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• Python Daemon Subprocess not working at boot

  - by Adam Richardson

  I am attempting to write a python daemon that will launch at boot. The goal of the script is to receive a job from our gearman load balancing server and complete the job. I am using the python-daemon module from pypi (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/python-daemon/). The nature of the job that it is completing is converting images in the orf (olympus raw image format) to jpeg. In order to accomplish this an outside program is used, ufraw in this case. The problem comes in when I start the daemon at boot, if I launch from the shell it runs perfectly and completes the work. When it starts at boot it is unable to launch the subprocess command. commandString = '/usr/bin/ufraw-batch --interpolation=four-color --wb=camera --compression=100 --output="' + outfile + '" --out-type=jpg --overwrite "' + infile + '"' args = shlex.split(commandString) process = subprocess.Popen(args).wait() I am not sure what I am doing wrong. Thanks for any help.

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• How to loop over nodes with xmlfeed using scrapy python

  - by Kour ipm

  Hi i working on scrapy and trying xml feeds first time, below is my code class TestxmlItemSpider(XMLFeedSpider): name = "TestxmlItem" allowed_domains = {"http://www.nasinteractive.com"} start_urls = [ "http://www.nasinteractive.com/jobexport/advance/hcantexasexport.xml" ] iterator = 'iternodes' itertag = 'job' def parse_node(self, response, node): title = node.select('title/text()').extract() job_code = node.select('job-code/text()').extract() detail_url = node.select('detail-url/text()').extract() category = node.select('job-category/text()').extract() print title,";;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;" print job_code,";;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;" item = TestxmlItem() item['title'] = node.select('title/text()').extract() ....... return item result: File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/Scrapy-0.14.3-py2.7.egg/scrapy/item.py", line 56, in __setitem__ (self.__class__.__name__, key)) exceptions.KeyError: 'TestxmlItem does not support field: title' Totally there are 200+ items so i need to loop over and assign the node text to item but here all the results are displaying at once when we print, actually how can we loop over on nodes in scraping xml files with xmlfeedspider

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• Showing all rows for keys with more than one row

  - by Leif Neland

  Table kal id integer primary key init char 4 indexed job char4 id init job --+----+------ 1 | aa | job1 2 | aa | job2 3 | bb | job1 4 | cc | job3 5 | cc | job5 I want to show all rows where init has more than one row id init job --+----+------ 1 | aa | job1 2 | aa | job2 4 | cc | job3 5 | cc | job5 I tried select * from kal where init in (select init from kal group by init having count(init)2); Actually, the table has 60000 rows, and the query was count(init)<40, but it takes humongus time, phpmyadmin and my patience runs out. Both select init from kal group by init having count(init)2) and select * from kal where init in ('aa','bb','cc') runs in "no time", less than 0.02 seconds. I've tried different subqueries, but all takes "infinite" time, more than a few minutes; I've actually never let them finish. Leif

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• Proper way to have an endless worker thread?

  - by Neil N

  I have an object that requires a lot of initialization (1-2 seconds on a beefy machine). Though once it is initialized it only takes about 20 miliseconds to do a typical "job" In order to prevent it from being re-initialized every time an app wants to use it (which could be 50 times a second or not at all for minutes in typical usage), I decided to give it a job que, and have it run on its own thread, checking to see if there is any work for it in the que. However I'm not entirely sure how to make a thread that runs indefinetly with or without work. Here's what I have so far, any critique is welcomed private void DoWork() { while (true) { if (JobQue.Count > 0) { // do work on JobQue.Pop() } else { System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(50); } } } After thought: I was thinking I may need to kill this thread gracefully insead of letting it run forever, so I think I will add a Job type that tells the thread to end. Any thoughts on how to end a thread like this also appreciated.

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• Run SSIS Package from T-SQL

  - by Dr. Zim

  I noticed you can use the following stored procedures (in order) to schedule a SSIS package: msdb.dbo.sp_add_category @class=N'JOB', @type=N'LOCAL', @name=N'[Uncategorized (Local)]' msdb.dbo.sp_add_job ... msdb.dbo.sp_add_jobstep ... msdb.dbo.sp_update_job ... msdb.dbo.sp_add_jobschedule ... msdb.dbo.sp_add_jobserver ... (You can see an example by right clicking a scheduled job and selecting "Script Job as- Create To".) AND you can use sp_start_job to execute the job immediately, effectively running SSIS packages on demand. Question: does anyone know of any msdb.dbo.[...] stored procedures that simply allow you to run SSIS packages on the fly without using sp_cmdshell directly, or some easier approach?

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• How can I create a canned reply with the CKEditor toolbar?

  - by Tur0k

  Hello, Is it possible to create configurable quick replies within an html page using cookies or session tracking with Javascript/php and the CKEditor toolbar. Do I have to create a custom plugin or button for this? Example: button1 -Good job 2 1/2 points. Close ticket. button2 -Great job 5 points. Close ticket. button3 -Awesome job 10 points. Close ticket. Any advise would be awesome! Thanks.

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• EnumJobs not returning Copies & Total Pages

  - by Hein du Plessis

  I'm using Windows API's EnumJobs to find the PageCount and Copies of a print job, but I found that these fields are almost always zero when called on a print server. Although it could be my timing is out, because the number of pages increment as the job prints and once it's done the print job cannot be accessed. So there is about half a nanosecond when the values in EnumJobs is correct before it dissapears. I've been scouring the web but can't find any help on this, just other people with similar problems. Anybody with experience with EnumJobs or can suggest other means of determining the total number of pages printed?

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• In which layer should I join 2 entities together?

  - by William

  I use Spring MVC and a regular JDBC. I've just learned that I should separate business process into layers which are presentation layer, controller layer, service layer, and repository/DAO layer. Now suppose that I have an Entity called Person that can have multiple Jobs. Job itself is another entity which have its own properties. From what I gathered, the repository layer only manages one entity. Now I have one entity that contains another entity. Where do I "join" them? The service layer? Suppose I want to get a person whose job isn't known yet (lazy loading). But the system might ask what the job of that particular person is later on. What is the role of each layer in this case? Please let me know if I need to add any detail into this question.

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• What's the preferred way to use helper methods in Ruby?

  - by DR

  Disclaimer: Although I'm asking in context of a Rails application, I'm not talking about Rails helpers (i.e. view helpers) Let's say I have a helper method/function: def dispatch_job(job = {}) #Do something end Now I want to use this from several places (mostly controllers, but also a few BackgrounDRb workers) What's the preferred way to do this? I can think of two possibilities: 1. Use a class and make the helper a static method: class MyHelper def self.dispatch_job(job = {}) end end class MyWorker def run MyHelper.dispatch_job(...) end end 2. Use a module and include the method into whatever class I need this functionality module MyHelper def self.dispatch_job(job = {}) end end class MyWorker include MyHelper def run dispatch_job(...) end end 3. Other possibilities I don't know yet ... The first one is more Java-like, but I'm not sure if the second one is really an appropriate use of Ruby's modules.

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• How To Refactor If-else Code Segment?

  - by LostInLib

  I'm developing win8(metro style) application with Html5-js-jquery. I have this code segment; GetBoutiqueDetail: function (boutiqueId, options) { if (IsUserLogin()) { //different job A } else { ShowLoginPanel(undefined); } }, GetProductDetail: function (boutiqueId, productId, options) { if (IsUserLogin()) { //different job B } else { ShowLoginPanel(undefined); } }, AddBasket: function (productId, productVariantId, quantity, options) { if (IsUserLogin()) { //different job C } else { ShowLoginPanel(undefined); } },.... .And ~20 functions should check if user login or not. I should call functions like similar to "Library.GetBoutiqueDetail();" So my question is simple, how can I refactor that code to remove these if-else sections ?

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• Help with running crontab from root

  - by user242065

  Im using OSX and having trouble getting a cron job to run. I type the following: $ sudo -i $ crontab -e I then enter: * * * * * root ifconfig en0 down > /dev/null 0 19 * * * root ifconfig en0 down > /dev/null 0 7 * * * root ifconfig en0 up > /dev/null and no success, the first line is for testing. I want it to shut off my internet. The next two lines I plan to leave in, once I get this working. If I type this in to the terminal the internet goes off ifconfig en0 down Why is my cron job not shutting down the internet? FYI: This is a follow up question from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3027362/how-can-i-write-a-cron-job-that-will-block-my-internet-from-7pm-to-7am-so-i-can most of the comments there are people making fun of me. And a few attempts to solve the problem with out cron jobs.

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• Selecting one object from a one-to-many relationship in Hibernate

  - by Nick Thomson

  I have two tables: Job job_id, <other data> Job_Link job_link_id, job_id, start_timestamp, end_timestamp, <other data> There may be multiple records in Job_Link specifying the same job_id with the start_timestamp and end_timestamps to indicate when those records are considered "current", it is guaranteed that start_timestamp and end_timestamp will not overlap. We have entities for both the Job and Job_Link tables and defining a one-to-many relationship to load all the job_links wouldn't be a problem. However we'd like to avoid that and have a single job_link item in the Job entity that will contain only the "current" Job_Link object. Is there any way to achive that?

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• ListView GridView and Grid

  - by urema

  Hi, If you have a ListView with its view set as a GridView, which itself contains columns for each month say.....how do I set a template up for the ItemTemplate of the ListView so that each Item will be three rows high, and be inline with the ListView.View's columns? For example different employee recruits over a year.... each month across the top and each employee on the left side, though sub-columned on the employee are three rows "Name", "Address" and "Job Type" say. I know you have to use the IsSharedSizeScope attached property. January February ... Employee1 Name E1 Address E1 Street Job Type Cleaner Employee2 Name ... Address ... Job Type ... Thanks greatly in advance, U.

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• select from multiple tables with different columns

  - by Qaiser Iftikhar

  Say I got this sql schema. Table Job: id,title, type, is_enabled Table JobFileCopy: job_id,from_path,to_path Table JobFileDelete: job_id, file_path Table JobStartProcess: job_id, file_path, arguments, working_directory There are many other tables with varying number of columns and they all got foreign key job_id which is linked to id in table Job. My questions: Is this the right approach? I don't have requirement to delete anything at anytime. I will require to select and insert mostly. Secondly, what is the best approach to get the list of jobs with relevant details from all the different tables in a single database hit? e.g I would like to select top 20 jobs with details, their details can be in any table (depends on column type in table Job) which I don't know until runtime. Thanks in advance. Regards,

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• How to relate keywords to records - Many to Many

  - by webworm

  Hi All, I am looking for suggestions on database design for a sample jobs listing application. I have many jobs that I would like to associate various keywords with. Each job can have multiple keywords. I would like to store the keywords in a seperate table instead of in a field within the Job table so as to avoid mispellings in keywords. What is the best way to relate keywords to the jobs? I was thinking of using an intermediary table that would have a many to many relationship linking keywords to jobs. Is this the best way to go or should I just have a field in the Job table that contains multiple keywords? Thanks for any suggestions.

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• Method for SharePoint list/item locking across processes/machines?

  - by Steve

  In general, is there a decent way in SharePoint to control race conditions due to two processes or even two machines in the farm operating on the same list or list item at the same time? That is, is there any mechanism either built in or that can be fabricated via the Object Model for doing cross-process or cross-machine locking of individual list items? I want to write a timer job that performs a bunch of manipulations on a list. This list is written to by the SharePoint UI and then read by the UI. I want to be able to make sure that the UI doesn't either write to or read from the list when it is in an inconsistent state due to the timer job being in the middle of a manipulation. Is there any way to do this? Also, I want to allow for multiple instances of the timer job to run simultaneously. This, again, will require a lock to be sure that the two jobs don't attempt to operate on the same list/item at the same time. TIA for any help!

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• Passing Large amount of data in PHP.

  - by Simple

  I would like to know what is the best way to pass a large amount of XML data from one PHP script to another. I have a script that reads in an XML feed of jobs. I would like to have the script display a list of the job titles as links. When the user clicks a link they would be taken to another page displaying the details for that job. The job details are too large to send in the query string, and it seems poor style to start a session for data that isn't specific to that user. Any ideas?

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• Clarifying... So Background Jobs don't Tie Up Application Resources (in Rails)?

  - by viatropos

  I'm trying to get a better grasp of the inner workings of background jobs and how they improve performance. I understand that the goal is to have the application return a response to the user as fast as it can, so you don't want to, say, parse a huge feed that would take 10 seconds because it would prevent the application from being able to process any other requests. So it's recommended to put any operations that take more than say 500ms to execute, into a queued background job. What I don't understand is, doesn't that just delay the same problem? I know the user who invoked that background job will get an immediate response, but what if another user comes right when that background job starts (and it takes 10 seconds to finish), wont that user have to wait? Or is the main issue that, requests are the only thing that can happen one-at-a-time, while on the other hand a request can start while one+ background jobs are in the middle of running? Is that correct?

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• Three Easy Ways of Providing Feedback to the Oracle AutoVue Team

  - by Celine Beck

  Customer feedback is essential in helping us deliver best-in-class Enterprise Visualization solutions which are centered around real-world usage. As the Oracle AutoVue Product Management team is busy prioritizing the next round of improvements, enhancements and new innovation to the AutoVue platform, I thought it would be a good idea to provide our blog-readers with a recap of how best to provide product feedback to the AutoVue Product Management team. This gives you the opportunity to help shape our future agenda and make our solutions better for you. Enterprise Visualization Special Interest Group (EV SIG): the AutoVue EV SIG is a customer-driven initiative that has recently been created to share knowledge and information between members and discuss common and best practices around Enterprise Visualization. The EV SIG also serves as a mechanism for establishing and communicating to AutoVue Product Management users’ collective priorities for the future development, direction and enhancement of the AutoVue product family with the objective of ensuring their continuous improvement. Essentially, EV SIG members meet in order to share and prioritize feedback and use this input to begin dialog with the AutoVue Product Management team on what they deem to be the most important improvements to Enterprise Visualization solutions. The AutoVue EV SIG is by far the best platform for sharing and relaying feedback to our Product Strategy / Management team regarding general product enhancements, industry-specific scenarios, new use cases, usability, support, deployability, etc, and helping us shape the future direction of Enterprise Visualization solutions. We strongly encourage ALL our customers to sign up for the SIG;  here is how you can do so: Sign up for the EVSIG mailing list b.    Visit the group’s website c.    Contact Dennis Walker at Harris Corporation directly should you have any questions: dwalke22-AT-harris-DOT-com Customer / Partner Advisory Boards: The AutoVue Product Strategy / Management team also periodically runs Customer and Partner Advisory Boards. These invitation-only events bring together individuals chosen from Oracle AutoVue’s top customers that are using AutoVue at the enterprise level, as well as strategic partners.  The idea here is to establish open lines of communication between top customers and partners and the Oracle AutoVue Product Strategy team, help us communicate AutoVue’s product direction, share perspectives on today and tomorrow’s challenges and needs for Enterprise Visualization, and validate that proposed additions to the product are valid industry solutions. Our next Customer / Partner Advisory Board will be held in San Francisco during Oracle Open World, please contact your account manager to find out more about the CAB Members’ nomination process. Enhancement Requests:  Enhancement requests are request logged by customers or partners with Product Development for a feature that is not currently available in Oracle AutoVue. Enhancement requests (ER) can be logged easily via the My Oracle Support portal. This is the best way to share feedback with us at the functionality level; for instance if you would like to see a new format supported in AutoVue or make suggestions as per how certain functionality can be improved or should behave. Once the ER is logged, it is then evaluated by Product Management based on feasibility, product adequation and business justification. Product Management then decides whether to consider this ER for future release or not. What helps accelerate the process is hearing from a large number of customers who urgently need a particular feature or configuration. Hence the importance of logging Metalink Service Requests, and describing in details your business expectations. You can include key milestones dates and justifications as to why this request is important and the benefits your organization stands to gain should this request be accepted. Again, feedback from customers and partners is critical to ensure we offer solutions that have the biggest impact on customers’ business processes and day-to-day operations. All feedback is welcome,. So please don’t be shy! 

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• SQLAuthority News – A Successful Community TechDays at Ahmedabad – December 11, 2010

  - by pinaldave

  We recently had one of the best community events in Ahmedabad. We were fortunate that we had SQL Experts from around the world to have presented at this event. This gathering was very special because besides Jacob Sebastian and myself, we had two other speakers traveling all the way from Florida (Rushabh Mehta) and Bangalore (Vinod Kumar).There were a total of nearly 170 attendees and the event was blast. Here are the details of the event. Pinal Dave Presenting at Community Tech Days On the day of the event, it seemed to be the coldest day in Ahmedabad but I was glad to see hundreds of people waiting for the doors to be opened some hours before. We started the day with hot coffee and cookies. Yes, food first; and it was right after my keynote. I could clearly see that the coffee did some magic right away; the hall was almost full after the coffee break. Jacob Sebastian Presenting at Community Tech Days Jacob Sebastian, an SQL Server MVP and a close friend of mine, had an unusual job of surprising everybody with an innovative topic accompanied with lots of question-and-answer portions. That’s definitely one thing to love Jacob, that is, the novelty of the subject. His presentation was entitled “Best Database Practices for the .Net”; it really created magic on the crowd. Pinal Dave Presenting at Community Tech Days Next to Jacob Sebastian, I presented “Best Database Practices for the SharePoint”. It was really fun to present Database with the perspective of the database itself. The main highlight of my presentation was when I talked about how one can speed up the database performance by 40% for SharePoint in just 40 seconds. It was fun because the most important thing was to convince people to use the recommendation as soon as they walk out of the session. It was really amusing and the response of the participants was remarkable. Pinal Dave Presenting at Community Tech Days My session was followed by the most-awaited session of the day: that of Rushabh Mehta. He is an international BI expert who traveled all the way from Florida to present “Self Service BI” session. This session was funny and truly interesting. In fact, no one knew BI could be this much entertaining and fascinating. Rushabh has an appealing style of presenting the session; he instantly got very much interaction from the audience. Rushabh Mehta Presenting at Community Tech Days We had a networking lunch break in-between, when we talked about many various topics. It is always interesting to get in touch with the Community and feel a part of it. I had a wonderful time during the break. Vinod Kumar Presenting at Community Tech Days After lunch was apparently the most difficult session for the presenter as during this time, many people started to fall sleep and get dizzy. This spot was requested by Microsoft SQL Server Evangelist Vinod Kumar himself. During our discussion he suggested that if he gets this slot he would make sure people are up and more interactive than during the morning session. Just like always, this session was one of the best sessions ever. Vinod is true to his word as he presented the subject of “Time Management for Developer”. This session was the biggest hit in the event because the subject was instilled in the mind of every participant. Vinod Kumar Presenting at Community Tech Days Vinod’s session was followed by his own small session. Due to “insistent public demand”, he presented an interesting subject, “Tricks and Tips of SQL Server“. In 20 minutes he has done another awesome job and all attendees wanted more of the tricks. Just as usual he promised to do that next time for us. Vinod’s session was succeeded by Prabhjot Singh Bakshi’s session. He presented an appealing Silverlight concept. Just the same, he did a great job and people cheered him. Prabhjot Presenting at Community Tech Days We had a special invited speaker, Dhananjay Kumar, traveling all the way from Pune. He always supports our cause to help the Community in empowering participants. He presented the topic about Win7 Mobile and SharePoint integration. This was something many did not even expect to be possible. Kudos to Dhananjay for doing a great job. Dhananjay Kumar Presenting at Community Tech Days All in all, this event was one of the best in the Community Tech Days series in Ahmedabad. We were fortunate that legends from the all over the world were present here to present to the Community. I’d say never underestimate the power of the Community and its influence over the direction of the technology. Vinod Kumar Presenting trophy to Pinal Dave Vinod Kumar Presenting trophy to Pinal Dave This event was a very special gathering to me personally because of your support to the vibrant Community. The following awards were won for last year’s performance: Ahmedabad SQL Server User Group (President: Jacob Sebastian; Leader: Pinal Dave) – Best Tier 2 User Group Best Development Community Individual Contributor – Pinal Dave Speakers I was very glad to receive the award for our entire Community. Attendees at Community Tech Days I want to say thanks to Rushabh Mehta, Vinod Kumar and Dhananjay Kumar for visiting the city and presenting various technology topics in Community Tech Days. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: MVP, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Did you think I wasn’t going to show up?

  - by Ratman21

  Well Monday was not good for me Job wise or Dare wise. Why? The Census job ended (after only two weeks!). It seems our group was too good at working our blocks and ran out of blocks in our area to work. Out of work again! Well at lest, they gave us a full days pay for Monday. As to dare wise, “Love Is Kind”. As I said, not saying any thing negative was and is easy for me (Love Is Patient).  Kindness is Love in action, no I don’t have problem with doing this (Which is Gentleness, Helpfulness, Willingness or Initiative; well maybe little with the initiative part). It was the dare part “In Addition To Saying Nothing Negative To Your Spouse Again Today, Do At Least One Unexpected Gesture As An Act Of Kindness”. It was the finding or waiting for something I could do.   Well I will keep on trying on that but; will move on to the next day/dare “Love is not selfish”. Stay tuned.

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• Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Spiderman

  - by Pinal Dave

  I have to admit, Spiderman is my favorite superhero.  The most recent movie recently was released in theaters, so it has been at the front of my mind for some time. Spiderman was my favorite superhero even before the latest movie came out, but of course I took my whole family to see the movie as soon as I could!  Every one of us loved it, including my daughter.  We all left the movie thinking how great it would be to be Spiderman.  So, with that in mind, I started thinking about how we are like Spiderman in our everyday lives, especially developers. Let me list some of the reasons why I think every developer is a Spiderman. We have special powers, just like a superhero.  There is a reason that when there are problems or emergencies, we get called in, just like a superhero!  Our powers might not be the ability to swing through skyscrapers on a web, our powers are our debugging abilities, but there are still similarities! Spiderman never gives up.  He might not be the strongest superhero, and the ability to shoot web from your wrists is a pretty cool power, it’s not as impressive as being able to fly, or be invisible, or turn into a hulking green monster.  Developers are also human.  We have cool abilities, but our true strength lies in our willingness to work hard, find solutions, and go above and beyond to solve problems. Spiderman and developers have “spidey sense.”  This is sort of a joke in the comics and movies as well – that Spiderman can just tell when something is about to go wrong, or when a villain is just around the corner.  Developers also have a spidey sense about when a server is about to crash (usually at midnight on a Saturday). Spiderman makes a great superhero because he doesn’t look like one.  Clark Kent is probably fooling no one, hiding his superhero persona behind glasses.  But Peter Parker actually does blend in.  Great developers also blend in.  When they do their job right, no one knows they were there at all. “With great power comes great responsibility.”  There is a joke about developers (sometimes we even tell the jokes) about how if they are unhappy, the server or databases might mysteriously develop problems.  The truth is, very few developers would do something to harm a company’s computer system – they take their job very seriously.  It is a big responsibility. These are just a few of the reasons why I love Spiderman, why I love being a developer, and why I think developers are the greatest.  Let me know other reasons you love Spiderman and developers, or if you can shoot webs from your wrists – I might have a job for you. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• TFS 2010 and the missing Area & Iterations (stale data) Issue

  - by andresv

  The symptom is this: you change some area or iteration in a TFS Project, but the change is not reflected (or updated) in VS or any other TFS Client. Well, it happens that TFS now has some clever caching mechanisms that need to be updated when you make a change like this, and those changes are propagated by some scheduled jobs TFS is continuously running in the Application Tier.  So, you you get this behavior, please check (and possibly restart) the "Visual Studio Team Foundation Background Job Agent" service. In my case, this service was logging a very odd "Object Reference Not Set" into the Windows Event Log, and a simple restart fixed it. Hope this is fixed by RTM...   (we are using the RC version). And by the way, if the job agent is broken there are some other things that stops working like email notifications. Best regards, Andrés G Vettori, CTO, VMBC  

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• On Contract Employment

  - by kerry

  I am going to post about something I don’t post about a lot, the business side of development.  Scott at the antipimp does a good job of explaining how contracts work from a business perspective.  I am going to give a view from the ground. First, a little background on myself.  I have recently taken a 6 month contract after about 8 years of fulltime employment.  I have 2 kids, and a stay at home wife.  I took this contract opportunity because I wanted to try it on for size.  I have always wondered whether I would like doing contracts over fulltime employment.  So, in keeping with the theme of this blog I will write this down now so that I may reference it later. ALL jobs are temporary! Right now you may not realize it, most people simply ignore it, but EVERY job is temporary.  Everyone should be planning for life after the money stops coming in.  Sadly, most people do not.  Contracting pushes this issue to the forefront, making you deal with it.  After a month on a contract, I am happy to say that I am saving more than I ever saved in a fulltime position.  Hopefully, I will be ready in case of an extended window of unemployment between contracts. Networking I find it extremely gratifying getting to know people.  It is especially beneficial when moving to a new city.  What better way to go out and meet people in your field than to work a few contracts?  6 months of working beside someone and you get to know them pretty well.  This is one of my favorite aspects. Technical Agility Moving between IS shops takes (or molds you into) a flexible person.  You have to be able to go in and hit the ground running.  This means you need to be able to sit down and start work on a large codebase working in a language that you may or may not have that much experience in.  It is also an excellent way to learn new languages and broaden your technical skill set.  I took my current position to learn Ruby.  A month ago, I had only used it in passing, but now I am using it every day.  It’s a tragedy in this field when people start coding for the joy and love of coding, then become deeply entrenched in their companies methods and technologies that it becomes a just a job. Less Stress I am not talking about the kind of stress you get from a jackass boss.  I am talking about the kind of stress I (or others) experience about planning and future proofing your code.  Not saying I stay up at night worrying whether we have done it right, if that code I wrote today is going to bite me later, but it still creeps around in the dark recesses of my mind.  Careful though, I am not suggesting you write sloppy code; just defer any large architectural or design decisions to the ‘code owners’. Flexible Scheduling It makes me very happy to be able to cut out a few hours early on a Friday (provided the work is done) and start the weekend off early by going to the pool, or taking the kids to the park.  Contracting provides you this opportunity (mileage may vary).  Most of your fulltime brethren will not care, they will be jealous that they’re corporate policy prevents them from doing the same.  However, you must be mindful of situations where this is not appropriate, and don’t over do it.  You are there to work after all. Affirmation of Need Have you ever been stuck in a job where you thought you were underpaid?  Have you ever been in a position where you felt like there was not enough workload for you?  This is not a problem for contractors.  When you start a contract it is understood that you are needed, and the employer knows that you are happy with the terms. Contracting may not be for everyone.  But, if you develop a relationship with a good consulting firm, keep their clients happy, then they will keep you happy.  They want you to work almost as much as you do.  Just be sure and plan financially for any windows of unemployment.

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• The Winds of Change are a Blowin&rsquo;

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  For six years I have been an avid and outspoken fan and paying customer of SourceGear products…from Vault to Dragnet to Fortress and on to Vault Professional, but that is all changing now.  Not the fan part, but the paying customer part.  I’m still a huge fan.  I think that SourceGear does a great job with their product and support has been fantastic when needed (which is not very often).  I think that Eric Sink has done a fine job building a quality company and products, and I appreciate his contributions to the tech community through this blogging and books.  I still think their products are high quality and do a fantastic job of what they do.  But there’s the rub…what they do is no longer enough for me. As I have rebuilt our development team over the last couple of years, and we have begun to investigate Scrum and Kanban, I realize that I need more visibility into the progress of the team.  I need better project management tools, and this is where Vault Professional lags behind several other tools.  Granted, in the latest release (Vault 6.0) they added a nice time tracking feature, but I want more.  (Note, I did contact SourceGear about my quest for more, but apparently, the rest of their customer base has not been clamoring for this and so they have not built it.  Granted, I wasn’t clamoring for it either until just recently, but unfortunately for SourceGear, I want it now and don’t want to wait for them to build it into their system.) Ironically, it was SourceGear themselves who started to turn me on to the possibilities of other tools.  They built a limited integration with Axosoft OnTime which I read about several times on their support site (I used to regularly read and occasionally comment on their Support Forum).  I decided to check out OnTime and was very impressed with the tool for work item tracking and project management (not to mention their great Scrum Master in 10 Minutes video).  I fell in love with the capabilities of OnTime.  Unfortunately, the integration with Vault for source control management was, as I mentioned, limited.  I could have forfeited the integration between work items and source code, but there is too much benefit to linking check-ins to work items for me to give that up.  So then I did what was previously unthinkable for me, I considered switching not just the work tracking tool, but also the source code management tool.  This was really stepping outside my comfort zone because source code is Gold, and not to be trifled with.  When you find a good weapon to protect your gold, stick with it. I looked at Git and Tortoise SVN, but the integration methods for those was pretty rough compared to what I was used to.  The recommended tool from Axosoft’s point of view appeared to be RocketSVN, but I really wasn’t sure I wanted to go the “flavor of Subversion” route.  Then I started thinking about that other tool I liked back when I first chose to go with Vault, but couldn’t afford:  Team Foundation Server.  And what do you know…Microsoft has not only radically improved it over that version from back in 2006, but they also came to their senses about how it should be licensed, and it is much more affordable now.  So I started looking into the latest capabilities in the 2012 version, and I fell in love all over again. I really went deep on checking out the tools.  I watched numerous webcasts from Microsoft partners, went to a beta preview on Microsoft’s campus, and watched a lot of Channel 9 videos on the new ALM features (oooh…shiny).  Frankly, I was very impressed with the capabilities of the newest version, and figured this was probably our direction.  As an interesting twist of fate, one of my employees crossed paths with an ALM Consultant from Northwest Cadence, a local Microsoft Partner, and one of the companies that produced several of the webcasts that I had been watching.  So I gave Bryon a call and started grilling him to see if he really knew anything or was just another guy who couldn’t find a job so he called himself a consultant.  It turns out Bryon actually knows a lot, especially in an area that was becoming a frustration point for us: Branching strategies and automated builds (that’s probably a whole separate blog entry).  As we talked, Bryon suggested we look into doing a DTDPS (Developer Tools Deployment Planning Services) session with his company.  This is a service that can be paid for by Microsoft Enterprise Agreement planning services credits or SA training benefits, and, again, coincidentally, we had several that were just about to expire, so I put them to good use. The DTDPS sessions were great; and Bryon, Rick, and the rest of the folks at Northwest Cadence have been a pleasure to work with.  We have just purchased a new server for our TFS rollout and are planning the steps and options right now.  This is still a big project ahead of us to not only install and configure TFS, but also to load all of our source code (many different systems, not just one program) and transition to the new way of life with TFS, but I am convinced that it is the right move for my team at this point in time.  We need the new capabilities that are in alignment with Scrum and Kanban methodologies in order to more efficiently manage all the different projects that we have going on at one time. I would still wholeheartedly endorse SourceGear’s products and Axosoft’s OnTime for those whose needs are met by those tools, but for me and my team, I think that TFS is the right fit, and I am looking forward to the change.

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