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• From Bluehost to WP Engine, My WordPress Story

  - by thatjeffsmith

  This is probably the longest blog post I’ve written in a LONG time. And if you’re used to coming here for the Oracle stuff, this post is not about that. It’s about my blog, and the stuff under the hood that makes it run, AKA WordPress. If you want to skip to the juicy stuff, then use these shortcuts: My Site Slowed Down How I Moved to WP Engine How WP Engine ‘Hooked’ Me Why WP Engine? I started thatJeffSmith.com on May 28th, 2010. I had been already been blogging for several years, but a couple of really smart people I respected (Andy, Brent – thanks again!) suggested that I take ownership of my content and begin building my personal brand. I thought that was a good idea, and so I signed up for service with bluehost. Bluehost makes setting up a WordPress site very, very easy. And, they continued to be easy to work with for the past 2 years. I would even recommend them to anyone looking to host their own WordPress install/site. For $83.40, I purchased a year’s worth of service and my domain name registration – a very good value. And then last year I paid $107.40 for another year’s services. And when that year expired I paid another $190.80 for an additional two year’s service in advance. I had been up to that point, getting my money’s worth. And then, just a few weeks ago… My Site Slowed to a Crawl That spike was from an April Fool's Day Post, I think Why? Well, when I first started blogging, I had the same problem that most beginner bloggers have – not many readers. In my first year of blogging, I think the highest number of readers on a single day was about 125. I remember that day as I was very excited to break 100! Bluehost was very reliable, serving up my content with maybe a total of 3-4 outages in the past 2 years. Support was usually very prompt with answers and solutions, and I love their ‘Chat now’ technology – much nicer than message boards only or pay-to-talk phone support. In the past 6 months however, I noticed a couple of things: daily traffic was increasing – woohoo! my service was experiencing severe CPU throttling – doh! To be honest, I wasn’t aware the throttling was occuring, but I did know that the response time of my blog was starting to lag. Average load times were approaching 20-30 seconds. Not good when good sites are loading in 5 seconds or less. And just this past week, in getting ready to launch a new website for work that sucked in an RSS feed from my blog, the new page was left waiting for more than a minute. Not good! In fact my boss asked, why aren’t you blogging on Blogger? Ugh. I tried a few things to fix the problem: I paid for a premium WordPress theme – Themify’s Grido (thanks to @SQLRockstar for the heads-up) I installed a couple of WP caching plugins I read every WP optimization blog post I could get my greedy little eyes on However, at the same time I was also getting addicted to WordPress bloggers talking about all the cool things you could do with your blog. As a result I had at one point about 30 different plugins installed. WordPress runs on MySQL, and certain queries running via these plugins were starving for CPU. Plugins that would be called every page load meant that as more people clicked on my site, the more CPU I needed. I’m not stupid, so I eventually figured out that maybe less plugins was better, and was able to go down to just 20. But still, the site was running like a dog. CPU Throttling, makes MySQL wait to run a query Bluehost runs shared servers. Your site runs on the same box that several hundred (or thousand?) other services are running on. If you take more CPU than they think you should have, they will limit your service by making you stand in line for CPU, AKA ‘throttling.’ This is not bad. This business model allows them to serve many, many users for a very fair price. It works great until, well, until it doesn’t. I noticed in the last week that for every minute of service, I was being throttled between 60 and 300 seconds. If there were 5 MySQL processes running, then every single one of them were being held in check. The blog visitor notice this as their page requests would take a minute or more to be answered. Bluehost unfortunately doesn’t offer dedicated server hosting, so there was no real upgrade path for me follow and remain one of their customers. So what was I to do? Uninstall every plugin and hope the site sped up? Ask for people to take turns on my blog? I decided to spend my way out of the problem. I signed up for service with WP Engine and moved ThatJeffSmith.com The first 2 months are free, and after that it’s about $29/month to run my site on their system. My math tells me that’s a good bit more expensive than what Bluehost was charging me – to the tune of about 300% more a month. Oh, and I should just say that my blog is a personal blog even though I talk about work stuff here. I don’t get paid for blogging, I don’t sell ads, and I don’t expense the service fees – this is my personal passion. So is it worth it? In the first 4 days, it seems to be totally worth it. Load times have gone from 20-30 seconds to less than 5 seconds. A few folks have told me via Twitter that they notice faster page loads. I anticipate this will indirectly lead to more traffic as Google penalizes you in search results if your site is too slow, and of course some folks won’t even bother waiting more than 5-10 seconds. I noticed right away that writing posts, uploading pictures, and just using the WordPress dashboard in general was much more responsive. So writing is less of a chore now, which means I won’t have a good reason not to write How I Moved to WP Engine I signed up for the service and registered my domain. I then took a full export of my ‘old’ site by doing a FTP GET of all my files, then did a MySQL database backup, exported my WordPress Theme settings to a .zip file, and then finally used the WordPress ‘Export’ feature. I then used the WordPress ‘Import’ on the new site to load up my posts. Then I uploaded the theme .zip package from Themify. Then I FTP’d the ‘wp-content’ directory up to my new server using SFTP (WP Engine only supports secure FTP – good on them!) Using a temporary URL to see my new site, I was able to confirm that everything looked mostly OK – I’ll detail the challenges and issues of fixing the content next – but then it was time to ‘flip the switch.’ I updated the IP address that the DNS lookup tables use to route traffic to my new server. In a matter of minutes the DNS servers around the world were updated and it was time to see the new site! But It Was ‘Broken’ I had never moved a website before, and in my rush to update the DNS, I had changed the records without really finding out what I was supposed to do first. After re-reading the directions provided by WP Engine and following the guidance of their support engineer, I realized I had needed to set the CNAME (Alias) ‘www’ record to point to a different URL than the ‘www.thatjeffsmith.com’ entry I had set. Once corrected the site was up and running in less than a minute. Then It Was Only Mostly Broken Many of my plugins weren’t working. Apparently just ftp’ing the wp-content directory up wasn’t the proper way to re-install the plugin. I suspect file permissions or file ownership wasn’t proper. Some plug-ins were working, many had their settings wiped to the defaults, and a few just didn’t work again. I had to delete the directory of the plug-in manually via SFTP, and then use the WP Dashboard to install it from scratch. And here was my first ‘lesson’ – don’t switch the DNS records until you’ve completely tested your new site. I wasn’t able to navigate the old WP console to review my plug-in settings. Thankfully I was able to use the Wayback Machine to reverse engineer some things, and of course most plug-ins aren’t that complicated to setup to begin with. An example of one that I had to redo from scratch is the ‘Twitter @Anywhere Plus’ plugin that I use to create the form that allows folks to tweet a post they enjoyed at the end of each story. How WP Engine ‘Hooked’ Me I actually signed up with another provider first. They ranked highly in Google searches and a few Tweeps recommended them to me. But hours after signing up and I still didn’t have sever reyady, I was ready to give up on them. They offered no chat or phone support – only mail and message boards. And the message boards were rife with posts about how the service had gone downhill in the past 6 months. To their credit, they did make it easy to cancel, although I did have to do so via email as their website ‘cancel’ button was non-existent. Within minutes of activating my WP Engine account I had received my welcome message and directions on how to get started. I was able to see my staged website right away. They also did something very cool before I even got started – they looked at my existing site and told me by how much they could improve its performance. The proof is in the web pudding. I like this for a few reasons, but primarily I liked their business model. It told me they knew what they were doing, and that they were willing to put their money where their mouth was. This was further evident by their 60-day money back guarantee. And if I understand it correctly, they don’t even take your money until after that 60 day period is over. After a day, I was welcomed by the WP Engine social media team, and was given the opportunity to subscribe to their newsletter and follow their account on Twitter. I noticed their Twitter team is sure to post regular WordPress tips several times a day. It’s not just an account that’s setup for the sake of having a Twitter presence. These little things add up and give me confidence in my decision to choose them as my hosting partner. ‘Partner’ – that’s a lot nicer word than just ‘service provider,’ isn’t it? Oh, and they offered me a t-shirt. Don’t ever doubt the power of a ‘free’ t-shirt! How awesome is this e-mail, from a customer perspective? I wasn’t really expecting any of this. Exceeding expectations before I have even handed over a single dollar seems like a pretty good business plan. This is how you treat customers. Love them to death, and they reward you with loyalty. But Jeff, You Skipped a Piece Here, Why WP Engine? I found them on one of those ‘Top 10′ list posts, and pulled up their webpage. I noticed they offered a specialized service – they host WordPress installs, and that’s it. Their servers are tuned specifically for running WordPress. They had in bolded text, things like ‘INSANELY FAST. INFINITELY SCALABLE.’ and ‘LIGHTNING SPEED.’ And then they offered insurance against hackers and they took care of automatic backups and restores. The only drawbacks I have noticed so far relate to plugins I used that have been ‘blacklisted.’ In order to guarantee that ‘lightning’ speed, they have banned the use of the CPU-suckiest plugins. One of those is the ‘Related Posts’ plugin. So if you are a subscriber and are reading this in your email, you’ll notice there’s no links back to my blog to continue reading other related stories. Since that referral traffic is very small single-digit for my site, I decided that I’m OK with that. I’d rather have the warp-speed page loads. Again, I think that will lead to higher traffic down the road. In 50+ days I will need to decide if WP Engine is a permanent solution. I’ll be sure to update this post when that time comes and let y’all know how it turns out.

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• Nullpointerexcption & abrupt IOStream closure with inheritence and subclasses

  - by user1401652

  A brief background before so we can communicate on the same wave length. I've had about 8-10 university courses on programming from data structure, to one on all languages, to specific ones such as java & c++. I'm a bit rusty because i usually take 2-3 month breaks from coding. This is a personal project that I started thinking of two years back. Okay down to the details, and a specific question, I'm having problems with my mutator functions. It seems to be that I am trying to access a private variable incorrectly. The question is, am I nesting my classes too much and trying to mutate a base class variable the incorrect way. If so point me in the way of the correct literature, or confirm this is my problem so I can restudy this information. Thanks package GroceryReceiptProgram; import java.io.*; import java.util.Vector; public class Date { private int hour, minute, day, month, year; Date() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What's the hour? (Use 1-24 military notation"); hour = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); System.out.println("what's the minute? "); minute = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); System.out.println("What's the day of the month?"); day = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); System.out.println("Which month of the year is it, use an integer"); month = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); System.out.println("What year is it?"); year = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); keyboard.close(); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println("Yo houston we have a problem"); } } public void setHour(int hour) { this.hour = hour; } public void setHour() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What hour, use military notation?"); this.hour = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); keyboard.close(); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ":doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public int getHour() { return hour; } public void setMinute(int minute) { this.minute = minute; } public void setMinute() { try (BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in))) { System.out.println("What minute?"); this.minute = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ": doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ": minute shall not cooperate"); } catch (NullPointerException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ": in the setMinute function of the Date class"); } } public int getMinute() { return minute; } public void setDay(int day) { this.day = day; } public void setDay() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What day 0-6?"); this.day = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); keyboard.close(); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ":doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public int getDay() { return day; } public void setMonth(int month) { this.month = month; } public void setMonth() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What month 0-11?"); this.month = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); keyboard.close(); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ":doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public int getMonth() { return month; } public void setYear(int year) { this.year = year; } public void setYear() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What year?"); this.year = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); keyboard.close(); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ":doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public int getYear() { return year; } public void set() { setMinute(); setHour(); setDay(); setMonth(); setYear(); } public Vector<Integer> get() { Vector<Integer> holder = new Vector<Integer>(5); holder.add(hour); holder.add(minute); holder.add(month); holder.add(day); holder.add(year); return holder; } }; That is the Date class obviously, next is the other base class Location. package GroceryReceiptProgram; import java.io.*; import java.util.Vector; public class Location { String streetName, state, city, country; int zipCode, address; Location() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What is the street name"); streetName = keyboard.readLine(); System.out.println("Which state?"); state = keyboard.readLine(); System.out.println("Which city?"); city = keyboard.readLine(); System.out.println("Which country?"); country = keyboard.readLine(); System.out.println("Which zipcode?");//if not u.s. continue around this step zipCode = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); System.out.println("What address?"); address = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public void setZipCode(int zipCode) { this.zipCode = zipCode; } public void setZipCode() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What zipCode?"); this.zipCode = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); keyboard.close(); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ":doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public void set() { setAddress(); setCity(); setCountry(); setState(); setStreetName(); setZipCode(); } public int getZipCode() { return zipCode; } public void setAddress(int address) { this.address = address; } public void setAddress() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What minute?"); this.address = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); keyboard.close(); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ":doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public int getAddress() { return address; } public void setStreetName(String streetName) { this.streetName = streetName; } public void setStreetName() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What minute?"); this.streetName = keyboard.readLine(); keyboard.close(); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public String getStreetName() { return streetName; } public void setState(String state) { this.state = state; } public void setState() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What minute?"); this.state = keyboard.readLine(); keyboard.close(); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public String getState() { return state; } public void setCity(String city) { this.city = city; } public void setCity() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What minute?"); this.city = keyboard.readLine(); keyboard.close(); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public String getCity() { return city; } public void setCountry(String country) { this.country = country; } public void setCountry() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What minute?"); this.country = keyboard.readLine(); keyboard.close(); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public String getCountry() { return country; } }; their parent(What is the proper name?) class package GroceryReceiptProgram; import java.io.*; public class FoodGroup { private int price, count; private Date purchaseDate, expirationDate; private Location location; private String name; public FoodGroup() { try { setPrice(); setCount(); expirationDate.set(); purchaseDate.set(); location.set(); } catch (NullPointerException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ": in the constructor of the FoodGroup class"); } } public void setPrice(int price) { this.price = price; } public void setPrice() { try (BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in))) { System.out.println("What Price?"); price = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ":doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ": in the FoodGroup class, setPrice function"); } catch (NullPointerException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ": in FoodGroup class. SetPrice()"); } } public int getPrice() { return price; } public void setCount(int count) { this.count = count; } public void setCount() { try (BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in))) { System.out.println("What count?"); count = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ":doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ": in the FoodGroup class, setCount()"); } catch (NullPointerException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ": in FoodGroup class, setCount"); } } public int getCount() { return count; } public void setName(String name) { this.name = name; } public void setName() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What minute?"); this.name = keyboard.readLine(); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public String getName() { return name; } public void setLocation(Location location) { this.location = location; } public Location getLocation() { return location; } public void setPurchaseDate(Date purchaseDate) { this.purchaseDate = purchaseDate; } public void setPurchaseDate() { this.purchaseDate.set(); } public Date getPurchaseDate() { return purchaseDate; } public void setExpirationDate(Date expirationDate) { this.expirationDate = expirationDate; } public void setExpirationDate() { this.expirationDate.set(); } public Date getExpirationDate() { return expirationDate; } } and finally the main class, so I can get access to all of this work. package GroceryReceiptProgram; public class NewMain { public static void main(String[] args) { FoodGroup test = new FoodGroup(); } } If anyone is further interested, here is a link the UML for this. https://www.dropbox.com/s/1weigjnxih70tbv/GRP.dia

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• What open source ecommerce webshops offer #1: usability, #2: PayPal integration, and #3: ease of administration and use

  - by Jonathan Hayward

  I've spent several days trying to deploy Satchmo, in the process asking several questions about deployment (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11277407/can-anyone-explain-this-error-message-deploying-a-satchmo-project-under-gunicorn, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11277685/is-there-a-howto-to-fcgi-for-deploying-satchmo, and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11278295/what-is-the-most-stable-release-of-satchmo). Django's tagline is "The web framework for perfectionists with deadlines," and Satchmo's tagline is equally forceful: "The webshop for perfectionists with deadlines." I'm looking more to set up, configure, design, etc., rather than code for this one, and I'm taking a bit of a hint that for me at least the "with deadlines" bit is something that I cannot manage. Deployment has been a time sink. So, taking a step back, I don't specifically need to edit and extend the source code; what I want are first, good usability and a clean experience for the end-user, then being easy to deploy/install/manage/maintain, and enough so that even if you're having a slow day it should at most be one day's work to install, one day's work to get running, and one day's work to rebrand as white label (for simple branding). What ecommerce webshops should I be looking at?

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• best-practices to block social sites

  - by adopilot

  In our company we have around 100 workstation with internet access, And day by day situation getting more worst and worst from perspective of using internet access for the purpose of doing private jobs, and wasting time on social sites. Open hearted I am not for blocking sites like Facebook, Youtube, and others similar but day by day my colleagues do not finishing his tasks and while I looking at their monitor all time they are ruining IE or Mozilla and chat and things like that. In other way Ill like to block youtube sometime when We have very poor internet access speed, Here is my questions: Do other companies blocking social sites ? Do I need dedicated device for that like hardware firewall, super expensive router Or I can do that whit my existing FreeBSD 6.1 self made router with two lan cards and configured nat to act like router. I was trying do that using ipfw and routerfirewall but without success, My code looks like ipfw add 25 deny tcp from 192.168.0.0/20 to www.facebook.com ipfw add 25 deny udp from 192.168.0.0/20 to www.facebook. ipfw add 25 deny tcp from 192.168.0.0/20 to www.dernek. ipfw add 25 deny udp from 192.168.0.0/20 to www.dernek. ipfw add 25 deny tcp from 192.168.0.0/20 to www.youtube. ipfw add 25 deny udp from 192.168.0.0/20 to www.youtube.com

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• SSD cache to minimize HDD spin-up time?

  - by sirprize

  short version first: I'm looking for Linux compatible software which is able to transparently cache HDD writes using an SSD. However, I only want to spin up the HDD once or twice a day (to write the cached data to the HDD). The rest of the time, the HDD should not be spinning due to noise concerns. Now the longer version: I have built a completely silent computer running Xubuntu. It has a A10-6700T APU, huge fanless cooler, fanless PSU, SSD. The problem is: it also has (and needs) a noisy HDD and I want to forbid spinning it up during the night. All writes should be cached on the SSD, reads are not needed in the night. Throughout every day, this computer will automatically download about 5 GB of data which will be retained for about a year, giving a total needed disk capacity of slightly less than 2 TB. This data is currently stored on a 3 TB noisy hard disk drive which is spinning day and night. Sometimes, I'll need to access some data from several months ago. However, most times I'll only need data from the last 14 days, which would fit on the SSD. Ideally, I'd like a transparent solution (all data on one filesystem) which caches all writes to the SSD, writing to the HDD only once a day. Reads would be served by the cache if they were still on the SDD, else the HDD would have to spin up. I have tried bcache without much success (using cache_mode=writeback, writeback_running=0, writeback_delay=86400, sequential_cutoff=0, congested_write_threshold_us=0 - anything missing?) and I read about ZFS ZIL/L2ARC but I'm not sure I can achieve my goal with ZFS. Any pointers? If all else fails, I will simply use some scripts to automatically copy files over to the big drive while deleting the oldest files from the SSD.

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• download management

  - by Jonathan

  I download many files, usually 2 or 3 a day, often 10ish. Some of them are duplicates because I just can't be bothered to find the original in my downloads folder. I have previously tried DAP and used that to create a new subfolder for each day's download. yet I have found this insufficient as sometimes I wish to find files by name/file type or I have multiple parts of downloads over more than one day. Another problem I have found is zips/rars/etc after downloading them and extracting them I then have the zip and the folder. I like it like on a Mac where it automatically extracts the zip after it has been downloaded and removes the zip. What I'd like to be able to do is sort the downloads by date, but dynamically so they are just in the big downloads folder, but I can just press a button and it will show me all the files from a particular site, or from a particular day or by a certain file type. Is there any software that will do this? I use Chrome as a browser but also have Firefox and like that. Jonathan

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• Looking for suitable backup solution Mac OS X to offsite Centos 6 server 1TB of working data

  - by Brady

  I'll start by saying what we have in place currently: On site file server (Mac OS X Server) that is used by GFX designers and they have a working 1TB of data. Offsite server with 2TB available storage (Centos 6) Mac OS X server rsync data to offsite server every 6 hours (rsync -avz --delete --progress -e ssh ...) Mac OS X server does full data backup to LTO 4 tape on a 10 day recycle (Mon-Fri for 2 weeks) rsync pushes about 60GB of file changes a day. The problem: The onsite tape backup is failing as 1TB of graphics files don't compress well to fit onto a 800GB LTO4 tape. Backup is incredibly slow doing a full backup. Pain in the backside getting people to remember to change the tape. Often gets forgotten etc The quick solution: Buy LTO5 Drive and tapes. However this has been turned down because of the cost... What I would like: Something that works in the same way rysnc works. Only changed data is sent over the wire and can be scheduled to run multiple times during the day. Data that is sent is compressed and sent over SSH. Something that keeps a 14day retention but doesn't keep duplicate data So as an example if I have 1TB of working data and 60GB of changes are made each day then I expect around 1.84TB of data to be stored on the offsite server. To work with the Mac OS X server and Centos 6 server. Not cost an arm and a leg. Must be a cheaper solution than buying an LTO5 drive with tapes (around £1500). Be able to be setup to run autonomously. Have some sort of control panel that will allow an admin to easily restore a file/folder. Any recommendations?

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• Excel Help: Data Input Help

  - by B-Ballerl

  Everyday I download data from a site that will have rows each filled with individual data for clients. I'm able to input the data into excel as a whole but after that I'm having trouble figuring out how to put it into a chart. For example Web visits time. So say Client 1 stayed for 5 min increasing his total time on the site to 20 min and Client 2 stayed for 0 min keeping his time of 10 min and they were both registered on new years eve, and R1's last login was today and R2's was yesterday. (R for some reason repersents Client, no idea why...). Client 3 hasn't been on since he registered keeping his total at 4 min So my data would look something like this for Today (20110104) R1,20101231,20110104,20 R2,20101231,20110103,10 R3,20101231,20101231,4 And this for the day before (201101030), R1,20101231,20110102,15 R2,20101231,20110103,10 R3,20101231,20101231,4 I get about 200+ client rows each day where even the names of the Client list are changing. Is it possible to import the data each day and fill it in a excel sheet where the Client number is off on the left hand side in a table, and the amount of time (Whole Number ex. 4) each day it spends on the site extend to the right under it's specific date see Picture? I've manage to create a manual sheet but have been unsucessful at getting excel to do any of it for me. Here are two pictures:

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• Log Shipping breaking daily on SQL Server 2005

  - by IT2

  I am facing a somewhat serious problem with Log Shipping on SQL Server 2005 and I am having trouble to correct it, so I will try some help from SF's experts. I have a Windows 2003 Server (PROD) that ships transactional log backups to another two servers: STAND1: Windows 2003 Server with SQL Server 2005. STAND2: Windows 2008 R2 Server with SQL Server 2005. The problem is that Log Shipping to STAND2 is breaking for ~ 90 minutes some times of the day and returning back without intervention. The breaking occur at times when the backup file is larger (after reindexing, etc). I can see the message below logged on the COPY job: *** Error: The specified network name is no longer available The copy agent was breaking dozens times a day only to STAND2 server, and after the changes below "only" breaks ~ two times a day: The frequency of the backup job was changed from 5 minutes to 10 minutes. Instead of backing up the 4 databases to the same folder, the log backups are now saved on separated folders for each database. The backup job doesn't run 24hs now, and only for 14 hours a day, when people are working on the database. I configured the SQL Server instances on the three servers to limit the memory, leaving more memory to the OS. Now I don't know what to do. Any help will be much appreciated! Thanks!

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• FTP Server with advanced features

  - by Nikolas Sakic

  Hi, We supply zone-files to our customers. Some zone files are big about 300MB and some are quite small, maybe like 1MB. We had this issue that someone setup a script to continually download the file. Imagine downloading 300MB file a few hundred times a day. Since, we don't have packet-shaper to throttle the traffic, we need to upgrade ftp server and use add-on modules to limit the download somehow. We currently use proftpd server. Also note that there are different users for different domains - say, if you want to download zone file for .INFO domain, then you use a particular user. That user can't download any other zone's file. This is what we are looking for: Have maximum of 400MB download per user per day. Or even have different download limit for different users per day. Have one connection per user at any time. Max # of connection (non-simultaneous) per user per day is 5. Anyone trying to exceed that gets banned for 24 hours. Has anyone used FTP server with similar restrictions above? Does anyone have any ideas where I can start? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. -N

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• How do I `SUM` by multiple columns in Excel

  - by dwwilson66

  I have a comma delimited file that includes two columns date/time (which imports as Excel's mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm custom format) and status of 1 or 0. The status represents a piece of equipment either being on or off. I'm trying to generate a graph that will show, hours up vs. down by day. CONSIDER: 1/1/2012 00:00, 1 1/1/2012 03:00, 0 1/1/2012 14:00, 1 1/3/2012 00:00, 0 This tells me that the equipment was up for three hours, down for eleven hours, and then up for thirty-four hours (across two calendar days). However, I would like to generate a graph that shows how many hours PER DAY we were up or down. CONSIDER: 1/1 XXXXXXXXXXXXX----------- (up 13, down 11) 1/2 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (up 24) To me, it seems that I need to generate a dataset summing HOURS by STATUS by CALENDAR DAY...but I can't seem to find a flavor of pivot table or nested SUM(IF(SUMIF(...))) combination to make it work. Most troubling is accounting for date changes...in my example above, since my uptime starting at 14:00 on 1/1/2012 crosses midnight, I need to know that 10 uptime hours get totalled with 1/1/2012 and 24 uptime hours get totalled with 1/2/2012. I may be able to do something with a calendar list to drive the date summation, but then I need a way to compare 01/01/2012 to 01/01/2012 03:00 as equal. There's got to be a way along the lines of if(INTEGER-PORTIONS-OF-SERIAL-DATES-ARE-EQUAL,TOTAL-HOURS-IF-VALUE-IS_1,0) but nothing's worked so far. Any suggestions? I've been battling this most of the day, and need a fresh perspective. Thanks

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• G4 server running slow

  - by Abby Kach

  I have HP proliant ML 350 servers. We have 8 remote locations where users connect and log on to our server through DYNDNS to access our company ERP's to conduct day to day work. The base of our company ERP's is oracle for which we have a separate server.Now the problem is day by day the load on the server is increasing and the speed is getting slower and slower and users are facing a lot of issues . so I are planning to implement Sonic wall VPN. I conducted a demo of sonic wall but it was slower than the current speed of dyndns. the configuration of my server is as follows :- Linux HP ProLiant 370 Intel Xenon 3.20 GHZ 150 GB (72 * 2) 3 GB Suse Omega HP ProLiant 370 Intel Xenon 3.20 GHZ 300GB (72.8 * 4) Raid 5 4 GB Windows Server 2K3 Enterprise Edition Storage Box HP Storage Works 1400 Intel Xenon 2.00 GHZ 4 TB(1 TB * 4) Raid 5 2 GB Windows Server 2K8 Enterprise Edition Domain & Terminal HP ProLiant 350 Intel Xenon 3.20 GHZ 250 GB(72.8 * 3) Raid 5 4 GB Windows Server 2K3 Enterprise Edition Can some one help me as to how can i speed up my network at remote locations and reduce the problems of speed etc..

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• Creating a test database with copied data *and* its own data

  - by Jordan Reiter

  I'd like to create a test database that each day is refreshed with data from the production database. BUT, I'd like to be able to create records in the test database and retain them rather than having them be overwritten. I'm wondering if there is a simple straightforward way to do this. Both databases run on the same server, so apparently that rules out replication? For clarification, here is what I would like to happen: Test database is created with production data I create some test records that I want to keep running on the test server (basically so I can have example records that I can play with) Next day, the database is completely refreshed, but the records I created that day are retained. Records that were untouched that day are replaced with records from the production database. The complication is if a record in the production database is deleted, I want it to be deleted on the test database too, so I do want to get rid of records in the test database that no longer exist in the production database, unless those records were created within the test database. Seems like the only way to do this would be to have some sort of table storing metadata about the records being created? So for example, something like this: CREATE TABLE MetaDataRecords ( id integer not null primary key auto_increment, tablename varchar(100), action char(1), pk varchar(100) ); DELETE FROM testdb.users WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT * from proddb.users WHERE proddb.users.id=testdb.users.id) AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT * from testdb.MetaDataRecords WHERE testdb.MetaDataRecords.pk=testdb.users.pk AND testdb.MetaDataRecords.action='C' AND testdb.MetaDataRecords.tablename='users' );

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• 2010 Collaboration Summit Impressions

  - by Elena Zannoni

  It's a bit late, but there you have it anyway. April 14 to 16 I attended the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in SFO. I was running two tracks, one on tracing and one on tools. You can see the tracks and the slides here: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/collaboration-summit/slides I was pretty busy both days, Thursday with a whole day tracing track, Friday with a half day toolchain track. The sessions were well attended, the rooms were full, with people spilling in the hallways. Some new things were presented, like Kernelshark, by Steve Rostedt, a GUI (yes, believe it or not, a GUI) written in GTK. It is very nice, showing a timeline for traced kernel events, and you can zoom in and filter at will. It works on the latest kernels, and it requires some new things/fixes in GTK. I don't recall exactly what version of GTK though. Dominique Toupin from Ericsson presented something about user requirements for tracing. Mostly though about who's who in the embedded world, and eclipse. Masami and Mathieu presented an update on their work. See their slides. The interesting thing to me was of course the new version of uprobes w/o underlying utrace presented by Jim Keniston. At the end of the session we had a discussion about the future of utrace. Roland wasn't there, butTom Tromey (also from RedHat) collected the feedback. Basically we are at a standstill now that utrace has been rejected yet again. There wasn't much advise that anybody could give, except jokingly, we decided that the only way in is to make it a part of perf events. There needs to be another refactoring, but most of all, this "killer app" that would be enabled because of utrace hasn't materialized yet. We think that having a good debugging story on Linux is enough of a killer app, for instance allowing multiple tracers, and not relying on SIGCHLD etc. I think this wasn't completely clear to the kernel community. Trying to achieve debugging via a gdb stub inside the kernel interfacing to utrace and that is controlled via the gdb remote protocol also lost its appeal (thankfully, since the gdb remote protocol is archaic). Somebody would have to be creative in how to submit utrace. It doesn't have to be called utrace (it was really a random choice, for lack of a letter that was not already used in front of the word "trace"). So basically, I think the ideas behind utrace are sound, and the necessity of a new interface is acknowledged. But I believe the integration/submission process with the kernel folks has to restart from scratch, clean slate. We'll see. There are many conferences and meetings coming up in the near future where things can be discussed further. On the second day, Friday, we had the tools talks. It was interesting to observe the more "kernel" oriented people's behavior towards the gcc etc community. The first talk was by Mark Mitchell, about Gcc and its new plugin architecture. After that, Paolo talked about the new C++1x standard, which will be finalized in 2011. Many features are already implemented in the libstdc++ library and gcc and usable today. We had a few minutes (really, the half day track was quite short) where Bradley Kuhn from the Software Freedom Law Center explained the GPLv3 exception for gcc (due to the new gcc plugin architecture and the availability of the intermediate results from the compilation, which is a new thing). I will not try to explain, but basically you cannot take the result of the preprocessing and then use that in your own proprietary compiler. After, we had a talk by Ian Taylor about the new Gold linker. One good thing in that area is that they are trying to make gold the new default linker (for instance Fedora will use gold as the distro linker). However gold is very different from binutils' old linker. It doesn't use a linker script, for instance. The kernel has been linked with gold many times as an exercise (the ground work was done by Kris Van Hees), but this needs to be constantly tested/monitored because the kernel linker script is very complex, and uses esoteric features (Wenji is now monitoring that each kernel RC can be built with gold). It was positive that people are now aware of gold and the need for it to be ported to more architectures. It seems that the porting is very easy, with little arch dependent code. Finally Tom Tromey presented about gdb and the archer project. Archer is a development branch of gdb mostly done by RedHat, where they are focusing on better c++ printing, c++ expression parsing, and plugins. The archer work is merged regularly in the gdb mainline. In general it was a good conference. I did miss most of the first day, because that's when I flew in. But I caught a couple of talks. Nothing earth shattering, except for Google giving each person registered a free Android phone. Yey.

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• Going to the Score Cards - Exceptional DBA Awards 2011

  - by Rodney

  This year marks my 4th year as a judge for the Exceptional DBA Awards, founded by Red Gate in 2008 to "recognize the essential but often overlooked contributions of DBAs, the unsung heroes of the IT community." As a professional DBA myself I have been honored to participate as a judge. It is not an easy job because there is a voluminous amount of nominees from all over the world. Each judge has to read through every word of the nominee's answers, deciding what makes each person special and stand out amongst their peers. What drives them? What single element of their submission will shine above all others? It is my hope that what I am about to divulge to you as a judge will prompt you to think about yourself or someone you know and decide that you may be the exceptional DBA who can take home the gold at this year's award ceremony in Seattle. We are more than a few weeks into the nomination process and there are quite a number of submissions already. I can not tell you how many as that would not be fair. I can say it is not 1 million or more. I can also say that it is not 100,000. But that is all I can say about that. However, I can tell you that it is enough this year that we are breaking records on the number of people who have been influenced, inspired or intrigued by the awards in the past. I remember them all like it were yesterday. fuzzy thought cloud here. It was a rainy day in Seattle (all memories for each award ceremony will start thusly) and I was in the hotel going over my notes on what I wanted to say about the winner of the 2008 Red Gate Exceptional DBA Award. The notes were on index cards that I had either bought or stolen from my wife, I do not recall, but I was nervous which was unlike me. This was, after all, a big night for the winner. Of course, we, the judges and the SQL community, had already decided the winner and now all that remained was to present the award. The room was packed. It was Casino night, sponsored by sqlservercentral.com. Money (fake), drinks (not fake) and camaraderie flowed through the room. Dan McClain won the award that year. He worked for Anheuser-Busch at the time. I promise that did not influence my decision. We presented Dan with the award. He was very proud of this achievement, rightfully so, as was the SQL community for him. I spoke with Dan throughout the conference and realized how huge this award was for him, not just personally but professionally. It was a rainy day in Seattle in 2009 and I was nervous. I was asked to speak to a group of people again as a judge for the Exceptional DBA Awards. This year, Josef Richberg would be the recipient of the award, but he would not be able to attend. We all prayed for him as he fought through an illness and congratulated him for his accomplishments as a DBA for his company. He got better and sallied forth and continued to give back to the SQL community that he saw as one big family. In 2010, and I am getting ahead of myself, he was asked to be a judge himself for the very award he had just received the year before. It was a sunny day in Seattle and I missed it, because it was in July and I was not there. It was a rainy day in Seattle and it is 2010 and Tracy Hamlin enters a submission that blows this judge away. She is managing a 50 Terabyte distributed database ("50 Gigabytes! Are you kidding me!!!", Rodney jokes.)  and loves her daily job as a DBA working with developers, mentoring them and teaching them best practices with kindness and patience. She is a people person who just happens to have 10+ years experience with RDBMS'. She wins the award and goes on to be recognized as famous at PASS. It will be a rainy day in Seattle this year when I sit amongst my old constituent judges and friends, Brad McGehee, http://www.simple-talk.com/books/sql-books/how-to-become-an-exceptional-dba,-2nd-edition/, Steve Jones, whom we all know and love at http://www.sqlservercentral.com and a young upstart to the SQL Community, this cat named Brent Ozar to announce the 2011 winner. I personally have not heard of Brent but I am told I have interviewed him for a DBA position several years ago and turned him down, http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2011/05/exceptional-dba-contest/ . I hope that did not jeopardize his future in the SQL world. I am a big hearted oaf and would feel horrible. Hopefully I will meet him at PASS and we can work this all out and I can help him get a DBA job. The rain has stopped and a new year is upon us. The stakes are high...the competition is fierce...the rewards are incredible. The entry form awaits you. http://www.exceptionaldba.com/ I very much look forward to meeting you and presenting the award to you in front of hundreds of your envious but proud peers as the new Exceptional DBA for 2011 at the PASS Summit. Here is what you could win: The Exceptional DBA of the Year receives full conference registration for the 2011 PSS Summit in Seattle, where the awards ceremony will take place, four nights' hotel accommodation, and $300 towards travel expenses. They will also be featured on Simple-Talk. Are you ready? Are you nervous?

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• Date and Time Support in SQL Server 2008

  - by Aamir Hasan

    Using the New Date and Time Data Types Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} 1.       The new date and time data types in SQL Server 2008 offer increased range and precision and are ANSI SQL compatible. 2.       Separate date and time data types minimize storage space requirements for applications that need only date or time information. Moreover, the variable precision of the new time data type increases storage savings in exchange for reduced accuracy. 3.       The new data types are mostly compatible with the original date and time data types and use the same Transact-SQL functions. 4.       The datetimeoffset data type allows you to handle date and time information in global applications that use data that originates from different time zones. SELECT c.name, p.* FROM politics pJOIN country cON p.country = c.codeWHERE YEAR(Independence) < 1753ORDER BY IndependenceGO8.    Highlight the SELECT statement and click Execute ( ) to show the use of some of the date functions.T-SQLSELECT c.name AS [Country Name],        CONVERT(VARCHAR(12), p.Independence, 107) AS [Independence Date],       DATEDIFF(YEAR, p.Independence, GETDATE()) AS [Years Independent (appox)],       p.GovernmentFROM politics pJOIN country cON p.country = c.codeWHERE YEAR(Independence) < 1753ORDER BY IndependenceGO10.    Select the SET DATEFORMAT statement and click Execute ( ) to change the DATEFORMAT to day-month-year.T-SQLSET DATEFORMAT dmyGO11.    Select the DECLARE and SELECT statements and click Execute ( ) to show how the datetime and datetime2 data types interpret a date literal.T-SQLSET DATEFORMAT dmyDECLARE @dt datetime = '2008-12-05'DECLARE @dt2 datetime2 = '2008-12-05'SELECT MONTH(@dt) AS [Month-Datetime], DAY(@dt)     AS [Day-Datetime]SELECT MONTH(@dt2) AS [Month-Datetime2], DAY(@dt2)     AS [Day-Datetime2]GO12.    Highlight the DECLARE and SELECT statements and click Execute ( ) to use integer arithmetic on a datetime variable.T-SQLDECLARE @dt datetime = '2008-12-05'SELECT @dt + 1GO13.    Highlight the DECLARE and SELECT statements and click Execute ( ) to show how integer arithmetic is not allowed for datetime2 variables.T-SQLDECLARE @dt2 datetime = '2008-12-05'SELECT @dt2 + 1GO14.    Highlight the DECLARE and SELECT statements and click Execute ( ) to show how to use DATE functions to do simple arithmetic on datetime2 variables.T-SQLDECLARE @dt2 datetime2(7) = '2008-12-05'SELECT DATEADD(d, 1, @dt2)GO15.    Highlight the DECLARE and SELECT statements and click Execute ( ) to show how the GETDATE function can be used with both datetime and datetime2 data types.T-SQLDECLARE @dt datetime = GETDATE();DECLARE @dt2 datetime2(7) = GETDATE();SELECT @dt AS [GetDate-DateTime], @dt2 AS [GetDate-DateTime2]GO16.    Draw attention to the values returned for both columns and how they are equal.17.    Highlight the DECLARE and SELECT statements and click Execute ( ) to show how the SYSDATETIME function can be used with both datetime and datetime2 data types.T-SQLDECLARE @dt datetime = SYSDATETIME();DECLARE @dt2 datetime2(7) = SYSDATETIME();SELECT @dt AS [Sysdatetime-DateTime], @dt2     AS [Sysdatetime-DateTime2]GO18.    Draw attention to the values returned for both columns and how they are different.Programming Global Applications with DateTimeOffset 2.    If you have not previously created the SQLTrainingKitDB database while completing another demo in this training kit, highlight the CREATE DATABASE statement and click Execute ( ) to do so now.T-SQLCREATE DATABASE SQLTrainingKitDBGO3.    Select the USE and CREATE TABLE statements and click Execute ( ) to create table datetest in the SQLTrainingKitDB database.T-SQLUSE SQLTrainingKitDBGOCREATE TABLE datetest (  id integer IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY,  datetimecol datetimeoffset,  EnteredTZ varchar(40)); Reference:http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=E9C68E1B-1E0E-4299-B498-6AB3CA72A6D7&displaylang=en   

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• SQL Saturday 43 in Redmond

  - by AjarnMark

  I attended my first SQLSaturday a couple of days ago, SQLSaturday #43 in Redmond (at Microsoft).  I got there really early, primarily because I forgot how fast I can get there from my home when nobody else is on the road.  On a weekday in rush hour traffic, that would have taken two hours to get there.  I gave myself 90 minutes, and actually got there in about 45.  Crazy! I made the mistake of going to the main Microsoft campus, but that’s not where the event was being held.  Instead it was in a big Microsoft conference center on the other side of the highway.  Fortunately, I had the address with me and quickly realized my mistake.  When I got back on track, I noticed that there were bright yellow signs out on the street corner that looked like they said they were for SOL Saturday, which actually was appropriate since it was the sunniest day around here in a long time. Since I was there so early, the registration was just getting setup, so I found Greg Larsen who was coordinating things and offered to help.  He put me to work with a group of people organizing the pre-printed raffle tickets and stuffing swag bags. I had never been to a SQLSaturday before this one, so I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect even though I have read about a few on some blogs.  It makes sense that each one will be a little bit different since they are almost completely volunteer driven, and the whole concept is still in its early stages.  I have been to the PASS Summit for the last several years, and was hoping for a smaller version of that.  Now, it’s not really fair to compare one free day of training run entirely by volunteers with a multi-day, $1,000+ event put on under the direction of a professional event management company.  But there are some parallels. At this SQLSaturday, there was no opening general session, just coffee and pastries in the common area / expo hallway and straight into the first group of sessions.  I don’t know if that was because there was no single room large enough to hold everyone, or for other reasons.  This worked out okay, but the organization guy in me would have preferred to have even a 15 minute welcome message from the organizers with a little overview of the day.  Even something as simple as, “Thanks to persons X, Y, and Z for helping put this together…Sessions will start in 20 minutes and are all in rooms down this hallway…the bathrooms are on the other side of the conference center…lunch today is pizza and we would like to thank sponsor Q for providing it.”  It doesn’t need to be much, certainly not a full-blown Keynote like at the PASS Summit, but something to use as a rallying point to pull everyone together and get the day off to an official start would be nice.  Again, there may have been logistical reasons why that was not feasible here.  I’m just putting out my thoughts for other SQLSaturday coordinators to consider. The event overall was great.  I believe that there were over 300 in attendance, and everything seemed to run smoothly.  At least from an attendee’s point of view where there was plenty of muffins in the morning and pizza in the afternoon, with plenty of pop to drink.  And hey, if you’ve got the food and drink covered, a lot of other stuff could go wrong and people will be very forgiving.  But as I said, everything appeared to run pretty smoothly, at least until Buck Woody showed up in his Oracle shirt.  Other than that, the volunteers did a great job! I was a little surprised by how few people in my own backyard that I know.  It makes sense if you really think about it, given how many companies must be using SQL Server around here.  I guess I just got spoiled coming into the PASS Summit with a few contacts that I already knew would be there.  Perhaps I have been spending too much time with too few people at the Summits and I need to step out and meet more folks.  Of course, it also is different since the Summit is the big national event and a number of the folks I know are spread out across the country, so the Summit is the only time we’re all in the same place at the same time.  I did make a few new contacts at SQLSaturday, and bumped into a couple of people that I knew (and a couple others that I only knew from Twitter, and didn’t even realize that they were here in the area). Other than the sheer entertainment value of Buck Woody’s session, the one that was probably the greatest value for me was a quick introduction to PowerShell.  I have not done anything with it yet, but I think it will be a good tool to use to implement my plans for automated database recovery testing.  I saw just enough at the session to take away some of the intimidation factor, and I am getting ready to jump in and see what I can put together in the next few weeks.  And that right there made the investment worthwhile.  So I encourage you, if you have the opportunity to go to a SQLSaturday event near you, go for it!

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• SQL Server devs–what source control system do you use, if any? (answer and maybe win free stuff)

  - by jamiet

  Recently I noticed a tweet from notable SQL Server author and community dude-at-large Steve Jones in which he asked how many SQL Server developers were putting their SQL Server source code (i.e. DDL) under source control (I’m paraphrasing because I can’t remember the exact tweet and Twitter’s search functionality is useless). The question surprised me slightly as I thought a more pertinent question would be “how many SQL Server developers are not using source control?” because I have been doing just that for many years now and I simply assumed that use of source control is a given in this day and age. Then I started thinking about it. “Perhaps I’m wrong” I pondered, “perhaps the SQL Server folks that do use source control in their day-to-day jobs are in the minority”. So, dear reader, I’m interested to know a little bit more about your use of source control. 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? To encourage you to contribute I have five pairs of licenses for Red Gate SQL Source Control and Red Gate SQL Connect to give away to what I consider to be the five best replies (“best” is totally subjective of course but this is my blog so my decision is final ), if you want to be considered don’t forget to leave contact details; email address, Twitter handle or similar will do. To start you off and to perhaps get the brain cells whirring, here are my answers to the questions above: Are you putting your SQL Server code into a source control system? As I think I’ve already said…yes. Always. If so, what source control server software (e.g. TFS, Git, SVN, Mercurial, SourceSafe, Perforce) are you using? I move around a lot between many clients so it changes on a fairly regular basis; my current client uses Team Foundation Server (aka TFS) and as part of a separate project is trialing the use of Team Foundation Service. I have used SVN extensively in the past which I am a fan of (I generally prefer it to TFS) and am trying to get my head around Git by using it for ObjectStorageHelper. 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…)? On my current project, Team Explorer. In the past I have used Tortoise to connect to SVN. Why did you make those particular software choices? I generally use whatever the client uses and given that I work with SQL Server I find that the majority of my clients use TFS, I guess simply because they are Microsoft development shops. Any interesting anecdotes to share in regard to your use of source control and SQL Server? Not an anecdote as such but I am going to share some frustrations about TFS. In many ways TFS is a great product because it integrates many separate functions (source control, work item tracking, build agents) into one whole and I’m firmly of the opinion that that is a good thing if for no reason other than being able to associate your check-ins with a work-item. However, like many people there are aspects to TFS source control that annoy me day-in, day-out. Chief among them has to be the fact that it uses a file’s read-only property to determine if a file should be checked-out or not and, if it determines that it should, it will happily do that check-out on your behalf without you even asking it to. I didn’t realise how ridiculous this was until I first used SVN about three years ago – with SVN you make any changes you wish and then use your source control client to determine which files have changed and thus be checked-in; the notion of “check-out” doesn’t even exist. That sounds like a small thing but you don’t realise how liberating it is until you actually start working that way. Hoping to hear some more anecdotes and opinions in the comments. Remember….free software is up for grabs! @jamiet 

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• Simple Preferred time control using silverlight 3.

  - by mohanbrij

  Here I am going to show you a simple preferred time control, where you can select the day of the week and the time of the day. This can be used in lots of place where you may need to display the users preferred times. Sample screenshot is attached below. This control is developed using Silverlight 3 and VS2008, I am also attaching the source code with this post. This is a very basic example. You can download and customize if further for your requirement if you want. I am trying to explain in few words how this control works and what are the different ways in which you can customize it further. File: PreferredTimeControl.xaml, in this file I have just hardcoded the controls and their positions which you can see in the screenshot above. In this example, to change the start day of the week and time, you will have to go and change the design in XAML file, its not controlled by your properties or implementation classes. You can also customize it to change the start day of the week, Language, Display format, styles, etc, etc. File: PreferredTimeControl.xaml.cs, In this control using the code below, first I am taking all the checkbox from my form and store it in the Global Variable, which I can use across my page. List<CheckBox> checkBoxList; #region Constructor public PreferredTimeControl() { InitializeComponent(); GetCheckboxes();//Keep all the checkbox in List in the Load itself } #endregion #region Helper Methods private List<CheckBox> GetCheckboxes() { //Get all the CheckBoxes in the Form checkBoxList = new List<CheckBox>(); foreach (UIElement element in LayoutRoot.Children) { if (element.GetType().ToString() == "System.Windows.Controls.CheckBox") { checkBoxList.Add(element as CheckBox); } } return checkBoxList; } Then I am exposing the two methods which you can use in the container form to get and set the values in this controls. /// <summary> /// Set the Availability on the Form, with the Provided Timings /// </summary> /// <param name="selectedTimings">Provided timings comes from the DB in the form 11,12,13....37 /// Where 11 refers to Monday Morning, 12 Tuesday Morning, etc /// Here 1, 2, 3 is for Morning, Afternoon and Evening respectively, and for weekdays /// 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 where 1 is for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thrusday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday respectively /// So if we want Monday Morning, we can can denote it as 11, similarly for Saturday Evening we can write 36, etc /// </param> public void SetAvailibility(string selectedTimings) { foreach (CheckBox chk in checkBoxList) { chk.IsChecked = false; } if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(selectedTimings)) { string[] selectedString = selectedTimings.Split(','); foreach (string selected in selectedString) { foreach (CheckBox chk in checkBoxList) { if (chk.Tag.ToString() == selected) { chk.IsChecked = true; } } } } } /// <summary> /// Gets the Availibility from the selected checkboxes /// </summary> /// <returns>String in the format of 11,12,13...41,42...31,32...37</returns> public string GetAvailibility() { string selectedText = string.Empty; foreach (CheckBox chk in GetCheckboxes()) { if (chk.IsChecked == true) { selectedText = chk.Tag.ToString() + "," + selectedText; } } return selectedText; }   In my example I am using the matrix format for Day and Time, for example Monday=1, Tuesday=2, Wednesday=3, Thursday = 4, Friday = 5, Saturday = 6, Sunday=7. And Morning = 1, Afternoon =2, Evening = 3. So if I want to represent Morning-Monday I will have to represent it as 11, Afternoon-Tuesday as 22, Morning-Wednesday as 13, etc. And in the other way to set the values in the control I am passing the values in the control in the same format as preferredTimeControl.SetAvailibility("11,12,13,16,23,22"); So this will set the checkbox value for Morning-Monday, Morning-Tuesday, Morning-Wednesday, Morning-Saturday, Afternoon of Tuesday and Afternoon of Wednesday. To implement this control, first I have to import this control in xmlns namespace as xmlns:controls="clr-namespace:PreferredTimeControlApp" and finally put in your page wherever you want, <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Style="{StaticResource LayoutRootGridStyle}"> <Border x:Name="ContentBorder" Style="{StaticResource ContentBorderStyle}"> <controls:PreferredTimeControl x:Name="preferredTimeControl"></controls:PreferredTimeControl> </Border> </Grid> And in the code behind you can just include this code: private void InitializeControl() { preferredTimeControl.SetAvailibility("11,12,13,16,23,22"); } And you are ready to go. For more details you can refer to my code attached. I know there can be even simpler and better way to do this. Let me know if any other ideas. Sorry, Guys Still I have used Silverlight 3 and VS2008, as from the system I am uploading this is still not upgraded, but still you can use the same code with Silverlight 4 and VS2010 without any changes. May be just it will ask you to upgrade your project which will take care of rest. Download Source Code.   Thanks ~Brij

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• SQLAuthority News – #TechEDIn – TechEd India 2012 – Things to Do and Explore for SQL Enthusiast

  - by pinaldave

  TechEd India 2012 is just 48 hours away and I have been receiving lots of requests regarding how SQL enthusiasts can maximize their time they’ll be spending at TechEd India 2012. Trust me – TechEd is the biggest Tech Event in India and it is much larger in magnitude than we can imagine. There are plenty of tracks there and lots of things to do. Honestly, we need clone ourselves multiple times to completely cover the event. However, I am going to talk about SQL enthusiasts only right now. In this post, I’ll share a few things they can do in this big event. But before I start talking about specific things, there is one thing which is a must – Keynote. There are amazing Keynotes planned every single day at TechEd India 2012. One should not miss them at all. Social Media I am a big believer of the social media. I am everywhere - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and GPlus. I suggest you follow the tag #TechEdIn as well as contribute at the healthy conversation going on right now. You may want to follow a few of the SQL Server enthusiasts who are also attending events like TechEd India. This way, you will know where they are and you can contribute along with them. For a good start, you can follow all the speakers who are presenting at the event. I have linked all the speakers’ names with their respective Twitter accounts. Networking Do not stop meeting new people. Introduce yourself. Catch the speakers after their sessions. Meet other SQL experts and discuss SQL as well as life aside SQL. The best way to start the communication is to talk about something new. Here are a few lines I usually use when I have to break the ice: SQL Server 2012 is just released and I have installed it. How many SQL Server sessions are you going to attend? I am going to attend _________ I am a big fan of SQL Server. Sessions Agenda Day 1 T-SQL Rediscovered with SQL Server 2012 - Jacob Sebastian Catapult your data with SQL Server 2012 integration services - Praveen Srivatsa Processing Big Data with SQL Server 2012 and Hadoop  - Stephan Forte SQL Server Misconceptions and Resolution – A Practical Perspective – Pinal Dave and Vinod Kumar Securing with ContainedDB in SQL Server 2012  - Pranab Majumdar Agenda Day 2 Hand-on-Lab – Exploring Power View with SQL Server 2012 – Ravi S. Maniam Hand-on-Lab - SQL Server 2012 – AlwaysOn Availability Groups  - Amit Ganguli Agenda Day 3 Peeling SQL Server like an Onion: Internals Debunked  - Vinod Kumar Speed Up! – Parallel Processes and Unparalleled Performance  - Pinal Dave Keeping Your Database Available – ‘AlwaysOn’  - Balmukund Lakhani Lesser Known Facts of SQL Server Backup and Restore  - Amit Banerjee Top five reasons why you want SQL Server 2012 BI - Praveen Srivatsa Product Booth and Event Partners There will be a dedicated SQL Server booth at the event. I suggest you stop by there and do communication with SQL Server Experts. Additionally there will be booths of various event partners. Stop by their booth and see if they have a product which can help your career. I know that Pluralsight has recently released my course on their online learning site and if that interests you, you can talk about the subject with them. Bring Your Camera Make a list of the people you want to meet. Follow them on Twitter or send them an email and know their location. Introduce yourself, meet them and have your conversation. Do not forget to take a photo with them and later on, share the photo on social media. It would be nice to send an email to everyone with attached high resolution images if you have their email address. After-hours parties After-hours parties are not always about eating and meeting friends but sometimes, they are very informative. Last time I ended up meeting an SQL expert, and we end up talking for long hours on various aspects of SQL Server. After 4 hours, we figured out that he stays in the same apartment complex as mine and since we have had an excellent friendship, he has then become our family friend. So, my advice is that you start to seek out who is meeting where in the evening and see if you can get invited to the parties. Make new friends but never lose mutual respect by doing something silly. Meet Me I will be at the event for three days straight. I will be around the SQL tracks. Please stop by and introduce yourself. I would like to meet you and talk to you. Meeting folks from the Community is very important as we all speak the same language at the end of the day – SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• Rip and Convert DVD’s to an ISO Image

  - by Mysticgeek

  If you own a lot of DVD’s, you might want to convert them to an ISO image for backup and easily playing them on your media center. Today we take a look at ripping your discs using DVDFab, then using ImgBurn to create an ISO image of the ripped DVD files. Rip DVD with DVDFab6 DVDFab will remove copy protection and rip the DVD files for free. Other components in the suite require you to purchase a license after the 30 day trial, but you’ll still be able to rip DVD’s after the trial. Install DVDFab by accepting the defaults (link below)…a system restart is required to complete the install process. The first time you run it, a welcome screen is displayed. If you don’t want to see it again check the box Do not show again, then Start DVDFab.  Pop the DVD in your drive and click Next. Now select your region and check Do not show again, then OK. It will then open the DVD and begin to scan it. Under DVD to DVD you can select either Full Disc or Main Movie depending on what you want to rip. If you want to burn the DVD to a disc after it’s created select the Full Disc option. Now click the Start button to begin the ripping process. After the ripping process has completed, you’ll get a message telling you it’s waiting for you to put in a blank DVD. Since we aren’t burning the disc, just cancel the message. Click Finish and close out of DVDFab or just minimize it if you’re going to keep using it to rip another DVD. By default the temporary directory is in My Documents \ DVDFab \ Temp…however you can change it in settings. If you go to the Temp directory you’ll see the DVD files listed there… Convert Files to ISO with ImgBurn Now that we have the files ripped from the DVD, we need to convert them to an ISO image using ImgBurn (link below). Open it up and from the main menu click on Create image file from files/folders. Click on the folder icon to browse to the location of the ripped DVD files. Browse to the DVDFab temp directory and the VIDEO_TS folder for the source and click Ok. Then choose a destination directory, give the ISO a name, and click Save. In this case we ripped the Unbreakable DVD, so named it that.   So now in ImgBurn you have the source being the ripped DVD files, and the destination for the ISO…then click the Build button. If you don’t create a volume label, ImgBurn is kind enough to create on for you. If everything looks correct, click Ok. Now wait while ImgBurn goes through the process of converting the ripped DVD files to an ISO image. The process has successfully completed. The ISO image of the DVD will be in the output directory you selected earlier. Now you can burn the ISO image to a blank DVD or store it on an external hard drive for safe keeping. When you’re done, you’ll probably want to go into the temp DVDFab folder and delete the VOB and other files in the Video_TS folder as they will take up a lot of space on your hard drive.   Conclusion Although this method requires two programs to make an ISO out of a DVD, it’s extremely quick. When burning DVD’s of various lengths, it took less than 30 minutes to get the final ISO. Now, you’ll have your DVD movies backed up in case something were to happen to the discs and are no longer playable. If you use Windows Media Center to watch your movies, check out our article on how to automatically mount and view ISO files in Windows 7 Media Center. With DVDFab, you get a 30 day fully functional trial for all of its features. You’ll still be able rip DVD’s even after the 30 day trial has ended. The more we’ve been using DVDFab, the more impressed we are with its capabilities, so after the 30 day trial you should consider purchasing a license. We will have a full review of the of it to share with you soon.  Download DVDFab Download ImgBurn Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Rip DVDs with VLCCalculate with Qalculate on LinuxConvert a Row to a Column in Excel the Easy WayEnjoy Quick & Easy Unit Conversion with Convert for WindowsConvert Older Excel Documents to Excel 2007 Format TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Beware Hover Kitties Test Drive Mobile Phones Online With TryPhone Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10 New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users Get News Quick and Precise With Newser

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• SUPINFO International University in Mauritius

  Since a while I'm considering to pick up my activities as a student and I'd like to get a degree in Computer Science. Personal motivation I mean after all this years as a professional software (and database) developer I have the personal urge to complete this part of my education. Having various certifications by Microsoft and being awarded as an Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) twice looks pretty awesome on a resume but having a "proper" degree would just complete my package. During the last couple of years I already got in touch with C-SAC (local business school with degree courses), the University of Mauritius and BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT to check the options to enroll as an experienced software developer. Quite frankly, it was kind of alienating to receive that feedback: Start from scratch! No seriously? Spending x amount of years to sit for courses that might be outdated and form part of your daily routine? Probably being in an awkward situation in which your professional expertise might exceed the lecturers knowledge? I don't know... but if that's path to walk... Well, then I might have to go for it. SUPINFO International University Some weeks ago I was contacted by the General Manager, Education Recruitment and Development of Medine Education Village, Yamal Matabudul, to have a chat on how the local IT scene, namely the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC), could assist in their plans to promote their upcoming campus. Medine went into partnership with the French-based SUPINFO International University and Mauritius will be the 36th location world-wide for SUPINFO. Actually, the concept of SUPINFO is very likely to the common understanding of an apprenticeship in Germany. Not only does a student enroll into the programme but will also be placed into various internships as part of the curriculum. It's a big advantage in my opinion as the person stays in touch with the daily procedures and workflows in the real world of IT. Statements like "We just received a 'crash course' of information and learned new technology which is equivalent to 1.5 months of lectures at the university" wouldn't form part of the experience of such an education. Open Day at the Medine Education Village Last Saturday, Medine organised their Open Day and it was the official inauguration of the SUPINFO campus in Mauritius. It's now listed on their website, too - but be warned, the site is mainly in French language although the courses are all done in English. Not only was it a big opportunity to "hang out" on the campus of Medine but it was great to see the first professional partners for their internship programme, too. Oh, just for the records, IOS Indian Ocean Software Ltd. will also be among the future employers for SUPINFO students. More about that in an upcoming blog entry. Open Day at Medine Education Village - SUPINFO International University in Mauritius Mr Alick Mouriesse, President of SUPINFO, arrived the previous day and he gave all attendees a great overview of the roots of SUPINFO, the general development of the educational syllabus and their high emphasis on their partnerships with local IT companies in order to assist their students to get future jobs but also feel the heartbeat of technology live. Something which is completely missing in classic institutions of tertiary education in Computer Science. And since I was on tour with my children, as usual during weekends, he also talked about the outlook of having a SUPINFO campus in Mauritius. Apart from the close connection to IT companies and providing internships to students, SUPINFO clearly works on an international level. Meaning students of SUPINFO can move around the globe and can continue their studies seamlessly. For example, you might enroll for your first year in France, then continue to do 2nd and 3rd year in Canada or any other country with a SUPINFO campus to earn your bachelor degree, and then live and study in Mauritius for the next 2 years to achieve a Master degree. Having a chat with Dale Smith, Expand Technologies, after his interesting session on Technological Entrepreneurship - TechPreneur More questions by other craftsmen of the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community And of course, this concept works in any direction, giving Mauritian students a huge (!) opportunity to live, study and work abroad. And thanks to this, Medine already announced that there will be new facilities near Cascavelle to provide dormitories and other facilities to international students coming to our island. Awesome! Okay, but why SUPINFO? Well, coming back to my original statement - I'd like to get a degree in Computer Science - SUPINFO has a process called Validation of Acquired Experience (VAE) which is tailor-made for employees in the field of IT, and allows you to enroll in their course programme. I already got in touch with their online support chat but was only redirected to some FAQs on their website, unfortunately. So, during the Open Day I seized the opportunity to have an one-on-one conversation with Alick Mouriesse, and he clearly encouraged me to gather my certifications and working experience. SUPINFO does an individual evaluation prior to their assignment regarding course level, and hopefully my chances of getting some modules ahead of studies are looking better than compared to the other institutes. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to go down the easy route but why should someone sit for "Database 101" or "Principles of OOP" when applying and preaching database normalisation and practicing Clean Code Developer are like flesh and blood? Anyway, I'll be off to get my transcripts of certificates together with my course assignments from the old days at the university. Yes, I studied Applied Chemistry for a couple of years before intersecting into IT and software development particularly... ;-)

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• Gamification = -10#/3mo

  - by erikanollwebb

  One of the purposes of gamification of anything is to see if you can modify the behavior of the user. In the enterprise, that might mean getting sales people to enter more information into a CRM system, encouraging employees to update their HR records, motivating people to participate in forums and discussions, or process invoices more quickly.  Wikipedia defines behavior modification as "the traditional term for the use of empirically demonstrated behavior change techniques to increase or decrease the frequency of behaviors, such as altering an individual's behaviors and reactions to stimuli through positive and negative reinforcement of adaptive behavior and/or the reduction of behavior through its extinction, punishment and/or satiation."  Gamification is just a way to modify someone's behavior using game mechanics. And the magic question is always whether it works. So I thought I would present my own little experiment from the last few months.  This spring, I upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy 4.  It's a pretty sweet phone in many ways, but one of the little extras I discovered was a built in app called S Health. S Health is an app that you can use to track calories, weight, exercise and it has a built in pedometer. I looked at it when I got the phone, but assumed you had to turn it on to use it so I didn't look at it much.  But sometime in July, I realized that in fact, it just ran in the background and was quietly tracking my steps, with a goal of 10,000 per day.  10,000 steps per day is this magic number recommended by the Surgeon General and the American Heart Association.  Dr. Oz pushes it as the goal for daily exercise.  It's about 5 miles of walking. I'm generally not the kind of person who always has my phone with me.  I leave it in my purse and pull it out when I need it.  But then I realized that meant I wasn't getting a good measure of my steps.  I decided to do a little experiment, and carry it with me as much as possible for a week.  That's when I discovered the gamification that changed my life over the last 3 months.  When I hit 10,000 steps, the app jingled out a little "success!" tune and I got a badge.  I was hooked.  I started carrying my phone.  I started making sure I had shoes I could walk in with me.  I started walking at lunch time, because I realized how often I sat at my desk for 8-10 hours every day without moving.  I started pestering my husband to walk with me after work because I hadn't hit my 10,000 yet, leading him at one point to say "I'm not as much a slave to that badge as you are!"  I started looking at parking lots differently.  Can't get a space up close?  No worries, just that many steps toward my 10,000.  I even tried to see if there was a second power user level at 15,000 or 20,000 (*sadly, no).  If I was close at the end of the day, I have done laps around my house until I got my badge.  I have walked around the block one more time to get my badge.  I have mentally chastised myself when I forgot to put my phone in my pocket because I don't know how many steps I got.  The badge below I got when my boss and I were in New York City and we walked around the block of our hotel just to watch the badge pop up. There are a bunch of tools out on the market now that have similar ideas for helping you to track your exercise, make it social.  There are apps (my favorite is still Zombies, Run!).  You could buy a FitBit or UP by Jawbone.   Interactive fitness makes the Expresso stationary bike with built in video games.  All designed to help you be more aware of your activity and keep you engaged and motivated.  And the idea is to help you change your behavior. I know someone who would spend extra time and work hard on the Expresso because he had built up strategies for how to kill the most dragons while he was riding to get more points.  When the machine broke down, he didn't ride a different bike because it just wasn't that interesting. But for me, just the simple jingle and badge have been all I needed.  I admit, I still giggle gleefully when I hear the tune sing out from my pocket. After a few weeks, I noticed I had dropped a few pounds.  Not a lot, just 2-3.  But then I was really hooked.  I started making a point both to eat a little less and hit 10,000 steps as much as I could.  I bemoaned that during the floods in Boulder, I wasn't hitting my 10,000 steps.  And now, a few months later, I'm almost 10 lbs lighter. All for 1 badge a day. So yes, simple gamification can increase motivation and engagement.  And that can lead to changes in behavior.  Now the job is to apply that to the enterprise space in a meaningful and engaging way. 

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• Flex actionscript extending DateChooser, events in calendar

  - by Nemi

  ExtendedDateChooser class is great solution for simple event calendar used in my flex project. You can find it if google for "Adding-Calendar-Event-Entries-to-the-Flex-DateChooser-Component" with a link of updated solution in comments of the post. I posted files below. Problem in that calendar is text events are missing when month is changed. Is there updateCompleted event in Actionscript just like in dateChooser flex component? Like in: <mx:DateChooser id="dc" updateCompleted="goThroughDateChooserCalendarLayoutAndSetEventsInCalendarAgain()"</mx> When scroll event is added, which is available in Actionscript, it gets dispatched but after updateDisplayList() is fired, so didn't manage to answer, why are calendar events erased? Any suggestions, what to add in code, maybe override some function? ExtendedDateChooserClass.mxml <?xml version='1.0' encoding="utf-8"?> <mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" xmlns:mycomp="cyberslingers.controls.*" layout="absolute" creationComplete="init()"> <mx:Script> <![CDATA[ import cyberslingers.controls.ExtendedDateChooser; import mx.rpc.events.ResultEvent; import mx.rpc.events.FaultEvent; import mx.controls.Alert; public var mycal:ExtendedDateChooser = new ExtendedDateChooser(); // collection to hold date, data and label [Bindable] public var dateCollection:XMLList = new XMLList(); private function init():void { eventList.send(); } private function readCollection(event:ResultEvent):void { dateCollection = event.result.calendarevent; //Position and size the calendar mycal.width = 400; mycal.height = 400; //Add the data from the XML file to the calendar mycal.dateCollection = dateCollection; //Add the calendar to the canvas this.addChild(mycal); } private function readFaultHandler(event:FaultEvent):void { Alert.show(event.fault.message, "Could not load data"); } ]]> </mx:Script> <mx:HTTPService id="eventList" url="data.xml" resultFormat="e4x" result="readCollection(event);" fault="readFaultHandler(event);"/> </mx:Application> ExtendedDateChooser.as package cyberslingers.controls { import flash.events.Event; import flash.events.TextEvent; import mx.collections.ArrayCollection; import mx.controls.Alert; import mx.controls.CalendarLayout; import mx.controls.DateChooser; import mx.core.UITextField; import mx.events.FlexEvent; public class ExtendedDateChooser extends DateChooser { public function ExtendedDateChooser() { super(); this.addEventListener(TextEvent.LINK, linkHandler); this.addEventListener(FlexEvent.CREATION_COMPLETE, addEvents); } //datasource public var dateCollection:XMLList = new XMLList(); //-------------------------------------- // Add events //-------------------------------------- /** * Loop through calendar control and add event links * @param e */ private function addEvents(e:Event):void { // loop through all the calendar children for(var i:uint = 0; i < this.numChildren; i++) { var calendarObj:Object = this.getChildAt(i); // find the CalendarLayout object if(calendarObj.hasOwnProperty("className")) { if(calendarObj.className == "CalendarLayout") { var cal:CalendarLayout = CalendarLayout(calendarObj); // loop through all the CalendarLayout children for(var j:uint = 0; j < cal.numChildren; j++) { var dateLabel:Object = cal.getChildAt(j); // find all UITextFields if(dateLabel.hasOwnProperty("text")) { var day:UITextField = UITextField(dateLabel); var dayHTML:String = day.text; day.selectable = true; day.wordWrap = true; day.multiline = true; day.styleName = "EventLabel"; //TODO: passing date as string is not ideal, tough to validate //Make sure to add one to month since it is zero based var eventArray:Array = dateHelper((this.displayedMonth+1) + "/" + dateLabel.text + "/" + this.displayedYear); if(eventArray.length > 0) { for(var k:uint = 0; k < eventArray.length; k++) { dayHTML += "<br><A HREF='event:" + eventArray[k].data + "' TARGET=''>" + eventArray[k].label + "</A>"; } day.htmlText = dayHTML; } } } } } } } //-------------------------------------- // Events //-------------------------------------- /** * Handle clicking text link * @param e */ private function linkHandler(event:TextEvent):void { // What do we want to do when user clicks an entry? Alert.show("selected: " + event.text); } //-------------------------------------- // Helpers //-------------------------------------- /** * Build array of events for current date * @param string - current date * */ private function dateHelper(renderedDate:String):Array { var result:Array = new Array(); for(var i:uint = 0; i < dateCollection.length(); i++) { if(dateCollection[i].date == renderedDate) { result.push(dateCollection[i]); } } return result; } } } data.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <rss> <calendarevent> <date>8/22/2009</date> <data>This is a test 1</data> <label>Stephens Test 1</label> </calendarevent> <calendarevent> <date>8/23/2009</date> <data>This is a test 2</data> <label>Stephens Test 2</label> </calendarevent> </rss>

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• Am I going about this the right way?

  - by Psytronic

  Hey Guys, I'm starting a WPF project, and just finished the base of the UI, it seems very convoluted though, so I'm not sure if I've gone around laying it out in the right way. I don't want to get to start developing the back-end and realise that I've done the front wrong, and make life harder for myself. Coming from a background of <DIV's and CSS to style this is a lot different, and really want to get it right from the start. Essentially it's a one week calendar (7 days, Mon-Sunday, defaulting to the current week.) Which will eventually link up to a DB and if I have an appointment for something on this day it will show it in the relevant day. I've opted for a Grid rather than ListView because of the way it will work I will not be binding the results to a collection or anything along those lines. Rather I will be filling out a Combo box within the canvas for each day (yet to be placed in the code) for each event and on selection it will show me further details. XAML: <Window x:Class="WOW_Widget.Window1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:s="clr-namespace:System;assembly=mscorlib" xmlns:Extensions="clr-namespace:WOW_Widget" DataContext="{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource Self}}" Title="Window1" Height="239" Width="831" <Window.Resources <LinearGradientBrush x:Key="NormalBrush" StartPoint="0,0" EndPoint="0,1" <GradientBrush.GradientStops <GradientStopCollection <GradientStop Offset="1.0" Color="White"/ <GradientStop Offset="0.0" Color="LightSlateGray"/ </GradientStopCollection </GradientBrush.GradientStops </LinearGradientBrush <LinearGradientBrush x:Key="grdDayHeader" StartPoint="0,0" EndPoint="0,1" <GradientBrush.GradientStops <GradientStopCollection <GradientStop Offset="0.0" Color="Peru" / <GradientStop Offset="1.0" Color="White" / </GradientStopCollection </GradientBrush.GradientStops </LinearGradientBrush <LinearGradientBrush x:Key="grdToday" StartPoint="0,0" EndPoint="0,1" <GradientBrush.GradientStops <GradientStopCollection <GradientStop Offset="0.0" Color="LimeGreen"/ <GradientStop Offset="1.0" Color="DarkGreen" / </GradientStopCollection </GradientBrush.GradientStops </LinearGradientBrush <Style TargetType="{x:Type GridViewColumnHeader}" <Setter Property="Background" Value="Khaki" / </Style <Style x:Key="DayHeader" TargetType="{x:Type Label}" <Setter Property="Background" Value="{StaticResource grdDayHeader}" / <Setter Property="Width" Value="111" / <Setter Property="Height" Value="25" / <Setter Property="HorizontalContentAlignment" Value="Center" / </Style <Style x:Key="DayField" <Setter Property="Canvas.Width" Value="111" / <Setter Property="Canvas.Height" Value="60" / <Setter Property="Canvas.Background" Value="White" / </Style <Style x:Key="Today" <Setter Property="Canvas.Background" Value="{StaticResource grdToday}" / </Style <Style x:Key="CalendarColSpacer" <Setter Property="Canvas.Width" Value="1" / <Setter Property="Canvas.Background" Value="Black" / </Style <Style x:Key="CalendarRowSpacer" <Setter Property="Canvas.Height" Value="1" / <Setter Property="Canvas.Background" Value="Black" / </Style </Window.Resources <Grid Background="{StaticResource NormalBrush}" <Border BorderBrush="Black" BorderThickness="1" Width="785" Height="86" Margin="12,12,12,104" <Canvas Height="86" Width="785" VerticalAlignment="Top" <Grid <Grid.ColumnDefinitions <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / </Grid.ColumnDefinitions <Grid.RowDefinitions <RowDefinition / <RowDefinition / <RowDefinition / </Grid.RowDefinitions <Label Grid.Column="0" Grid.Row="0" Content="Monday" Style="{StaticResource DayHeader}" / <Canvas Grid.Column="1" Grid.RowSpan="3" Grid.Row="0" Style="{StaticResource CalendarColSpacer}" / <Label Grid.Column="2" Grid.Row="0" Content="Tuesday" Style="{StaticResource DayHeader}" / <Canvas Grid.Column="3" Grid.RowSpan="3" Grid.Row="0" Style="{StaticResource CalendarColSpacer}" / <Label Grid.Column="4" Grid.Row="0" Content="Wednesday" Style="{StaticResource DayHeader}" / <Canvas Grid.Column="5" Grid.RowSpan="3" Grid.Row="0" Style="{StaticResource CalendarColSpacer}" / <Label Grid.Column="6" Grid.Row="0" Content="Thursday" Style="{StaticResource DayHeader}" / <Canvas Grid.Column="7" Grid.RowSpan="3" Grid.Row="0" Style="{StaticResource CalendarColSpacer}" / <Label Grid.Column="8" Grid.Row="0" Content="Friday" Style="{StaticResource DayHeader}" / <Canvas Grid.Column="9" Grid.RowSpan="3" Grid.Row="0" Style="{StaticResource CalendarColSpacer}" / <Label Grid.Column="10" Grid.Row="0" Content="Saturday" Style="{StaticResource DayHeader}" / <Canvas Grid.Column="11" Grid.RowSpan="3" Grid.Row="0" Style="{StaticResource CalendarColSpacer}" / <Label Grid.Column="12" Grid.Row="0" Content="Sunday" Style="{StaticResource DayHeader}" / <Canvas Grid.Column="0" Grid.ColumnSpan="13" Grid.Row="1" Style="{StaticResource CalendarRowSpacer}" / <Canvas Grid.Column="0" Grid.Row="2" Margin="0" Style="{StaticResource DayField}" <Label Name="lblMondayDate" / </Canvas <Canvas Grid.Column="2" Grid.Row="2" Margin="0" Style="{StaticResource DayField}" <Label Name="lblTuesdayDate" / </Canvas <Canvas Grid.Column="4" Grid.Row="2" Margin="0" Style="{StaticResource DayField}" <Label Name="lblWednesdayDate" / </Canvas <Canvas Grid.Column="6" Grid.Row="2" Margin="0" Style="{StaticResource DayField}" <Label Name="lblThursdayDate" / </Canvas <Canvas Grid.Column="8" Grid.Row="2" Margin="0" Style="{StaticResource DayField}" <Label Name="lblFridayDate" / </Canvas <Canvas Grid.Column="10" Grid.Row="2" Margin="0" Style="{StaticResource DayField}" <Label Name="lblSaturdayDate" / </Canvas <Canvas Grid.Column="12" Grid.Row="2" Margin="0" Style="{StaticResource DayField}" <Label Name="lblSundayDate" / </Canvas </Grid </Canvas </Border <Canvas Height="86" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Margin="0,0,12,12" Name="canvas1" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Width="198"</Canvas </Grid </Window CS: public partial class Window1 : Window { private DateTime today = new DateTime(); private Label[] Dates = new Label[7]; public Window1() { DateTime start = today = DateTime.Now; int day = (int)today.DayOfWeek; while (day != 1) { start = start.Subtract(new TimeSpan(1, 0, 0, 0)); day--; } InitializeComponent(); Dates[0] = lblMondayDate; Dates[1] = lblTuesdayDate; Dates[2] = lblWednesdayDate; Dates[3] = lblThursdayDate; Dates[4] = lblFridayDate; Dates[5] = lblSaturdayDate; Dates[6] = lblSundayDate; FillWeek(start); } private void FillWeek(DateTime start) { for (int d = 0; d < Dates.Length; d++) { TimeSpan td = new TimeSpan(d, 0, 0, 0); DateTime _day = start.Add(td); if (_day.Date == today.Date) { Canvas dayCanvas = (Canvas)Dates[d].Parent; dayCanvas.Style = (Style)this.Resources["Today"]; } Dates[d].Content = (int)start.Add(td).Day; } } } Thanks for any tips you guys can give Psytronic

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