object element - Page 590

A Reusable Builder Class for Javascript Testing

- by Liam McLennan

Continuing on my series of builders for C# and Ruby here is the solution in Javascript. This is probably the implementation with which I am least happy. There are several parts that did not seem to fit the language. This time around I didn’t bother with a testing framework, I just append some values to the page with jQuery. Here is the test code: var initialiseBuilder = function() { var builder = builderConstructor(); builder.configure({ 'Person': function() { return {name: 'Liam', age: 26}}, 'Property': function() { return {street: '127 Creek St', manager: builder.a('Person') }} }); return builder; }; var print = function(s) { $('body').append(s + '<br/>'); }; var build = initialiseBuilder(); // get an object liam = build.a('Person'); print(liam.name + ' is ' + liam.age); // get a modified object liam = build.a('Person', function(person) { person.age = 999; }); print(liam.name + ' is ' + liam.age); home = build.a('Property'); print(home.street + ' manager: ' + home.manager.name); and the implementation: var builderConstructor = function() { var that = {}; var defaults = {}; that.configure = function(d) { defaults = d; }; that.a = function(type, modifier) { var o = defaults[type](); if (modifier) { modifier(o); } return o; }; return that; }; I still like javascript’s syntax for anonymous methods, defaults[type]() is much clearer than the Ruby equivalent @defaults[klass].call(). You can see the striking similarity between Ruby hashes and javascript objects. I also prefer modifier(o) to the equivalent Ruby, yield o.

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

- by Bertrand Le Roy

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

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Unity – Part 5: Injecting Values

- by Ricardo Peres

Introduction This is the fifth post on Unity. You can find the introductory post here, the second post, on dependency injection here, a third one on Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) here and the latest so far, on writing custom extensions, here. This time we will talk about injecting simple values. An Inversion of Control (IoC) / Dependency Injector (DI) container like Unity can be used for things other than injecting complex class dependencies. It can also be used for setting property values or method/constructor parameters whenever a class is built. The main difference is that these values do not have a lifetime manager associated with them and do not come from the regular IoC registration store. Unlike, for instance, MEF, Unity won’t let you register as a dependency a string or an integer, so you have to take a different approach, which I will describe in this post. Scenario Let’s imagine we have a base interface that describes a logger – the same as in previous examples: 1: public interface ILogger 2: { 3: void Log(String message); 4: } And a concrete implementation that writes to a file: 1: public class FileLogger : ILogger 2: { 3: public String Filename 4: { 5: get; 6: set; 7: } 8: 9: #region ILogger Members 10: 11: public void Log(String message) 12: { 13: using (Stream file = File.OpenWrite(this.Filename)) 14: { 15: Byte[] data = Encoding.Default.GetBytes(message); 16: 17: file.Write(data, 0, data.Length); 18: } 19: } 20: 21: #endregion 22: } And let’s say we want the Filename property to come from the application settings (appSettings) section on the Web/App.config file. As usual with Unity, there is an extensibility point that allows us to automatically do this, both with code configuration or statically on the configuration file. Extending Injection We start by implementing a class that will retrieve a value from the appSettings by inheriting from ValueElement: 1: sealed class AppSettingsParameterValueElement : ValueElement, IDependencyResolverPolicy 2: { 3: #region Private methods 4: private Object CreateInstance(Type parameterType) 5: { 6: Object configurationValue = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[this.AppSettingsKey]; 7: 8: if (parameterType != typeof(String)) 9: { 10: TypeConverter typeConverter = this.GetTypeConverter(parameterType); 11: 12: configurationValue = typeConverter.ConvertFromInvariantString(configurationValue as String); 13: } 14: 15: return (configurationValue); 16: } 17: #endregion 18: 19: #region Private methods 20: private TypeConverter GetTypeConverter(Type parameterType) 21: { 22: if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(this.TypeConverterTypeName) == false) 23: { 24: return (Activator.CreateInstance(TypeResolver.ResolveType(this.TypeConverterTypeName)) as TypeConverter); 25: } 26: else 27: { 28: return (TypeDescriptor.GetConverter(parameterType)); 29: } 30: } 31: #endregion 32: 33: #region Public override methods 34: public override InjectionParameterValue GetInjectionParameterValue(IUnityContainer container, Type parameterType) 35: { 36: Object value = this.CreateInstance(parameterType); 37: return (new InjectionParameter(parameterType, value)); 38: } 39: #endregion 40: 41: #region IDependencyResolverPolicy Members 42: 43: public Object Resolve(IBuilderContext context) 44: { 45: Type parameterType = null; 46: 47: if (context.CurrentOperation is ResolvingPropertyValueOperation) 48: { 49: ResolvingPropertyValueOperation op = (context.CurrentOperation as ResolvingPropertyValueOperation); 50: PropertyInfo prop = op.TypeBeingConstructed.GetProperty(op.PropertyName); 51: parameterType = prop.PropertyType; 52: } 53: else if (context.CurrentOperation is ConstructorArgumentResolveOperation) 54: { 55: ConstructorArgumentResolveOperation op = (context.CurrentOperation as ConstructorArgumentResolveOperation); 56: String args = op.ConstructorSignature.Split('(')[1].Split(')')[0]; 57: Type[] types = args.Split(',').Select(a => Type.GetType(a.Split(' ')[0])).ToArray(); 58: ConstructorInfo ctor = op.TypeBeingConstructed.GetConstructor(types); 59: parameterType = ctor.GetParameters().Where(p => p.Name == op.ParameterName).Single().ParameterType; 60: } 61: else if (context.CurrentOperation is MethodArgumentResolveOperation) 62: { 63: MethodArgumentResolveOperation op = (context.CurrentOperation as MethodArgumentResolveOperation); 64: String methodName = op.MethodSignature.Split('(')[0].Split(' ')[1]; 65: String args = op.MethodSignature.Split('(')[1].Split(')')[0]; 66: Type[] types = args.Split(',').Select(a => Type.GetType(a.Split(' ')[0])).ToArray(); 67: MethodInfo method = op.TypeBeingConstructed.GetMethod(methodName, types); 68: parameterType = method.GetParameters().Where(p => p.Name == op.ParameterName).Single().ParameterType; 69: } 70: 71: return (this.CreateInstance(parameterType)); 72: } 73: 74: #endregion 75: 76: #region Public properties 77: [ConfigurationProperty("appSettingsKey", IsRequired = true)] 78: public String AppSettingsKey 79: { 80: get 81: { 82: return ((String)base["appSettingsKey"]); 83: } 84: 85: set 86: { 87: base["appSettingsKey"] = value; 88: } 89: } 90: #endregion 91: } As you can see from the implementation of the IDependencyResolverPolicy.Resolve method, this will work in three different scenarios: When it is applied to a property; When it is applied to a constructor parameter; When it is applied to an initialization method. The implementation will even try to convert the value to its declared destination, for example, if the destination property is an Int32, it will try to convert the appSettings stored string to an Int32. Injection By Configuration If we want to configure injection by configuration, we need to implement a custom section extension by inheriting from SectionExtension, and registering our custom element with the name “appSettings”: 1: sealed class AppSettingsParameterInjectionElementExtension : SectionExtension 2: { 3: public override void AddExtensions(SectionExtensionContext context) 4: { 5: context.AddElement<AppSettingsParameterValueElement>("appSettings"); 6: } 7: } And on the configuration file, for setting a property, we use it like this: 1: <appSettings> 2: <add key="LoggerFilename" value="Log.txt"/> 3: </appSettings> 4: <unity xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/practices/2010/unity"> 5: <container> 6: <register type="MyNamespace.ILogger, MyAssembly" mapTo="MyNamespace.ConsoleLogger, MyAssembly"/> 7: <register type="MyNamespace.ILogger, MyAssembly" mapTo="MyNamespace.FileLogger, MyAssembly" name="File"> 8: <lifetime type="singleton"/> 9: <property name="Filename"> 10: <appSettings appSettingsKey="LoggerFilename"/> 11: </property> 12: </register> 13: </container> 14: </unity> If we would like to inject the value as a constructor parameter, it would be instead: 1: <unity xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/practices/2010/unity"> 2: <sectionExtension type="MyNamespace.AppSettingsParameterInjectionElementExtension, MyAssembly" /> 3: <container> 4: <register type="MyNamespace.ILogger, MyAssembly" mapTo="MyNamespace.ConsoleLogger, MyAssembly"/> 5: <register type="MyNamespace.ILogger, MyAssembly" mapTo="MyNamespace.FileLogger, MyAssembly" name="File"> 6: <lifetime type="singleton"/> 7: <constructor> 8: <param name="filename" type="System.String"> 9: <appSettings appSettingsKey="LoggerFilename"/> 10: </param> 11: </constructor> 12: </register> 13: </container> 14: </unity> Notice the appSettings section, where we add a LoggerFilename entry, which is the same as the one referred by our AppSettingsParameterInjectionElementExtension extension. For more advanced behavior, you can add a TypeConverterName attribute to the appSettings declaration, where you can pass an assembly qualified name of a class that inherits from TypeConverter. This class will be responsible for converting the appSettings value to a destination type. Injection By Attribute If we would like to use attributes instead, we need to create a custom attribute by inheriting from DependencyResolutionAttribute: 1: [Serializable] 2: [AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Parameter | AttributeTargets.Property, AllowMultiple = false, Inherited = true)] 3: public sealed class AppSettingsDependencyResolutionAttribute : DependencyResolutionAttribute 4: { 5: public AppSettingsDependencyResolutionAttribute(String appSettingsKey) 6: { 7: this.AppSettingsKey = appSettingsKey; 8: } 9: 10: public String TypeConverterTypeName 11: { 12: get; 13: set; 14: } 15: 16: public String AppSettingsKey 17: { 18: get; 19: private set; 20: } 21: 22: public override IDependencyResolverPolicy CreateResolver(Type typeToResolve) 23: { 24: return (new AppSettingsParameterValueElement() { AppSettingsKey = this.AppSettingsKey, TypeConverterTypeName = this.TypeConverterTypeName }); 25: } 26: } As for file configuration, there is a mandatory property for setting the appSettings key and an optional TypeConverterName for setting the name of a TypeConverter. Both the custom attribute and the custom section return an instance of the injector AppSettingsParameterValueElement that we implemented in the first place. Now, the attribute needs to be placed before the injected class’ Filename property: 1: public class FileLogger : ILogger 2: { 3: [AppSettingsDependencyResolution("LoggerFilename")] 4: public String Filename 5: { 6: get; 7: set; 8: } 9: 10: #region ILogger Members 11: 12: public void Log(String message) 13: { 14: using (Stream file = File.OpenWrite(this.Filename)) 15: { 16: Byte[] data = Encoding.Default.GetBytes(message); 17: 18: file.Write(data, 0, data.Length); 19: } 20: } 21: 22: #endregion 23: } Or, if we wanted to use constructor injection: 1: public class FileLogger : ILogger 2: { 3: public String Filename 4: { 5: get; 6: set; 7: } 8: 9: public FileLogger([AppSettingsDependencyResolution("LoggerFilename")] String filename) 10: { 11: this.Filename = filename; 12: } 13: 14: #region ILogger Members 15: 16: public void Log(String message) 17: { 18: using (Stream file = File.OpenWrite(this.Filename)) 19: { 20: Byte[] data = Encoding.Default.GetBytes(message); 21: 22: file.Write(data, 0, data.Length); 23: } 24: } 25: 26: #endregion 27: } Usage Just do: 1: ILogger logger = ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<ILogger>("File"); And off you go! A simple way do avoid hardcoded values in component registrations. Of course, this same concept can be applied to registry keys, environment values, XML attributes, etc, etc, just change the implementation of the AppSettingsParameterValueElement class. Next stop: custom lifetime managers.

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How should I design a correct OO design in case of a Business-logic wide operation

- by Mithir

EDIT: Maybe I should ask the question in a different way. in light of ammoQ's comment, I realize that I've done something like suggested which is kind of a fix and it is fine by me. But I still want to learn for the future, so that if I develop new code for operations similar to this, I can design it correctly from the start. So, if I got the following characteristics: The relevant input is composed from data which is connected to several different business objects All the input data is validated and cross-checked Attempts are made in order to insert the data to the DB All this is just a single operation from Business side prospective, meaning all of the cross checking and validations are just side effects. I can't think of any other way but some sort of Operator/Coordinator kind of Object which activates the entire procedure, but then I fall into a Functional-Decomposition kind of code. so is there a better way in doing this? Original Question In our system we have many complex operations which involve many validations and DB activities. One of the main Business functionality could have been designed better. In short, there were no separation of layers, and the code would only work from the scenario in which it was first designed at, and now there were more scenarios (like requests from an API or from other devices) So I had to redesign. I found myself moving all the DB code to objects which acts like Business to DB objects, and I've put all the business logic in an Operator kind of a class, which I've implemented like this: First, I created an object which will hold all the information needed for the operation let's call it InformationObject. Then I created an OperatorObject which will take the InformationObject as a parameter and act on it. The OperatorObject should activate different objects and validate or check for existence or any scenario in which the business logic is compromised and then make the operation according to the information on the InformationObject. So my question is - Is this kind of implementation correct? PS, this Operator only works on a single Business-wise Operation.

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Overriding GetHashCode in a mutable struct - What NOT to do?

- by Kyle Baran

I am using the XNA Framework to make a learning project. It has a Point struct which exposes an X and Y value; for the purpose of optimization, it breaks the rules for proper struct design, since its a mutable struct. As Marc Gravell, John Skeet, and Eric Lippert point out in their respective posts about GetHashCode() (which Point overrides), this is a rather bad thing, since if an object's values change while its contained in a hashmap (ie, LINQ queries), it can become "lost". However, I am making my own Point3D struct, following the design of Point as a guideline. Thus, it too is a mutable struct which overrides GetHashCode(). The only difference is that mine exposes and int for X, Y, and Z values, but is fundamentally the same. The signatures are below: public struct Point3D : IEquatable<Point3D> { public int X; public int Y; public int Z; public static bool operator !=(Point3D a, Point3D b) { } public static bool operator ==(Point3D a, Point3D b) { } public Point3D Zero { get; } public override int GetHashCode() { } public override bool Equals(object obj) { } public bool Equals(Point3D other) { } public override string ToString() { } } I have tried to break my struct in the way they describe, namely by storing it in a List<Point3D>, as well as changing the value via a method using ref, but I did not encounter they behavior they warn about (maybe a pointer might allow me to break it?). Am I being too cautious in my approach, or should I be okay to use it as is?

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Using Microsoft's Chart Controls In An ASP.NET Application: Serializing Chart Data

In most usage scenarios, the data displayed in a Microsoft Chart control comes from some dynamic source, such as from a database query. The appearance of the chart can be modified dynamically, as well; past installments in this article series showed how to programmatically customize the axes, labels, and other appearance-related settings. However, it is possible to statically define the chart's data and appearance strictly through the control's declarative markup. One of the demos examined in the Getting Started article rendered a column chart with seven columns whose labels and values were defined statically in the <asp:Series> tag's <Points> collection. Given this functionality, it should come as no surprise that the Microsoft Chart Controls also support serialization. Serialization is the process of persisting the state of a control or an object to some other medium, such as to disk. Deserialization is the inverse process, and involves taking the persisted data and recreating the control or object. With just a few lines of code you can persist the appearance settings, the data, or both to a file on disk or to any stream. Likewise, it takes just a few lines of codes to reconstitute a chart from the persisted information. This article shows how to use the Microsoft Chart Control's serialization functionality by examining a demo application that allows users to create custom charts, specifying the data to plot and some appearance-related settings. The user can then save a "snapshot" of this chart, which persists its appearance and data to a record in a database. From another page, users can view these saved chart snapshots. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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Using Table-Valued Parameters With SQL Server Reporting Services

- by Jesse

In my last post I talked about using table-valued parameters to pass a list of integer values to a stored procedure without resorting to using comma-delimited strings and parsing out each value into a TABLE variable. In this post I’ll extend the “Customer Transaction Summary” report example to see how we might leverage this same stored procedure from within an SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) report. I’ve worked with SSRS off and on for the past several years and have generally found it to be a very useful tool for building nice-looking reports for end users quickly and easily. That said, I’ve been frustrated by SSRS from time to time when seemingly simple things are difficult to accomplish or simply not supported at all. I thought that using table-valued parameters from within a SSRS report would be simple, but unfortunately I was wrong. Customer Transaction Summary Example Let’s take the “Customer Transaction Summary” report example from the last post and try to plug that same stored procedure into an SSRS report. Our report will have three parameters: Start Date – beginning of the date range for which the report will summarize customer transactions End Date – end of the date range for which the report will summarize customer transactions Customer Ids – One or more customer Ids representing the customers that will be included in the report The simplest way to get started with this report will be to create a new dataset and point it at our Customer Transaction Summary report stored procedure (note that I’m using SSRS 2012 in the screenshots below, but there should be little to no difference with SSRS 2008): When you initially create this dataset the SSRS designer will try to invoke the stored procedure to determine what the parameters and output fields are for you automatically. As part of this process the following dialog pops-up: Obviously I can’t use this dialog to specify a value for the ‘@customerIds’ parameter since it is of the IntegerListTableType user-defined type that we created in the last post. Unfortunately this really throws the SSRS designer for a loop, and regardless of what combination of Data Type, Pass Null Value, or Parameter Value I used here, I kept getting this error dialog with the message, "Operand type clash: nvarchar is incompatible with IntegerListTableType". This error message makes some sense considering that the nvarchar type is indeed incompatible with the IntegerListTableType, but there’s little clue given as to how to remedy the situation. I don’t know for sure, but I think that behind-the-scenes the SSRS designer is trying to give the @customerIds parameter an nvarchar-typed SqlParameter which is causing the issue. When I first saw this error I figured that this might just be a limitation of the dataset designer and that I’d be able to work around the issue by manually defining the parameters. I know that there are some special steps that need to be taken when invoking a stored procedure with a table-valued parameter from ADO .NET, so I figured that I might be able to use some custom code embedded in the report to create a SqlParameter instance with the needed properties and value to make this work, but the “Operand type clash" error message persisted. The Text Query Approach Just because we’re using a stored procedure to create the dataset for this report doesn’t mean that we can’t use the ‘Text’ Query Type option and construct an EXEC statement that will invoke the stored procedure. In order for this to work properly the EXEC statement will also need to declare and populate an IntegerListTableType variable to pass into the stored procedure. Before I go any further I want to make one point clear: this is a really ugly hack and it makes me cringe to do it. Simply put, I strongly feel that it should not be this difficult to use a table-valued parameter with SSRS. With that said, let’s take a look at what we’ll have to do to make this work. Manually Define Parameters First, we’ll need to manually define the parameters for report by right-clicking on the ‘Parameters’ folder in the ‘Report Data’ window. We’ll need to define the ‘@startDate’ and ‘@endDate’ as simple date parameters. We’ll also create a parameter called ‘@customerIds’ that will be a mutli-valued Integer parameter: In the ‘Available Values’ tab we’ll point this parameter at a simple dataset that just returns the CustomerId and CustomerName of each row in the Customers table of the database or manually define a handful of Customer Id values to make available when the report runs. Once we have these parameters properly defined we can take another crack at creating the dataset that will invoke the ‘rpt_CustomerTransactionSummary’ stored procedure. This time we’ll choose the ‘Text’ query type option and put the following into the ‘Query’ text area: 1: exec('declare @customerIdList IntegerListTableType ' + @customerIdInserts + 2: ' EXEC rpt_CustomerTransactionSummary 3: @startDate=''' + @startDate + ''', 4: @endDate='''+ @endDate + ''', 5: @customerIds=@customerIdList') By using the ‘Text’ query type we can enter any arbitrary SQL that we we want to and then use parameters and string concatenation to inject pieces of that query at run time. It can be a bit tricky to parse this out at first glance, but from the SSRS designer’s point of view this query defines three parameters: @customerIdInserts – This will be a Text parameter that we use to define INSERT statements that will populate the @customerIdList variable that is being declared in the SQL. This parameter won’t actually ever get passed into the stored procedure. I’ll go into how this will work in a bit. @startDate – This is a simple date parameter that will get passed through directly into the @startDate parameter of the stored procedure on line 3. @endDate – This is another simple data parameter that will get passed through into the @endDate parameter of the stored procedure on line 4. At this point the dataset designer will be able to correctly parse the query and should even be able to detect the fields that the stored procedure will return without needing to specify any values for query when prompted to. Once the dataset has been correctly defined we’ll have a @customerIdInserts parameter listed in the ‘Parameters’ tab of the dataset designer. We need to define an expression for this parameter that will take the values selected by the user for the ‘@customerIds’ parameter that we defined earlier and convert them into INSERT statements that will populate the @customerIdList variable that we defined in our Text query. In order to do this we’ll need to add some custom code to our report using the ‘Report Properties’ dialog: Any custom code defined in the Report Properties dialog gets embedded into the .rdl of the report itself and (unfortunately) must be written in VB .NET. Note that you can also add references to custom .NET assemblies (which could be written in any language), but that’s outside the scope of this post so we’ll stick with the “quick and dirty” VB .NET approach for now. Here’s the VB .NET code (note that any embedded code that you add here must be defined in a static/shared function, though you can define as many functions as you want): 1: Public Shared Function BuildIntegerListInserts(ByVal variableName As String, ByVal paramValues As Object()) As String 2: Dim insertStatements As New System.Text.StringBuilder() 3: For Each paramValue As Object In paramValues 4: insertStatements.AppendLine(String.Format("INSERT {0} VALUES ({1})", variableName, paramValue)) 5: Next 6: Return insertStatements.ToString() 7: End Function This method takes a variable name and an array of objects. We use an array of objects here because that is how SSRS will pass us the values that were selected by the user at run-time. The method uses a StringBuilder to construct INSERT statements that will insert each value from the object array into the provided variable name. Once this method has been defined in the custom code for the report we can go back into the dataset designer’s Parameters tab and update the expression for the ‘@customerIdInserts’ parameter by clicking on the button with the “function” symbol that appears to the right of the parameter value. We’ll set the expression to: 1: =Code.BuildIntegerListInserts("@customerIdList ", Parameters!customerIds.Value) In order to invoke our custom code method we simply need to invoke “Code.<method name>” and pass in any needed parameters. The first parameter needs to match the name of the IntegerListTableType variable that we used in the EXEC statement of our query. The second parameter will come from the Value property of the ‘@customerIds’ parameter (this evaluates to an object array at run time). Finally, we’ll need to edit the properties of the ‘@customerIdInserts’ parameter on the report to mark it as a nullable internal parameter so that users aren’t prompted to provide a value for it when running the report. Limitations And Final Thoughts When I first started looking into the text query approach described above I wondered if there might be an upper limit to the size of the string that can be used to run a report. Obviously, the size of the actual query could increase pretty dramatically if you have a parameter that has a lot of potential values or you need to support several different table-valued parameters in the same query. I tested the example Customer Transaction Summary report with 1000 selected customers without any issue, but your mileage may vary depending on how much data you might need to pass into your query. If you think that the text query hack is a lot of work just to use a table-valued parameter, I agree! I think that it should be a lot easier than this to use a table-valued parameter from within SSRS, but so far I haven’t found a better way. It might be possible to create some custom .NET code that could build the EXEC statement for a given set of parameters automatically, but exploring that will have to wait for another post. For now, unless there’s a really compelling reason or requirement to use table-valued parameters from SSRS reports I would probably stick with the tried and true “join-multi-valued-parameter-to-CSV-and-split-in-the-query” approach for using mutli-valued parameters in a stored procedure.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 21, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 21, 2010New ProjectsAdaptCMS: AdaptCMS is an open source CMS that is made for complete control of your website, easiness of use and easily adaptable to any type of website. It's...Aura: Aura is a application that calculates average color of desktop background image or whole screen and sets it as Aero Glass color.Boxee Launcher: Boxee Launcher is a simple Windows Media Center add-in that attempts to launch Boxee and manage the windows as seamlessly as possible.ClothingSMS: ClothingSMSEasySL3ColorPicker: Silverlight 3 color picker user control.Fluent Moq Builder: Gives a fluent interface to help with building complex mock objects with Moq, such as mocks of HttpContextBase for help in unit testing ASP.NET MVC.Folder Bookmarks: A simple folder/file bookmark manager. Simple and easy to use. No need to navigate large folder directories, just double-click the bookmark to open...GeocodeThe.Net: GeoCodeThe.Net seeks to promote geographic tagging for all content on the web. It is our belief that anything on the web can and should be geocoded...GNF: GNF is a open source WPF based GPS library controlsHKGolden Express: HKGolden Express is a web application to generate simplified layout of HKGolden forum. HKGolden Express is written in Java EE, it can be deployed o...Informant: Informant provides people with the desire to send mass SMS to specific groups with the ability to do so using Google Voice. Included with Informant...JSON Object Serializer .Net 1.1: JSON serializer is used to created javascript object notation strings. It was written in the .NET 1.1 framework, and has capabilities of serializ...LightWeight Application Server: LWAS aims to provide the means for non-technical developers using just a web browser to create data-centered applications from user interface desig...MicroHedge: Quant FiNerd Clock: NerdClock is my windows phone 7 test app. A clock for nerds, time reads in binary.PhotoHelper: PhotoHelper makes it easier to organize the photoes, if your photoes are put into different locations, but you think they are the same category, yo...Pylor: An ASP.NET MVC custom attribute that allows the configuration of role based security access rules with similar functionality to the System.Web.Mvc....radiogaga: Access an online data source of internet streaming media and present it using a mixed paradigm of embedded web browser and rich client functionalit...Register WCF LOB Adapter MSBuild Task: If you would like to use MSBuild to register a WCF LOB Adapter in a given server, the custom tasks: RegisterWCFLOBAdapter and UnregisterWCFLOBAdapt...Restart Explorer: Utility to start, stop and restart Windows Explorer.Silverlight 4 Netflix Browser: Demonstrates using a WCF Data Client in Silverlight 4 to browse movie titles with the Netflix OData API announced at MIX 10.trayTwittr: With trayTwittr you can easily update your Twitterstatus right from the Systray. The GUI is designed like the Notificationpanels in Windows 7 (e.g....Warensoft Socket Server: Warensoft Socket Server is a solo server, which never cares about the real logical business. While you could process your socket message with IronP...Weka - Message Serialization: Message serialization framework for .net, including Compact Framework.New Releases[Tool] Vczh Visual Studio UnitTest Coverage Analyzer: Coverage Analyzer (beta): Done features: Load Visual Studio Code Coverage XML File (get this file by clicking "Export Results" in "Test->Windows->Code Coverage Results" in V...Aura: Aura Beta 1: Initial releaseBoxee Launcher: BoxeeLauncher Release 1.0.1.0: BoxeeLauncher Release 1.0.1.0 is the initial, barely-tested release of this Windows Media Center add-in. It should work in Vista Media Center and 7...Controlled Vocabulary: 1.0.0.2: System Requirements Outlook 2007 / 2010 .Net Framework 3.5 Installation 1. Close Outlook (Use Task Manager to ensure no running instances in the b...CycleMania Starter Kit EAP - ASP.NET 4 Problem - Design - Solution: Cyclemania 0.08.33: removed ASP.NET Menu from admin module applied security role filtering to Dashboard panels/tabsDDDSample.Net: 0.7: This is the next major release of DDDSample. This time I give you 4 different versions of the application: Classic (vanilla) with synchronous inter...DirectoryInfoEx: DirectoryInfoEx 0.16: 03-14-10 Version 0.13 o Fixed FileSystemWaterEx ignore remove directory event. o Fixed Removed IDisposable ...Employee Scheduler: Employee Scheduler [2.6]: Fixed clear data methods to handle holiday modification Added buttons to allow holiday and add time exceptions Updated drag/drop and resize of holi...Enovatics Foundation Library: Enovatics Foundation Library V1.4: This version provides the following components : Strongly Typed cache management, CSV management Base classes for SQL Server data access laye...Fluent Moq Builder: Version 0.1: Intial release. Contains (incomplete) builders for HttpRequestBase, HttpContextBase and ControllerContext. Mock methods so far focus around request...Folder Bookmarks: Folder Bookmarks 1.4: This is the latest version of Folder Bookmarks (1.4). It has an installer - it will create a directory 'CPascoe' in My Documents. Once you have ex...Folder Bookmarks: Source Code: This has the all the code for Folder Bookmarks in a Text file.Genesis Smart Client Framework: Genesis Smart Client Framework v1.60.1024.1: This release features the first installer for the Genesis Smart Client Framework. The installer creates the database and set's up the Internet Info...HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201003201725): New features: (None) Bug fix: (None) Improvements: Added <meta> tag to optimize screen layout for different screen size. Added drop-down li...Home Access Plus+: v3.1.5.0: Version 3.1.5.0 Release Change Log: Fixed CSS for My Computer in List View Ability to remember which view mode you have selected Added HA+ home...IT Tycoon: IT Tycoon 0.2.0: Started refactoring toward more formatted and documented code and XAML.JSON Object Serializer .Net 1.1: jsonSerializer: Basic jsonSerializer binary. Now only handles an object model using reflection. There's no optimization added to the codebase handling .Net Refle...LightWeight Application Server: 0.4.0: 2010-03-20 lwas 0.4.0 This release is intended for c# developers audience only. Developed with MS vWD 2008 Express with .NET 3.5 and writen in c#....Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Marketing List Member Importer: Nocelab ExcelAddin - Release 2.0: Release note: - new installation procedure - fix some bugs related with the import procedure - errors during the import are displayed in red bold ...MSBuild Mercurial Tasks: 0.2.1 Stable: This release realises the Scenario 2 and provides two MSBuild tasks: HgCommit and HgPush. This task allows to create a new changeset in the current...NetSockets: NetBox (Example): Example application using the NetSockets library.NetSockets: NetSockets: The NetSockets library (DLL)Open Dotnet CMS: Open Dotnet CMS 1.6.2: This release update Open Dotnet CMS Console which now uses the modulare client application framework provided by Viking.Windows.Form library. The ...Open Portal Foundation: Open Portal Foundation V1.4: This release updates templates and theming library, and templates are now thematizable. This release also provides a better sample site and online ...PHPWord: PHPWord 0.6.0 Beta: Changelog: Added support for hyperlinks (inserting and formatting) Added support for GD images (created by PHP) Added support for Full-Table-St...Plurk.NET API and Client Applications: Plurk API Component: Plurk API Component is a wrapper of Plurk HTTP API.Register WCF LOB Adapter MSBuild Task: Register WCF LOB Adapter MSBuild Task 1.0: Register WCF LOB Adapter MSBuild Task Version 1.0 For more information visit: http://whiteboardworks.com/2010/02/installing-wcf-lob-adapters-wit...SCSI Interface for Multimedia and Block Devices: Release 11 - Complete User-Friendly Burning App!: I made numerous internal and external changes in this release of the program, the most important ones of which are: An intermediate buffer to make ...SharePoint LogViewer: SharePoint LogViewer 1.5.2: This release has following improvements: Scroll position is maintained when log is refreshed Filtering/Sorting performance has been significantly ...ShellLight: ShellLight 0.2.0.0: This is the first feature complete and full functional version of ShellLight. It is still a very simple framework with a limited set of features, b...Silverlight Media Player (3.0): Silverlight Media Player v.02: Silverlight Media Player (2.0/3.0/4.0) major upgrade: initial settings and media elements are stored in external XML filesStardust: Stardust Binaries: Stardust BinariesToolkit.forasp.net Multipurpose Tools for Asp.net written in C#: Beta 1: Beta 1 of csToolkit.dllToolkitVB.net is a set of Multipurpose Tools for Asp.net written in VB: Beta 1: Beta 1 of ToolKitVB.dllTransparent Persistence.Net: TP.Net 0.1.1: This is a minor update that produces separate 2.0 and 3.5 builds. Additionally type to persistence store naming has been enhanced.VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30320.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: Screen Capture Program (Visual C++ 2008): This screen capture program can capture the whole screen of your computer and save it in any picture format you want including gif, bmp, jpg and pn...WPF Dialogs: Version 0.1.3 for .Net 3.5: This is a special version of the "Version 0.1.3" for the .Net-framework 3.5. You can use these library like the .Net 4.0 version. The changes are o...Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpSavvy DateTimeRawrWBFS ManagerSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitLiveUpload to FacebookWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)Most Active ProjectsLINQ to TwitterRawrOData SDK for PHPjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesDirectQPHPExcelFarseer Physics Enginepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryBlogEngine.NETNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 16, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 16, 2010New ProjectsAtomFeedBuilder: Simple and lightweight Atom feed builder. Developed in VB.Net.Cable and Wire harness tester: If you build lots of cable/wire harness' you know that testing them is a pain. I have wanted an automated cable tester for a while now but commerci...Carmenta Engine Power Pack: The target of Carmenta Engine Power Pack is to provide extensions, utilities and wrapper classes that allows developers to work more efficiently w...Customer Book: Customer Book, its like address book with facility for generating quotation for a business or a supplier to the clients.Dialector: Using this program, you can convert pure Turkish texts into different dialects; such as: Emmi, Kufurbaz, Kusdili, Laz, Peltek, Tiki, and many more....Downline Commision Generator: Analyze the compensations plan of the organizations in multi-level marketing or network marketing. Check with this tool the commision plan of the c...EmbeddedSpark 2010 Project M: Project M is a system for seamlessly interfacing a tabletop interface to portable devices placed upon it. Using image recognition and projectors, P...Event Log Creator by eVestment Alliance: Provides a simple utility to create a new source and log in the Windows event log. The utility checks if the current user is an administrator, and...ExchangeHog: Desktop/daemon application that aggregates emails from multiple pop3-accounts into single Microsoft Exchange 2010 account. For users receiving ema...Extra Time Calculator: Extra Time Calculator allows exam end times to be easily calculated for students receiving an extra time accommodation.Generic WCF Hosting Service: The Generic Host Service provides a simple, reusable, and reliable mechanism for hosting WCF services. Google Storage for .NET: Google Storage for .NET (GSN) is an open source library that provides .NET developers with easy access to the Google Storage API. The library allo...Helium: The Helium XNA game engine is a light portable game engine designed to work on many platforms and soon to be expanded on more. Currently the helium...IconizedButton Control Set: ASP.NET WebForms IconizedButton Custom Control Set. Replaces the dull Button/LinkButton/HyperLink controls with styling and left and right aligned...Jedi Council PM List: Allows for users to process Private Message Lists on the Jedi Council forums for TheForce.Net.JetPumpDesign: 本软件为蒸气喷射泵设计计算软件作者：申阳单位：西安交通大学过程装备与控制工程61班log4Nez: An high personalized implementation of a logging libraryMutantFramework: Provides a common set of building blocks for building enterprise applicationsNUnit Add-in for Growl Notifications: NUnit add-in which allows to send notifications to Growl when test run is started or finished, when a first test failure occurs and so on.Object Reports: Object Reports is a "proof of concept" application which provides users the ability to visualy build queries based on data stored in the relational...openTrionyx: openTrionyx is a set of tools to make easier web application development. Includes Data, Web and plain text documents tools. Developed in C#, compl...Partial Rendering control for MVC 2: This project shows a web custom control that allow to have partial rendering using async post-back (through JQuery) in a MVC 2 web application.PowerGUI Visual Studio Extension: The PowerGUI Visual Studio Extension exposes PowerGUI as an editor in Visual Studio. PowerShell developers can now write scripts directly in Visual...PowerShell Script Provider: Write your own PowerShell provider using only script, no C# required. Module definition is provided by a Windows PowerShell 2.0 Module, which may b...Scholar: Scholar is a solution/framework for .Net developers to help with the creation of distributed data processing (think SETI@home style apps). It is in...scrabb: Scrabb help people play scrabble over net.SharePointNuke: A DotNetNuke module that connects to a SharePoint server using web services API and displays the content of a specified list. SolidWorksBackConverter: a Project to Convert a solidwork file to an older version Soma - Sql Oriented MApping framework: Sql Oriented MApping framework.SPCreate: SPCreate auto store procedure creator. It's developed in c#. SpCreate as output ADO.NET Class (C# or VB.Net) and SQL Server or MS Access Store pro...std::streambuf wrapper for COM IStream: This provides a subclass of std::streambuf that wraps a COM IStream, so you can use an IStream with any C++ code that uses iostreams or the STL alg...VACID solutions: Solutions of verification problems posed in paper "Verification of Ample Correctness of Invariants of Data-structures". Developed with various tool...Viewer: Our Goal is to create a C# project that will centeralize Image and Movie Viewing in a forms application, It will also have a Specialized Webbrowser...vsXPathTester: vsXPathTester is a utility for Developer. This help them load XML file and the run their XPath Query. The Resultant is shown in window. It save the...New Releases.Net Max Framework: Version 1.0.0: Version 1.0.0 - EstableAndrew's XNA Helpers: V1.2: Features upgraded features based off of the V1.1 code for both X86 and XBOX Additions/Changes Reworked the Texture2D and Rectangle extender namesp...BaseCalendar: BaseControls 1.2: BaseControls 1.2 contains the BaseCalendar ASP.NET control. Changes: 1.2 Exposed EffectiveVisibleDate and FirstVisibleDay methods 1.1 Rendering ...Customer Book: Customer Book Code: Bronze Release PostgreSQL database dump for Customer Book. Open PgAdmin III and restore the database dump into your server. Notice User Name for t...Data Connection Suite: Data Connections Suite v1.0.0.0: This is the first release of this incomplete component, but good enought to use in a production environment (it's what we do).DigitArchive: Build 8: Now the software works on .NET 3.5 and above. So if you have Windows 7 it installs without any pre-requisites. Changes: -Works on .NET 3.5 -Now t...Doom 64 Ex (SVN Builds): Doom 64 Ex r-738: Finally a new build after so many months. There are way to many updates to even begin to write about here just download and frag away. There is a s...DotNetNuke® Media: 03.03.00a: This release is Beta!! There is no guaranteed upgrade path to the 03.03.00 release version! Please use this to help us and test what we have. Repor...Downline Commision Generator: Downline Commision Generator: Downline Commision GeneratorElmah2 : An extensable error logger for ASP.net: 1.0 Beta 1: This is a beta release be sure to report any errors etc. Be sure to check out the documentation tab on information on how to install and configure...EPiServer Template Foundation: First compiled release: First compiled release for experimenting only! :) An introductory post will be published shortly on the blog.Helium: Initial Release: This is the initial release of the Helium Engine. Please check out the documentation link for information on how to use the engine. To see a ful...IconizedButton Control Set: IconizedButton Control Set: Taking a line from Google's play book - marking everything as Beta. Seriously, I'd like to hear some feedback before moving the Development Status...JetPumpDesign: JetPumpDesign 1.0: 当前的软件可以设计5级以内的蒸汽喷射泵。Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework: Version 1.4.4 Installer: Tools TargetingVisual Studio 2010 Expression Blend 4 (part of Expression Studio 4) Analytics Services Included Vendor Behavior Silverlight 3...NHibernate Sidekick Library: 0.7.0: Added a few methods for use with the NHibernate 2nd level cache (EvictAllObjectsFromCache and EvictPersistentClass). I also added the boolean optio...NHibernate Sidekick Library: 0.7.5: Fix for http://nhprof.com/Learn/Alerts/DoNotUseImplicitTransactionsNito.KitchenSink: Version 9: Dependencies Nito.Linq 0.6 Beta (released 2010-06-14) Rx 1.0.2563.0 (released 2010-06-09) Supported Platforms .NET 4.0 Client Profile, with Rx. ...NQueue: Version 1.0.0.0: Version 1.0.0.0NUnit Add-in for Growl Notifications: NUnit Add-in for Growl Notifications 1.0 build 0: The very first stable releasePartial Rendering control for MVC 2: Partial Rendering control for MVC 2: Here there is the source code and a MVC 2 web site as testPowerShell Script Provider: PSProvider 0.1: Requires PowerShell 2.0 RTM The functions in the attached ps1 script are the bare minimum for a working container-style provider (no subfolders.) ...Quick Performance Monitor: Version 1.4.3: Fixed issue where if an instance name contains backslash characters (\) the program would not load the performance counter properly. Also added sta...SharePointNuke: SharePointNuke 2.00.08: SharePointNuke 2.00.08 - Binary DotNetNuke 5.x module.Skype Voice Changer: 1.0 Updated Sample Code: This updated release is the accompanying code for the Skype Voice Changer article on Coding4Fun. Changes in this release: Added support for PreEmp...std::streambuf wrapper for COM IStream: Beta release (tested in a commercial project): This code has been tested in a custom Windows Search filter and property handler I wrote for a proprietary binary format. There may be some bugs, b...Sunlit World Scheme: Sunlit World Scheme - 20100615 - source and binary: This is the result of building the current source code in Debug mode. The source code is included. The binaries are in the SchemeCode folder along...Timo-Design / 40FINGERS DotNetNuke® Skinning Extensions: Style Helper Skin Object Beta: The 40FINGERS Style Helper Skin object allows you to add CSS and Javascript links and meta tags to the head of your page. It can also remove CSS l...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.1 RC: This is the final test version of Umbraco 4.1 before the final release. PLEASE BE AWARE THAT UMBRACO 4.1 RC IS A .NET 4.0 RELEASE AND WON'T WORK O...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30615.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWCF 4 Templates for Visual Studio 2010: UserNameForCertificate Template: Produces a WCF service application supporting username and password authentication, relying on message security to protect messages en route. Suppl...WCF 4 Templates for Visual Studio 2010: UserNameOverHttps Template: Produces a WCF service application supporting username and password authentication over HTTPS/SSL, relying on transport security to protect message...xUnit.net Contrib: xunitcontrib 0.4.1 alpha (ReSharper 5.1.1709 only): xunitcontrib release 0.4.1 (ReSharper runner) This release targets the current nightly build of ReSharper 5.1's Early Access Programme (build 1709)...Most Popular ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeRIA Services EssentialsNeatUploadBxf (Basic XAML Framework).NET Transactional File ManagerSOLID by exampleSSIS Expression Editor & TesterWEI ShareChirpy - VS Add In For Handling Js, Css, and DotLess FilesASP.NET MVC Time PlannerMost Active ProjectsdotSpatialRhyduino - Arduino and Managed CodeCassandraemonpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeLightweight Fluent Workflowpatterns & practices: Enterprise Library ContribNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleBlogEngine.NETjQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services

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DocumentDB - Another Azure NoSQL Storage Service

- by Shaun

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2014/08/25/documentdb---another-azure-nosql-storage-service.aspxMicrosoft just released a bunch of new features for Azure on 22nd and one of them I was interested in most is DocumentDB, a document NoSQL database service on the cloud. Quick Look at DocumentDB We can try DocumentDB from the new azure preview portal. Just click the NEW button and select the item named DocumentDB to create a new account. Specify the name of the DocumentDB, which will be the endpoint we are going to use to connect later. Select the capacity unit, resource group and subscription. In resource group section we can select which region our DocumentDB will be located. Same as other azure services select the same location with your consumers of the DocumentDB, for example the website, web services, etc.. After several minutes the DocumentDB will be ready. Click the KEYS button we can find the URI and primary key, which will be used when connecting. Now let's open Visual Studio and try to use the DocumentDB we had just created. Create a new console application and install the DocumentDB .NET client library from NuGet with the keyword "DocumentDB". You need to select "Include Prerelase" in NuGet Package Manager window since this library was not yet released. Next we will create a new database and document collection under our DocumentDB account. The code below created an instance of DocumentClient with the URI and primary key we just copied from azure portal, and create a database and collection. And it also prints the document and collection link string which will be used later to insert and query documents. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: var endpoint = new Uri("https://shx.documents.azure.com:443/"); 4: var key = "LU2NoyS2fH0131TGxtBE4DW/CjHQBzAaUx/mbuJ1X77C4FWUG129wWk2oyS2odgkFO2Xdif9/ZddintQicF+lA=="; 5: 6: var client = new DocumentClient(endpoint, key); 7: Run(client).Wait(); 8: 9: Console.WriteLine("done"); 10: Console.ReadKey(); 11: } 12: 13: static async Task Run(DocumentClient client) 14: { 15: 16: var database = new Database() { Id = "testdb" }; 17: database = await client.CreateDatabaseAsync(database); 18: Console.WriteLine("database link = {0}", database.SelfLink); 19: 20: var collection = new DocumentCollection() { Id = "testcol" }; 21: collection = await client.CreateDocumentCollectionAsync(database.SelfLink, collection); 22: Console.WriteLine("collection link = {0}", collection.SelfLink); 23: } Below is the result from the console window. We need to copy the collection link string for future usage. Now if we back to the portal we will find a database was listed with the name we specified in the code. Next we will insert a document into the database and collection we had just created. In the code below we pasted the collection link which copied in previous step, create a dynamic object with several properties defined. As you can see we can add some normal properties contains string, integer, we can also add complex property for example an array, a dictionary and an object reference, unless they can be serialized to JSON. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: var endpoint = new Uri("https://shx.documents.azure.com:443/"); 4: var key = "LU2NoyS2fH0131TGxtBE4DW/CjHQBzAaUx/mbuJ1X77C4FWUG129wWk2oyS2odgkFO2Xdif9/ZddintQicF+lA=="; 5: 6: var client = new DocumentClient(endpoint, key); 7: 8: // collection link pasted from the result in previous demo 9: var collectionLink = "dbs/AAk3AA==/colls/AAk3AP6oFgA=/"; 10: 11: // document we are going to insert to database 12: dynamic doc = new ExpandoObject(); 13: doc.firstName = "Shaun"; 14: doc.lastName = "Xu"; 15: doc.roles = new string[] { "developer", "trainer", "presenter", "father" }; 16: 17: // insert the docuemnt 18: InsertADoc(client, collectionLink, doc).Wait(); 19: 20: Console.WriteLine("done"); 21: Console.ReadKey(); 22: } the insert code will be very simple as below, just provide the collection link and the object we are going to insert. 1: static async Task InsertADoc(DocumentClient client, string collectionLink, dynamic doc) 2: { 3: var document = await client.CreateDocumentAsync(collectionLink, doc); 4: Console.WriteLine(await JsonConvert.SerializeObjectAsync(document, Formatting.Indented)); 5: } Below is the result after the object had been inserted. Finally we will query the document from the database and collection. Similar to the insert code, we just need to specify the collection link so that the .NET SDK will help us to retrieve all documents in it. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: var endpoint = new Uri("https://shx.documents.azure.com:443/"); 4: var key = "LU2NoyS2fH0131TGxtBE4DW/CjHQBzAaUx/mbuJ1X77C4FWUG129wWk2oyS2odgkFO2Xdif9/ZddintQicF+lA=="; 5: 6: var client = new DocumentClient(endpoint, key); 7: 8: var collectionLink = "dbs/AAk3AA==/colls/AAk3AP6oFgA=/"; 9: 10: SelectDocs(client, collectionLink); 11: 12: Console.WriteLine("done"); 13: Console.ReadKey(); 14: } 15: 16: static void SelectDocs(DocumentClient client, string collectionLink) 17: { 18: var docs = client.CreateDocumentQuery(collectionLink + "docs/").ToList(); 19: foreach(var doc in docs) 20: { 21: Console.WriteLine(doc); 22: } 23: } Since there's only one document in my collection below is the result when I executed the code. As you can see all properties, includes the array was retrieve at the same time. DocumentDB also attached some properties we didn't specified such as "_rid", "_ts", "_self" etc., which is controlled by the service. DocumentDB Benefit DocumentDB is a document NoSQL database service. Different from the traditional database, document database is truly schema-free. In a short nut, you can save anything in the same database and collection if it could be serialized to JSON. We you query the document database, all sub documents will be retrieved at the same time. This means you don't need to join other tables when using a traditional database. Document database is very useful when we build some high performance system with hierarchical data structure. For example, assuming we need to build a blog system, there will be many blog posts and each of them contains the content and comments. The comment can be commented as well. If we were using traditional database, let's say SQL Server, the database schema might be defined as below. When we need to display a post we need to load the post content from the Posts table, as well as the comments from the Comments table. We also need to build the comment tree based on the CommentID field. But if were using DocumentDB, what we need to do is to save the post as a document with a list contains all comments. Under a comment all sub comments will be a list in it. When we display this post we just need to to query the post document, the content and all comments will be loaded in proper structure. 1: { 2: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 3: "title": "xxxxx", 4: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 5: "postedOn": "08/25/2014 13:55", 6: "comments": 7: [ 8: { 9: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 10: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 11: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 14:00", 12: "commentedBy": "xxx" 13: }, 14: { 15: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 16: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 17: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 14:10", 18: "commentedBy": "xxx", 19: "comments": 20: [ 21: { 22: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 23: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 24: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 14:18", 25: "commentedBy": "xxx", 26: "comments": 27: [ 28: { 29: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 30: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 31: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 18:22", 32: "commentedBy": "xxx", 33: } 34: ] 35: }, 36: { 37: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 38: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 39: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 15:02", 40: "commentedBy": "xxx", 41: } 42: ] 43: }, 44: { 45: "id": "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx", 46: "content": "xxxxx, xxxxxxxxx. xxxxxx, xx, xxxx.", 47: "commentedOn": "08/25/2014 14:30", 48: "commentedBy": "xxx" 49: } 50: ] 51: } DocumentDB vs. Table Storage DocumentDB and Table Storage are all NoSQL service in Microsoft Azure. One common question is "when we should use DocumentDB rather than Table Storage". Here are some ideas from me and some MVPs. First of all, they are different kind of NoSQL database. DocumentDB is a document database while table storage is a key-value database. Second, table storage is cheaper. DocumentDB supports scale out from one capacity unit to 5 in preview period and each capacity unit provides 10GB local SSD storage. The price is $0.73/day includes 50% discount. For storage service the highest price is $0.061/GB, which is almost 10% of DocumentDB. Third, table storage provides local-replication, geo-replication, read access geo-replication while DocumentDB doesn't support. Fourth, there is local emulator for table storage but none for DocumentDB. We have to connect to the DocumentDB on cloud when developing locally. But, DocumentDB supports some cool features that table storage doesn't have. It supports store procedure, trigger and user-defined-function. It supports rich indexing while table storage only supports indexing against partition key and row key. It supports transaction, table storage supports as well but restricted with Entity Group Transaction scope. And the last, table storage is GA but DocumentDB is still in preview. Summary In this post I have a quick demonstration and introduction about the new DocumentDB service in Azure. It's very easy to interact through .NET and it also support REST API, Node.js SDK and Python SDK. Then I explained the concept and benefit of using document database, then compared with table storage. Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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Security exception in Twitterizer

- by Raghu

Hi, We are using Twitterizer for Twitter integration to get the Tweets details. When making call to the method OAuthUtility.GetRequestToken, following exception is coming. System.Security.SecurityException: Request for the permission of type 'System.Net.WebPermission, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' failed. When the application is hosted on IIS 5, the application works fine and the above error is coming only when the application is hosted in IIS 7 on Windows 2008 R2. and the method OAuthUtility.GetRequestToken throws above exception. It seems the issue is something with code access security. Please suggest what kind of permissions should be given to fix the security exception. The application has the Full Trust and I have even tried by registering the Twitterizer DLL in GAC and still the same error is coming. I am not sure what makes the difference between IIS 5 and IIS 7 with regards to code access security to cause that exception. Following is the stack track of the exception. [SecurityException: Request for the permission of type 'System.Net.WebPermission, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' failed.] System.Security.CodeAccessSecurityEngine.Check(Object demand, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean isPermSet) +0 System.Security.CodeAccessPermission.Demand() +54 Twitterizer.OAuthUtility.ExecuteRequest(String baseUrl, Dictionary`2 parameters, HTTPVerb verb, String consumerKey, String consumerSecret, String token, String tokenSecret, WebProxy proxy) +224 Twitterizer.OAuthUtility.GetRequestToken(String consumerKey, String consumerSecret, String callbackAddress, WebProxy proxy) +238 Twitter._Default.btnSubmit_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) +94 System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e) +115 System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) +140 System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(IPostBackEventHandler sourceControl, String eventArgument) +29 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +11045655 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +11045194 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest() +91 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) +240 ASP.authorization_aspx.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) in c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files\twitter\c2fd5853\dcb96ae9\App_Web_y_ada-ix.0.cs:0 System.Web.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +599 System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +171 Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Regards, Raghu

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Ogre 3d and bullet physics interaction

- by Tim

I have been playing around with Ogre3d and trying to integrate bullet physics. I have previously somewhat successfully got this functionality working with irrlicht and bullet and I am trying to base this on what I had done there, but modifying it to fit with Ogre. It is working but not correctly and I would like some help to understand what it is I am doing wrong. I have a state system and when I enter the "gamestate" I call some functions such as setting up a basic scene, creating the physics simulation. I am doing that as follows. void GameState::enter() { ... // Setup Physics btBroadphaseInterface *BroadPhase = new btAxisSweep3(btVector3(-1000,-1000,-1000), btVector3(1000,1000,1000)); btDefaultCollisionConfiguration *CollisionConfiguration = new btDefaultCollisionConfiguration(); btCollisionDispatcher *Dispatcher = new btCollisionDispatcher(CollisionConfiguration); btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver *Solver = new btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver(); World = new btDiscreteDynamicsWorld(Dispatcher, BroadPhase, Solver, CollisionConfiguration); ... createScene(); } In the createScene method I add a light and try to setup a "ground" plane to act as the ground for things to collide with.. as follows. I expect there is issues with this as I get objects colliding with the ground but half way through it and they glitch around like crazy on collision. void GameState::createScene() { m_pSceneMgr->createLight("Light")->setPosition(75,75,75); // Physics // As a test we want a floor plane for things to collide with Ogre::Entity *ent; Ogre::Plane p; p.normal = Ogre::Vector3(0,1,0); p.d = 0; Ogre::MeshManager::getSingleton().createPlane( "FloorPlane", Ogre::ResourceGroupManager::DEFAULT_RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME, p, 200000, 200000, 20, 20, true, 1, 9000,9000,Ogre::Vector3::UNIT_Z); ent = m_pSceneMgr->createEntity("floor", "FloorPlane"); ent->setMaterialName("Test/Floor"); Ogre::SceneNode *node = m_pSceneMgr->getRootSceneNode()->createChildSceneNode(); node->attachObject(ent); btTransform Transform; Transform.setIdentity(); Transform.setOrigin(btVector3(0,1,0)); // Give it to the motion state btDefaultMotionState *MotionState = new btDefaultMotionState(Transform); btCollisionShape *Shape = new btStaticPlaneShape(btVector3(0,1,0),0); // Add Mass btVector3 LocalInertia; Shape->calculateLocalInertia(0, LocalInertia); // CReate the rigid body object btRigidBody *RigidBody = new btRigidBody(0, MotionState, Shape, LocalInertia); // Store a pointer to the Ogre Node so we can update it later RigidBody->setUserPointer((void *) (node)); // Add it to the physics world World->addRigidBody(RigidBody); Objects.push_back(RigidBody); m_pNumEntities++; // End Physics } I then have a method to create a cube and give it rigid body physics properties. I know there will be errors here as I get the items colliding with the ground but not with each other properly. So I would appreciate some input on what I am doing wrong. void GameState::CreateBox(const btVector3 &TPosition, const btVector3 &TScale, btScalar TMass) { Ogre::Vector3 size = Ogre::Vector3::ZERO; Ogre::Vector3 pos = Ogre::Vector3::ZERO; Ogre::Vector3 scale = Ogre::Vector3::ZERO; pos.x = TPosition.getX(); pos.y = TPosition.getY(); pos.z = TPosition.getZ(); scale.x = TScale.getX(); scale.y = TScale.getY(); scale.z = TScale.getZ(); Ogre::Entity *entity = m_pSceneMgr->createEntity( "Box" + Ogre::StringConverter::toString(m_pNumEntities), "cube.mesh"); entity->setCastShadows(true); Ogre::AxisAlignedBox boundingB = entity->getBoundingBox(); size = boundingB.getSize(); //size /= 2.0f; // Only the half needed? //size *= 0.96f; // Bullet margin is a bit bigger so we need a smaller size entity->setMaterialName("Test/Cube"); Ogre::SceneNode *node = m_pSceneMgr->getRootSceneNode()->createChildSceneNode(); node->attachObject(entity); node->setPosition(pos); //node->scale(scale); // Physics btTransform Transform; Transform.setIdentity(); Transform.setOrigin(TPosition); // Give it to the motion state btDefaultMotionState *MotionState = new btDefaultMotionState(Transform); btVector3 HalfExtents(TScale.getX()*0.5f,TScale.getY()*0.5f,TScale.getZ()*0.5f); btCollisionShape *Shape = new btBoxShape(HalfExtents); // Add Mass btVector3 LocalInertia; Shape->calculateLocalInertia(TMass, LocalInertia); // CReate the rigid body object btRigidBody *RigidBody = new btRigidBody(TMass, MotionState, Shape, LocalInertia); // Store a pointer to the Ogre Node so we can update it later RigidBody->setUserPointer((void *) (node)); // Add it to the physics world World->addRigidBody(RigidBody); Objects.push_back(RigidBody); m_pNumEntities++; } Then in the GameState::update() method which which runs every frame to handle input and render etc I call an UpdatePhysics method to update the physics simulation. void GameState::UpdatePhysics(unsigned int TDeltaTime) { World->stepSimulation(TDeltaTime * 0.001f, 60); btRigidBody *TObject; for(std::vector<btRigidBody *>::iterator it = Objects.begin(); it != Objects.end(); ++it) { // Update renderer Ogre::SceneNode *node = static_cast<Ogre::SceneNode *>((*it)->getUserPointer()); TObject = *it; // Set position btVector3 Point = TObject->getCenterOfMassPosition(); node->setPosition(Ogre::Vector3((float)Point[0], (float)Point[1], (float)Point[2])); // set rotation btVector3 EulerRotation; QuaternionToEuler(TObject->getOrientation(), EulerRotation); node->setOrientation(1,(Ogre::Real)EulerRotation[0], (Ogre::Real)EulerRotation[1], (Ogre::Real)EulerRotation[2]); //node->rotate(Ogre::Vector3(EulerRotation[0], EulerRotation[1], EulerRotation[2])); } } void GameState::QuaternionToEuler(const btQuaternion &TQuat, btVector3 &TEuler) { btScalar W = TQuat.getW(); btScalar X = TQuat.getX(); btScalar Y = TQuat.getY(); btScalar Z = TQuat.getZ(); float WSquared = W * W; float XSquared = X * X; float YSquared = Y * Y; float ZSquared = Z * Z; TEuler.setX(atan2f(2.0f * (Y * Z + X * W), -XSquared - YSquared + ZSquared + WSquared)); TEuler.setY(asinf(-2.0f * (X * Z - Y * W))); TEuler.setZ(atan2f(2.0f * (X * Y + Z * W), XSquared - YSquared - ZSquared + WSquared)); TEuler *= RADTODEG; } I seem to have issues with the cubes not colliding with each other and colliding strangely with the ground. I have tried to capture the effect with the attached image. I would appreciate any help in understanding what I have done wrong. Thanks. EDIT : Solution The following code shows the changes I made to get accurate physics. void GameState::createScene() { m_pSceneMgr->createLight("Light")->setPosition(75,75,75); // Physics // As a test we want a floor plane for things to collide with Ogre::Entity *ent; Ogre::Plane p; p.normal = Ogre::Vector3(0,1,0); p.d = 0; Ogre::MeshManager::getSingleton().createPlane( "FloorPlane", Ogre::ResourceGroupManager::DEFAULT_RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME, p, 200000, 200000, 20, 20, true, 1, 9000,9000,Ogre::Vector3::UNIT_Z); ent = m_pSceneMgr->createEntity("floor", "FloorPlane"); ent->setMaterialName("Test/Floor"); Ogre::SceneNode *node = m_pSceneMgr->getRootSceneNode()->createChildSceneNode(); node->attachObject(ent); btTransform Transform; Transform.setIdentity(); // Fixed the transform vector here for y back to 0 to stop the objects sinking into the ground. Transform.setOrigin(btVector3(0,0,0)); // Give it to the motion state btDefaultMotionState *MotionState = new btDefaultMotionState(Transform); btCollisionShape *Shape = new btStaticPlaneShape(btVector3(0,1,0),0); // Add Mass btVector3 LocalInertia; Shape->calculateLocalInertia(0, LocalInertia); // CReate the rigid body object btRigidBody *RigidBody = new btRigidBody(0, MotionState, Shape, LocalInertia); // Store a pointer to the Ogre Node so we can update it later RigidBody->setUserPointer((void *) (node)); // Add it to the physics world World->addRigidBody(RigidBody); Objects.push_back(RigidBody); m_pNumEntities++; // End Physics } void GameState::CreateBox(const btVector3 &TPosition, const btVector3 &TScale, btScalar TMass) { Ogre::Vector3 size = Ogre::Vector3::ZERO; Ogre::Vector3 pos = Ogre::Vector3::ZERO; Ogre::Vector3 scale = Ogre::Vector3::ZERO; pos.x = TPosition.getX(); pos.y = TPosition.getY(); pos.z = TPosition.getZ(); scale.x = TScale.getX(); scale.y = TScale.getY(); scale.z = TScale.getZ(); Ogre::Entity *entity = m_pSceneMgr->createEntity( "Box" + Ogre::StringConverter::toString(m_pNumEntities), "cube.mesh"); entity->setCastShadows(true); Ogre::AxisAlignedBox boundingB = entity->getBoundingBox(); // The ogre bounding box is slightly bigger so I am reducing it for // use with the rigid body. size = boundingB.getSize()*0.95f; entity->setMaterialName("Test/Cube"); Ogre::SceneNode *node = m_pSceneMgr->getRootSceneNode()->createChildSceneNode(); node->attachObject(entity); node->setPosition(pos); node->showBoundingBox(true); //node->scale(scale); // Physics btTransform Transform; Transform.setIdentity(); Transform.setOrigin(TPosition); // Give it to the motion state btDefaultMotionState *MotionState = new btDefaultMotionState(Transform); // I got the size of the bounding box above but wasn't using it to set // the size for the rigid body. This now does. btVector3 HalfExtents(size.x*0.5f,size.y*0.5f,size.z*0.5f); btCollisionShape *Shape = new btBoxShape(HalfExtents); // Add Mass btVector3 LocalInertia; Shape->calculateLocalInertia(TMass, LocalInertia); // CReate the rigid body object btRigidBody *RigidBody = new btRigidBody(TMass, MotionState, Shape, LocalInertia); // Store a pointer to the Ogre Node so we can update it later RigidBody->setUserPointer((void *) (node)); // Add it to the physics world World->addRigidBody(RigidBody); Objects.push_back(RigidBody); m_pNumEntities++; } void GameState::UpdatePhysics(unsigned int TDeltaTime) { World->stepSimulation(TDeltaTime * 0.001f, 60); btRigidBody *TObject; for(std::vector<btRigidBody *>::iterator it = Objects.begin(); it != Objects.end(); ++it) { // Update renderer Ogre::SceneNode *node = static_cast<Ogre::SceneNode *>((*it)->getUserPointer()); TObject = *it; // Set position btVector3 Point = TObject->getCenterOfMassPosition(); node->setPosition(Ogre::Vector3((float)Point[0], (float)Point[1], (float)Point[2])); // Convert the bullet Quaternion to an Ogre quaternion btQuaternion btq = TObject->getOrientation(); Ogre::Quaternion quart = Ogre::Quaternion(btq.w(),btq.x(),btq.y(),btq.z()); // use the quaternion with setOrientation node->setOrientation(quart); } } The QuaternionToEuler function isn't needed so that was removed from code and header files. The objects now collide with the ground and each other appropriately.

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A DirectoryCatalog class for Silverlight MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework)

- by Dixin

In the MEF (Managed Extension Framework) for .NET, there are useful ComposablePartCatalog implementations in System.ComponentModel.Composition.dll, like: System.ComponentModel.Composition.Hosting.AggregateCatalog System.ComponentModel.Composition.Hosting.AssemblyCatalog System.ComponentModel.Composition.Hosting.DirectoryCatalog System.ComponentModel.Composition.Hosting.TypeCatalog While in Silverlight, there is a extra System.ComponentModel.Composition.Hosting.DeploymentCatalog. As a wrapper of AssemblyCatalog, it can load all assemblies in a XAP file in the web server side. Unfortunately, in silverlight there is no DirectoryCatalog to load a folder. Background There are scenarios that Silverlight application may need to load all XAP files in a folder in the web server side, for example: If the Silverlight application is extensible and supports plug-ins, there would be a /ClinetBin/Plugins/ folder in the web server, and each pluin would be an individual XAP file in the folder. In this scenario, after the application is loaded and started up, it would like to load all XAP files in /ClinetBin/Plugins/ folder. If the aplication supports themes, there would be a /ClinetBin/Themes/ folder, and each theme would be an individual XAP file too. The application would qalso need to load all XAP files in /ClinetBin/Themes/. It is useful if we have a DirectoryCatalog: DirectoryCatalog catalog = new DirectoryCatalog("/Plugins"); catalog.DownloadCompleted += (sender, e) => { }; catalog.DownloadAsync(); Obviously, the implementation of DirectoryCatalog is easy. It is just a collection of DeploymentCatalog class. Retrieve file list from a directory Of course, to retrieve file list from a web folder, the folder’s “Directory Browsing” feature must be enabled: So when the folder is requested, it responses a list of its files and folders: This is nothing but a simple HTML page: <html> <head> <title>localhost - /Folder/</title> </head> <body> <h1>localhost - /Folder/</h1> <hr> <pre> <a href="/">[To Parent Directory]</a><br> <br> 1/3/2011 7:22 PM 185 <a href="/Folder/File.txt">File.txt</a><br> 1/3/2011 7:22 PM <dir> <a href="/Folder/Folder/">Folder</a><br> </pre> <hr> </body> </html> For the ASP.NET Deployment Server of Visual Studio, directory browsing is enabled by default: The HTML <Body> is almost the same: <body bgcolor="white"> <h2><i>Directory Listing -- /ClientBin/</i></h2> <hr width="100%" size="1" color="silver"> <pre> <a href="/">[To Parent Directory]</a> Thursday, January 27, 2011 11:51 PM 282,538 <a href="Test.xap">Test.xap</a> Tuesday, January 04, 2011 02:06 AM <dir> <a href="TestFolder/">TestFolder</a> </pre> <hr width="100%" size="1" color="silver"> <b>Version Information:</b> ASP.NET Development Server 10.0.0.0 </body> The only difference is, IIS’s links start with slash, but here the links do not. Here one way to get the file list is read the href attributes of the links: [Pure] private IEnumerable<Uri> GetFilesFromDirectory(string html) { Contract.Requires(html != null); Contract.Ensures(Contract.Result<IEnumerable<Uri>>() != null); return new Regex( "<a href=\"(?<uriRelative>[^\"]*)\">[^<]*</a>", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.CultureInvariant) .Matches(html) .OfType<Match>() .Where(match => match.Success) .Select(match => match.Groups["uriRelative"].Value) .Where(uriRelative => uriRelative.EndsWith(".xap", StringComparison.Ordinal)) .Select(uriRelative => { Uri baseUri = this.Uri.IsAbsoluteUri ? this.Uri : new Uri(Application.Current.Host.Source, this.Uri); uriRelative = uriRelative.StartsWith("/", StringComparison.Ordinal) ? uriRelative : (baseUri.LocalPath.EndsWith("/", StringComparison.Ordinal) ? baseUri.LocalPath + uriRelative : baseUri.LocalPath + "/" + uriRelative); return new Uri(baseUri, uriRelative); }); } Please notice the folders’ links end with a slash. They are filtered by the second Where() query. The above method can find files’ URIs from the specified IIS folder, or ASP.NET Deployment Server folder while debugging. To support other formats of file list, a constructor is needed to pass into a customized method: /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="T:System.ComponentModel.Composition.Hosting.DirectoryCatalog" /> class with <see cref="T:System.ComponentModel.Composition.Primitives.ComposablePartDefinition" /> objects based on all the XAP files in the specified directory URI. /// </summary> /// <param name="uri"> /// URI to the directory to scan for XAPs to add to the catalog. /// The URI must be absolute, or relative to <see cref="P:System.Windows.Interop.SilverlightHost.Source" />. /// </param> /// <param name="getFilesFromDirectory"> /// The method to find files' URIs in the specified directory. /// </param> public DirectoryCatalog(Uri uri, Func<string, IEnumerable<Uri>> getFilesFromDirectory) { Contract.Requires(uri != null); this._uri = uri; this._getFilesFromDirectory = getFilesFromDirectory ?? this.GetFilesFromDirectory; this._webClient = new Lazy<WebClient>(() => new WebClient()); // Initializes other members. } When the getFilesFromDirectory parameter is null, the above GetFilesFromDirectory() method will be used as default. Download the directory’s XAP file list Now a public method can be created to start the downloading: /// <summary> /// Begins downloading the XAP files in the directory. /// </summary> public void DownloadAsync() { this.ThrowIfDisposed(); if (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref this._state, State.DownloadStarted, State.Created) == 0) { this._webClient.Value.OpenReadCompleted += this.HandleOpenReadCompleted; this._webClient.Value.OpenReadAsync(this.Uri, this); } else { this.MutateStateOrThrow(State.DownloadCompleted, State.Initialized); this.OnDownloadCompleted(new AsyncCompletedEventArgs(null, false, this)); } } Here the HandleOpenReadCompleted() method is invoked when the file list HTML is downloaded. Download all XAP files After retrieving all files’ URIs, the next thing becomes even easier. HandleOpenReadCompleted() just uses built in DeploymentCatalog to download the XAPs, and aggregate them into one AggregateCatalog: private void HandleOpenReadCompleted(object sender, OpenReadCompletedEventArgs e) { Exception error = e.Error; bool cancelled = e.Cancelled; if (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref this._state, State.DownloadCompleted, State.DownloadStarted) != State.DownloadStarted) { cancelled = true; } if (error == null && !cancelled) { try { using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(e.Result)) { string html = reader.ReadToEnd(); IEnumerable<Uri> uris = this._getFilesFromDirectory(html); Contract.Assume(uris != null); IEnumerable<DeploymentCatalog> deploymentCatalogs = uris.Select(uri => new DeploymentCatalog(uri)); deploymentCatalogs.ForEach( deploymentCatalog => { this._aggregateCatalog.Catalogs.Add(deploymentCatalog); deploymentCatalog.DownloadCompleted += this.HandleDownloadCompleted; }); deploymentCatalogs.ForEach(deploymentCatalog => deploymentCatalog.DownloadAsync()); } } catch (Exception exception) { error = new InvalidOperationException(Resources.InvalidOperationException_ErrorReadingDirectory, exception); } } // Exception handling. } In HandleDownloadCompleted(), if all XAPs are downloaded without exception, OnDownloadCompleted() callback method will be invoked. private void HandleDownloadCompleted(object sender, AsyncCompletedEventArgs e) { if (Interlocked.Increment(ref this._downloaded) == this._aggregateCatalog.Catalogs.Count) { this.OnDownloadCompleted(e); } } Exception handling Whether this DirectoryCatelog can work only if the directory browsing feature is enabled. It is important to inform caller when directory cannot be browsed for XAP downloading. private void HandleOpenReadCompleted(object sender, OpenReadCompletedEventArgs e) { Exception error = e.Error; bool cancelled = e.Cancelled; if (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref this._state, State.DownloadCompleted, State.DownloadStarted) != State.DownloadStarted) { cancelled = true; } if (error == null && !cancelled) { try { // No exception thrown when browsing directory. Downloads the listed XAPs. } catch (Exception exception) { error = new InvalidOperationException(Resources.InvalidOperationException_ErrorReadingDirectory, exception); } } WebException webException = error as WebException; if (webException != null) { HttpWebResponse webResponse = webException.Response as HttpWebResponse; if (webResponse != null) { // Internally, WebClient uses WebRequest.Create() to create the WebRequest object. Here does the same thing. WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(Application.Current.Host.Source); Contract.Assume(request != null); if (request.CreatorInstance == WebRequestCreator.ClientHttp && // Silverlight is in client HTTP handling, all HTTP status codes are supported. webResponse.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.Forbidden) { // When directory browsing is disabled, the HTTP status code is 403 (forbidden). error = new InvalidOperationException( Resources.InvalidOperationException_ErrorListingDirectory_ClientHttp, webException); } else if (request.CreatorInstance == WebRequestCreator.BrowserHttp && // Silverlight is in browser HTTP handling, only 200 and 404 are supported. webResponse.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.NotFound) { // When directory browsing is disabled, the HTTP status code is 404 (not found). error = new InvalidOperationException( Resources.InvalidOperationException_ErrorListingDirectory_BrowserHttp, webException); } } } this.OnDownloadCompleted(new AsyncCompletedEventArgs(error, cancelled, this)); } Please notice Silverlight 3+ application can work either in client HTTP handling, or browser HTTP handling. One difference is: In browser HTTP handling, only HTTP status code 200 (OK) and 404 (not OK, including 500, 403, etc.) are supported In client HTTP handling, all HTTP status code are supported So in above code, exceptions in 2 modes are handled differently. Conclusion Here is the whole DirectoryCatelog’s looking: Please click here to download the source code, a simple unit test is included. This is a rough implementation. And, for convenience, some design and coding are just following the built in AggregateCatalog class and Deployment class. Please feel free to modify the code, and please kindly tell me if any issue is found.

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Autoscaling in a modern world…. Part 1

- by Steve Loethen

It has been a while since I have had time to sit down and blog. I need to make sure I take the time. It helps me to focus on technology and not let the administrivia keep me from doing the things I love. I have been focusing on the cloud for the last couple of years. Specifically the PaaS platform from Microsoft called Azure. Time to dig in.. I wanted to explore Autoscaling. Autoscaling is not native part of Azure. The platform has the needed connection points. You can write code that looks at the health and performance of your application components and react to needed scaling changes. But that means you have to write all the code. Luckily, an add on to the Enterprise Library provides a lot of code that gets you a long way to being able to autoscale without having to start from scratch. The tool set is primarily composed of a Autoscaler object that you need to host. This object, when hosted and configured, looks at the performance criteria you specify and adjusts your application based on your needs. Sounds perfect. I started with the a set of HOL’s that gave me a good basis to understand the mechanics. I worked through labs 1 and 2 just to get the feel, but let’s start our saga at the end of lab3. Lab3 end results in a web application, hosted in Azure and a console app running on premise. The web app has a few buttons on it. One set adds messages to a queue, another removes them. A second set of buttons drives processor utilization to 100%. If you want to guess, a safe bet is that the Autoscaler is configured to react to a queue that has filled up or high cpu usage. We will continue our saga in the next post…

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Edit in desktop application with DataGridView

- by SAMIR BHOGAYTA

private void DataGridView_CellContentClick(object sender, DataGridViewCellEventArgs e) { if (e.ColumnIndex == 0) { string s = DataGridView.Rows[e.RowIndex].Cells[1].FormattedValue.ToString(); srno = Convert.ToInt16(s); FormName objFrm = new FormName(s); objFrm.MdiParent = this.MdiParent; objFrm.Show(); } } //Into the New Form public FormName(string id) { uid = id; i = Convert.ToInt16(id); InitializeComponent(); } //Get Detail As per id public void GetDetail() { string detail = "SELECT fieldname1,fieldname2 FROM TableName where PrimaryKeyField = "+id+""; DataSet ds = new DataSet(); ds = (DataSet)prm.RetriveData(detail); } //RetriveData Function public object RetriveData(string query) { // If you have sql connection use SqlConnection OleDbConnection con = new OleDbConnection(constr); OleDbDataAdapter drap = new OleDbDataAdapter(query, con); con.Open(); DataSet ds = new DataSet(); drap.Fill(ds); con.Close(); return ds; }

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indirect rendering issue on 12.04, using ati driver

- by lurscher

I have ubuntu 12.04 64-bit system, when i run glxinfo i see some strange error about indirect rendering and failed to load some lib32/dri/swrast_dri libraries. Any idea what is going on? please let me know if i can enhance the relevant information provided in this question $ LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxinfo name of display: :0 libGL: screen 0 does not appear to be DRI2 capable libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib32/dri/tls/swrast_dri.so libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib32/dri/swrast_dri.so libGL error: dlopen /usr/lib32/dri/swrast_dri.so failed (/usr/lib32/dri/swrast_dri.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory) libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/tls/swrast_dri.so libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so libGL error: dlopen /usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so failed (/usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory) libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so libGL error: reverting to indirect rendering display: :0 screen: 0 direct rendering: No (If you want to find out why, try setting LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose) server glx vendor string: ATI server glx version string: 1.4 server glx extensions: GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_OML_swap_method, GLX_SGI_make_current_read, GLX_SGI_swap_control, GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, GLX_SGIX_pbuffer, GLX_SGIX_visual_select_group client glx vendor string: Mesa Project and SGI client glx version string: 1.4 client glx extensions: GLX_ARB_create_context, GLX_ARB_create_context_profile, GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_framebuffer_sRGB, GLX_EXT_create_context_es2_profile, GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer, GLX_MESA_multithread_makecurrent, GLX_MESA_swap_control, GLX_OML_swap_method, GLX_OML_sync_control, GLX_SGI_make_current_read, GLX_SGI_swap_control, GLX_SGI_video_sync, GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, GLX_SGIX_pbuffer, GLX_SGIX_visual_select_group, GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap, GLX_INTEL_swap_event GLX version: 1.4 GLX extensions: GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_MESA_multithread_makecurrent, GLX_OML_swap_method, GLX_SGI_make_current_read, GLX_SGI_swap_control, GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, GLX_SGIX_pbuffer, GLX_SGIX_visual_select_group, GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc. OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series OpenGL version string: 1.4 (2.1 (4.2.11762 Compatibility Profile Context)) OpenGL extensions: GL_ARB_depth_texture, GL_ARB_draw_buffers, GL_ARB_fragment_program, GL_ARB_fragment_program_shadow, GL_ARB_framebuffer_object, GL_ARB_imaging, GL_ARB_multisample, GL_ARB_multitexture, GL_ARB_occlusion_query, GL_ARB_point_parameters, GL_ARB_point_sprite, GL_ARB_shadow, GL_ARB_shadow_ambient, GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp, GL_ARB_texture_compression, GL_ARB_texture_cube_map, GL_ARB_texture_env_add, GL_ARB_texture_env_combine, GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar, GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3, GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat, GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two, GL_ARB_texture_rectangle, GL_ARB_transpose_matrix, GL_ARB_vertex_program, GL_ARB_window_pos, GL_EXT_abgr, GL_EXT_bgra, GL_EXT_blend_color, GL_EXT_blend_equation_separate, GL_EXT_blend_func_separate, GL_EXT_blend_minmax, GL_EXT_blend_subtract, GL_EXT_copy_texture, GL_EXT_draw_range_elements, GL_EXT_fog_coord, GL_EXT_framebuffer_blit, GL_EXT_framebuffer_multisample, GL_EXT_framebuffer_object, GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays, GL_EXT_packed_pixels, GL_EXT_point_parameters, GL_EXT_rescale_normal, GL_EXT_secondary_color, GL_EXT_separate_specular_color, GL_EXT_shadow_funcs, GL_EXT_stencil_wrap, GL_EXT_subtexture, GL_EXT_texture3D, GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc, GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp, GL_EXT_texture_env_add, GL_EXT_texture_env_combine, GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3, GL_EXT_texture_lod, GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias, GL_EXT_texture_mirror_clamp, GL_EXT_texture_object, GL_EXT_texture_rectangle, GL_EXT_vertex_array, GL_ATI_draw_buffers, GL_ATI_texture_env_combine3, GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once, GL_ATIX_texture_env_combine3, GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat, GL_INGR_blend_func_separate, GL_NV_texture_rectangle, GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap, GL_SGIS_texture_border_clamp, GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp, GL_SGIS_texture_lod, GL_SGIX_shadow_ambient, GL_SUN_multi_draw_arrays

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Java - System design with distributed Queues and Locks

- by sunny

Looking for inputs to evaluate a design for a system (java) which would have a distributed queue serving several (but not too many) nodes. These nodes would process objects present in the distributed queue and on occasion require a distributed lock across the cluster on an arbitrary (distributed) data structures. These (distributed) data structures could potentially lie in a distributed cache. Eliminating Terracotta (DSO),Hazelcast and Akka what could be alternative choices. Currently considering zookeeper as a distributed locking mechanism. Since the recommendation of a znode is not to exceed the 1M size , the understanding is that zookeeper should not be used a distributed queue. And also from Netflix curator tech note 4. So should a distributed cache, say like memcached, or redis be used to emulate a distributed queue ? i.e. The distributed queue will be stored in the caches and will be locked cluster-wide via zookeeper. Are there potential pitfalls with this high-level approach. The objects don't need to be taken off the queue. The object will pass through a lifecycle which will determine its removal from the queue. There would be about 10k+ objects in a queue at a given time changing states and any node could service one stage of the object's lifecycle. (Although not strictly necessary .. i.e. one node could serve the entire lifecycle if that is more efficient.) Any suggestions/alternatives ? sidenote: new to zookeeper ; redis etc.

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Code Trivia #4

- by João Angelo

Got the inspiration for this one in a recent stackoverflow question. What should the following code output and why? class Program { class Author { public string FirstName { get; set; } public string LastName { get; set; } public override string ToString() { return LastName + ", " + FirstName; } } static void Main() { Author[] authors = new[] { new Author { FirstName = "John", LastName = "Doe" }, new Author { FirstName = "Jane", LastName="Doe" } }; var line1 = String.Format("Authors: {0} and {1}", authors); Console.WriteLine(line1); string[] serial = new string[] { "AG27H", "6GHW9" }; var line2 = String.Format("Serial: {0}-{1}", serial); Console.WriteLine(line2); int[] version = new int[] { 1, 0 }; var line3 = String.Format("Version: {0}.{1}", version); Console.WriteLine(line3); } } Update: The code will print the first two lines // Authors: Doe, John and Doe, Jane // Serial: AG27H-6GHW9 and then throw an exception on the third call to String.Format because array covariance is not supported in value types. Given this the third call of String.Format will not resolve to String.Format(string, params object[]), like the previous two, but to String.Format(string, object) which fails to provide the second argument for the specified format and will then cause the exception.

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Organizing an entity system with external component managers?

- by Gustav

I'm designing a game engine for a top-down multiplayer 2D shooter game, which I want to be reasonably reuseable for other top-down shooter games. At the moment I'm thinking about how something like an entity system in it should be designed. First I thought about this: I have a class called EntityManager. It should implement a method called Update and another one called Draw. The reason for me separating Logic and Rendering is because then I can omit the Draw method if running a standalone server. EntityManager owns a list of objects of type BaseEntity. Each entity owns a list of components such as EntityModel (the drawable representation of an entity), EntityNetworkInterface, and EntityPhysicalBody. EntityManager also owns a list of component managers like EntityRenderManager, EntityNetworkManager and EntityPhysicsManager. Each component manager keeps references to the entity components. There are various reasons for moving this code out of the entity's own class and do it collectively instead. For example, I'm using an external physics library, Box2D, for the game. In Box2D, you first add the bodies and shapes to a world (owned by the EntityPhysicsManager in this case) and add collision callbacks (which would be dispatched to the entity object itself in my system). Then you run a function which simulates everything in the system. I find it hard to find a better solution to do this than doing it in an external component manager like this. Entity creation is done like this: EntityManager implements the method RegisterEntity(entityClass, factory) which registers how to create an entity if that class. It also implements the method CreateEntity(entityClass) which would return an object of type BaseEntity. Well now comes my problem: How would the reference to a component be registered to the component managers? I have no idea how I would reference the component managers from a factory/closure.

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Libraries for eclipse with CCSv5 from Texas Instruments

- by Alex

My system is Ubuntu 11.10 64bit and i have to run a 32bit version of eclipse to use the TI plugins for CCSv5 but it doesn't work. I tried to run eclipse in a 62bit java environment but it doesn't even start. Now I got "java version "1.6.0_30"" from Sun in 32bit and now eclipse starts but can't use the TI plug ins and I get the following errors in bash: /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so: falsche ELF-Klasse: ELFCLASS64 /usr/lib/gio/modules/libgvfsdbus.so: falsche ELF-Klasse: ELFCLASS64 Failed to load module: /usr/lib/gio/modules/libgvfsdbus.so and this in a popup-window when Itry to use the plugin: The selected wizard could not be started. Plug-in com.ti.ccstudio.project.ui was unable to load class com.ti.ccstudio.project.ui.internal.wizards.importexport.temp.ExternalProjectImportWizard. An error occurred while automatically activating bundle com.ti.ccstudio.project.ui (352). T tested the libraries with file: /usr/lib/gio/modules/libgvfsdbus.so: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, stripped /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, stripped The ia32-libs are installed.

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How can a single script attached to multiple enemies provide separate behavior for each enemy?

- by Syed

I am making a TD game and now stucked at multiple enemies using same script. All is well with scripts attached with one enemy only. Problem is in running multiple enemies. Here is the overview. I have a Enemy object with which I have attached a 'RunEnemy' script. Flow of this script is: RunEnemy.cs: PathF p; p = gameObject.GetComponent<PathF>(); //PathF is a pathfinding algo which has 'search; function which returns a array of path from starting position PathList = p.search(starting position); //------------------------------- if(PathList != null) { //if a way found! if(moving forward) transform.Translate(someXvalue,0,0); //translates on every frame until next grid point else if(moving back) transform.Translate(0,someXvalue,0); ...and so on.. if(reached on next point) PathList = p.search(from this point) //call again from next grid point so that if user placed a tower enemy will run again on the returned path } Now I have attached this script and "PathF.cs" to a single enemy which works perfect. I have then made one more enemy object and attached both of these script to it as well, which is not working they both are overlapping movements. I can't understand why, I have attached these scripts on two different gameobjects but still their values change when either enemy changes its value. I don't want to go with a separate script for each enemy because there would be 30 enemies in a scene. How can I fix this problem?

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A WPF Image Button

- by psheriff

Instead of a normal button with words, sometimes you want a button that is just graphical. Yes, you can put an Image control in the Content of a normal Button control, but you still have the button outline, and trying to change the style can be rather difficult. Instead I like creating a user control that simulates a button, but just accepts an image. Figure 1 shows an example of three of these custom user controls to represent minimize, maximize and close buttons for a borderless window. Notice the highlighted image button has a gray rectangle around it. You will learn how to highlight using the VisualStateManager in this blog post.Figure 1: Creating a custom user control for things like image buttons gives you complete control over the look and feel.I would suggest you read my previous blog post on creating a custom Button user control as that is a good primer for what I am going to expand upon in this blog post. You can find this blog post at http://weblogs.asp.net/psheriff/archive/2012/08/10/create-your-own-wpf-button-user-controls.aspx.The User ControlThe XAML for this image button user control contains just a few controls, plus a Visual State Manager. The basic outline of the user control is shown below:<Border Grid.Row="0" Name="borMain" Style="{StaticResource pdsaButtonImageBorderStyle}" MouseEnter="borMain_MouseEnter" MouseLeave="borMain_MouseLeave" MouseLeftButtonDown="borMain_MouseLeftButtonDown"> <VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups> ... MORE XAML HERE ... </VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups> <Image Style="{StaticResource pdsaButtonImageImageStyle}" Visibility="{Binding Path=Visibility}" Source="{Binding Path=ImageUri}" ToolTip="{Binding Path=ToolTip}" /></Border>There is a Border control named borMain and a single Image control in this user control. That is all that is needed to display the buttons shown in Figure 1. The definition for this user control is in a DLL named PDSA.WPF. The Style definitions for both the Border and the Image controls are contained in a resource dictionary names PDSAButtonStyles.xaml. Using a resource dictionary allows you to create a few different resource dictionaries, each with a different theme for the buttons.The Visual State ManagerTo display the highlight around the button as your mouse moves over the control, you will need to add a Visual State Manager group. Two different states are needed; MouseEnter and MouseLeave. In the MouseEnter you create a ColorAnimation to modify the BorderBrush color of the Border control. You specify the color to animate as “DarkGray”. You set the duration to less than a second. The TargetName of this storyboard is the name of the Border control “borMain” and since we are specifying a single color, you need to set the TargetProperty to “BorderBrush.Color”. You do not need any storyboard for the MouseLeave state. Leaving this VisualState empty tells the Visual State Manager to put everything back the way it was before the MouseEnter event.<VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups> <VisualStateGroup Name="MouseStates"> <VisualState Name="MouseEnter"> <Storyboard> <ColorAnimation To="DarkGray" Duration="0:0:00.1" Storyboard.TargetName="borMain" Storyboard.TargetProperty="BorderBrush.Color" /> </Storyboard> </VisualState> <VisualState Name="MouseLeave" /> </VisualStateGroup></VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups>Writing the Mouse EventsTo trigger the Visual State Manager to run its storyboard in response to the specified event, you need to respond to the MouseEnter event on the Border control. In the code behind for this event call the GoToElementState() method of the VisualStateManager class exposed by the user control. To this method you will pass in the target element (“borMain”) and the state (“MouseEnter”). The VisualStateManager will then run the storyboard contained within the defined state in the XAML.private void borMain_MouseEnter(object sender, MouseEventArgs e){ VisualStateManager.GoToElementState(borMain, "MouseEnter", true);}You also need to respond to the MouseLeave event. In this event you call the VisualStateManager as well, but specify “MouseLeave” as the state to go to.private void borMain_MouseLeave(object sender, MouseEventArgs e){ VisualStateManager.GoToElementState(borMain, "MouseLeave", true);}The Resource DictionaryBelow is the definition of the PDSAButtonStyles.xaml resource dictionary file contained in the PDSA.WPF DLL. This dictionary can be used as the default look and feel for any image button control you add to a window. <ResourceDictionary ... >     <Style TargetType="Border" x:Key="pdsaButtonImageBorderStyle"> <Setter Property="Margin" Value="4" /> <Setter Property="Padding" Value="2" /> <Setter Property="BorderBrush" Value="Transparent" /> <Setter Property="BorderThickness" Value="1" /> <Setter Property="VerticalAlignment" Value="Top" /> <Setter Property="HorizontalAlignment" Value="Left" /> <Setter Property="Background" Value="Transparent" /> </Style>  <Style TargetType="Image" x:Key="pdsaButtonImageImageStyle"> <Setter Property="Width" Value="40" /> <Setter Property="Margin" Value="6" /> <Setter Property="VerticalAlignment" Value="Top" /> <Setter Property="HorizontalAlignment" Value="Left" /> </Style></ResourceDictionary>Using the Button ControlOnce you make a reference to the PDSA.WPF DLL from your WPF application you will see the “PDSAucButtonImage” control appear in your Toolbox. Drag and drop the button onto a Window or User Control in your application. I have not referenced the PDSAButtonStyles.xaml file within the control itself so you do need to add a reference to this resource dictionary somewhere in your application such as in the App.xaml.<Application.Resources> <ResourceDictionary> <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> <ResourceDictionary Source="/PDSA.WPF;component/PDSAButtonStyles.xaml" /> </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> </ResourceDictionary></Application.Resources>This will give your buttons a default look and feel unless you override that dictionary on a specific Window or User Control or on an individual button. After you have given a global style to your application and you drag your image button onto a window, the following will appear in your XAML window.<my:PDSAucButtonImage ... />There will be some other attributes set on the above XAML, but you simply need to set the x:Name, the ToolTip and ImageUri properties. You will also want to respond to the Click event procedure in order to associate an action with clicking on this button. In the sample code you download for this blog post you will find the declaration of the Minimize button to be the following:<my:PDSAucButtonImage x:Name="btnMinimize" Click="btnMinimize_Click" ToolTip="Minimize Application" ImageUri="/PDSA.WPF;component/Images/Minus.png" />The ImageUri property is a dependency property in the PDSAucButtonImage user control. The x:Name and the ToolTip we get for free. You have to create the Click event procedure yourself. This is also created in the PDSAucButtonImage user control as follows:private void borMain_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e){ RaiseClick(e);}public delegate void ClickEventHandler(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e);public event ClickEventHandler Click;protected void RaiseClick(RoutedEventArgs e){ if (null != Click) Click(this, e);}Since a Border control does not have a Click event you will create one by using the MouseLeftButtonDown on the border to fire an event you create called “Click”.SummaryCreating your own image button control can be done in a variety of ways. In this blog post I showed you how to create a custom user control and simulate a button using a Border and Image control. With just a little bit of code to respond to the MouseLeftButtonDown event on the border you can raise your own Click event. Dependency properties, such as ImageUri, allow you to set attributes on your custom user control. Feel free to expand on this button by adding additional dependency properties, change the resource dictionary, and even the animation to make this button look and act like you want.NOTE: You can download the sample code for this article by visiting my website at http://www.pdsa.com/downloads. Select “Tips & Tricks”, then select “A WPF Image Button” from the drop down list.

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SQL Developer: Describe versus Ctrl+Click to Open Database Objects

- by thatjeffsmith

In yesterday’s post I talked about you could use SQL Developer’s Describe (SHIFT+F4) to open a PL/SQL Package at your cursor. You might get an error if you try to describe this… If you actually try to describe the package as you see it in the above screenshot, you’ll get an error: Doh! I neglected to say in yesterday’s post that I was highlighting the package name before I hit SHIFT+F4. This works just fine, but it will work even better in our next release as we’ve fixed this issue. Until then, you can also try the Ctrl+Hover with your mouse. For PL/SQL calls you can open the source immediately based on what you’re hovering over with your mouse cursor. You could try this with “dbms_output.put_line(” too Ctrl+Click, It’s not just for PL/SQL If you don’t like the floating describe windows you get when you do a SHIFT+F4 on a database object, the ctrl+click will work too. Instead of opening a normal ‘hover’ panel, you’ll be taken directly to the object editor for that table, view, etc. Go ahead and try it right now. Paste this into your worksheet, then ctrl+click with your mouse over the table name: select * from scott.emp And now you know, the rest of the story.

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HTML5 point and click adventure game code structure with CreateJS

- by user1612686

I'm a programming beginner. I made a tiny one scene point and click adventure game to try to understand simple game logic and came up with this: CreateJS features prototypes for creating bitmap images, sprites and sounds objects. I create them and define their properties in a corresponding function (for example images(); spritesheets(), sounds()...). I then create functions for each animation sequence and "game level" functions, which handle user interactions and play the according animations and sounds for a certain event (when the level is complete, the current level function calls the next level function). And I end up with quite the mess. What would be the "standard (if something like that exists)" OOP approach to structure simple game data and interactions like that? I thought about making game.images, game.sprites, game.sounds objects, which contain all the game data with its properties using CreateJS constructors. game.spriteAnimations and game.tweenAnimations objects for sprite animations and tweens and a game.levelN object, which communicates with a game.interaction object, processing user interaction. Does this make any sense? How do you structure your simple game code? Thanks in advance!

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Silverlight Cream for May 29, 2010 -- #872

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: Michael Washington, Chris Koenig, Kunal Chowdhury, SilverLaw, Shayne Burgess, Ian T. Lackey, Alan Beasley, Marlon Grech. Shoutouts: Ozymandias has a post up that's not Silverlight necessarily, but it's pretty cool: Typeface Selection Flowchart Damian Schenkelman posted about the latest: Prism 2.2 Release available. Get it at Codeplex. From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 4 OData Paging with RX Extensions Michael Washington continues with this OData and Rx post using the View Model Style. Michael has some good external links, good info, and all the code. WP7 Part 4: Morphing and Mapping Chris Koenig has the 4th in his WP7 series he's doing, and this one is on MVVMLight and BingMaps ... code included. Silverlight 4: Interoperability with Excel using the COM Object Kunal Chowdhury has a post up about Excel Interoperability using the COM object including opening an Excel Workbook and writing data out, then modifying the data in the spreadsheet and seeing it updated in the app. Creating A Flexible Surface Effect – Silverlight 4 (Part 1) SilverLaw put up a demo of an awesome 'water ripple' SL4 demo a couple days ago, and now he's got part 1 of a great tutorial explaining it all. Service Operations and the WCF Data Services Client Shayne Burgess has a post up about Service Operations and how they can be used by the WCF Data Services client. Role Based Silverlight Behaviors Also from the Open Light Group, Ian T. Lackey has a post up about Behaviors that takes a list of roles and updates the UI appropriatetly. How to Toggle (Show/Hide) using Behaviours (Behaviors) between Visual States or Storyboards in Expression Blend for Windows Phone Alan Beasley has a quick post up talking about the solution he found to a problem he was having with state switching in a WP7 app. MEFedMVVM: Testability Marlon Grech has another MEFedMVVM post up and he's discussing Testability all rolled in there with everything else :) Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

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