass0).name) var d = et.Compile(); name = "me"; d(person); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); // Prints: me name = "you"; d(person); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); // Prints: you Not so useful in the intended scenario (but still possible) is building an expression tree that receives the value to assign to the property as a parameter: public static Expression<Action<TEntity, TValue>> Set<TEntity, TValue>(Expression<Func<TEntity, TValue>> propertyGetExpression) { var entityParameterExpression = (ParameterExpression)(((MemberExpression)(propertyGetExpression.Body)).Expression); var valueParameterExpression = Expression.Parameter(typeof(TValue)); return Expression.Lambda<Action<TEntity, TValue>>( Expression.Assign(propertyGetExpression.Body, valueParameterExpression), entityParameterExpression, valueParameterExpression); } This new expression can be used like this: var et = Set((Person p) => p.Name); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); // Prints: (p, Param_0) => (p.Name = Param_0) var d = et.Compile(); d(person, "me"); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); // Prints: me d(person, "you"); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); // Prints: you The only caveat is that we need to be able to write code to read the property in order to write to it.

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

  - by Clint Edmonson

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

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• Interview with Geoff Bones, developer on SQL Storage Compress

  - by red(at)work

  How did you come to be working at Red Gate? I've been working at Red Gate for nine months; before that I had been at a multinational engineering company. A number of my colleagues had left to work at Red Gate and spoke very highly of it, but I was happy in my role and thought, 'It can't be that great there, surely? They'll be back!' Then one day I visited to catch up them over lunch in the Red Gate canteen. I was so impressed with what I found there, that, three days later, I'd applied for a role as a developer. And how did you get into software development? My first job out of university was working as a systems programmer on IBM mainframes. This was quite a while ago: there was a lot of assembler and loading programs from tape drives and that kind of stuff. I learned a lot about how computers work, and this stood me in good stead when I moved over the development in the 90s. What's the best thing about working as a developer at Red Gate? Where should I start? One of the great things as a developer at Red Gate is the useful feedback and close contact we have with the people who use our products, either directly at trade shows and other events or through information coming through the product managers. The company's whole ethos is built around assisting the user, and this is in big contrast to my previous development roles. We aim to produce tools that people really want to use, that they enjoy using, and, as a developer, this is a great thing to aim for and a great feeling when we get it right. At Red Gate we also try to cut out the things that distract and stop us doing our jobs. As a developer, this means that I can focus on the code and the product I'm working on, knowing that others are doing a first-class job of making sure that the builds are running smoothly and that I'm getting great feedback from the testers. We keep our process light and effective, as we want to produce great software more than we want to produce great audit trails. Tell us a bit about the products you are currently working on. You mean HyperBac? First let me explain a bit about what HyperBac is. At heart it's a compression and encryption technology, but with a few added features that open up a wealth of really exciting possibilities. Right now we have the HyperBac technology in just three products: SQL HyperBac, SQL Virtual Restore and SQL Storage Compress, but we're only starting to develop what it can do. My personal favourite is SQL Virtual Restore; for example, I love the way you can use it to run independent test databases that are all backed by a single compressed backup. I don't think the market yet realises the kind of things you do once you are using these products. On the other hand, the benefits of SQL Storage Compress are straightforward: run your databases but use only 20% of the disk space. Databases are getting larger and larger, and, as they do, so does your ROI. What's a typical day for you? My days are pretty varied. We have our daily team stand-up meeting and then sometimes I will work alone on a current issue, or I'll be pair programming with one of my colleagues. From time to time we give half a day up to future planning with the team, when we look at the long and short term aims for the product and working out the development priorities. I also get to go to conferences and events, which is unusual for a development role and gives me the chance to meet and talk to our customers directly. Have you noticed anything different about developing tools for DBAs rather than other IT kinds of user? It seems to me that DBAs are quite independent minded; they know exactly what the problem they are facing is, and often have a solution in mind before they begin to look for what's on the market. This means that they're likely to cherry-pick tools from a range of vendors, picking the ones that are the best fit for them and that disrupt their environments the least. When I've met with DBAs, I've often been very impressed at their ability to summarise their set up, the issues, the obstacles they face when implementing a tool and their plans for their environment. It's easier to develop products for this audience as they give such a detailed overview of their needs, and I feel I understand their problems.

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

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

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

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• How to Tell If Your Computer is Overheating and What to Do About It

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Heat is a computer’s enemy. Computers are designed with heat dispersion and ventilation in mind so they don’t overheat. If too much heat builds up, your computer may become unstable or suddenly shut down. The CPU and graphics card produce much more heat when running demanding applications. If there’s a problem with your computer’s cooling system, an excess of heat could even physically damage its components. Is Your Computer Overheating? When using a typical computer in a typical way, you shouldn’t have to worry about overheating at all. However, if you’re encountering system instability issues like abrupt shut downs, blue screens, and freezes — especially while doing something demanding like playing PC games or encoding video — your computer may be overheating. This can happen for several reasons. Your computer’s case may be full of dust, a fan may have failed, something may be blocking your computer’s vents, or you may have a compact laptop that was never designed to run at maximum performance for hours on end. Monitoring Your Computer’s Temperature First, bear in mind that different CPUs and GPUs (graphics cards) have different optimal temperature ranges. Before getting too worried about a temperature, be sure to check your computer’s documentation — or its CPU or graphics card specifications — and ensure you know the temperature ranges your hardware can handle. You can monitor your computer’s temperatures in a variety of different ways. First, you may have a way to monitor temperature that is already built into your system. You can often view temperature values in your computer’s BIOS or UEFI settings screen. This allows you to quickly see your computer’s temperature if Windows freezes or blue screens on you — just boot the computer, enter the BIOS or UEFI screen, and check the temperatures displayed there. Note that not all BIOSes or UEFI screens will display this information, but it is very common. There are also programs that will display your computer’s temperature. Such programs just read the sensors inside your computer and show you the temperature value they report, so there are a wide variety of tools you can use for this, from the simple Speccy system information utility to an advanced tool like SpeedFan. HWMonitor also offer this feature, displaying a wide variety of sensor information. Be sure to look at your CPU and graphics card temperatures. You can also find other temperatures, such as the temperature of your hard drive, but these components will generally only overheat if it becomes extremely hot in the computer’s case. They shouldn’t generate too much heat on their own. If you think your computer may be overheating, don’t just glance as these sensors once and ignore them. Do something demanding with your computer, such as running a CPU burn-in test with Prime 95, playing a PC game, or running a graphical benchmark. Monitor the computer’s temperature while you do this, even checking a few hours later — does any component overheat after you push it hard for a while? Preventing Your Computer From Overheating If your computer is overheating, here are some things you can do about it: Dust Out Your Computer’s Case: Dust accumulates in desktop PC cases and even laptops over time, clogging fans and blocking air flow. This dust can cause ventilation problems, trapping heat and preventing your PC from cooling itself properly. Be sure to clean your computer’s case occasionally to prevent dust build-up. Unfortunately, it’s often more difficult to dust out overheating laptops. Ensure Proper Ventilation: Put the computer in a location where it can properly ventilate itself. If it’s a desktop, don’t push the case up against a wall so that the computer’s vents become blocked or leave it near a radiator or heating vent. If it’s a laptop, be careful to not block its air vents, particularly when doing something demanding. For example, putting a laptop down on a mattress, allowing it to sink in, and leaving it there can lead to overheating — especially if the laptop is doing something demanding and generating heat it can’t get rid of. Check if Fans Are Running: If you’re not sure why your computer started overheating, open its case and check that all the fans are running. It’s possible that a CPU, graphics card, or case fan failed or became unplugged, reducing air flow. Tune Up Heat Sinks: If your CPU is overheating, its heat sink may not be seated correctly or its thermal paste may be old. You may need to remove the heat sink and re-apply new thermal paste before reseating the heat sink properly. This tip applies more to tweakers, overclockers, and people who build their own PCs, especially if they may have made a mistake when originally applying the thermal paste. This is often much more difficult when it comes to laptops, which generally aren’t designed to be user-serviceable. That can lead to trouble if the laptop becomes filled with dust and needs to be cleaned out, especially if the laptop was never designed to be opened by users at all. Consult our guide to diagnosing and fixing an overheating laptop for help with cooling down a hot laptop. Overheating is a definite danger when overclocking your CPU or graphics card. Overclocking will cause your components to run hotter, and the additional heat will cause problems unless you can properly cool your components. If you’ve overclocked your hardware and it has started to overheat — well, throttle back the overclock! Image Credit: Vinni Malek on Flickr     

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• Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010

  - by Wayne

  Another SharePoint Server 2010 feature which cannot go unnoticed is the Access Services. Access Services is a service in SharePoint Server 2010 that allows administrators to view, edit, and configure a Microsoft access application within a Web Browser. Access Services settings support backup and recovery, regardless of whether there is a UI setting in Central Administration. However, backup and recovery only apply to service-level and administrative-level settings; end-user content from the Access application is not backed up as part of this process. Access Services has Windows PowerShell functionality that can be used to provide the service that uses settings from a previous backup; configure and manage macro and query setting; manage and configure session management; and configure all the global settings of the service. Key Benefits of SharePoint Server Access Services Easier Access to right tools: The enhanced, customizable Ribbon in Access 2010 makes it easy to uncover more commands so you can focus on the end product. The new Microsoft Office BackstageTM view is yet another feature that can help you easily analyze and document your database, share, publish, and customize your Access 2010 experience, all from one convenient location. Helps build database effortlessly and quickly: Out-of-the box templates and reusable components make Access Services the fastest, simplest database solution available. It helps find new pre-built templates which you can start using without customization or select templates created by your peers in the Access online community and customize them to meet your needs. It builds your databases with new modular components. New Application Parts enable you to add a set of common Access components, such as a table and form for task management, to your database in a few simple clicks. Database navigation is now simplified. It creates Navigation Forms and makes your frequently used forms and reports more accessible without writing any code or logic. Create Impactful forms and reports: Whether it's an inventory of your assets or customer sales database, Access 2010 brings the innovative tools you'd expect from Microsoft Office. Access Services easily spot trends and add emphasis to your data. It quickly create coordinating database forms and reports and bring the Web into your database. Obtain a centralized landing pad for your data: Access 2010 offers easy ways to bring your data together and help increase work quality. New technologies help break down barriers so you can share and work together on your databases, making you or your team more efficient and productive. Add automation and complex expressions: If you need a more robust database design, such as preventing record deletion if a specific condition is met or if you need to create calculations to forecast your budget, Access 2010 empowers you to be your own developer. The enhanced Expression Builder greatly simplifies your expression building experience with IntelliSense®. With the revamped Macro Designer, it's now even easier for you to add basic logic to your database. New Data Macros allow you to attach logic to your data, centralizing the logic on the table, not the objects that update your data. Key features of Access Services 2010 - Access database content through a Web browser: Newly added Access Services on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 enables you to make your databases available on the Web with new Web databases. Users without an Access client can open Web forms and reports via a browser and changes are automatically synchronized. - Simplify how you access the features you need: The Ribbon, improved in Access 2010, helps you access commands even more quickly by enabling you to customize or create your own tabs. The new Microsoft Office Backstage view replaces the traditional File menu to provide one central, organized location for all of your document management tasks. - Codeless navigation: Use professional looking web-like navigation forms to make frequently used forms and reports more accessible without writing any code or logic. - Easily reuse Access items in other databases: Use Application Parts to add pre-built Access components for common tasks to your database in a few simple clicks. You can also package common database components, such as data entry forms and reports for task management, and reuse them across your organization or other databases. - Simplified formatting: By using Office themes you can create coordinating professional forms and reports across your database. Simply select a familiar and great looking Office theme, or design your own, and apply it to your database. Newly created Access objects will automatically match your chosen theme.

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• Declarative Architectures in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

  - by BuckWoody

  I deal with computing architectures by first laying out requirements, and then laying in any constraints for it's success. Only then do I bring in computing elements to apply to the system. As an example, a requirement might be "world-side availability" and a constraint might be "with less than 80ms response time and full HA" or something similar. Then I can choose from the best fit of technologies which range from full-up on-premises computing to IaaS, PaaS or SaaS. I also deal in abstraction layers - on-premises systems are fully under your control, in IaaS the hardware is abstracted (but not the OS, scale, runtimes and so on), in PaaS the hardware and the OS is abstracted and you focus on code and data only, and in SaaS everything is abstracted - you merely purchase the function you want (like an e-mail server or some such) and simply use it. When you think about solutions this way, the architecture moves to the primary factor in your decision. It's problem-first architecting, and then laying in whatever technology or vendor best fixes the problem. To that end, most architects design a solution using a graphical tool (I use Visio) and then creating documents that  let the rest of the team (and business) know what is required. It's the template, or recipe, for the solution. This is extremely easy to do for SaaS - you merely point out what the needs are, research the vendor and present the findings (and bill) to the business. IT might not even be involved there. In PaaS it's not much more complicated - you use the same Application Lifecycle Management and design tools you always have for code, such as Visual Studio or some other process and toolset, and you can "stamp out" the application in multiple locations, update it and so on. IaaS is another story. Here you have multiple machines, operating systems, patches, virus scanning, run-times, scale-patterns and tools and much more that you have to deal with, since essentially it's just an in-house system being hosted by someone else. You can certainly automate builds of servers - we do this as technical professionals every day. From Windows to Linux, it's simple enough to create a "build script" that makes a system just like the one we made yesterday. What is more problematic is being able to tie those systems together in a coherent way (as a solution) and then stamp that out repeatedly, especially when you might want to deploy that solution on-premises, or in one cloud vendor or another. Lately I've been working with a company called RightScale that does exactly this. I'll point you to their site for more info, but the general idea is that you document out your intent for a set of servers, and it will deploy them to on-premises clouds, Windows Azure, and other cloud providers all from the same script. In other words, it doesn't contain the images or anything like that - it contains the scripts to build them on-premises or on a cloud vendor like Microsoft. Using a tool like this, you combine the steps of designing a system (all the way down to passwords and accounts if you wish) and then the document drives the distribution and implementation of that intent. As time goes on and more and more companies implement solutions on various providers (perhaps for HA and DR) then this becomes a compelling investigation. The RightScale information is here, if you want to investigate it further. Yes, there are other methods I've found, but most are tied to a single kind of cloud, and I'm not into vendor lock-in. Poppa Bear Level - Hands-on EvaluateRightScale at no cost.  Just bring your Windows Azurecredentials and follow the these tutorials: Sign Up for Windows Azure Add     Windows Azure to a RightScale Account Windows Azure Virtual Machines     3-tier Deployment Momma Bear Level - Just the Right level... ;0)  WindowsAzure Evaluation Guide - if you are new toWindows Azure Virtual Machines and new to RightScale, we recommend that youread the entire evaluation guide to gain a more complete understanding of theWindows Azure + RightScale solution.    WindowsAzure Support Page @ support.rightscale.com - FAQ's, tutorials,etc. for  Windows Azure Virtual Machines (Work in Progress) Baby Bear Level - Marketing WindowsAzure Page @ www.rightscale.com - find overview informationincluding solution briefs and presentation & demonstration videos   Scale     and Automate Applications on Windows Azure  Solution Brief     - how RightScale makes Windows Azure Virtual Machine even better SQL     Server on Windows Azure  Solution Brief   -       Run Highly Available SQL Server on Windows Azure Virtual Machines

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• Issues with ILMerge, Lambda Expressions and VS2010 merging?

  - by John Blumenauer

  A little Background For quite some time now, it’s been possible to merge multiple .NET assemblies into a single assembly using ILMerge in Visual Studio 2008.  This is especially helpful when writing wrapper assemblies for 3rd-party libraries where it’s desirable to minimize the number of assemblies for distribution.  During the merge process, ILMerge will take a set of assemblies and merge them into a single assembly.  The resulting assembly can be either an executable or a DLL and is identified as the primary assembly. Issue During a recent project, I discovered using ILMerge to merge assemblies containing lambda expressions in Visual Studio 2010 is resulting in invalid primary assemblies.  The code below is not where the initial issue was identified, I will merely use it to illustrate the problem at hand. In order to describe the issue, I created a console application and a class library for calculating a few math functions utilizing lambda expressions.  The code is available for download at the bottom of this blog entry. MathLib.cs using System; namespace MathLib { public static class MathHelpers { public static Func<double, double, double> Hypotenuse = (x, y) => Math.Sqrt(x * x + y * y); static readonly Func<int, int, bool> divisibleBy = (int a, int b) => a % b == 0; public static bool IsPrimeNumber(int x) { { for (int i = 2; i <= x / 2; i++) if (divisibleBy(x, i)) return false; return true; }; } } } Program.cs using System; using MathLib; namespace ILMergeLambdasConsole { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { int n = 19; if (MathHelpers.IsPrimeNumber(n)) { Console.WriteLine(n + " is prime"); } else { Console.WriteLine(n + " is not prime"); } Console.ReadLine(); } } } Not surprisingly, the preceding code compiles, builds and executes without error prior to running the ILMerge tool.   ILMerge Setup In order to utilize ILMerge, the following changes were made to the project. The MathLib.dll assembly was built in release configuration and copied to the MathLib folder.  The following folder hierarchy was used for this example:   The project file for ILMergeLambdasConsole project file was edited to add the ILMerge post-build configuration.  The following lines were added near the bottom of the project file:  <Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Release'"> <Exec Command="&quot;..\..\lib\ILMerge\Ilmerge.exe&quot; /ndebug /out:@(MainAssembly) &quot;@(IntermediateAssembly)&quot; @(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths->'&quot;%(FullPath)&quot;', ' ')" /> <Delete Files="@(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths->'$(OutDir)%(DestinationSubDirectory)%(Filename)%(Extension)')" /> </Target> The ILMergeLambdasConsole project was modified to reference the MathLib.dll located in the MathLib folder above. ILMerge and ILMerge.exe.config was copied into the ILMerge folder shown above.  The contents of ILMerge.exe.config are: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true"> <requiredRuntime safemode="true" imageVersion="v4.0.30319" version="v4.0.30319"/> </startup> </configuration> Post-ILMerge After compiling and building, the MathLib.dll assembly will be merged into the ILMergeLambdasConsole executable.  Unfortunately, executing ILMergeLambdasConsole.exe now results in a crash.  The ILMerge documentation recommends using PEVerify.exe to validate assemblies after merging.  Executing PEVerify.exe against the ILMergeLambdasConsole.exe assembly results in the following error:    Further investigation by using Reflector reveals the divisibleBy method in the MathHelpers class looks a bit questionable after the merge.     Prior to using ILMerge, the same divisibleBy method appeared as the following in Reflector: It’s pretty obvious something has gone awry during the merge process.  However, this is only occurring when building within the Visual Studio 2010 environment.  The same code and configuration built within Visual Studio 2008 executes fine.  I’m still investigating the issue.  If anyone has already experienced this situation and solved it, I would love to hear from you.  However, as of right now, it looks like something has gone terribly wrong when executing ILMerge against assemblies containing Lambdas in Visual Studio 2010. Solution Files ILMergeLambdaExpression

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• Oracle RightNow CX for Good Customer Experiences

  - by Andreea Vaduva

  Oracle RightNow CX is all about the customer experience, it’s about understanding what drives a good interaction and it’s about delivering a solution which works for our customers and by extension, their customers. One of the early guiding principles of Oracle RightNow was an 8-point strategy to providing good customer experiences. Establish a knowledge foundation Empowering the customer Empower employees Offer multi-channel choice Listen to the customer Design seamless experiences Engage proactively Measure and improve continuously The application suite provides all of the tools necessary to deliver a rewarding, repeatable and measurable relationship between business and customer. The Knowledge Authoring tool provides gap analysis, WYSIWIG editing (and includes HTML rich content for non-developers), multi-level categorisation, permission based publishing and Web self-service publishing. Oracle RightNow Customer Portal, is a complete web application framework that enables businesses to control their own end-user page branding experience, which in turn will allow customers to self-serve. The Contact Centre Experience Designer builds a combination of workspaces, agent scripting and guided assistances into a Desktop Workflow. These present an agent with the tools they need, at the time they need them, providing even the newest and least experienced advisors with consistently accurate and efficient information, whilst guiding them through the complexities of internal business processes. Oracle RightNow provides access points for customers to feedback about specific knowledge articles or about the support site in general. The system will generate ‘incidents’ based on the scoring of the comments submitted. This makes it easy to view and respond to customer feedback. It is vital, more now than ever, not to under-estimate the power of the social web – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – they have the ability to cause untold amounts of damage to businesses with a single post – witness musician Dave Carroll and his protest song on YouTube, posted in response to poor customer services from an American airline. The first day saw 150,000 views and is currently at 12,011,375. The Times reported that within 4 days of the post, the airline’s stock price fell by 10 percent, which represented a cost to shareholders of $180 million dollars. It is a universally acknowledged fact, that when customers are unhappy, they will not come back, and, generally speaking, it only takes one bad experience to lose a customer. The idea that customer loyalty can be regained by using social media channels was the subject of a 2011 Survey commissioned by RightNow and conducted by Harris Interactive. The survey discovered that 68% of customers who posted a negative review about a holiday on a social networking site received a response from the business. It further found that 33% subsequently posted a positive review and 34% removed the original negative review. Cloud Monitor provides the perfect mechanism for seeing what is being said about a business on public Facebook pages, Twitter or YouTube posts; it allows agents to respond proactively – either by creating an Oracle RightNow incident or by using the same channel as the original post. This leaves step 8 – Measuring and Improving: How does a business know whether it’s doing the right thing? How does it know if its customers are happy? How does it know if its staff are being productive? How does it know if its staff are being effective? Cue Oracle RightNow Analytics – fully integrated across the entire platform – Service, Marketing and Sales – there are in excess of 800 standard reports. If this were not enough, a large proportion of the database has been made available via the administration console, allowing users without any prior database experience to write their own reports, format them and schedule them for e-mail delivery to a distribution list. It handles the complexities of table joins, and allows for the manipulation of data with ease. Oracle RightNow believes strongly in the customer owning their solution, and to provide the best foundation for success, Oracle University can give you the RightNow knowledge and skills you need. This is a selection of the courses offered: RightNow Customer Service Administration Rel 12.02 (3 days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course familiarises users with the tasks and concepts needed to configure and maintain their system. RightNow Customer Portal Designer and Contact Center Experience Designer Administration Rel 12.02 (2 days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course introduces basic CP structure and how to make changes to the look, feel and behaviour of their self-service pages RightNow Analytics Rel 12.02 (2 days) Available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand (Release 11.11 is available as In Class and Live Virtual Class) This course equips users with the skills necessary to understand data supplied by standard reports and to create custom reports RightNow Integration and Customization For Developers Rel 12.02 (5-days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course is for experienced web developers and offers an introduction to Add-In development using the Desktop Add-In Framework and introduces the core knowledge that developers need to begin integrating Oracle RightNow CX with other systems A full list of courses offered can be found on the Oracle University website. For more information and course dates please get in contact with your local Oracle University team. On top of the Service components, the suite also provides marketing tools, complex survey creation and tracking and sales functionality. I’m a fan of the application, and I think I’ve made that clear: It’s completely geared up to providing customers with support at point of need. It can be configured to meet even the most stringent of business requirements. Oracle RightNow is passionate about, and committed to, providing the best customer experience possible. Oracle RightNow CX is the application that makes it possible. About the Author: Sarah Anderson worked for RightNow for 4 years in both in both a consulting and training delivery capacity. She is now a Senior Instructor with Oracle University, delivering the following Oracle RightNow courses: RightNow Customer Service Administration RightNow Analytics RightNow Customer Portal Designer and Contact Center Experience Designer Administration RightNow Marketing and Feedback

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• Session Report - Java on the Raspberry Pi

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  On mid-day Wednesday, the always colorful Oracle Evangelist Simon Ritter demonstrated Java on the Raspberry Pi at his session, “Do You Like Coffee with Your Dessert?”. The Raspberry Pi consists of a credit card-sized single-board computer developed in the UK with the intention of stimulating the teaching of basic computer science in schools. “I don't think there is a single feature that makes the Raspberry Pi significant,” observed Ritter, “but a combination of things really makes it stand out. First, it's $35 for what is effectively a completely usable computer. You do have to add a power supply, SD card for storage and maybe a screen, keyboard and mouse, but this is still way cheaper than a typical PC. The choice of an ARM (Advanced RISC Machine and Acorn RISC Machine) processor is noteworthy, because it avoids problems like cooling (no heat sink or fan) and can use a USB power brick. When you add in the enormous community support, it offers a great platform for teaching everyone about computing.”Some 200 enthusiastic attendees were present at the session which had the feel of Simon Ritter sharing a fun toy with friends. The main point of the session was to show what Oracle was doing to support Java on the Raspberry Pi in a way that is entertaining and fun. Ritter pointed out that, in addition to being great for teaching, it’s an excellent introduction to the ARM architecture, and runs well with Java and will get better once it has official hard float support. The possibilities are vast.Ritter explained that the Raspberry Pi Project started in 2006 with the goal of devising a computer to inspire children; it drew inspiration from the BBC Micro literacy project of 1981 that produced a series of microcomputers created by the Acorn Computer company. It was officially launched on February 29, 2012, with a first production of 10,000 boards. There were 100,000 pre-orders in one day; currently about 4,000 boards are produced a day. Ritter described the specification as follows:* CPU: ARM 11 core running at 700MHz Broadcom SoC package Can now be overclocked to 1GHz (without breaking the warranty!) * Memory: 256Mb* I/O: HDMI and composite video 2 x USB ports (Model B only) Ethernet (Model B only) Header pins for GPIO, UART, SPI and I2C He took attendees through a brief history of ARM Architecture:* Acorn BBC Micro (6502 based) Not powerful enough for Acorn’s plans for a business computer * Berkeley RISC Project UNIX kernel only used 30% of instruction set of Motorola 68000 More registers, less instructions (Register windows) One chip architecture to come from this was… SPARC * Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) 32-bit data, 26-bit address space, 27 registers First machine was Acorn Archimedes * Spin off from Acorn, Advanced RISC MachinesNext he presented its features:* 32-bit RISC Architecture–  ARM accounts for 75% of embedded 32-bit CPUs today– 6.1 Billion chips sold last year (zero manufactured by ARM)* Abstract architecture and microprocessor core designs– Raspberry Pi is ARM11 using ARMv6 instruction set* Low power consumption– Good for mobile devices– Raspberry Pi can be powered from 700mA 5V only PSU– Raspberry Pi does not require heatsink or fanHe described the current ARM Technology:* ARMv6– ARM 11, ARM Cortex-M* ARMv7– ARM Cortex-A, ARM Cortex-M, ARM Cortex-R* ARMv8 (Announced)– Will support 64-bit data and addressingHe next gave the Java Specifics for ARM: Floating point operations* Despite being an ARMv6 processor it does include an FPU– FPU only became standard as of ARMv7* FPU (Hard Float, or HF) is much faster than a software library* Linux distros and Oracle JVM for ARM assume no HF on ARMv6– Need special build of both– Raspbian distro build now available– Oracle JVM is in the works, release date TBDNot So RISCPerformance Improvements* DSP Enhancements* Jazelle* Thumb / Thumb2 / ThumbEE* Floating Point (VFP)* NEON* Security Enhancements (TrustZone)He spent a few minutes going over the challenges of using Java on the Raspberry Pi and covered:* Sound* Vision * Serial (TTL UART)* USB* GPIOTo implement sound with Java he pointed out:* Sound drivers are now included in new distros* Java Sound API– Remember to add audio to user’s groups– Some bits work, others not so much* Playing (the right format) WAV file works* Using MIDI hangs trying to open a synthesizer* FreeTTS text-to-speech– Should work once sound works properlyHe turned to JavaFX on the Raspberry Pi:* Currently internal builds only– Will be released as technology preview soon* Work involves optimal implementation of Prism graphics engine– X11?* Once the JavaFX implementation is completed there will be little of concern to developers-- It’s just Java (WORA). He explained the basis of the Serial Port:* UART provides TTL level signals (3.3V)* RS-232 uses 12V signals* Use MAX3232 chip to convert* Use this for access to serial consoleHe summarized his key points. The Raspberry Pi is a very cool (and cheap) computer that is great for teaching, a great introduction to ARM that works very well with Java and will work better in the future. The opportunities are limitless. For further info, check out, Raspberry Pi User Guide by Eben Upton and Gareth Halfacree. From there, Ritter tried out several fun demos, some of which worked better than others, but all of which were greeted with considerable enthusiasm and support and good humor (even when he ran into some glitches).  All in all, this was a fun and lively session.

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• Hiring New IT Employees versus Promoting Internally for IT Positions

  Recently I was asked my opinion regarding the hiring of IT professionals in regards to the option of hiring new IT employees versus promoting internally for IT positions. After thinking a little more about this question regarding staffing, specifically pertaining to promoting internally verses new employees; I think my answer to this question is that it truly depends on the situation. However, in most cases I would side with promoting internally. The key factors in this decision should be based on a company/department’s current values, culture, attitude, and existing priorities.  For example if a company values retaining all of its hard earned business knowledge then they would tend to promote existing employees internal over hiring a new employee. Moreover, the company will have to pay to train an existing employee to learn a new technology and the learning curve for some technologies can be very steep. Conversely, if a company values new technologies and technical proficiency over business knowledge then a company would tend to hire new employees because they may already have experience with a technology that the company is planning on using. In this scenario, the company would have to take on the additional overhead of allowing a new employee to learn how the business operates prior to them being fully effective. To illustrate my points above let us look at contractor that builds in ground pools for example.  He has the option to hire employees that are very strong but use small shovels to dig, or employees weak in physical strength but use large shovels to dig. Which employee should the contractor use to dig a hole for a new in ground pool? If we compare the possible candidates for this job we will find that they are very similar to hiring someone internally verses a new hire. The first example represents the existing workers that are very strong regarding the understanding how the business operates and the reasons why in a specific manner. However this employee could be potentially weaker than an outsider pertaining to specific technologies and would need some time to build their technical prowess for a new position much like the strong worker upgrading their shovels in order to remove more dirt at once when digging. The other employee is very similar to hiring a new person that may already have the large shovel but will need to increase their strength in order to use the shovel properly and efficiently so that they can move a maximum amount of dirt in a minimal amount of time. This can be compared to new employ learning how a business operates before they can be fully functional and integrated in the company/department. Another key factor in this dilemma pertains to existing employee and their passion for their work, their ability to accept new responsibility when given, and the willingness to take on responsibilities when they see a need in the business. As much as possible should be considered in this decision down to the mood of the team, the quality of existing staff, learning cure for both technology and business, and the potential side effects of the existing staff.  In addition, there are many more consideration based on the current team/department/companies culture and mood. There are several factors that need to be considered when promoting an individual or hiring new blood for a team. They both can provide great benefits as well as create controversy to a group. Personally, staffing especially in the IT world is like building a large scale system in that all of the components and modules must fit together and preform as one cohesive system in the same way a team must come together using their individually acquired skills so that they can work as one team.  If a module is out of place or is nonexistent then the rest of the team will suffer until the all of its issues are addressed and resolved. Benefits of Promoting Internally Internal promotions give employees a reason to constantly upgrade their technology, business, and communication skills if they want to further their career Employees can control their own destiny based on personal desires Employee already knows how the business operates Companies can save money by promoting internally because the initial overhead of allowing new hires to learn how a company operates is very expensive Newly promoted employees can assist in training their replacements while transitioning to their new role within a company. Existing employees already have a proven track record in regards fitting in with the business culture; this is always an unknown with all new hires Benefits of a New Hire New employees can energize and excite existing employees New employees can bring new ideas and advancements in technology New employees can offer a different perspective on existing issues based on their past experience. As you can see the decision to promote an existing employee from within a company verses hiring a new person should be based on several factors that should ultimately place the business in the best possible situation for the immediate and long term future. How would you handle this situation? Would you hire a new employee or promote from within?

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• How do I organize a GUI application for passing around events and for setting up reads from a shared resource

  - by Savanni D'Gerinel

  My tools involved here are GTK and Haskell. My questions are probably pretty trivial for anyone who has done significant GUI work, but I've been off in the equivalent of CGI applications for my whole career. I'm building an application that displays tabular data, displays the same data in a graph form, and has an edit field for both entering new data and for editing existing data. After asking about sharing resources, I decided that all of the data involved will be stored in an MVar so that every component can just read the current state from the MVar. All of that works, but now it is time for me to rearrange the application so that it can be interactive. With that in mind, I have three widgets: a TextView (for editing), a TreeView (for displaying the data), and a DrawingArea (for displaying the data as a graph). I THINK I need to do two things, and the core of my question is, are these the right things, or is there a better way. Thing the first: All event handlers, those functions that will be called any time a redisplay is needed, need to be written at a high level and then passed into the function that actually constructs the widget to begin with. For instance: drawStatData :: DrawingArea -> MVar Core.ST -> (Core.ST -> SetRepWorkout.WorkoutStore) -> IO () createStatView :: (DrawingArea -> IO ()) -> IO VBox createUI :: MVar Core.ST -> (Core.ST -> SetRepWorkout.WorkoutStore) -> IO HBox createUI storeMVar field = do graphs <- createStatView (\area -> drawStatData area storeMVar field) hbox <- hBoxNew False 10 boxPackStart hbox graphs PackNatural 0 return hbox In this case, createStatView builds up a VBox that contains a DrawingArea to graph the data and potentially other widgets. It attaches drawStatData to the realize and exposeEvent events for the DrawingArea. I would do something similar for the TreeView, but I am not completely sure what since I have not yet done it and what I am thinking of would involve replacing the TreeModel every time the TreeView needs to be updated. My alternative to the above would be... drawStatData :: DrawingArea -> MVar Core.ST -> (Core.ST -> SetRepWorkout.WorkoutStore) -> IO () createStatView :: IO (VBox, DrawingArea) ... but in this case, I would arrange createUI like so: createUI :: MVar Core.ST -> (Core.ST -> SetRepWorkout.WorkoutStore) -> IO HBox createUI storeMVar field = do (graphbox, graph) <- createStatView (\area -> drawStatData area storeMVar field) hbox <- hBoxNew False 10 boxPackStart hbox graphs PackNatural 0 on graph realize (drawStatData graph storeMVar field) on graph exposeEvent (do liftIO $ drawStatData graph storeMVar field return ()) return hbox I'm not sure which is better, but that does lead me to... Thing the second: it will be necessary for me to rig up an event system so that various events can send signals all the way to my widgets. I'm going to need a mediator of some kind to pass events around and to translate application-semantic events to the actual events that my widgets respond to. Is it better for me to pass my addressable widgets up the call stack to the level where the mediator lives, or to pass the mediator down the call stack and have the widgets register directly with it? So, in summary, my two questions: 1) pass widgets up the call stack to a global mediator, or pass the global mediator down and have the widgets register themselves to it? 2) pass my redraw functions to the builders and have the builders attach the redraw functions to the constructed widgets, or pass the constructed widgets back and have a higher level attach the redraw functions (and potentially link some widgets together)? Okay, and... 3) Books or wikis about GUI application architecture, preferably coherent architectures where people aren't arguing about minute details? The application in its current form (displays data but does not write data or allow for much interaction) is available at https://bitbucket.org/savannidgerinel/fitness . You can run the application by going to the root directory and typing runhaskell -isrc src/Main.hs data/ or... cabal build dist/build/fitness/fitness data/ You may need to install libraries, but cabal should tell you which ones.

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• Profiling NetBeans 7.0 Beta 2 and Reporting Problems

  - by christopher.jones

  With NetBeans 7.0 recently going into Beta 2 phase, now is the time to test it out properly and report issues. The development team has been squashing bugs, including memory issues with the PHP bundle.There are some great new PHP related features in NetBeans 7.0, so you know you want to try it out.If you identify something wrong with NetBeans, please report it following the guidelines http://wiki.netbeans.org/IssueReportingGuidelinesDepending on the issues, data to attach to the report is mentioned on: http://wiki.netbeans.org/FaqLogMessagesFile and http://wiki.netbeans.org/FaqProfileMeNowIf you have a memory issue then a memory dump would also be useful. Run the jmap tool for this. There is some background information on http://wiki.netbeans.org/FaqMemoryDump. Here's how I used it.First I set my environment to match the JDK used by NetBeans. In my case I am using a nightly build so the JDK is in the configuration file under $HOME/netbeans-dev-201102210501:$ egrep netbeans_jdkhome $HOME/netbeans-dev-201102210501/etc/netbeans.conf netbeans_jdkhome="/home/cjones/src/jdk1.6.0_24" $ export JAVA_HOME=/home/cjones/src/jdk1.6.0_24 $ export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH Next, I found the correct process number to examine:$ ps -ef | egrep 'netbeans|jdk'cjones   23230     1  0 16:07 ?        00:00:00 /bin/bash /home/cjones/netbeans-cjones   23438 23230  2 16:07 ?        00:00:09 /home/cjones/src/jdk1.6.0_24/binFinally I used the parent JDK process as the jmap argument:$ jmap -histo:live 23438 num     #instances         #bytes  class name----------------------------------------------   1:         12075        9028656  [I   2:         49535        6581920  <constMethodKlass>   3:         49535        3964128  <methodKlass>   4:         80256        3840776  <symbolKlass>   5:         36093        3635336  [C   6:          5095        3341312  <constantPoolKlass>   7:          5095        2486016  <instanceKlassKlass>   8:          4325        1961432  <constantPoolCacheKlass>   9:         18729        1763976  [B  10:         59952        1438848  java.util.HashMap$Entry  . . .This histogram memory report will help identify the kind of memory issues you are seeing. It may not be as complete as an often tens of megabyte jmap -dump:live,file=/tmp/nbheap.log 23438 heap dump, but is much more easily attached to a bug report.If you want to keep up to date with NetBeans, nightly builds are at: http://bits.netbeans.org/download/trunk/nightly/latest/zip/

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• Clone a VirtualBox Machine

  I just installed VirtualBox, which I want to try out based on recommendations from peers for running a server from within my Windows 7 x64 OS.  Ive never used VirtualBox, so Im certainly no expert at it, but I did want to share my experience with it thus far.  Specifically, my intention is to create a couple of virtual machines.  One I intend to use as a build server, for which a virtual machine makes sense because I can easily move it around as needed if there are hardware issues (its worth noting my need for setting up a build server at the moment is a result of a disk failure on the old build server).  The other VM I want to set up will act as a proxy server for the issue tracking system were using at Code Project, Axosoft OnTime.  They have a Remote Server application for this purpose, and since the OnTime install is 300 miles away from my location, the Remote Server should speed up my use of the OnTime client by limiting the chattiness with the database (at least, thats the hope). So, I need two VMs, and Im lazy.  I dont want to have to install the OS and such twice.  No problem, it should be simple to clone a virtualbox machine, or clone a virtualbox hard drive, right?  Well unfortunately, if you look at the UI for VirtualBox, theres no such command.  Youre left wondering How do I clone a VirtualBox machine? or the slightly related How do I clone a VirtualBox hard drive? If youve used VirtualPC, then you know that its actually pretty easy to copy and move around those VMs.  Not quite so easy with VirtualBox.  Finding the files is easy, theyre located in your user folder within the .VirtualBox folder (possibly within a HardDisks folder).  The disks have a .vdi extension and will be pretty large if youve installed anything.  The one shown here has just Windows Server 2008 R2 installed on it nothing else. If you copy the .vdi file and rename it, you can use the Virtual Media Manager to view it and you can create a new machine and choose the new drive to attach to.  Unfortunately, if you simply make a copy of the drive, this wont work and youll get an error that says something to the effect of: Cannot register the hard disk PATH with UUID {id goes here} because a hard disk PATH2 with UUID {same id goes here} already exists in the media registry (PATH to XML file). There are command line tools you can use to do this in a way that avoids this error.  Specifically, the c:\Program File\Sun\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe program is used for all command line access to VirtualBox, and to copy a virtual disk (.vdi file) you would call something like this: VBoxManage clonehd Disk1.vdi Disk1_Copy.vdi However, in my case this didnt work.  I got basically the same error I showed above, along with some debug information for line 628 of VBoxManageDisk.cpp.  As my main task was not to debug the C++ code used to write VirtualBox, I continued looking for a simple way to clone a virtual drive.  I found it in this blog post. The Secret setvdiuuid Command VBoxManage has a whole bunch of commands you can use with it just pass it /? to see the list.  However, it also has a special command called internalcommands that opens up access to even more commands.  The one thats interesting for us here is the setvdiuuid command.  By calling this command and passing in the file path to your vdi file, it will reset the UUID to a new (random, apparently) UUID.  This then allows the virtual media manager to cope with the file, and lets you set up new machines that reference the newly UUIDd virtual drive.  The full command line would be: VBoxManage internalcommands setvdiuuid MyCopy.vdi The following screenshot shows the error when trying clonehd as well as the successful use of setvdiuuid. Summary Now that I can clone machines easily, its a simple matter to set up base builds of any OS I might need, and then fork from there as needed.  Hopefully the GUI for VirtualBox will be improved to include better support for copying machines/disks, as this is Im sure a very common scenario. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Processing Text and Binary (Blob, ArrayBuffer, ArrayBufferView) Payload in WebSocket - (TOTD #185)

  - by arungupta

  The WebSocket API defines different send(xxx) methods that can be used to send text and binary data. This Tip Of The Day (TOTD) will show how to send and receive text and binary data using WebSocket. TOTD #183 explains how to get started with a WebSocket endpoint using GlassFish 4. A simple endpoint from that blog looks like: @WebSocketEndpoint("/endpoint") public class MyEndpoint { public void receiveTextMessage(String message) { . . . } } A message with the first parameter of the type String is invoked when a text payload is received. The payload of the incoming WebSocket frame is mapped to this first parameter. An optional second parameter, Session, can be specified to map to the "other end" of this conversation. For example: public void receiveTextMessage(String message, Session session) {     . . . } The return type is void and that means no response is returned to the client that invoked this endpoint. A response may be returned to the client in two different ways. First, set the return type to the expected type, such as: public String receiveTextMessage(String message) { String response = . . . . . . return response; } In this case a text payload is returned back to the invoking endpoint. The second way to send a response back is to use the mapped session to send response using one of the sendXXX methods in Session, when and if needed. public void receiveTextMessage(String message, Session session) {     . . .     RemoteEndpoint remote = session.getRemote();     remote.sendString(...);     . . .     remote.sendString(...);    . . .    remote.sendString(...); } This shows how duplex and asynchronous communication between the two endpoints can be achieved. This can be used to define different message exchange patterns between the client and server. The WebSocket client can send the message as: websocket.send(myTextField.value); where myTextField is a text field in the web page. Binary payload in the incoming WebSocket frame can be received if ByteBuffer is used as the first parameter of the method signature. The endpoint method signature in that case would look like: public void receiveBinaryMessage(ByteBuffer message) {     . . . } From the client side, the binary data can be sent using Blob, ArrayBuffer, and ArrayBufferView. Blob is a just raw data and the actual interpretation is left to the application. ArrayBuffer and ArrayBufferView are defined in the TypedArray specification and are designed to send binary data using WebSocket. In short, ArrayBuffer is a fixed-length binary buffer with no format and no mechanism for accessing its contents. These buffers are manipulated using one of the views defined by one of the subclasses of ArrayBufferView listed below: Int8Array (signed 8-bit integer or char) Uint8Array (unsigned 8-bit integer or unsigned char) Int16Array (signed 16-bit integer or short) Uint16Array (unsigned 16-bit integer or unsigned short) Int32Array (signed 32-bit integer or int) Uint32Array (unsigned 16-bit integer or unsigned int) Float32Array (signed 32-bit float or float) Float64Array (signed 64-bit float or double) WebSocket can send binary data using ArrayBuffer with a view defined by a subclass of ArrayBufferView or a subclass of ArrayBufferView itself. The WebSocket client can send the message using Blob as: blob = new Blob([myField2.value]);websocket.send(blob); where myField2 is a text field in the web page. The WebSocket client can send the message using ArrayBuffer as: var buffer = new ArrayBuffer(10);var bytes = new Uint8Array(buffer);for (var i=0; i<bytes.length; i++) { bytes[i] = i;}websocket.send(buffer); A concrete implementation of receiving the binary message may look like: @WebSocketMessagepublic void echoBinary(ByteBuffer data, Session session) throws IOException {    System.out.println("echoBinary: " + data);    for (byte b : data.array()) {        System.out.print(b);    }    session.getRemote().sendBytes(data);} This method is just printing the binary data for verification but you may actually be storing it in a database or converting to an image or something more meaningful. Be aware of TYRUS-51 if you are trying to send binary data from server to client using method return type. Here are some references for you: JSR 356: Java API for WebSocket - Specification (Early Draft) and Implementation (already integrated in GlassFish 4 promoted builds) TOTD #183 - Getting Started with WebSocket in GlassFish TOTD #184 - Logging WebSocket Frames using Chrome Developer Tools, Net-internals and Wireshark Subsequent blogs will discuss the following topics (not necessary in that order) ... Error handling Custom payloads using encoder/decoder Interface-driven WebSocket endpoint Java client API Client and Server configuration Security Subprotocols Extensions Other topics from the API

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• Solaris 11.1 changes building of code past the point of __NORETURN

  - by alanc

  While Solaris 11.1 was under development, we started seeing some errors in the builds of the upstream X.Org git master sources, such as: "Display.c", line 65: Function has no return statement : x_io_error_handler "hostx.c", line 341: Function has no return statement : x_io_error_handler from functions that were defined to match a specific callback definition that declared them as returning an int if they did return, but these were calling exit() instead of returning so hadn't listed a return value. These had been generating warnings for years which we'd been ignoring, but X.Org has made enough progress in cleaning up code for compiler warnings and static analysis issues lately, that the community turned up the default error levels, including the gcc flag -Werror=return-type and the equivalent Solaris Studio cc flags -v -errwarn=E_FUNC_HAS_NO_RETURN_STMT, so now these became errors that stopped the build. Yet on Solaris, gcc built this code fine, while Studio errored out. Investigation showed this was due to the Solaris headers, which during Solaris 10 development added a number of annotations to the headers when gcc was being used for the amd64 kernel bringup before the Studio amd64 port was ready. Since Studio did not support the inline form of these annotations at the time, but instead used #pragma for them, the definitions were only present for gcc. To resolve this, I fixed both sides of the problem, so that it would work for building new X.Org sources on older Solaris releases or with older Studio compilers, as well as fixing the general problem before it broke more software building on Solaris. To the X.Org sources, I added the traditional Studio #pragma does_not_return to recognize that functions like exit() don't ever return, in patches such as this Xserver patch. Adding a dummy return statement was ruled out as that introduced unreachable code errors from compilers and analyzers that correctly realized you couldn't reach that code after a return statement. And on the Solaris 11.1 side, I updated the annotation definitions in <sys/ccompile.h> to enable for Studio 12.0 and later compilers the annotations already existing in a number of system headers for functions like exit() and abort(). If you look in that file you'll see the annotations we currently use, though the forms there haven't gone through review to become a Committed interface, so may change in the future. Actually getting this integrated into Solaris though took a bit more work than just editing one header file. Our ELF binary build comparison tool, wsdiff, actually showed a large number of differences in the resulting binaries due to the compiler using this information for branch prediction, code path analysis, and other possible optimizations, so after comparing enough of the disassembly output to be comfortable with the changes, we also made sure to get this in early enough in the release cycle so that it would get plenty of test exposure before the release. It also required updating quite a bit of code to avoid introducing new lint or compiler warnings or errors, and people building applications on top of Solaris 11.1 and later may need to make similar changes if they want to keep their build logs similarly clean. Previously, if you had a function that was declared with a non-void return type, lint and cc would warn if you didn't return a value, even if you called a function like exit() or panic() that ended execution. For instance: #include <stdlib.h> int callback(int status) { if (status == 0) return status; exit(status); } would previously require a never executed return 0; after the exit() to avoid lint warning "function falls off bottom without returning value". Now the compiler & lint will both issue "statement not reached" warnings for a return 0; after the final exit(), allowing (or in some cases, requiring) it to be removed. However, if there is no return statement anywhere in the function, lint will warn that you've declared a function returning a value that never does so, suggesting you can declare it as void. Unfortunately, if your function signature is required to match a certain form, such as in a callback, you not be able to do so, and will need to add a /* LINTED */ to the end of the function. If you need your code to build on both a newer and an older release, then you will either need to #ifdef these unreachable statements, or, to keep your sources common across releases, add to your sources the corresponding #pragma recognized by both current and older compiler versions, such as: #pragma does_not_return(exit) #pragma does_not_return(panic) Hopefully this little extra work is paid for by the compilers & code analyzers being able to better understand your code paths, giving you better optimizations and more accurate errors & warning messages.

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• jqGrid multi-checkbox custom edittype solution

  - by gsiler

  For those of you trying to understand jqGrid custom edit types ... I created a multi-checkbox form element, and thought I'd share. This was built using version 3.6.4. If anyone has a more efficient solution, please pass it on. Within the colModel, the appropriate edit fields look like this: edittype:'custom' editoptions:{ custom_element:MultiCheckElem, custom_value:MultiCheckVal, list:'Check1,Check2,Check3,Check4' } Here are the javascript functions (BTW, It also works – with some modifications – when the list of checkboxes is in a DIV block): //———————————————————— // Description: // MultiCheckElem is the "custom_element" function that builds the custom multiple check box input // element. From what I have gathered, jqGrid calls this the first time the form is launched. After // that, only the "custom_value" function is called. // // The full list of checkboxes is in the jqGrid "editoptions" section "list" tag (in the options // parameter). //———————————————————— function MultiCheckElem( value, options ) { //———- // for each checkbox in the list // build the input element // set the initial "checked" status // endfor //———- var ctl = ''; var ckboxAry = options.list.split(','); for ( var i in ckboxAry ) { var item = ckboxAry[i]; ctl += '<input type="checkbox" '; if ( value.indexOf(item + '|') != -1 ) ctl += 'checked="checked" '; ctl += 'value="' + item + '"> ' + item + '</input><br />&nbsp;'; } ctl = ctl.replace( /<br />&nbsp;$/, '' ); return ctl; } //———————————————————— // Description: // MultiCheckVal is the "custom_value" function for the custom multiple check box input element. It // appears that jqGrid invokes this function the first time the form is submitted and, the rest of // the time, when the form is launched (action = set) and when it is submitted (action = 'get'). //———————————————————— function MultiCheckVal(elem, action, val) { var items = ''; if (action == 'get') // the form has been submitted { //———- // for each input element // if it's checked, add it to the list of items // endfor //———- for (var i in elem) { if (elem[i].tagName == 'INPUT' && elem[i].checked ) items += elem[i].value + ','; } // items contains a comma delimited list that is returned as the result of the element items = items.replace(/,$/, ''); } else // the form is launched { //———- // for each input element // based on the input value, set the checked status // endfor //———- for (var i in elem) { if (elem[i].tagName == 'INPUT') { if (val.indexOf(elem[i].value + '|') == -1) elem[i].checked = false; else elem[i].checked = true; } } // endfor } return items; }

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• Switching DataSources on a ReportViewer in WinForms

  - by Mike Wills

  I have created a winform for the users to view view the many reports I am creating for them. I have a drop down list with the report name which triggers the appropriate fields to display the parameters. Once those are filled, they press Submit and the report appears. This works the first time they hit the screen. They can change the parameters and the ReportViewer works fine. Change to a different report, and the I get the following ReportViewer error: An error occurred during local report processing. An error has occurred during the report processing. A data source instance has not been supplied for the data source "CgTempData_BusMaintenance". As far as the process I use: I set reportName (string) the physical RDLC name. I set the dataSource (string) as the DataSource Name I fill a generic DataTable with the data for the report to run from. Make the ReportViewer visible Set the LocalReport.ReportPath = "Reports\\" = reportName; Clear the LocalReport.DataSources.Clear() Add the new LocalReport.DataSources.Add(new ReportDataSource(dataSource, dt)); RefreshReport() on the ReportViewer. Here is the portion of the code that setups up and displays the ReportViewer: /// <summary> /// Builds the report. /// </summary> private void BuildReport() { DataTable dt = null; ReportingCG rcg = new ReportingCG(); if (reportName == "GasUsedReport.rdlc") { dataSource = "CgTempData_FuelLog"; CgTempData.FuelLogDataTable DtFuelLog = rcg.BuildFuelUsedTable(fromDate, toDate); dt = DtFuelLog; } else if (reportName == "InventoryCost.rdlc") { CgTempData.InventoryUsedDataTable DtInventory; dataSource = "CgTempData_InventoryUsed"; DtInventory = rcg.BuildInventoryUsedTable(fromDate, toDate); dt = DtInventory; } else if (reportName == "VehicleMasterList.rdlc") { dataSource = "CgTempData_VehicleMaster"; CgTempData.VehicleMasterDataTable DtVehicleMaster = rcg.BuildVehicleMasterTable(); dt = DtVehicleMaster; } else if (reportName == "BusCosts.rdlc") { dataSource = "CgTempData_BusMaintenance"; dt = rcg.BuildBusCostsTable(fromDate, toDate); } // Setup the DataSource this.reportViewer1.Visible = true; this.reportViewer1.LocalReport.ReportPath = "Reports\\" + reportName; this.reportViewer1.LocalReport.DataSources.Clear(); this.reportViewer1.LocalReport.DataSources.Add(new ReportDataSource(dataSource, dt)); this.reportViewer1.RefreshReport(); } Any ideas how to remove all of the old remaining data? Do I dispose the object and recreate it?

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• Qt static build with static mysql plugin confusion

  - by bdiloreto

  I have built a Qt application which uses the MySQL library, but I am confused by the documentation on static versus shared builds. From the Qt documentation at http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.7/deployment-windows.html it says: To deploy plugin-based applications we should use the shared library approach. And on http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.7/deployment.html, it says: Static linking results in a stand-alone executable. The advantage is that you will only have a few files to deploy. The disadvantages are that the executables are large and with no flexibility and that you cannot deploy plugins. To deploy plugin-based applications, you can use the shared library approach. But on http://doc.qt.nokia.com/latest/plugins-howto.html, it seems to say the opposite, giving directions on how to use static plugins: Plugins can be linked statically against your application. If you build the static version of Qt, this is the only option for including Qt's predefined plugins. Using static plugins makes the deployment less error-prone, but has the disadvantage that no functionality from plugins can be added without a complete rebuild and redistribution of the application. ... To link statically against those plugins, you need to use the Q_IMPORT_PLUGIN() macro in your application and you need to add the required plugins to your build using QTPLUGIN. I want to build the Qt libraries statically (for easy deployment) and then use the static MySQL plugin. To do this, I did NOT use the binary distrubtion for Windows. Instead, I've started with the source qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.7.4 Is the following the correct way to do a static build so that i can use the static MySql plugin? configure -static -debug-and-release -opensource -platform win32-msvc2010 -no-qt3support -no-webkit -no-script -plugin-sql-mysql -I C:\MySQL\include -L C:\MySQL\lib This should build the Qt libraries statically AND the static plugin to be linked at run-time, correct? I would NOT need to build the Mysql Plugin from source separately, correct? If I was to subtitute "-qt-sql-mysql" for "-plugin-sql-mysql" in above, it would include the MySQL driver directly in the QT static libraries, in which case I would NOT need to use the plugin at all, correct? Thanks for making me unconfused!

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