Search Results

Search found 1560 results on 63 pages for 'creative art'.

Page 60/63 | < Previous Page | 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63  | Next Page >

• EM12c Release 4: Database as a Service Enhancements

  - by Adeesh Fulay

  Oracle Enterprise Manager 12.1.0.4 (or simply put EM12c R4) is the latest update to the product. As previous versions, this release provides tons of enhancements and bug fixes, attributing to improved stability and quality. One of the areas that is most exciting and has seen tremendous growth in the last few years is that of Database as a Service. EM12c R4 provides a significant update to Database as a Service. The key themes are: Comprehensive Database Service Catalog (includes single instance, RAC, and Data Guard) Additional Storage Options for Snap Clone (includes support for Database feature CloneDB) Improved Rapid Start Kits Extensible Metering and Chargeback Miscellaneous Enhancements 1. Comprehensive Database Service Catalog Before we get deep into implementation of a service catalog, lets first understand what it is and what benefits it provides. Per ITIL, a service catalog is an exhaustive list of IT services that an organization provides or offers to its employees or customers. Service catalogs have been widely popular in the space of cloud computing, primarily as the medium to provide standardized and pre-approved service definitions. There is already some good collateral out there that talks about Oracle database service catalogs. The two whitepapers i recommend reading are: Service Catalogs: Defining Standardized Database Service High Availability Best Practices for Database Consolidation: The Foundation for Database as a Service [Oracle MAA] EM12c comes with an out-of-the-box service catalog and self service portal since release 1. For the customers, it provides the following benefits: Present a collection of standardized database service definitions, Define standardized pools of hardware and software for provisioning, Role based access to cater to different class of users, Automated procedures to provision the predefined database definitions, Setup chargeback plans based on service tiers and database configuration sizes, etc Starting Release 4, the scope of services offered via the service catalog has been expanded to include databases with varying levels of availability - Single Instance (SI) or Real Application Clusters (RAC) databases with multiple data guard based standby databases. Some salient points of the data guard integration: Standby pools can now be defined across different datacenters or within the same datacenter as the primary (this helps in modelling the concept of near and far DR sites) The standby databases can be single instance, RAC, or RAC One Node databases Multiple standby databases can be provisioned, where the maximum limit is determined by the version of database software The standby databases can be in either mount or read only (requires active data guard option) mode All database versions 10g to 12c supported (as certified with EM 12c) All 3 protection modes can be used - Maximum availability, performance, security Log apply can be set to sync or async along with the required apply lag The different service levels or service tiers are popularly represented using metals - Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and so on. The Oracle MAA whitepaper (referenced above) calls out the various service tiers as defined by Oracle's best practices, but customers can choose any logical combinations from the table below:  Primary  Standby [1 or more]  EM 12cR4  SI  -  SI  SI  RAC -  RAC SI  RAC RAC  RON -  RON RON where RON = RAC One Node is supported via custom post-scripts in the service template A sample service catalog would look like the image below. Here we have defined 4 service levels, which have been deployed across 2 data centers, and have 3 standardized sizes. Again, it is important to note that this is just an example to get the creative juices flowing. I imagine each customer would come up with their own catalog based on the application requirements, their RTO/RPO goals, and the product licenses they own. In the screenwatch titled 'Build Service Catalog using EM12c DBaaS', I walk through the complete steps required to setup this sample service catalog in EM12c. 2. Additional Storage Options for Snap Clone In my previous blog posts, i have described the snap clone feature in detail. Essentially, it provides a storage agnostic, self service, rapid, and space efficient approach to solving your data cloning problems. The net benefit is that you get incredible amounts of storage savings (on average 90%) all while cloning databases in a matter of minutes. Space and Time, two things enterprises would love to save on. This feature has been designed with the goal of providing data cloning capabilities while protecting your existing investments in server, storage, and software. With this in mind, we have pursued with the dual solution approach of Hardware and Software. In the hardware approach, we connect directly to your storage appliances and perform all low level actions required to rapidly clone your databases. While in the software approach, we use an intermediate software layer to talk to any storage vendor or any storage configuration to perform the same low level actions. Thus delivering the benefits of database thin cloning, without requiring you to drastically changing the infrastructure or IT's operating style. In release 4, we expand the scope of options supported by snap clone with the addition of database CloneDB. While CloneDB is not a new feature, it was first introduced in 11.2.0.2 patchset, it has over the years become more stable and mature. CloneDB leverages a combination of Direct NFS (or dNFS) feature of the database, RMAN image copies, sparse files, and copy-on-write technology to create thin clones of databases from existing backups in a matter of minutes. It essentially has all the traits that we want to present to our customers via the snap clone feature. For more information on cloneDB, i highly recommend reading the following sources: Blog by Tim Hall: Direct NFS (DNFS) CloneDB in Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Oracle OpenWorld Presentation by Cern: Efficient Database Cloning using Direct NFS and CloneDB The advantages of the new CloneDB integration with EM12c Snap Clone are: Space and time savings Ease of setup - no additional software is required other than the Oracle database binary Works on all platforms Reduce the dependence on storage administrators Cloning process fully orchestrated by EM12c, and delivered to developers/DBAs/QA Testers via the self service portal Uses dNFS to delivers better performance, availability, and scalability over kernel NFS Complete lifecycle of the clones managed by EM12c - performance, configuration, etc 3. Improved Rapid Start Kits DBaaS deployments tend to be complex and its setup requires a series of steps. These steps are typically performed across different users and different UIs. The Rapid Start Kit provides a single command solution to setup Database as a Service (DBaaS) and Pluggable Database as a Service (PDBaaS). One command creates all the Cloud artifacts like Roles, Administrators, Credentials, Database Profiles, PaaS Infrastructure Zone, Database Pools and Service Templates. Once the Rapid Start Kit has been successfully executed, requests can be made to provision databases and PDBs from the self service portal. Rapid start kit can create complex topologies involving multiple zones, pools and service templates. It also supports standby databases and use of RMAN image backups. The Rapid Start Kit in reality is a simple emcli script which takes a bunch of xml files as input and executes the complete automation in a matter of seconds. On a full rack Exadata, it took only 40 seconds to setup PDBaaS end-to-end. This kit works for both Oracle's engineered systems like Exadata, SuperCluster, etc and also on commodity hardware. One can draw parallel to the Exadata One Command script, which again takes a bunch of inputs from the administrators and then runs a simple script that configures everything from network to provisioning the DB software. Steps to use the kit: The kit can be found under the SSA plug-in directory on the OMS: EM_BASE/oracle/MW/plugins/oracle.sysman.ssa.oms.plugin_12.1.0.8.0/dbaas/setup It can be run from this default location or from any server which has emcli client installed For most scenarios, you would use the script dbaas/setup/database_cloud_setup.py For Exadata, special integration is provided to reduce the number of inputs even further. The script to use for this scenario would be dbaas/setup/exadata_cloud_setup.py The database_cloud_setup.py script takes two inputs: Cloud boundary xml: This file defines the cloud topology in terms of the zones and pools along with host names, oracle home locations or container database names that would be used as infrastructure for provisioning database services. This file is optional in case of Exadata, as the boundary is well know via the Exadata system target available in EM. Input xml: This file captures inputs for users, roles, profiles, service templates, etc. Essentially, all inputs required to define the DB services and other settings of the self service portal. Once all the xml files have been prepared, invoke the script as follows for PDBaaS: emcli @database_cloud_setup.py -pdbaas -cloud_boundary=/tmp/my_boundary.xml -cloud_input=/tmp/pdb_inputs.xml          The script will prompt for passwords a few times for key users like sysman, cloud admin, SSA admin, etc. Once complete, you can simply log into EM as the self service user and request for databases from the portal. More information available in the Rapid Start Kit chapter in Cloud Administration Guide.  4. Extensible Metering and Chargeback  Last but not the least, Metering and Chargeback in release 4 has been made extensible in all possible regards. The new extensibility features allow customer, partners, system integrators, etc to : Extend chargeback to any target type managed in EM Promote any metric in EM as a chargeback entity Extend list of charge items via metric or configuration extensions Model abstract entities like no. of backup requests, job executions, support requests, etc  A slew of emcli verbs have also been added that allows administrators to create, edit, delete, import/export charge plans, and assign cost centers all via the command line. More information available in the Chargeback API chapter in Cloud Administration Guide. 5. Miscellaneous Enhancements There are other miscellaneous, yet important, enhancements that are worth a mention. These mostly have been asked by customers like you. These are: Custom naming of DB Services Self service users can provide custom names for DB SID, DB service, schemas, and tablespaces Every custom name is validated for uniqueness in EM 'Create like' of Service Templates Now creating variants of a service template is only a click away. This would be vital when you publish service templates to represent different database sizes or service levels. Profile viewer View the details of a profile like datafile, control files, snapshot ids, export/import files, etc prior to its selection in the service template Cleanup automation - for failed and successful requests Single emcli command to cleanup all remnant artifacts of a failed request Cleanup can be performed on a per request bases or by the entire pool As an extension, you can also delete successful requests Improved delete user workflow Allows administrators to reassign cloud resources to another user or delete all of them Support for multiple tablespaces for schema as a service In addition to multiple schemas, user can also specify multiple tablespaces per request I hope this was a good introduction to the new Database as a Service enhancements in EM12c R4. I encourage you to explore many of these new and existing features and give us feedback. Good luck! References: Cloud Management Page on OTN Cloud Administration Guide [Documentation] -- Adeesh Fulay (@adeeshf)

  Read the article

• Make Your Menu Item Highlighted

  - by Shaun

  When I was working on the TalentOn project (Promotion in MSDN Chinese) I was asked to implement a functionality that makes the top menu items highlighted when the currently viewing page was in that section. This might be a common scenario in the web application development I think.   Simple Example When thinking about the solution of the highlighted menu items the biggest problem would be how to define the sections (menu item) and the pages it belongs to rather than making the menu highlighted. With the ASP.NET MVC framework we can use the controller – action infrastructure for us to achieve it. Each controllers would have a related menu item on the master page normally. The menu item would be highlighted if any of the views under this controller are being shown. Some specific menu items would be highlighted of that action was invoked, for example the home page, the about page, etc. The check rule can be specified on-demand. For example I can define the action LogOn and Register of Account controller should make the Account menu item highlighted while the ChangePassword should make the Profile menu item highlighted. I’m going to use the HtmlHelper to render the highlight-able menu item. The key point is that I need to pass the predication to check whether the current view belongs to this menu item which means this menu item should be highlighted or not. Hence I need a delegate as its parameter. The simplest code would be like this. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Web; 5: using System.Web.Mvc; 6: using System.Web.Mvc.Html; 7:  8: namespace ShaunXu.Blogs.HighlighMenuItem 9: { 10: public static class HighlightMenuItemHelper 11: { 12: public static MvcHtmlString HighlightMenuItem(this HtmlHelper helper, 13: string text, string controllerName, string actionName, object routeData, object htmlAttributes, 14: string highlightText, object highlightHtmlAttributes, 15: Func<HtmlHelper, bool> highlightPredicate) 16: { 17: var shouldHighlight = highlightPredicate.Invoke(helper); 18: if (shouldHighlight) 19: { 20: return helper.ActionLink(string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(highlightText) ? text : highlightText, 21: actionName, controllerName, routeData, highlightHtmlAttributes == null ? htmlAttributes : highlightHtmlAttributes); 22: } 23: else 24: { 25: return helper.ActionLink(text, actionName, controllerName, routeData, htmlAttributes); 26: } 27: } 28: } 29: } There are 3 groups of the parameters: the first group would be the same as the in-build ActionLink method parameters. It has the link text, controller name and action name, etc passed in so that I can render a valid linkage for the menu item. The second group would be more focus on the highlight link text and Html attributes. I will use them to render the highlight menu item. The third group, which contains one parameter, would be a predicate that tells me whether this menu item should be highlighted or not based on the user’s definition. And then I changed my master page of the sample MVC application. I let the Home and About menu highlighted only when the Index and About action are invoked. And I added a new menu named Account which should be highlighted for all actions/views under its Account controller. So my master would be like this. 1: <div id="menucontainer"> 2:  3: <ul id="menu"> 4: <li><% 1: : Html.HighlightMenuItem( 2: "Home", "Home", "Index", null, null, 3: "[Home]", null, 4: helper => helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString() == "Home" 5: && helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString() == "Index")%></li> 5:  6: <li><% 1: : Html.HighlightMenuItem( 2: "About", "Home", "About", null, null, 3: "[About]", null, 4: helper => helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString() == "Home" 5: && helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString() == "About")%></li> 7:  8: <li><% 1: : Html.HighlightMenuItem( 2: "Account", "Account", "LogOn", null, null, 3: "[Account]", null, 4: helper => helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString() == "Account")%></li> 9: 10: </ul> 11:  12: </div> Note: You need to add the import section for the namespace “ShaunXu.Blogs.HighlighMenuItem” to make the extension method I created below available. So let’s see the result. When the home page was shown the Home menu was highlighted since at this moment it was controller = Home and action = Index. And if I clicked the About menu you can see it turned highlighted as now the action was About. And if I navigated to the register page the Account menu was highlighted since it should be like that when any actions under the Account controller was invoked.   Fluently Language Till now it’s a fully example for the highlight menu item but not perfect yet. Since the most common scenario would be: highlighted when the action invoked, or highlighted when any action was invoked under this controller, we can created 2 shortcut method so for them so that normally the developer will be no need to specify the delegation. Another place we can improve would be, to make the method more user-friendly, or I should say developer-friendly. As you can see when we want to add a highlight menu item we need to specify 8 parameters and we need to remember what they mean. In fact we can make the method more “fluently” so that the developer can have the hints when using it by the Visual Studio IntelliSense. Below is the full code for it. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Web; 5: using System.Web.Mvc; 6: using System.Web.Mvc.Html; 7:  8: namespace Ethos.Xrm.HR 9: { 10: #region Helper 11:  12: public static class HighlightActionMenuHelper 13: { 14: public static IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterCreated HighlightActionMenu(this HtmlHelper helper) 15: { 16: return new HighlightActionMenuProvider(helper); 17: } 18: } 19:  20: #endregion 21:  22: #region Interfaces 23:  24: public interface IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterCreated 25: { 26: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterOn On(string actionName, string controllerName); 27: } 28:  29: public interface IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterOn 30: { 31: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterWith With(string text, object routeData, object htmlAttributes); 32: } 33:  34: public interface IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterWith 35: { 36: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterHighlightWhen HighlightWhen(Func<HtmlHelper, bool> predicate); 37: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterHighlightWhen HighlightWhenControllerMatch(); 38: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterHighlightWhen HighlightWhenControllerAndActionMatch(); 39: } 40:  41: public interface IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterHighlightWhen 42: { 43: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle ApplyHighlighStyle(object highlightHtmlAttributes, string highlightText); 44: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle ApplyHighlighStyle(object highlightHtmlAttributes); 45: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle ApplyHighlighStyle(string cssClass, string highlightText); 46: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle ApplyHighlighStyle(string cssClass); 47: } 48:  49: public interface IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle 50: { 51: MvcHtmlString ToActionLink(); 52: } 53:  54: #endregion 55:  56: public class HighlightActionMenuProvider : 57: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterCreated, 58: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterOn, IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterWith, 59: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterHighlightWhen, IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle 60: { 61: private HtmlHelper _helper; 62:  63: private string _controllerName; 64: private string _actionName; 65: private string _text; 66: private object _routeData; 67: private object _htmlAttributes; 68:  69: private Func<HtmlHelper, bool> _highlightPredicate; 70:  71: private string _highlightText; 72: private object _highlightHtmlAttributes; 73:  74: public HighlightActionMenuProvider(HtmlHelper helper) 75: { 76: _helper = helper; 77: } 78:  79: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterOn On(string actionName, string controllerName) 80: { 81: _actionName = actionName; 82: _controllerName = controllerName; 83: return this; 84: } 85:  86: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterWith With(string text, object routeData, object htmlAttributes) 87: { 88: _text = text; 89: _routeData = routeData; 90: _htmlAttributes = htmlAttributes; 91: return this; 92: } 93:  94: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterHighlightWhen HighlightWhen(Func<HtmlHelper, bool> predicate) 95: { 96: _highlightPredicate = predicate; 97: return this; 98: } 99:  100: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterHighlightWhen HighlightWhenControllerMatch() 101: { 102: return HighlightWhen((helper) => 103: { 104: return helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString().ToLower() == _controllerName.ToLower(); 105: }); 106: } 107:  108: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterHighlightWhen HighlightWhenControllerAndActionMatch() 109: { 110: return HighlightWhen((helper) => 111: { 112: return helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString().ToLower() == _controllerName.ToLower() && 113: helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString().ToLower() == _actionName.ToLower(); 114: }); 115: } 116:  117: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle ApplyHighlighStyle(object highlightHtmlAttributes, string highlightText) 118: { 119: _highlightText = highlightText; 120: _highlightHtmlAttributes = highlightHtmlAttributes; 121: return this; 122: } 123:  124: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle ApplyHighlighStyle(object highlightHtmlAttributes) 125: { 126: return ApplyHighlighStyle(highlightHtmlAttributes, _text); 127: } 128:  129: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle ApplyHighlighStyle(string cssClass, string highlightText) 130: { 131: return ApplyHighlighStyle(new { @class = cssClass }, highlightText); 132: } 133:  134: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle ApplyHighlighStyle(string cssClass) 135: { 136: return ApplyHighlighStyle(new { @class = cssClass }, _text); 137: } 138:  139: public MvcHtmlString ToActionLink() 140: { 141: if (_highlightPredicate.Invoke(_helper)) 142: { 143: // should be highlight 144: return _helper.ActionLink(_highlightText, _actionName, _controllerName, _routeData, _highlightHtmlAttributes); 145: } 146: else 147: { 148: // should not be highlight 149: return _helper.ActionLink(_text, _actionName, _controllerName, _routeData, _htmlAttributes); 150: } 151: } 152: } 153: } So in the master page when I need the highlight menu item I can “tell” the helper how it should be, just like this. 1: <li> 2: <% 1: : Html.HighlightActionMenu() 2: .On("Index", "Home") 3: .With(SiteMasterStrings.Home, null, null) 4: .HighlightWhenControllerMatch() 5: .ApplyHighlighStyle(new { style = "background:url(../../Content/Images/topmenu_bg.gif) repeat-x;text-decoration:none;color:#feffff;" }) 6: .ToActionLink() %> 3: </li> While I’m typing the code the IntelliSense will advise me that I need a highlight action menu, on the Index action of the Home controller, with the “Home” as its link text and no need the additional route data and Html attributes, and it should be highlighted when the controller was “Home”, and if it’s highlighted the style should be like this and finally render it to me. This is something we call “Fluently Language”. If you had been using Moq you will see that’s very development-friendly, document-ly and easy to read.   Summary In this post I demonstrated how to implement a highlight menu item in ASP.NET MVC by using its controller – action infrastructure. We can see the ASP.NET MVC helps us to organize our web application better. And then I also told a little bit more on the “Fluently Language” and showed how it will make our code better and easy to be used.   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.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, September 13, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, September 13, 2012Popular ReleasesAustralia Income and Tax Calculator: Australia Income and Tax Calculator: first release, can calculate net income, tax, quarterly/monthly/weekly/daily and hourly taxable/net ratedatajs - JavaScript Library for data-centric web applications: datajs version 1.1.0-beta: datajs is a cross-browser and UI agnostic JavaScript library that enables data-centric web applications with the following features: OData client that enables CRUD operations including batching and metadata support using both ATOM and JSON payloads. Single store abstraction that provides a common API on top of HTML5 local storage technologies. Data cache component that allows reading data ranges from a collection and storing them locally to reduce the number of network requests. Changes...SharePoint (2010) Farm Backup: PowerShell SharePoint (2010) Farm Backup v2.2: Version 2.2 Changelog - Added the ability to export Solutions (WSP) from solution gallery. - Added the ability to exclude MySites from the sites backup. - Added Is-Foundation method to determine whether SharePoint edition is Foundation, Standard or Enterprise to prevent errors when running script on SharePoint Foundation 2010 as Foundation does not have MySite functionality. - Added method to determine amount of storage required for sites backup. Script will now determine total required fo...Metadata Document Generator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Metadata Document Generator (2.0.325.117): Add latest version of McTools.Xrm.Connection library to correct Office 365 authentication supportLakana - WPF Framework: Lakana V2: Lakana V2 contains : - Lakana WPF Forms (with sample project) - Lakana WPF Navigation (with sample project)Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: OData QueryFeed workflow activity: The OData QueryFeed sample activity shows how to create a workflow activity that consumes an OData resource, and renders entity properties in a Microsoft Excel 2010 worksheet or Microsoft Word 2010 document. Using the sample QueryFeed activity, you can consume any OData resource. The sample activity uses LINQ to project OData metadata into activity designer expression items. By setting activity expressions, a fully qualified OData query string is constructed consisting of Resource, Filter, Or...Arduino for Visual Studio: Arduino 1.x for Visual Studio 2012, 2010 and 2008: Register for the visualmicro.com forum for more news and updates Version 1209.10 includes support for VS2012 and minor fixes for the Arduino debugger beta test team. Version 1208.19 is considered stable for visual studio 2010 and 2008. If you are upgrading from an older release of Visual Micro and encounter a problem then uninstall "Visual Micro for Arduino" using "Control Panel>Add and Remove Programs" and then run the install again. Key Features of 1209.10 Support for Visual Studio 2...Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell: Script Explorer Reference Implementation(s): This download contains Source Code and Documentation for Script Explorer DB Reference Implementation. You can create your own provider and use it in Script Explorer. Refer to the documentation for more information. The source code is provided "as is" without any warranty. Read the Readme.txt file in the SourceCode.Social Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.5): This new version includes: - Fixed the "resource limit" bug caused by Facebook - Bug fixes To use the new graph data provider, do the following: Unzip the Zip file into the "PlugIns" folder that can be found in the NodeXL installation folder (i.e "C:\Program Files\Social Media Research Foundation\NodeXL Excel Template\PlugIns") Open NodeXL template and you can access the new importer from the "Import" menuAcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v4.1: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??...Move Mouse: Move Mouse 2.5.2: FIXED - Minor fixes and improvements.MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 2.3: Added The new release is compatible with Mvc4 RTM. Support for handling Time Zones in dates. Specifically added helper methods to convert to UTC or local time all DateTimes contained in a model received by a controller, and helper methods to handle date only fileds. This together with a detailed documentation on how TimeZones are handled in all situations by the Asp.net Mvc framework, will contribute to mitigate the nightmare of dates and timezones. Multiple Templates, and more options to...DNN Metro7 style Skin package: Metro7 style Skin for DotNetNuke 06.02.00: Maintenance Release Changes on Metro7 06.02.00 Fixed width and height on the jQuery popup for the Editor. Navigation Provider changed to DDR menu Added menu files and scripts Changed skins to Doctype HTML Changed manifest to dnn6 manifest file Changed License to HTML view Fixed issue on Metro7/PinkTitle.ascx with double registering of the Actions Changed source folder structure and start folder, so the project works with the default DNN structure on developing Added VS 20...Xenta Framework - extensible enterprise n-tier application framework: Xenta Framework 1.9.0: Release Notes Imporved framework architecture Improved the framework security More import/export formats and operations New WebPortal application which includes forum, new, blog, catalog, etc. UIs Improved WebAdmin app. Reports, navigation and search Perfomance optimization Improve Xenta.Catalog domain More plugin interfaces and plugin implementations Refactoring Windows Azure support and much more... Package Guide Source Code - package contains the source code Binaries...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 9: New feature - Added JsonValueConverter New feature - Set a property's DefaultValueHandling to Ignore when EmitDefaultValue from DataMemberAttribute is false Fix - Fixed DefaultValueHandling.Ignore not igoring default values of non-nullable properties Fix - Fixed DefaultValueHandling.Populate error with non-nullable properties Fix - Fixed error when writing JSON for a JProperty with no value Fix - Fixed error when calling ToList on empty JObjects and JArrays Fix - Fixed losing deci...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.66: Just going to bite the bullet and rip off the band-aid... SEMI-BREAKING CHANGE! Well, it's a BREAKING change to those who already adjusted their projects to use the previous breaking change's ill-conceived renamed DLLs (versions 4.61-4.65). For those who had not adapted and were still stuck in this-doesn't-work-please-fix-me mode, this is more like a fixing change. The previous breaking change just broke too many people, I'm sorry to say. Renaming the DLL from AjaxMin.dll to AjaxMinLibrary.dl...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 07.00.00 CTP (Not for Production Use): NOTE: New Minimum Requirementshttp://www.dotnetnuke.com/Portals/25/Blog/Files/1/3418/Windows-Live-Writer-1426fd8a58ef_902C-MinimumVersionSupport_2.png Simplified InstallerThe first thing you will notice is that the installer has been updated. Not only have we updated the look and feel, but we also simplified the overall install process. You shouldn’t have to click through a series of screens in order to just get your website running. With the 7.0 installer we have taken an approach that a...WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.2: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...BIDS Helper: BIDS Helper 1.6.1: In addition to fixing a number of bugs that beta testers reported, this release includes the following new features for Tabular models in SQL 2012: New Features: Tabular Display Folders Tabular Translations Editor Tabular Sync Descriptions Fixed Issues: Biml issues 32849 fixing bug in Tabular Actions Editor Form where you type in an invalid action name which is a reserved word like CON or which is a duplicate name to another action 32695 - fixing bug in SSAS Sync Descriptions whe...Code Snippets for Windows Store Apps: Code Snippets for Windows Store Apps: First release of our snippets! For more information: Installation List of Snippets Minor update 9/13: Updated C# and VB packages -- Converted from VSI installers to ZIP files for easier usage with Visual Studio Express editions. Snippets contained in each package were not altered.New Projectsanother hello world: a very quick test.Atorpat Marquee: This is the advanced marquee pro moduleAustralia Income and Tax Calculator: Calculates australian net income, tax, ratesAuto generate C# DAL, BLL classes and Sql Store Procedures: This program helps to you for auto generate store procedures for Sql and DAL, BLL classes for C# without any extra code.BugSystem: bug systemBuild and Deploy Tool using BTDF: This tool can be used by a build and release manager who can prepare the BizTalk MSI and deploy the application in the corresponding environment. Calculation WebApplication: Calc web appChild&Family Brigade®: This Software, is specially realized for the Family Brigade of Cochabamba Bolivia, this is a nonprofit institution, that helps family's problems.Creative Style System: This is our Sheridan College Capstone project. Bitches.Customizable Process Guidance Content for VS ALM 2012: Customizable process guidance is provided for each of the default process templates that VS ALM TFS 2012 provides. DER_Autoit: 2012-9-13-14-10 ?????！Dynamics Xrm Application Speed Builder: The Dynamics Xrm Application Speed Builder will analyze databases, then create the entities in CRM, attributes, and forms for you. Feed Discovery: Want to subscribe to a web page and can't find the newsfeed? Just rightclick on the page and discover! Subscribe directly in IE, Google Reader or any other.Inmeta Tools for Visual Studio 2012 and TFS 2012: Info comingInventory Manager: Inventory Manager is a small demo project that lets you manage your items.Kayvon's Group: projectsLibreta: Something about LibretaMultiple Image choice custom field type: This solution contains "Custom Field Type" which allows the user to choose multiple images as a choice.PHP-Edin: Php kurs PROJETO PET: Um ambiente social para adoção e apreciação de animais.Read the Reader: Read the Reader is a lightweight Google Reader Client. It runs in the background and tells you, when something's happening.SharePoint 2010 File Recovery: A little utility program to allow you to easily recover files from your SharePoint 2010 content database backupsSistema para estudo do mvc: Estudando asp.mvcSports Center Asp.net MVC Demo: Sample Sports Center Asp.net MVC Project. Good start up kit for getting in to various feature of Asp.net MVC offering. testtom08092012git01: bvcT-SQL implementation of Standard Distribution PDF and CDF: Files for blog post at http://formaldev.blogspot.com/2012/09/T-SQL-NORMDIST-1.htmlWunderlist.com Shortcut Google Chrome Extension: Just exactly that, a shortcut to Wunderlist.com

  Read the article

• Why Are Minimized Programs Often Slow to Open Again?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  It seems particularly counterintuitive: you minimize an application because you plan on returning to it later and wish to skip shutting the application down and restarting it later, but sometimes maximizing it takes even longer than launching it fresh. What gives? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Bart wants to know why he’s not saving any time with application minimization: I’m working in Photoshop CS6 and multiple browsers a lot. I’m not using them all at once, so sometimes some applications are minimized to taskbar for hours or days. The problem is, when I try to maximize them from the taskbar – it sometimes takes longer than starting them! Especially Photoshop feels really weird for many seconds after finally showing up, it’s slow, unresponsive and even sometimes totally freezes for minute or two. It’s not a hardware problem as it’s been like that since always on all on my PCs. Would I also notice it after upgrading my HDD to SDD and adding RAM (my main PC holds 4 GB currently)? Could guys with powerful pcs / macs tell me – does it also happen to you? I guess OSes somehow “focus” on active software and move all the resources away from the ones that run, but are not used. Is it possible to somehow set RAM / CPU / HDD priorities or something, for let’s say, Photoshop, so it won’t slow down after long period of inactivity? So what is the deal? Why does he find himself waiting to maximize a minimized app? The Answer SuperUser contributor Allquixotic explains why: Summary The immediate problem is that the programs that you have minimized are being paged out to the “page file” on your hard disk. This symptom can be improved by installing a Solid State Disk (SSD), adding more RAM to your system, reducing the number of programs you have open, or upgrading to a newer system architecture (for instance, Ivy Bridge or Haswell). Out of these options, adding more RAM is generally the most effective solution. Explanation The default behavior of Windows is to give active applications priority over inactive applications for having a spot in RAM. When there’s significant memory pressure (meaning the system doesn’t have a lot of free RAM if it were to let every program have all the RAM it wants), it starts putting minimized programs into the page file, which means it writes out their contents from RAM to disk, and then makes that area of RAM free. That free RAM helps programs you’re actively using — say, your web browser — run faster, because if they need to claim a new segment of RAM (like when you open a new tab), they can do so. This “free” RAM is also used as page cache, which means that when active programs attempt to read data on your hard disk, that data might be cached in RAM, which prevents your hard disk from being accessed to get that data. By using the majority of your RAM for page cache, and swapping out unused programs to disk, Windows is trying to improve responsiveness of the program(s) you are actively using, by making RAM available to them, and caching the files they access in RAM instead of the hard disk. The downside of this behavior is that minimized programs can take a while to have their contents copied from the page file, on disk, back into RAM. The time increases the larger the program’s footprint in memory. This is why you experience that delay when maximizing Photoshop. RAM is many times faster than a hard disk (depending on the specific hardware, it can be up to several orders of magnitude). An SSD is considerably faster than a hard disk, but it is still slower than RAM by orders of magnitude. Having your page file on an SSD will help, but it will also wear out the SSD more quickly than usual if your page file is heavily utilized due to RAM pressure. Remedies Here is an explanation of the available remedies, and their general effectiveness: Installing more RAM: This is the recommended path. If your system does not support more RAM than you already have installed, you will need to upgrade more of your system: possibly your motherboard, CPU, chassis, power supply, etc. depending on how old it is. If it’s a laptop, chances are you’ll have to buy an entire new laptop that supports more installed RAM. When you install more RAM, you reduce memory pressure, which reduces use of the page file, which is a good thing all around. You also make available more RAM for page cache, which will make all programs that access the hard disk run faster. As of Q4 2013, my personal recommendation is that you have at least 8 GB of RAM for a desktop or laptop whose purpose is anything more complex than web browsing and email. That means photo editing, video editing/viewing, playing computer games, audio editing or recording, programming / development, etc. all should have at least 8 GB of RAM, if not more. Run fewer programs at a time: This will only work if the programs you are running do not use a lot of memory on their own. Unfortunately, Adobe Creative Suite products such as Photoshop CS6 are known for using an enormous amount of memory. This also limits your multitasking ability. It’s a temporary, free remedy, but it can be an inconvenience to close down your web browser or Word every time you start Photoshop, for instance. This also wouldn’t stop Photoshop from being swapped when minimizing it, so it really isn’t a very effective solution. It only helps in some specific situations. Install an SSD: If your page file is on an SSD, the SSD’s improved speed compared to a hard disk will result in generally improved performance when the page file has to be read from or written to. Be aware that SSDs are not designed to withstand a very frequent and constant random stream of writes; they can only be written over a limited number of times before they start to break down. Heavy use of a page file is not a particularly good workload for an SSD. You should install an SSD in combination with a large amount of RAM if you want maximum performance while preserving the longevity of the SSD. Use a newer system architecture: Depending on the age of your system, you may be using an out of date system architecture. The “system architecture” is generally defined as the “generation” (think generations like children, parents, grandparents, etc.) of the motherboard and CPU. Newer generations generally support faster I/O (input/output), better memory bandwidth, lower latency, and less contention over shared resources, instead providing dedicated links between components. For example, starting with the “Nehalem” generation (around 2009), the Front-Side Bus (FSB) was eliminated, which removed a common bottleneck, because almost all system components had to share the same FSB for transmitting data. This was replaced with a “point to point” architecture, meaning that each component gets its own dedicated “lane” to the CPU, which continues to be improved every few years with new generations. You will generally see a more significant improvement in overall system performance depending on the “gap” between your computer’s architecture and the latest one available. For example, a Pentium 4 architecture from 2004 is going to see a much more significant improvement upgrading to “Haswell” (the latest as of Q4 2013) than a “Sandy Bridge” architecture from ~2010. Links Related questions: How to reduce disk thrashing (paging)? Windows Swap (Page File): Enable or Disable? Also, just in case you’re considering it, you really shouldn’t disable the page file, as this will only make matters worse; see here. And, in case you needed extra convincing to leave the Windows Page File alone, see here and here. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

  Read the article

• OK - What now? How do we become a Social Business?

  - by Michael Snow

  We hope that those of you that attended yesterday's Webcast with Brian Solis enjoyed Brian's discussion with Christian Finn for our last Webcast of the season for the Oracle Social Business Thought Leaders Series.  For those of you that may have missed the webcast or were stuck at a company holiday party - you'll be glad to hear that the webcast will be available On-Demand starting later today (12/14/12). And any of you who'd like to listen to a quick but informative podcast with Brian - can listen to that here. Some of you may still be left with questions about how to get from point A to point B and even more confused than when you started thinking about this new world of Digital Darwinism. The post below, grabbed from an abundance of great thought leadership prose on Brian's blog may help you frame the path you need to start walking sooner versus later to stay off of the endangered species list.  As you explore your path forward, please keep Oracle in mind - we do offer a wide range of solutions to help your organization 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} optimize the engagement for your customers, employees and partners. The Path from a Social Brand to a Social Business Brian Solis Originally posted May 2, 2012 I’ve been a long-time supporter of MediaTemple’s (MT)Residence program along with Gary Vaynerchuk, Neil Patel, and many others whom I respect. I wanted to share my “7 questions to answer to become a social business” with you here.. Social Media is pervasive and is becoming the new normal in corporate marketing. Brands who get this right are starting to build their own media networks rich with customer connections numbering in the millions. Right now, Coca-Cola has over 34 million fans on Facebook, but they’re hardly alone. Disney follows just behind with 29 million fans, Starbucks boasts 25 million, and Oreo, Red Bull, and Converse play host to over 20 million fans. If we were to look at other networks such as Twitter and Youtube, we would see a recurring theme. People are connecting en masse with the businesses they support and new media represents the ability to cultivate consumer relationships in ways not possible with traditional earned or paid media. Sounds great right? This might sound abrupt, but the truth is that we’re hardly realizing the potential of what lies before us. Everything begins with understanding not just how other brands are marketing themselves in social media, but also seeing what they’re not doing and envisioning what’s possible. We’re already approaching the first of many crossroads that new media will present. Do we take the path of a social brand or that of a social business? What’s the difference? A social brand is just that, a business that is remodeling or retrofitting its existing marketing practices to new media. A social business is something altogether different as it embraces introspection and extrospection to reevaluate internal and external processes, systems, and opportunities to transform into a living, breathing entity that adapts to market conditions and opportunities. It’s a tough decision to make right now especially at a time when all we read about is how much success many businesses are finding without having to answer this very question. With all of the newfound success in social networks, the truth is that we’re only just beginning to learn what’s possible and that’s where you come in. When compared to the investment in time and resources across the board, social media represents only a small part of the mix. But with your help, that’s all about to change. The CMO Survey, an organization that disseminates the opinions of top marketers in order to predict the future of markets, recently published a report that gave credence to the fact that social media is taking off. One of the most profound takeaways from the report was this gem; “The “like button” [in Facebook] packs more customer-acquisition punch than other demand-generating activities.” With insights like this, it’s easy to see why the race to social is becoming heated. The report also highlighted exactly where social fits in the marketing mix today and as you can see, despite all of the hype, it’s not a dominant focus yet. As of August 2011, the percentage of overall marketing budgets dedicated to social media hovered at around 7%. However, in 2012 the investment in social media will climb to 10%. And, in five years, social media is expected to represent almost 18% of the total marketing budget. Think about that for a moment. In 2016, social media will only represent 18%? Queue the sound of a record scratching here. With businesses finding success in social networks, why are businesses failing to realize the true opportunity brought forth by the ability to listen to, connect with, and engage with customers? While there’s value in earning views, driving traffic, and building connections through the 3F’s (friends, fans and followers), success isn’t just defined simply by what really amounts to low-hanging fruit. The truth is that businesses cannot measure what it is they don’t know to value. As a result, innovation in new engagement initiatives is stifled because we’re applying dated or inflexible frameworks to new paradigms. Social media isn’t owned by marketing, but instead the entire organization. This changes everything and makes your role so much more important. It’s up to you to learn how to think outside of the proverbial social media box to see what others don’t, the ability to improve customers experiences through the evolution of a social brand into a social business. Doing so will translate customer insights from what they do and don’t share in social networks into better products, services, and processes. See, customers want something more from their favorite businesses than creative campaigns, viral content, and everyday dialogue in social networks. Customers want to be heard and they want to know that you’re listening. How businesses use social media must remind them that they’re more than just an audience, consumer, or a conduit to “trigger” a desired social effect. Herein lies both the challenge and opportunity of social media. It’s bigger than marketing. It’s also bigger than customer service. It’s about building relationships with customers that improve experiences and more importantly, teaches businesses how to re-imagine products and internal processes to better adapt to potential crises and seize new opportunities. When it comes down to it, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Foursquare, are all channels for listening, learning, and engaging. It’s what you do within each channel that builds a community around your brand. And, at the end of the day, the value of the community you build counts for everything. It’s important to understand that we cannot assume that these networks simply exist for people to lineup for our marketing messages or promotional campaigns. Nor can we assume that they’re reeling in anticipation for simple dialogue. They want value. They want recognition. They want access to exclusive information and offers. They need direction, answers and resolution. What we’re talking about here is the multidimensional makeup of consumers and how a one-sided approach to social media forces the needs for social media to expand beyond traditional marketing to socialize the various departments, lines of business, and functions to engage based on the nature of the situation or opportunity. In the same CMO study, it was revealed that marketers believe that social media has a long way to go toward integrating into the overall company strategy. On a scale of 1-7, with one being “not integrated at all” and seven being “very integrated,” 22% chose “one.” Critical functions such as service, HR, sales, R&D, product marketing and development, IR, CSR, etc. are either not engaged or are operating social media within a silo disconnected from other efforts or possibilities. The problem is that customers don’t view a company by silo, instead they see one company, one brand, and their experience in social media forms an impression that eventually contributes to their view of your brand. The first step here is to understand business priorities and objectives to assess how social media can be additive in achieving these goals. Additionally, surveying the landscape to determine other areas of interest as its specifically related to your business. • Are customers seeking help or direction? • Who are your most valuable customers and what are they sharing? • How can you use social media to acquire and retain customers? - What ideas are circulating and how can you harness user generated activity and content to innovate or adapt to better meet the needs of customers? - How can you broaden a single customer view to recognize the varying needs of customers and how your organization can organize around each circumstance? - What insights exist based on how consumers are interacting with one another? How can this intelligence inform marketing, service, products and other important business initiatives? - How can your business extend their current efforts to deliver better customer experiences and in turn more effectively unit internal collaboration and communication? Customer demands far exceed the capabilities of the marketing department. While creating a social brand is a necessary endeavor, building a social business is an investment in customer relevance now and over time. Beyond relevance, a social business fosters a culture of change that unites employees and customers and sets a foundation for meaningful and beneficial relationships. Innovation, communication, and creativity are the natural byproducts of engagement and transformation. As a social brand, we are competing for the moment. As a social business, we are competing the future in all that we do today.

  Read the article

• Variant Management– Which Approach fits for my Product?

  - by C. Chadwick

  Jürgen Kunz – Director Product Development – Oracle ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG Introduction In a difficult economic environment, it is important for companies to understand the customer requirements in detail and to address them in their products. Customer specific products, however, usually cause increased costs. Variant management helps to find the best combination of standard components and custom components which balances customer’s product requirements and product costs. Depending on the type of product, different approaches to variant management will be applied. For example the automotive product “car” or electronic/high-tech products like a “computer”, with a pre-defined set of options to be combined in the individual configuration (so called “Assembled to Order” products), require a different approach to products in heavy machinery, which are (at least partially) engineered in a customer specific way (so-called “Engineered-to Order” products). This article discusses different approaches to variant management. Starting with the simple Bill of Material (BOM), this article presents three different approaches to variant management, which are provided by Agile PLM. Single level BOM and Variant BOM The single level BOM is the basic form of the BOM. The product structure is defined using assemblies and single parts. A particular product is thus represented by a fixed product structure. As soon as you have to manage product variants, the single level BOM is no longer sufficient. A variant BOM will be needed to manage product variants. The variant BOM is sometimes referred to as 150% BOM, since a variant BOM contains more parts and assemblies than actually needed to assemble the (final) product – just 150% of the parts You can evolve the variant BOM from the single level BOM by replacing single nodes with a placeholder node. The placeholder in this case represents the possible variants of a part or assembly. Product structure nodes, which are part of any product, are so-called “Must-Have” parts. “Optional” parts can be omitted in the final product. Additional attributes allow limiting the quantity of parts/assemblies which can be assigned at a certain position in the Variant BOM. Figure 1 shows the variant BOM of Agile PLM. Figure 1 Variant BOM in Agile PLM During the instantiation of the Variant BOM, the placeholders get replaced by specific variants of the parts and assemblies. The selection of the desired or appropriate variants is either done step by step by the user or by applying pre-defined configuration rules. As a result of the instantiation, an independent BOM will be created (Figure 2). Figure 2 Instantiated BOM in Agile PLM This kind of Variant BOM  can be used for „Assembled –To-Order“ type products as well as for „Engineered-to-Order“-type products. In case of “Assembled –To-Order” type products, typically the instantiation is done automatically with pre-defined configuration rules. For „Engineered- to-Order“-type products at least part of the product is selected manually to make use of customized parts/assemblies, that have been engineered according to the specific custom requirements. Template BOM The Template BOM is used for „Engineered-to-Order“-type products. It is another type of variant BOM. The engineer works in a flexible environment which allows him to build the most creative solutions. At the same time the engineer shall be guided to re-use existing solutions and it shall be assured that product variants of the same product family share the same base structure. The template BOM defines the basic structure of products belonging to the same product family. Let’s take a gearbox as an example. The customer specific configuration of the gearbox is influenced by several parameters (e.g. rpm range, transmitted torque), which are defined in the customer’s requirement document.  Figure 3 shows part of a Template BOM (yellow) and its relation to the product family hierarchy (blue).  Figure 3 Template BOM Every component of the Template BOM has links to the variants that have been engineeried so far for the component (depending on the level in the Template BOM, they are product variants, Assembly Variant or single part variants). This library of solutions, the so-called solution space, can be used by the engineers to build new product variants. In the best case, the engineer selects an existing solution variant, such as the gearbox shown in figure 3. When the existing variants do not fulfill the specific requirements, a new variant will be engineered. This new variant must be compliant with the given Template BOM. If we look at the gearbox in figure 3  it must consist of a transmission housing, a Connecting Plate, a set of Gears and a Planetary transmission – pre-assumed that all components are must have components. The new variant will enhance the solution space and is automatically available for re-use in future variants. The result of the instantiation of the Template BOM is a stand-alone BOM which represents the customer specific product variant. Modular BOM The concept of the modular BOM was invented in the automotive industry. Passenger cars are so-called „Assembled-to-Order“-products. The customer first selects the specific equipment of the car (so-called specifications) – for instance engine, audio equipment, rims, color. Based on this information the required parts will be determined and the customer specific car will be assembled. Certain combinations of specification are not available for the customer, because they are not feasible from technical perspective (e.g. a convertible with sun roof) or because the combination will not be offered for marketing reasons (e.g. steel rims with a sports line car). The modular BOM (yellow structure in figure 4) is defined in the context of a specific product family (in the sample it is product family „Speedstar“). It is the same modular BOM for the different types of cars of the product family (e.g. sedan, station wagon). The assembly or single parts of the car (blue nodes in figure 4) are assigned at the leaf level of the modular BOM. The assignment of assembly and parts to the modular BOM is enriched with a configuration rule (purple elements in figure 4). The configuration rule defines the conditions to use a specific assembly or single part. The configuration rule is valid in the context of a type of car (green elements in figure 4). Color specific parts are assigned to the color independent parts via additional configuration rules (grey elements in figure 4). The configuration rules use Boolean operators to connect the specifications. Additional consistency rules (constraints) may be used to define invalid combinations of specification (so-called exclusions). Furthermore consistency rules may be used to add specifications to the set of specifications. For instance it is important that a car with diesel engine always is build using the high capacity battery.  Figure 4 Modular BOM The calculation of the car configuration consists of several steps. First the consistency rules (constraints) are applied. Resulting from that specification might be added automatically. The second step will determine the assemblies and single parts for the complete structure of the modular BOM, by evaluating the configuration rules in the context of the current type of car. The evaluation of the rules for one component in the modular BOM might result in several rules being fulfilled. In this case the most specific rule (typically the longest rule) will win. Thanks to this approach, it is possible to add a specific variant to the modular BOM without the need to change any other configuration rules.  As a result the whole set of configuration rules is easy to maintain. Finally the color specific assemblies respective parts will be determined and the configuration is completed. Figure 5 Calculated Car Configuration The result of the car configuration is shown in figure 5. It shows the list of assemblies respective single parts (blue components in figure 5), which are required to build the customer specific car. Summary There are different approaches to variant management. Three different approaches have been presented in this article. At the end of the day, it is the type of the product which decides about the best approach.  For „Assembled to Order“-type products it is very likely that you can define the configuration rules and calculate the product variant automatically. Products of type „Engineered-to-Order“ ,however, need to be engineered. Nevertheless in the majority of cases, part of the product structure can be generated automatically in a similar way to „Assembled to Order“-tape products.  That said it is important first to analyze the product portfolio, in order to define the best approach to variant management.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 26, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 26, 2014Popular ReleasesClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.71.1: More performance improvements. It's faster and consumes less memory.Role Based Views in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Role Based Views in CRM 2011 and 2013 - 1.1.0.0: Issues fixed in this build: 1. Works for CRM 2013 2. Lookup view not getting blockedSimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.3.1.0: Main New Features: Fixed Importing of Instance Names (get rid of the Dutch translations) Added advanced editor for Decal Dictionaries Added possibility to import .PNG to generate new decals Added advanced editor for Path display entriesSimple Connect To Db: SimpleConnectToDb_v1: SimpleConnectToDb_v1CRM 2011 / CRM 2013 Form Helper: v2014.05.25: v2014.05.25 Added PhoneFormat & PhoneFormatAreaCode v2014.05.24 Initial ReleaseCreate Word documents without MS Word: Release 3.0: Add support for Sections, Sections Headers and Footers and right to left languages.Corporate News App for SharePoint 2013: CorporateNewsApp v1.6.2.0: Important note This version contains a major bug fix about the generic error "Request failed. Unexpected response data from server null" This error occurs on SharePoint Online only, following an update of the Javascript API after May 2014. If you have installed this application manually in your applications company catalog, you can download the CorporateNewsApp.app file in the zip archive and update it manually. If you have installed this application directly from the SharePoint Store, it ...DevOS: DevOS: Plugin-system added Including:DevOS.exe DevOS API.dll Files must be in the some folderTiny Deduplicator: Tiny Deduplicator 1.0.1.0: Increased version number to 1.0.1.0 Moved all options to a separate 'Options' dialog window. Allows the user to specify a selection strategy which will help when dealing with large numbers of duplicate files. Available options are "None," "Keep First," and "Keep Last"C64 Studio: 3.5: Add: BASIC renumber function Add: !PET pseudo op Add: elseif for !if, } else { pseudo op Add: !TRACE pseudo op Add: Watches are saved/restored with a solution Add: Ctrl-A works now in export assembly controls Add: Preliminary graphic import dialog (not fully functional yet) Add: range and block selection in sprite/charset editor (Shift-Click = range, Alt-Click = block) Fix: Expression evaluator could miscalculate when both division and multiplication were in an expression without parenthesisSEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.031.009 Release 1: Added mirroring of ConveyorTubeCurved. Updated Ship cube rotation to rotate ship back to original location (cubes are reoriented but ship appears no different to outsider), and to rotate Grouped items. Repair now fixes the loss of Grouped controls due to changes in Space Engineers 01.030. Added export asteroids. Rejoin ships will merge grouping and conveyor systems (even though broken ships currently only maintain the Grouping on one part of the ship). Installation of this version wi...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows and WP v2.0: Support for new Universal and Windows Phone 8.1 projects for both Xaml and JavaScript projects. See a detailed list of improvements, breaking changes and a general overview of version 2 ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows 8 Applications Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows 8.1 Applications Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows Phone 8.1 Applications Microsoft PlayReady Client SDK for Windows 8 Applications Microsoft PlayReady Client SDK for Windows 8.1 Applicat...TerraMap (Terraria World Map Viewer): TerraMap 1.0.6: Added support for the new Terraria v1.2.4 update. New items, walls, and tiles Added the ability to select multiple highlighted block types. Added a dynamic, interactive highlight opacity slider, making it easier to find highlighted tiles with dark colors (and fixed blurriness from 1.0.5 alpha). Added ability to find Enchanted Swords (in the stone) and Water Bolt books Fixed Issue 35206: Hightlight/Find doesn't work for Demon Altars Fixed finding Demon Hearts/Shadow Orbs Fixed inst...DotNet.Highcharts: DotNet.Highcharts 4.0 with Examples: DotNet.Highcharts 4.0 Tested and adapted to the latest version of Highcharts 4.0.1 Added new chart type: Heatmap Added new type PointPlacement which represents enumeration or number for the padding of the X axis. Changed target framework from .NET Framework 4 to .NET Framework 4.5. Closed issues: 974: Add 'overflow' property to PlotOptionsColumnDataLabels class 997: Split container from JS 1006: Series/Categories with numeric names don't render DotNet.Highcharts.Samples Updated s...ConEmu - Windows console with tabs: ConEmu 140523 [Alpha]: ConEmu - developer build x86 and x64 versions. Written in C++, no additional packages required. Run "ConEmu.exe" or "ConEmu64.exe". Some useful information you may found: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/conemu http://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/wiki/ConEmuFAQ http://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/wiki/TableOfContents If you want to use ConEmu in portable mode, just create empty "ConEmu.xml" file near to "ConEmu.exe" Aspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI SL - v 1.1: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI SL SDK in Comparison with Aspose.Slides for dealing with Microsoft Power Point. What's New ?Following Examples: Managing Slide Transitions Manage Smart Art Adding Media Player Adding Audio Frame to Slide Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are yet to come here. Keep visiting us. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit: PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit v3.1.3: Added CompressLogs option to the config file. Each Install / Uninstall creates a timestamped zip file with all MSI and PSAppDeployToolkit logs contained within Added variable expansion to all paths in the configuration file Added documentation for each of the Toolkit internal variables that can be used Changed Install-MSUpdates to continue if any errors are encountered when installing updates Implement /Force parameter on Update-GroupPolicy (ensure that any logoff message is ignored) ...WordMat: WordMat v. 1.07: A quick fix because scientific notation was broken in v. 1.06 read more at http://wordmat.blogspot.com????: 《????》: 《????》（c???）??“????”???????，???????????????C?????????。???????,???????????????????????. ??????????????????????????????????；????????????????????????????。Mini SQL Query: Mini SQL Query (1.0.72.457): Apologies for the previous update! FK issue fixed and also a template data cache issue.New ProjectsASP.Net MCV4 Simplified Code Samples: This project intended to simplify the same. In this project each task is implemented with minimum lines of code to reduces complicity.Calvin: net???CodeLatino by Latinosoft: A Modified version for codeShow -- Probably taking more than a month.freeasyBackup: A free and easy to use Backup Tool for everyone. Without any cloud restrictions. freeasyExplorer: A free and easy to use File Explorer for everyone.openPDFspeedreader: #spritz #pdfreader #speedreader PDF Editor to Edit PDF Files in your ASP.NET Applications: This sample application allows the users to edit PDF files online using Aspose.Pdf for .NET.SharePoint World Cup 2013: world cup 2014SSAS Long Running Query Performance Helper: This utility helps investigate long running multidimensional or mining queries in discovery, de-parameterization and re-parameterization back to source format.

  Read the article

• Parallel Classloading Revisited: Fully Concurrent Loading

  - by davidholmes

  Java 7 introduced support for parallel classloading. A description of that project and its goals can be found here: http://openjdk.java.net/groups/core-libs/ClassLoaderProposal.html The solution for parallel classloading was to add to each class loader a ConcurrentHashMap, referenced through a new field, parallelLockMap. This contains a mapping from class names to Objects to use as a classloading lock for that class name. This was then used in the following way: protected Class loadClass(String name, boolean resolve) throws ClassNotFoundException { synchronized (getClassLoadingLock(name)) { // First, check if the class has already been loaded Class c = findLoadedClass(name); if (c == null) { long t0 = System.nanoTime(); try { if (parent != null) { c = parent.loadClass(name, false); } else { c = findBootstrapClassOrNull(name); } } catch (ClassNotFoundException e) { // ClassNotFoundException thrown if class not found // from the non-null parent class loader } if (c == null) { // If still not found, then invoke findClass in order // to find the class. long t1 = System.nanoTime(); c = findClass(name); // this is the defining class loader; record the stats sun.misc.PerfCounter.getParentDelegationTime().addTime(t1 - t0); sun.misc.PerfCounter.getFindClassTime().addElapsedTimeFrom(t1); sun.misc.PerfCounter.getFindClasses().increment(); } } if (resolve) { resolveClass(c); } return c; } } Where getClassLoadingLock simply does: protected Object getClassLoadingLock(String className) { Object lock = this; if (parallelLockMap != null) { Object newLock = new Object(); lock = parallelLockMap.putIfAbsent(className, newLock); if (lock == null) { lock = newLock; } } return lock; } This approach is very inefficient in terms of the space used per map and the number of maps. First, there is a map per-classloader. As per the code above under normal delegation the current classloader creates and acquires a lock for the given class, checks if it is already loaded, then asks its parent to load it; the parent in turn creates another lock in its own map, checks if the class is already loaded and then delegates to its parent and so on till the boot loader is invoked for which there is no map and no lock. So even in the simplest of applications, you will have two maps (in the system and extensions loaders) for every class that has to be loaded transitively from the application's main class. If you knew before hand which loader would actually load the class the locking would only need to be performed in that loader. As it stands the locking is completely unnecessary for all classes loaded by the boot loader. Secondly, once loading has completed and findClass will return the class, the lock and the map entry is completely unnecessary. But as it stands, the lock objects and their associated entries are never removed from the map. It is worth understanding exactly what the locking is intended to achieve, as this will help us understand potential remedies to the above inefficiencies. Given this is the support for parallel classloading, the class loader itself is unlikely to need to guard against concurrent load attempts - and if that were not the case it is likely that the classloader would need a different means to protect itself rather than a lock per class. Ultimately when a class file is located and the class has to be loaded, defineClass is called which calls into the VM - the VM does not require any locking at the Java level and uses its own mutexes for guarding its internal data structures (such as the system dictionary). The classloader locking is primarily needed to address the following situation: if two threads attempt to load the same class, one will initiate the request through the appropriate loader and eventually cause defineClass to be invoked. Meanwhile the second attempt will block trying to acquire the lock. Once the class is loaded the first thread will release the lock, allowing the second to acquire it. The second thread then sees that the class has now been loaded and will return that class. Neither thread can tell which did the loading and they both continue successfully. Consider if no lock was acquired in the classloader. Both threads will eventually locate the file for the class, read in the bytecodes and call defineClass to actually load the class. In this case the first to call defineClass will succeed, while the second will encounter an exception due to an attempted redefinition of an existing class. It is solely for this error condition that the lock has to be used. (Note that parallel capable classloaders should not need to be doing old deadlock-avoidance tricks like doing a wait() on the lock object\!). There are a number of obvious things we can try to solve this problem and they basically take three forms: Remove the need for locking. This might be achieved by having a new version of defineClass which acts like defineClassIfNotPresent - simply returning an existing Class rather than triggering an exception. Increase the coarseness of locking to reduce the number of lock objects and/or maps. For example, using a single shared lockMap instead of a per-loader lockMap. Reduce the lifetime of lock objects so that entries are removed from the map when no longer needed (eg remove after loading, use weak references to the lock objects and cleanup the map periodically). There are pros and cons to each of these approaches. Unfortunately a significant "con" is that the API introduced in Java 7 to support parallel classloading has essentially mandated that these locks do in fact exist, and they are accessible to the application code (indirectly through the classloader if it exposes them - which a custom loader might do - and regardless they are accessible to custom classloaders). So while we can reason that we could do parallel classloading with no locking, we can not implement this without breaking the specification for parallel classloading that was put in place for Java 7. Similarly we might reason that we can remove a mapping (and the lock object) because the class is already loaded, but this would again violate the specification because it can be reasoned that the following assertion should hold true: Object lock1 = loader.getClassLoadingLock(name); loader.loadClass(name); Object lock2 = loader.getClassLoadingLock(name); assert lock1 == lock2; Without modifying the specification, or at least doing some creative wordsmithing on it, options 1 and 3 are precluded. Even then there are caveats, for example if findLoadedClass is not atomic with respect to defineClass, then you can have concurrent calls to findLoadedClass from different threads and that could be expensive (this is also an argument against moving findLoadedClass outside the locked region - it may speed up the common case where the class is already loaded, but the cost of re-executing after acquiring the lock could be prohibitive. Even option 2 might need some wordsmithing on the specification because the specification for getClassLoadingLock states "returns a dedicated object associated with the specified class name". The question is, what does "dedicated" mean here? Does it mean unique in the sense that the returned object is only associated with the given class in the current loader? Or can the object actually guard loading of multiple classes, possibly across different class loaders? So it seems that changing the specification will be inevitable if we wish to do something here. In which case lets go for something that more cleanly defines what we want to be doing: fully concurrent class-loading. Note: defineClassIfNotPresent is already implemented in the VM as find_or_define_class. It is only used if the AllowParallelDefineClass flag is set. This gives us an easy hook into existing VM mechanics. Proposal: Fully Concurrent ClassLoaders The proposal is that we expand on the notion of a parallel capable class loader and define a "fully concurrent parallel capable class loader" or fully concurrent loader, for short. A fully concurrent loader uses no synchronization in loadClass and the VM uses the "parallel define class" mechanism. For a fully concurrent loader getClassLoadingLock() can return null (or perhaps not - it doesn't matter as we won't use the result anyway). At present we have not made any changes to this method. All the parallel capable JDK classloaders become fully concurrent loaders. This doesn't require any code re-design as none of the mechanisms implemented rely on the per-name locking provided by the parallelLockMap. This seems to give us a path to remove all locking at the Java level during classloading, while retaining full compatibility with Java 7 parallel capable loaders. Fully concurrent loaders will still encounter the performance penalty associated with concurrent attempts to find and prepare a class's bytecode for definition by the VM. What this penalty is depends on the number of concurrent load attempts possible (a function of the number of threads and the application logic, and dependent on the number of processors), and the costs associated with finding and preparing the bytecodes. This obviously has to be measured across a range of applications. Preliminary webrevs: http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~dholmes/concurrent-loaders/webrev.hotspot/ http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~dholmes/concurrent-loaders/webrev.jdk/ Please direct all comments to the mailing list [email protected].

  Read the article

• Azure &ndash; Part 5 &ndash; Repository Pattern for Table Service

  - by Shaun

  In my last post I created a very simple WCF service with the user registration functionality. I created an entity for the user data and a DataContext class which provides some methods for operating the entities such as add, delete, etc. And in the service method I utilized it to add a new entity into the table service. But I didn’t have any validation before registering which is not acceptable in a real project. So in this post I would firstly add some validation before perform the data creation code and show how to use the LINQ for the table service.   LINQ to Table Service Since the table service utilizes ADO.NET Data Service to expose the data and the managed library of ADO.NET Data Service supports LINQ we can use it to deal with the data of the table service. Let me explain with my current example: I would like to ensure that when register a new user the email address should be unique. So I need to check the account entities in the table service before add. If you remembered, in my last post I mentioned that there’s a method in the TableServiceContext class – CreateQuery, which will create a IQueryable instance from a given type of entity. So here I would create a method under my AccountDataContext class to return the IQueryable<Account> which named Load. 1: public class AccountDataContext : TableServiceContext 2: { 3: private CloudStorageAccount _storageAccount; 4:  5: public AccountDataContext(CloudStorageAccount storageAccount) 6: : base(storageAccount.TableEndpoint.AbsoluteUri, storageAccount.Credentials) 7: { 8: _storageAccount = storageAccount; 9:  10: var tableStorage = new CloudTableClient(_storageAccount.TableEndpoint.AbsoluteUri, 11: _storageAccount.Credentials); 12: tableStorage.CreateTableIfNotExist("Account"); 13: } 14:  15: public void Add(Account accountToAdd) 16: { 17: AddObject("Account", accountToAdd); 18: SaveChanges(); 19: } 20:  21: public IQueryable<Account> Load() 22: { 23: return CreateQuery<Account>("Account"); 24: } 25: } The method returns the IQueryable<Account> so that I can perform the LINQ operation on it. And back to my service class, I will use it to implement my validation. 1: public bool Register(string email, string password) 2: { 3: var storageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.FromConfigurationSetting("DataConnectionString"); 4: var accountToAdd = new Account(email, password) { DateCreated = DateTime.Now }; 5: var accountContext = new AccountDataContext(storageAccount); 6:  7: // validation 8: var accountNumber = accountContext.Load() 9: .Where(a => a.Email == accountToAdd.Email) 10: .Count(); 11: if (accountNumber > 0) 12: { 13: throw new ApplicationException(string.Format("Your account {0} had been used.", accountToAdd.Email)); 14: } 15:  16: // create entity 17: try 18: { 19: accountContext.Add(accountToAdd); 20: return true; 21: } 22: catch (Exception ex) 23: { 24: Trace.TraceInformation(ex.ToString()); 25: } 26: return false; 27: } I used the Load method to retrieve the IQueryable<Account> and use Where method to find the accounts those email address are the same as the one is being registered. If it has I through an exception back to the client side. Let’s run it and test from my simple client application. Oops! Looks like we encountered an unexpected exception. It said the “Count” is not support by the ADO.NET Data Service LINQ managed library. That is because the table storage managed library (aka. TableServiceContext) is based on the ADO.NET Data Service and it supports very limit LINQ operation. Although I didn’t find a full list or documentation about which LINQ methods it supports I could even refer a page on msdn here. It gives us a roughly summary of which query operation the ADO.NET Data Service managed library supports and which doesn't. As you see the Count method is not in the supported list. Not only the query operation, there inner lambda expression in the Where method are limited when using the ADO.NET Data Service managed library as well. For example if you added (a => !a.DateDeleted.HasValue) in the Where method to exclude those deleted account it will raised an exception said "Invalid Input". Based on my experience you should always use the simple comparison (such as ==, >, <=, etc.) on the simple members (such as string, integer, etc.) and do not use any shortcut methods (such as string.Compare, string.IsNullOrEmpty etc.). 1: // validation 2: var accountNumber = accountContext.Load() 3: .Where(a => a.Email == accountToAdd.Email) 4: .ToList() 5: .Count; 6: if (accountNumber > 0) 7: { 8: throw new ApplicationException(string.Format("Your account {0} had been used.", accountToAdd.Email)); 9: } We changed the a bit and try again. Since I had created an account with my mail address so this time it gave me an exception said that the email had been used, which is correct.   Repository Pattern for Table Service The AccountDataContext takes the responsibility to save and load the account entity but only for that specific entity. Is that possible to have a dynamic or generic DataContext class which can operate any kinds of entity in my system? Of course yes. Although there's no typical database in table service we can threat the entities as the records, similar with the data entities if we used OR Mapping. As we can use some patterns for ORM architecture here we should be able to adopt the one of them - Repository Pattern in this example. We know that the base class - TableServiceContext provide 4 methods for operating the table entities which are CreateQuery, AddObject, UpdateObject and DeleteObject. And we can create a relationship between the enmity class, the table container name and entity set name. So it's really simple to have a generic base class for any kinds of entities. Let's rename the AccountDataContext to DynamicDataContext and make the type of Account as a type parameter if it. 1: public class DynamicDataContext<T> : TableServiceContext where T : TableServiceEntity 2: { 3: private CloudStorageAccount _storageAccount; 4: private string _entitySetName; 5:  6: public DynamicDataContext(CloudStorageAccount storageAccount) 7: : base(storageAccount.TableEndpoint.AbsoluteUri, storageAccount.Credentials) 8: { 9: _storageAccount = storageAccount; 10: _entitySetName = typeof(T).Name; 11:  12: var tableStorage = new CloudTableClient(_storageAccount.TableEndpoint.AbsoluteUri, 13: _storageAccount.Credentials); 14: tableStorage.CreateTableIfNotExist(_entitySetName); 15: } 16:  17: public void Add(T entityToAdd) 18: { 19: AddObject(_entitySetName, entityToAdd); 20: SaveChanges(); 21: } 22:  23: public void Update(T entityToUpdate) 24: { 25: UpdateObject(entityToUpdate); 26: SaveChanges(); 27: } 28:  29: public void Delete(T entityToDelete) 30: { 31: DeleteObject(entityToDelete); 32: SaveChanges(); 33: } 34:  35: public IQueryable<T> Load() 36: { 37: return CreateQuery<T>(_entitySetName); 38: } 39: } I saved the name of the entity type when constructed for performance matter. The table name, entity set name would be the same as the name of the entity class. The Load method returned a generic IQueryable instance which supports the lazy load feature. Then in my service class I changed the AccountDataContext to DynamicDataContext and that's all. 1: var accountContext = new DynamicDataContext<Account>(storageAccount); Run it again and register another account. The DynamicDataContext now can be used for any entities. For example, I would like the account has a list of notes which contains 3 custom properties: Account Email, Title and Content. We create the note entity class. 1: public class Note : TableServiceEntity 2: { 3: public string AccountEmail { get; set; } 4: public string Title { get; set; } 5: public string Content { get; set; } 6: public DateTime DateCreated { get; set; } 7: public DateTime? DateDeleted { get; set; } 8:  9: public Note() 10: : base() 11: { 12: } 13:  14: public Note(string email) 15: : base(email, string.Format("{0}_{1}", email, Guid.NewGuid().ToString())) 16: { 17: AccountEmail = email; 18: } 19: } And no need to tweak the DynamicDataContext we can directly go to the service class to implement the logic. Notice here I utilized two DynamicDataContext instances with the different type parameters: Note and Account. 1: public class NoteService : INoteService 2: { 3: public void Create(string email, string title, string content) 4: { 5: var storageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.FromConfigurationSetting("DataConnectionString"); 6: var accountContext = new DynamicDataContext<Account>(storageAccount); 7: var noteContext = new DynamicDataContext<Note>(storageAccount); 8:  9: // validate - email must be existed 10: var accounts = accountContext.Load() 11: .Where(a => a.Email == email) 12: .ToList() 13: .Count; 14: if (accounts <= 0) 15: throw new ApplicationException(string.Format("The account {0} does not exsit in the system please register and try again.", email)); 16:  17: // save the note 18: var noteToAdd = new Note(email) { Title = title, Content = content, DateCreated = DateTime.Now }; 19: noteContext.Add(noteToAdd); 20: } 21: } And updated our client application to test the service. I didn't implement any list service to show all notes but we can have a look on the local SQL database if we ran it at local development fabric.   Summary In this post I explained a bit about the limited LINQ support for the table service. And then I demonstrated about how to use the repository pattern in the table service data access layer and make the DataContext dynamically. The DynamicDataContext I created in this post is just a prototype. In fact we should create the relevant interface to make it testable and for better structure we'd better separate the DataContext classes for each individual kind of entity. So it should have IDataContextBase<T>, DataContextBase<T> and for each entity we would have class AccountDataContext<Account> : IDataContextBase<Account>, DataContextBase<Account> { … } class NoteDataContext<Note> : IDataContextBase<Note>, DataContextBase<Note> { … }   Besides the structured data saving and loading, another common scenario would be saving and loading some binary data such as images, files. In my next post I will show how to use the Blob Service to store the bindery data - make the account be able to upload their logo in my example.   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.

  Read the article

• Clean Code Development & Flexible work environment - MSCC 26.10.2013

  Finally, some spare time to summarize my impressions and experiences of the recent meetup of Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community. I already posted my comment on the event and on our social media networks: Professional - It's getting better with our meetups and I really appreciated that 'seniors' and 'juniors' were present today. Despite running a little bit out of time it was really great to see more students coming to the gathering. This time we changed location for our Saturday meetup and it worked out very well. A big thank you to Ebene Accelerator, namely Mrs Poonum, for the ability to use their meeting rooms for our community get-together. Already some weeks ago I had a very pleasant conversation with her about the MSCC aims, 'mission' and how we organise things. Additionally, I think that an environment like the Ebene Accelerator is a good choice as it acts as an incubator for young developers and start-ups. Reactions from other craftsmen Before I put my thoughts about our recent meeting down, I'd like to mention and cross-link to some of the other craftsmen that were present: "MSCC meet up is a massive knowledge gaining strategies for students, future entrepreneurs, or for geeks all around. Knowledge sharing becomes a fun. For those who have not been able to made it do subscribe on our MSCC meet up group at meetup.com." -- Nitin on Learning is fun with #MSCC #Ebene Accelerator "We then talked about the IT industry in Mauritius, salary issues in various field like system administration, software development etc. We analysed the reasons why people tend to hop from one company to another. That was a fun debate." -- Ish on MSCC meetup - Gang of Geeks "Flexible Learning Environment was quite interesting since these lines struck cords : "You're not a secretary....9 to 5 shouldn't suit you"....This allowed reflection...deep reflection....especially regarding the local mindset...which should be changed in a way which would promote creativity rather than choking it till death..." -- Yannick on 2nd MSCC Monthly Meet-up And others on Facebook... ;-) Visual impressions are available on our Meetup event page. More first time attendees We great pleasure I noticed that we have once again more first time visitors. A quick overlook showed that we had a majority of UoM students in first, second or last year. Some of them are already participating in the UoM Computer Club or are nominated as members of the Microsoft Student Partner (MSP) programme. Personally, I really appreciate the fact that the MSCC is able to gather such a broad audience. And as I wrote initially, the MSCC is technology-agnostic; we want IT people from any segment of this business. Of course, students which are about to delve into the 'real world' of working are highly welcome, and I hope that they might get one or other glimpse of experience or advice from employees. Sticking to the schedule? No, not really... And honestly, it was a good choice to go a little bit of the beaten tracks. I mean, yes we have a 'rough' agenda of topics that we would like to talk about or having a presentation about. But we keep it 'agile'. Due to the high number of new faces, we initiated another quick round of introductions and I gave a really brief overview of the MSCC. Next, we started to reflect on the Clean Code Developer (CCD) - Red Grade which we introduced on the last meetup. Nirvan was the lucky one and he did a good job on summarizing the various abbreviations of the first level of being a CCD. Actually, more interesting, we exchanged experience about the principles and practices of Red Grade, and it was very informative to get to know that Yann actually 'interviewed' a couple of friends, other students, local guys working in IT companies as well as some IT friends from India in order to counter-check on what he learned first-hand about Clean Code. Currently, he is reading the book of Robert C. Martin on that topic and I'm looking forward to his review soon. More output generates more input What seems to be like a personal mantra is working out pretty well for me since the beginning of this year. Being more active on social media networks, writing more article on my blog, starting the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community, and contributing more to other online communities has helped me to receive more project requests, job offers and possibilities to expand my business at IOS Indian Ocean Software Ltd. Actually, it is not a coincidence that one of the questions new craftsmen should answer during registration asks about having a personal blog. Whether you are just curious about IT, right in the middle of your Computer Studies, or already working in software development or system administration since a while you should consider to advertise and market yourself online. Easiest way to resolve this are to have online profiles on professional social media networks like LinkedIn, Xing, Twitter, and Google+ (no Facebook should be considered for private only), and considering to have a personal blog. Why? -- Be yourself, be proud of your work, and let other people know that you're passionate about your profession. Trust me, this is going to open up opportunities you might not have dreamt about... Exchanging ideas about having a professional online presence - MSCC meetup on the 26th October 2013 Furthermore, consider to put your Curriculum Vitae online, too. There are quite a number of service providers like 1ClickCV, Stack Overflow Careers 2.0, etc. which give you the ability to have an up to date CV online. At least put it on your site, next to your personal blog. Similar to what you would be able to see on my site here. Cyber Island Mauritius - are we there? A couple of weeks ago I got a 'cold' message on LinkedIn from someone living in the U.S. asking about the circumstances and conditions of the IT world of Mauritius. He has a great business idea, venture capital and is currently looking for a team of software developers (mainly mobile - iOS) for a new startup here in Mauritius. Since then we exchanged quite some details through private messages and Skype conversations, and I suggested that it might be a good chance to join our meetup through a conference call and see for yourself about potential candidates. During approximately 30 to 40 minutes the brief idea of the new startup was presented - very promising state-of-the-art technology aspects and integration of various public APIs -, and we had a good Q&A session about it. Also thanks to the excellent bandwidth provided by the Ebene Accelerator the video conference between three parties went absolutely well. Clean Code Developer - Orange Grade Hahaha - nice one... Being at the Orange Tower at Ebene and then talking about an Orange Grade as CCD. Well, once again I provided an overview of the principles and practices in that rank of Clean Code, and similar to our last meetup we discussed on the various aspect of each principle, whether someone already got in touch with it during studies or work, and how it could affect their future view on their source code. Following are the principles and practices of Clean Code Developer - Orange Grade: CCD Orange Grade - Principles Single Level of Abstraction (SLA) Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) Separation of Concerns (SoC) Source Code conventions CCD Orange Grade - Practices Issue Tracking Automated Integration Tests Reading, Reading, Reading Reviews Especially the part on reading technical books got some extra attention. We quickly gathered our views on that and came up with a result that ranges between Zero (0) and up to Fifteen (15) book titles per year. Personally, I'm keeping my progress between Six (6) and Eight (8) titles per year, but at least One (1) per quarter of a year. Which is also connected to the fact that I'm participating in the O'Reilly Reader Review Program and have a another benefit to get access to free books only by writing and publishing a review afterwards. We also had a good exchange on the extended topic of 'Reviews' - which to my opinion is abnormal difficult here in Mauritius for various reasons. As far as I can tell from my experience working with Mauritian software developers, either as colleagues, employees or during consulting services there are unfortunately two dominant pattern on that topic: Keeping quiet Running away Honestly, I have no evidence about why these are the two 'solutions' on reviews but that's the situation that I had to face over the last couple of years. Sitting together and talking about problematic issues, tackling down root causes of de-motivational activities and working on general improvements doesn't seem to have a ground within the IT world of Mauritius. Are you a typist or a creative software craftsman? - MSCC meetup on the 26th October 2013 One very good example that we talked about was the fact of 'job hoppers' as you can easily observe it on someone's CV - those people change job every single year; for no obvious reason! Frankly speaking, I wouldn't even consider an IT person like to for an interview. As a company you're investing money and effort into the abilities of your employees. Hiring someone that won't stay for a longer period is out of question. And sorry to say, these kind of IT guys smell fishy about their capabilities and more likely to cause problems than actually produce productive results. One of the reasons why there is a probation period on an employment contract is to give you the liberty to leave as early as possible in case that you don't like your new position. Don't fool yourself or waste other people's time and money by hanging around a full year only to snatch off the bonus payment... Future outlook: Developer's Conference Even though it is not official yet I already mentioned it several times during our weekly Code & Coffee sessions. The MSCC is looking forward to be able to organise or to contribute to an upcoming IT event. Currently, the rough schedule is set for April 2014 but this mainly depends on availability of location(s), a decent time frame for preparations, and the underlying procedures with public bodies to have it approved and so on. As soon as the information about date and location has been fixed there will be a 'Call for Papers' period in order to attract local IT enthusiasts to apply for a session slot and talk about their field of work and their passion in IT. More to come for sure... My resume of the day It was a great gathering and I am very pleased about the fact that we had another 15 craftsmen (plus 2 businessmen on conference call plus 2 young apprentices) in the same room, talking about IT related topics and sharing their experience as employees and students. Personally, I really appreciated the feedback from the students about their current view on their future career, and I really hope that some of them are going to pursue their dreams. Start promoting yourself and it will happen... Looking forward to your blogs! And last but not least our numbers on Meetup and Facebook have been increased as a direct consequence of this meetup. Please, spread the word about the MSCC and get your friends and colleagues to join our official site. The higher the number of craftsmen we have the better chances we have t achieve something great! Thanks!

  Read the article

• Benefits of Behavior Driven Development

  - by Aligned

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Aligned/archive/2013/07/26/benefits-of-behavior-driven-development.aspxContinuing my previous article on BDD, I wanted to point out some benefits of BDD and since BDD is an extension of Test Driven Development (TDD), you get those as well. I’ll add another article on some possible downsides of this approach. There are many articles about the benefits of TDD and they apply to BDD. I’ve pointed out some here and copied some of the main points for each article, but there are many more including the book The Art of Unit Testing by Roy Osherove. http://geekswithblogs.net/leesblog/archive/2008/04/30/the-benefits-of-test-driven-development.aspx (Lee Brandt) Stability Accountability Design Ability Separated Concerns Progress Indicator http://tddftw.com/benefits-of-tdd/ Help maintainers understand the intention behind the code Bring validation and proper data handling concerns to the forefront. Writing the tests first is fun. Better APIs come from writing testable code. TDD will make you a better developer. http://www.slideshare.net/dhelper/benefit-from-unit-testing-in-the-real-world (from Typemock). Take a look at the slides, especially the extra time required for TDD (slide 10) and the next one of the bugs avoided using TDD (slide 11). Less bugs (slide 11) about testing and development (13) Increase confidence in code (14) Fearlessly change your code (14) Document Requirements (14) also see http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2013/06/01/roc-rocks.aspx Discover usability issues early (14) All these points and articles are great and there are many more. The following are my additions to the benefits of BDD from using it in real projects for my company. July 2013 on MSDN - Behavior-Driven Design with SpecFlow Scott Allen did a very informative TDD and MVC module, but to me he is doing BDDCompile and Execute Requirements in Microsoft .NET ~ Video from TechEd 2012 Communication I was working through a complicated task that the decision tree kept growing. After writing out the Given, When, Then of the scenario, I was able tell QA what I had worked through for their initial test cases. They were able to add from there. It is also useful to use this language with other developers, managers, or clients to help make informed decisions on if it meets the requirements or if it can simplified to save time (money). Thinking through solutions, before starting to code This was the biggest benefit to me. I like to jump into coding to figure out the problem. Many times I don't understand my path well enough and have to do some parts over. A past supervisor told me several times during reviews that I need to get better at seeing "the forest for the trees". When I sit down and write out the behavior that I need to implement, I force myself to think things out further and catch scenarios before they get to QA. A co-worker that is new to BDD and we’ve been using it in our new project for the last 6 months, said “It really clarifies things”. It took him awhile to understand it all, but now he’s seeing the value of this approach (yes there are some downsides, but that is a different issue). Developers’ Confidence This is huge for me. With tests in place, my confidence grows that I won’t break code that I’m not directly changing. In the past, I’ve worked on projects with out tests and we would frequently find regression bugs (or worse the users would find them). That isn’t fun. We don’t catch all problems with the tests, but when QA catches one, I can write a test to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s also good for Releasing code, telling your manager that it’s good to go. As time goes on and the code gets older, how confident are you that checking in code won’t break something somewhere else? Merging code - pre release confidence If you’re merging code a lot, it’s nice to have the tests to help ensure you didn’t merge incorrectly. Interrupted work I had a task that I started and planned out, then was interrupted for a month because of different priorities. When I started it up again, and un-shelved my changes, I had the BDD specs and it helped me remember what I had figured out and what was left to do. It would have much more difficult without the specs and tests. Testing and verifying complicated scenarios Sometimes in the UI there are scenarios that get tricky, because there are a lot of steps involved (click here to open the dialog, enter the information, make sure it’s valid, when I click cancel it should do {x}, when I click ok it should close and do {y}, then do this, etc….). With BDD I can avoid some of the mouse clicking define the scenarios and have them re-run quickly, without using a mouse. UI testing is still needed, but this helps a bunch. The same can be true for tricky server logic. Documentation of Assumptions and Specifications The BDD spec tests (Jasmine or SpecFlow or other tool) also work as documentation and show what the original developer was trying to accomplish. It’s not a different Word document, so developers will keep this up to date, instead of letting it become obsolete. What happens if you leave the project (consulting, new job, etc) with no specs or at the least good comments in the code? Sometimes I think of a new scenario, so I add a failing spec and continue in the same stream of thought (don’t forget it because it was on a piece of paper or in a notepad). Then later I can come back and handle it and have it documented. Jasmine tests and JavaScript –> help deal with the non-typed system I like JavaScript, but I also dislike working with JavaScript. I miss C# telling me if a property doesn’t actually exist at build time. I like the idea of TypeScript and hope to use it more in the future. I also use KnockoutJs, which has observables that need to be called with ending (), since the observable is a function. It’s hard to remember when to use () or not and the Jasmine specs/tests help ensure the correct usage.   This should give you an idea of the benefits that I see in using the BDD approach. I’m sure there are more. It talks a lot of practice, investment and experimentation to figure out how to approach this and to get comfortable with it. I agree with Scott Allen in the video I linked above “Remember that TDD can take some practice. So if you're not doing test-driven design right now? You can start and practice and get better. And you'll reach a point where you'll never want to get back.”

  Read the article

• Processing Kinect v2 Color Streams in Parallel

  - by Chris Gardner

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2014/08/20/processing-kinect-v2-color-streams-in-parallel.aspxProcessing Kinect v2 Color Streams in Parallel I've really been enjoying being a part of the Kinect for Windows Developer's Preview. The new hardware has some really impressive capabilities. However, with great power comes great system specs. Unfortunately, my little laptop that could is not 100% up to the task; I've had to get a little creative. The most disappointing thing I've run into is that I can't always cleanly display the color camera stream in managed code. I managed to strip the code down to what I believe is the bear minimum: using( ColorFrame _ColorFrame = e.FrameReference.AcquireFrame() ) { if( null == _ColorFrame ) return;   BitmapToDisplay.Lock(); _ColorFrame.CopyConvertedFrameDataToIntPtr( BitmapToDisplay.BackBuffer, Convert.ToUInt32( BitmapToDisplay.BackBufferStride * BitmapToDisplay.PixelHeight ), ColorImageFormat.Bgra ); BitmapToDisplay.AddDirtyRect( new Int32Rect( 0, 0, _ColorFrame.FrameDescription.Width, _ColorFrame.FrameDescription.Height ) ); BitmapToDisplay.Unlock(); } With this snippet, I'm placing the converted Bgra32 color stream directly on the BackBuffer of the WriteableBitmap. This gives me pretty smooth playback, but I still get the occasional freeze for half a second. After a bit of profiling, I discovered there were a few problems. The first problem is the size of the buffer along with the conversion on the buffer. At this time, the raw image format of the data from the Kinect is Yuy2. This is great for direct video processing. It would be ideal if I had a WriteableVideo object in WPF. However, this is not the case. Further digging led me to the real problem. It appears that the SDK is converting the input serially. Let's think about this for a second. The color camera is a 1080p camera. As we should all know, this give us a native resolution of 1920 x 1080. This produces 2,073,600 pixels. Yuy2 uses 4 bytes per 2 pixel, for a buffer size of 4,147,200 bytes. Bgra32 uses 4 bytes per pixel, for a buffer size of 8,294,400 bytes. The SDK appears to be doing this on one thread. I started wondering if I chould do this better myself. I mean, I have 8 cores in my system. Why can't I use them all? The first problem is converting a Yuy2 frame into a Bgra32 frame. It is NOT trivial. I spent a day of research of just how to do this. In the end, I didn't even produce the best algorithm possible, but it did work. After I managed to get that to work, I knew my next step was the get the conversion operation off the UI Thread. This was a simple process of throwing the work into a Task. Of course, this meant I had to marshal the final write to the WriteableBitmap back to the UI thread. Finally, I needed to vectorize the operation so I could run it safely in parallel. This was, mercifully, not quite as hard as I thought it would be. I had my loop return an index to a pair of pixels. From there, I had to tell the loop to do everything for this pair of pixels. If you're wondering why I did it for pairs of pixels, look back above at the specification for the Yuy2 format. I won't go into full detail on why each 4 bytes contains 2 pixels of information, but rest assured that there is a reason why the format is described in that way. The first working attempt at this algorithm successfully turned my poor laptop into a space heater. I very quickly brought and maintained all 8 cores up to about 97% usage. That's when I remembered that obscure option in the Task Parallel Library where you could limit the amount of parallelism used. After a little trial and error, I discovered 4 parallel tasks was enough for most cases. This yielded the follow code: private byte ClipToByte( int p_ValueToClip ) { return Convert.ToByte( ( p_ValueToClip < byte.MinValue ) ? byte.MinValue : ( ( p_ValueToClip > byte.MaxValue ) ? byte.MaxValue : p_ValueToClip ) ); }   private void ColorFrameArrived( object sender, ColorFrameArrivedEventArgs e ) { if( null == e.FrameReference ) return;   // If you do not dispose of the frame, you never get another one... using( ColorFrame _ColorFrame = e.FrameReference.AcquireFrame() ) { if( null == _ColorFrame ) return;   byte[] _InputImage = new byte[_ColorFrame.FrameDescription.LengthInPixels * _ColorFrame.FrameDescription.BytesPerPixel]; byte[] _OutputImage = new byte[BitmapToDisplay.BackBufferStride * BitmapToDisplay.PixelHeight]; _ColorFrame.CopyRawFrameDataToArray( _InputImage );   Task.Factory.StartNew( () => { ParallelOptions _ParallelOptions = new ParallelOptions(); _ParallelOptions.MaxDegreeOfParallelism = 4;   Parallel.For( 0, Sensor.ColorFrameSource.FrameDescription.LengthInPixels / 2, _ParallelOptions, ( _Index ) => { // See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd206750(v=vs.85).aspx int _Y0 = _InputImage[( _Index << 2 ) + 0] - 16; int _U = _InputImage[( _Index << 2 ) + 1] - 128; int _Y1 = _InputImage[( _Index << 2 ) + 2] - 16; int _V = _InputImage[( _Index << 2 ) + 3] - 128;   byte _R = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y0 + 409 * _V + 128 ) >> 8 ); byte _G = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y0 - 100 * _U - 208 * _V + 128 ) >> 8 ); byte _B = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y0 + 516 * _U + 128 ) >> 8 );   _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 0] = _B; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 1] = _G; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 2] = _R; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 3] = 0xFF; // A   _R = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y1 + 409 * _V + 128 ) >> 8 ); _G = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y1 - 100 * _U - 208 * _V + 128 ) >> 8 ); _B = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y1 + 516 * _U + 128 ) >> 8 );   _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 4] = _B; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 5] = _G; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 6] = _R; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 7] = 0xFF; } );   Application.Current.Dispatcher.Invoke( () => { BitmapToDisplay.WritePixels( new Int32Rect( 0, 0, Sensor.ColorFrameSource.FrameDescription.Width, Sensor.ColorFrameSource.FrameDescription.Height ), _OutputImage, BitmapToDisplay.BackBufferStride, 0 ); } ); } ); } } This seemed to yield a results I wanted, but there was still the occasional stutter. This lead to what I realized was the second problem. There is a race condition between the UI Thread and me locking the WriteableBitmap so I can write the next frame. Again, I'm writing approximately 8MB to the back buffer. Then, I started thinking I could cheat. The Kinect is running at 30 frames per second. The WPF UI Thread runs at 60 frames per second. This made me not feel bad about exploiting the Composition Thread. I moved the bulk of the code from the FrameArrived handler into CompositionTarget.Rendering. Once I was in there, I polled from a frame, and rendered it if it existed. Since, in theory, I'm only killing the Composition Thread every other hit, I decided I was ok with this for cases where silky smooth video performance REALLY mattered. This ode looked like this: private byte ClipToByte( int p_ValueToClip ) { return Convert.ToByte( ( p_ValueToClip < byte.MinValue ) ? byte.MinValue : ( ( p_ValueToClip > byte.MaxValue ) ? byte.MaxValue : p_ValueToClip ) ); }   void CompositionTarget_Rendering( object sender, EventArgs e ) { using( ColorFrame _ColorFrame = FrameReader.AcquireLatestFrame() ) { if( null == _ColorFrame ) return;   byte[] _InputImage = new byte[_ColorFrame.FrameDescription.LengthInPixels * _ColorFrame.FrameDescription.BytesPerPixel]; byte[] _OutputImage = new byte[BitmapToDisplay.BackBufferStride * BitmapToDisplay.PixelHeight]; _ColorFrame.CopyRawFrameDataToArray( _InputImage );   ParallelOptions _ParallelOptions = new ParallelOptions(); _ParallelOptions.MaxDegreeOfParallelism = 4;   Parallel.For( 0, Sensor.ColorFrameSource.FrameDescription.LengthInPixels / 2, _ParallelOptions, ( _Index ) => { // See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd206750(v=vs.85).aspx int _Y0 = _InputImage[( _Index << 2 ) + 0] - 16; int _U = _InputImage[( _Index << 2 ) + 1] - 128; int _Y1 = _InputImage[( _Index << 2 ) + 2] - 16; int _V = _InputImage[( _Index << 2 ) + 3] - 128;   byte _R = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y0 + 409 * _V + 128 ) >> 8 ); byte _G = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y0 - 100 * _U - 208 * _V + 128 ) >> 8 ); byte _B = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y0 + 516 * _U + 128 ) >> 8 );   _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 0] = _B; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 1] = _G; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 2] = _R; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 3] = 0xFF; // A   _R = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y1 + 409 * _V + 128 ) >> 8 ); _G = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y1 - 100 * _U - 208 * _V + 128 ) >> 8 ); _B = ClipToByte( ( 298 * _Y1 + 516 * _U + 128 ) >> 8 );   _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 4] = _B; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 5] = _G; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 6] = _R; _OutputImage[( _Index << 3 ) + 7] = 0xFF; } );   BitmapToDisplay.WritePixels( new Int32Rect( 0, 0, Sensor.ColorFrameSource.FrameDescription.Width, Sensor.ColorFrameSource.FrameDescription.Height ), _OutputImage, BitmapToDisplay.BackBufferStride, 0 ); } }

  Read the article

• Data Source Connection Pool Sizing

  - by Steve Felts

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} One of the most time-consuming procedures of a database application is establishing a connection. The connection pooling of the data source can be used to minimize this overhead.  That argues for using the data source instead of accessing the database driver directly. Configuring the size of the pool in the data source is somewhere between an art and science – this article will try to move it closer to science.  From the beginning, WLS data source has had an initial capacity and a maximum capacity configuration values.  When the system starts up and when it shrinks, initial capacity is used.  The pool can grow to maximum capacity.  Customers found that they might want to set the initial capacity to 0 (more on that later) but didn’t want the pool to shrink to 0.  In WLS 10.3.6, we added minimum capacity to specify the lower limit to which a pool will shrink.  If minimum capacity is not set, it defaults to the initial capacity for upward compatibility.   We also did some work on the shrinking in release 10.3.4 to reduce thrashing; the algorithm that used to shrink to the maximum of the currently used connections or the initial capacity (basically the unused connections were all released) was changed to shrink by half of the unused connections. The simple approach to sizing the pool is to set the initial/minimum capacity to the maximum capacity.  Doing this creates all connections at startup, avoiding creating connections on demand and the pool is stable.  However, there are a number of reasons not to take this simple approach. When WLS is booted, the deployment of the data source includes synchronously creating the connections.  The more connections that are configured in initial capacity, the longer the boot time for WLS (there have been several projects for parallel boot in WLS but none that are available).  Related to creating a lot of connections at boot time is the problem of logon storms (the database gets too much work at one time).   WLS has a solution for that by setting the login delay seconds on the pool but that also increases the boot time. There are a number of cases where it is desirable to set the initial capacity to 0.  By doing that, the overhead of creating connections is deferred out of the boot and the database doesn’t need to be available.  An application may not want WLS to automatically connect to the database until it is actually needed, such as for some code/warm failover configurations. There are a number of cases where minimum capacity should be less than maximum capacity.  Connections are generally expensive to keep around.  They cause state to be kept on both the client and the server, and the state on the backend may be heavy (for example, a process).  Depending on the vendor, connection usage may cost money.  If work load is not constant, then database connections can be freed up by shrinking the pool when connections are not in use.  When using Active GridLink, connections can be created as needed according to runtime load balancing (RLB) percentages instead of by connection load balancing (CLB) during data source deployment. Shrinking is an effective technique for clearing the pool when connections are not in use.  In addition to the obvious reason that there times where the workload is lighter,  there are some configurations where the database and/or firewall conspire to make long-unused or too-old connections no longer viable.  There are also some data source features where the connection has state and cannot be used again unless the state matches the request.  Examples of this are identity based pooling where the connection has a particular owner and XA affinity where the connection is associated with a particular RAC node.  At this point, WLS does not re-purpose (discard/replace) connections and shrinking is a way to get rid of the unused existing connection and get a new one with the correct state when needed. So far, the discussion has focused on the relationship of initial, minimum, and maximum capacity.  Computing the maximum size requires some knowledge about the application and the current number of simultaneously active users, web sessions, batch programs, or whatever access patterns are common.  The applications should be written to only reserve and close connections as needed but multiple statements, if needed, should be done in one reservation (don’t get/close more often than necessary).  This means that the size of the pool is likely to be significantly smaller then the number of users.   If possible, you can pick a size and see how it performs under simulated or real load.  There is a high-water mark statistic (ActiveConnectionsHighCount) that tracks the maximum connections concurrently used.  In general, you want the size to be big enough so that you never run out of connections but no bigger.   It will need to deal with spikes in usage, which is where shrinking after the spike is important.  Of course, the database capacity also has a big influence on the decision since it’s important not to overload the database machine.  Planning also needs to happen if you are running in a Multi-Data Source or Active GridLink configuration and expect that the remaining nodes will take over the connections when one of the nodes in the cluster goes down.  For XA affinity, additional headroom is also recommended.  In summary, setting initial and maximum capacity to be the same may be simple but there are many other factors that may be important in making the decision about sizing.

  Read the article

• "Oracle ?????????" Oracle Days Tokyo 2012 ?????

  - by OTN-J Master

  Normal 0 0 2 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Century","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Century; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS ??"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Century; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt;} Normal 0 0 2 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Century","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Century; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS ??"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Century; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt;} 10?30?(?)?31?(?)?2????Oracle Days Tokyo 2012?????????????????????Oracle Days ???????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????IT???????????????(Simplified IT, Unleash Innovation)????IT????????????????????????????????????????????????????9/30??10/4???????????????Oracle OpenWorld 2012 ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Normal 0 0 2 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Century","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Century; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS ??"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Century; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt;} Oracle Days Tokyo 2012?????????????????????????????13?????60????????????????????????????????? ?1??:??????????????????? 1????????????????????????????????????????????·????????????????·??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????·????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Exadata???????????????????????????????????? Normal 0 0 2 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Century","serif";} ?2??:???????????·??????????????????????? 2????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????·??????????????·???????????????????Oracle Cloud???????? ??????????6????????????? ·????????:???????·?????????????????·????????????????·??????????3??????????????WebLogic Server 12?Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g?Oracle Exalogic?Oracle Event Processing?Oracle Coherence?Oracle Tuxedo ART 12c?Java??? ·????·???????:?????????·??????????????&????????2???????Oracle ?????????????????????????????????????????????? ·??????????:?????·??????????1?????13??????????????????????·??????????????????????????? Normal 0 0 2 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Century","serif";} ¦??????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ¦???????????????? Oracle Days Tokyo 2012???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????? ???????????????????

  Read the article

• What is the coolest thing you can do in <10 lines of simple code? Help me inspire beginners!

  - by Tom Ritter

  I'm looking for the coolest thing you can do in a few lines of simple code. I'm sure you can write a Mandelbrot set in Haskell in 15 lines but it's difficult to follow. My goal is to inspire students that programming is cool. We know that programming is cool because you can create anything you imagine - it's the ultimate creative outlet. I want to inspire these beginners and get them over as many early-learning humps as I can. Now, my reasons are selfish. I'm teaching an Intro to Computing course to a group of 60 half-engineering, half business majors; all freshmen. They are the students who came from underprivileged High schools. From my past experience, the group is generally split as follows: a few rock-stars, some who try very hard and kind of get it, the few who try very hard and barely get it, and the few who don't care. I want to reach as many of these groups as effectively as I can. Here's an example of how I'd use a computer program to teach: Here's an example of what I'm looking for: a 1-line VBS script to get your computer to talk to you: CreateObject("sapi.spvoice").Speak InputBox("Enter your text","Talk it") I could use this to demonstrate order of operations. I'd show the code, let them play with it, then explain that There's a lot going on in that line, but the computer can make sense of it, because it knows the rules. Then I'd show them something like this: 4(5*5) / 10 + 9(.25 + .75) And you can see that first I need to do is (5*5). Then I can multiply for 4. And now I've created the Object. Dividing by 10 is the same as calling Speak - I can't Speak before I have an object, and I can't divide before I have 100. Then on the other side I first create an InputBox with some instructions for how to display it. When I hit enter on the input box it evaluates or "returns" whatever I entered. (Hint: 'oooooo' makes a funny sound) So when I say Speak, the right side is what to Speak. And I get that from the InputBox. So when you do several things on a line, like: x = 14 + y; You need to be aware of the order of things. First we add 14 and y. Then we put the result (what it evaluates to, or returns) into x. That's my goal, to have a bunch of these cool examples to demonstrate and teach the class while they have fun. I tried this example on my roommate and while I may not use this as the first lesson, she liked it and learned something. Some cool mathematica programs that make beautiful graphs or shapes that are easy to understand would be good ideas and I'm going to look into those. Here are some complicated actionscript examples but that's a bit too advanced and I can't teach flash. What other ideas do you have?

  Read the article

• Where do I start ?

  - by Panthe

  Brief History: Just graduated high school, learned a bit of python and C++, have no friends with any helpful computer knowledge at all. Out of anyone i met in my school years I was probably the biggest nerd, but no one really knew. I consider my self to have a vast amount of knowledge on computers and tech then the average person. built/fixed tons of computers, and ability to troubleshoot pretty much any problem I came across. Now that high school is over, Ive really been thinking about my career. Loving, living computers for the past 15 years of my life I decided to take my ability's and try to learn computer programming, why I didn't start earlier I don't know, seems to be big mistake on my part... Doing some research I concluded that Python was the first programming language I should learn, since it was high level and easier to understand then C++ and Java. I also knew that to become good at what I did I needed to know more then just 2 or 3 languages, which didn't seem like a big problem considering once I learned the way Python worked, mainly syntax changed, and the rest would come naturally. I watched a couple of youtube videos, downloaded some book pdf's and snooped around from some tutorials here and there to get the hang of what to do. A two solid weeks had passed of trying to understand the syntax, create small programs that used the basic functions and understanding how it worked, I think i have got the hang of it. It breaks down into what ive been dealing with all this time (although i kinda knew) is that, input,output, loops, functions and other things derived from 0's and 1's storing data and recalling it, ect. (A VERY BASIC IDEA). Ive been able to create small programs, Hangman, file storing, temperature conversion, Caeser Cipher decode/encoding, Fibonacci Sequence and more, which i can create and understand how each work. Being 2 weeks into this, I have learned alot. Nothing at all compared to what i should be learning in the years to come if i get a grip on what I'm doing. While doing these programs I wont stop untill I've done doing a practice problem on a book, which embarresing enough will take me a couple hour depending on the complexity of it. I absolutly will not put aside the challenge until its complete, WHICH CAN BE EXTREMELY DRAINING, ive tried most problems without cheating and reached success, which makes me feel extremely proud of my self after completing something after much trial and error. After all this I have met the demon, alogrithm's which seem to be key to effiecent code. I cant seem to rap my head around some of the computer codes people put out there using numbers, and sometimes even basic functions, I have been able to understand them after a while but i know there are alot more complex things to come, considering my self smart, functions that require complex codes, actually hurt my brain. NOTHING EVER IN LIFE HURT MY BRAIN....... not even math classes in highschool, trying to understand some of the stuff people put out there makes me feel like i have a mental disadvantage lol... i still walk forward though, crossing my fingers that the understanding will come with time. Sorry if is this is long i just wish someone takes all these things into consideration when answering my question. even through all these downsides im still pushing through and continuing to try and get good at this, i know reading these tutorials wont make me any good unless i can become creative and make my own, understand other peoples programs, so this leads me to the simple question i could have asked in the beginning..... WHERE IN THE WORLD DO I START ? Ive been trying to find out how to understand some of the open source projects, how i can work with experianced coders to learn from them and help them, but i dont think thats even possible by the way how far people's knowledge is compared to me, i have no freinds who i can learn from, can someone help me and guide me into the right direction.. i have a huge motivation to get good at coding, anything information would be extremely helpful

  Read the article

• How do I learn algorithms?

  - by Panthe

  Brief History: Just graduated high school, learned a bit of python and C++, have no friends with any helpful computer knowledge at all. Out of anyone i met in my school years I was probably the biggest nerd, but no one really knew. I consider my self to have a vast amount of knowledge on computers and tech then the average person. built/fixed tons of computers, and ability to troubleshoot pretty much any problem I came across. Now that high school is over, Ive really been thinking about my career. Loving, living computers for the past 15 years of my life I decided to take my ability's and try to learn computer programming, why I didn't start earlier I don't know, seems to be big mistake on my part... Doing some research I concluded that Python was the first programming language I should learn, since it was high level and easier to understand then C++ and Java. I also knew that to become good at what I did I needed to know more then just 2 or 3 languages, which didn't seem like a big problem considering once I learned the way Python worked, mainly syntax changed, and the rest would come naturally. I watched a couple of youtube videos, downloaded some book pdf's and snooped around from some tutorials here and there to get the hang of what to do. A two solid weeks had passed of trying to understand the syntax, create small programs that used the basic functions and understanding how it worked, I think i have got the hang of it. It breaks down into what ive been dealing with all this time (although i kinda knew) is that, input,output, loops, functions and other things derived from 0's and 1's storing data and recalling it, ect. (A VERY BASIC IDEA). Ive been able to create small programs, Hangman, file storing, temperature conversion, Caeser Cipher decode/encoding, Fibonacci Sequence and more, which i can create and understand how each work. Being 2 weeks into this, I have learned alot. Nothing at all compared to what i should be lear ning in the years to come if i get a grip on what I'm doing. While doing these programs I wont stop untill I've done doing a practice problem on a book, which embarresing enough will take me a couple hour depending on the complexity of it. I absolutly will not put aside the challenge until its complete, WHICH CAN BE EXTREMELY DRAINING, ive tried most problems without cheating and reached success, which makes me feel extremely proud of my self after completing something after much trial and error. After all this I have met the demon, alogrithm's which seem to be key to effiecent code. I cant seem to rap my head around some of the computer codes people put out there using numbers, and sometimes even basic functions, I have been able to understand them after a while but i know there are alot more complex things to come, considering my self smart, functions that require complex codes, actually hurt my brain. NOTHING EVER IN LIFE HURT MY BRAIN....... not even math classes in highschool, trying to understand some of the stuff people put out there makes me feel like i have a mental disadvantage lol... i still walk forward though, crossing my fingers that the understanding will come with time. Sorry if is this is long i just wish someone takes all these things into consideration when answering my question. even through all these downsides im still pushing through and continuing to try and get good at this, i know reading these tutorials wont make me any good unless i can become creative and make my own, understand other peoples programs, so this leads me to the simple question i could have asked in the beginning..... WHERE IN THE WORLD DO I START ? Ive been trying to find out how to understand some of the open source projects, how i can work with experianced coders to learn from them and help them, but i dont think thats even possible by the way how far people's knowledge is compared to me, i have no freinds who i can learn from, can someone help me and guide me into the right direction.. i have a huge motivation to get good at coding, anything information would be extremely helpful

  Read the article

• Letter to Ballmer: Making Better Consumer Devices

  - by andrewbrust

  Last year, I wrote Steve Ballmer an email, and he was kind enough to write me back.  The email contained a scan of a column I wrote praising Microsoft’s BI strategy.  His reply contained three simple words: “Super nice  thanks.” Well, now I’d like to write to Steve again, in an open letter format, and this time the love may be a bit tougher.  But I’m still super earnest. The past two days have been eventful ones for Microsoft: The company announced the departure of company veterans Robbie Bach and J Allard and the market announced Apple is now besting Microsoft in market capitalization. Plus, announcements were made that make it plain that Ballmer will, in effect, be running Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division himself. With that in mind, I’d like to offer my list of a dozen things I think Microsoft’s CEO should do to improve that division’s offerings and, hopefully, its bottom line. So here goes:   1. On Windows Phone 7, Stay the Course The press is teeming with headlines and reader comments proclaiming the death-before-arrival of Windows Phone 7.  That’s plain silly.  You’ve got the makings of a great and unique SmartPhone platform, and you’re the only company (even considering RIM) that can offer full fidelity Exchange integration, not to mention implementing Office on the device.  Let the existing team finish this puppy and ship it. And then have them pump out a few updates, over-the-air, quickly.  Show them that Google Android’s not the only product that can do good, rapid dot releases. And another thing: make sure your OEMs’ devices have flawless touch screens.  If they don’t, then you shouldn’t certify them for delivery to customers.  Period. Oh, and kill the Kin, quietly.  It was DOA, and you know it.   2. Move Media Center to the Xbox Platform Media Center is, at its core, a good product.  But delivering a media distribution and DVR platform on a sophisticated PC operating system like Windows 7 just creates too many moving parts.  Xbox already functions as the best Media Center extender device – it should actually be the hub as well. Media Center is mostly based on .NET code – and XNA is a .NET environment for Xbox – find a way to bridge that small gap and make Media Center a joy to work with instead of a frustration.  Beating Apple TV out of this sub-market is the lowest hanging fruit on the tree (goofy pun, but it’s true).   3. Integrate Media Center with Mediaroom, or Kill the Latter You have two media products with almost identical names.  One is for standalone DVRs and the other is for IPTV cable set tops with DVR capabilities.  Can we merge these please?  My previous request of putting Media Center on Xbox would seem to tie into this nicely, since you’ve announced plans to do that with Mediaroom already.   4. Fix the Red Ring of Death People love the Xbox, but they really don’t love sending their consoles back every 18-24 months, when they get a bunch of red lights flashing on power up.  You’ve handled this defect about as gracefully as possible, but it’s been around for a long time now and it doesn’t seem to be fixed yet.  You can do better.  In fact, you must do better, or you insult your customers.   5. Add Blu Ray to Xbox I know, streaming movies are the future; physical media is legacy technology.  So if that’s true, why did you back HD DVD so hard?  You know why: for now, the film studios won’t allow a large selection of new release, HD, surround sound content be distributed on any medium other than Blu Ray or cable pay per view/on-demand.  Don’t you want home theater buffs to see the Xbox as a fantastic device for their rigs?  Don’t you want to put PlayStation 3 out of its misery?  And if you follow my suggestions above (move Media Center to the Xbox and fix the Red Ring problem), you’d have it all sewn up.  Do I think Blu Ray functionality will move a lot of units?  No.  Do I think that it would move more units with desperately needed influential home theater consumers?  You bet.  And you might sell more ZunePass subscriptions in the process. But while you’re at it, make the fan quieter, please.   6. Make More of Windows Home Server Home Server is a fantastic product.  And for reasons unknown to me, it seems like you’re letting it languish.  Development of the add-in ecosystem seems underfunded.  WHS’ unparalleled ease of use and reliability for home PC backup (and emergency restores) goes unsung.  Product cycles are slow.  Support for your OEMs, who are doing great work, especially in the green space with Atom CPUs, seems lacking.  You’ve married a trophy girl and you keep her cloistered at home!  That’s cruel, unusual and, um, incredibly ill-advised.  Make use of this ace card, and while you’re at it, give it real integration with Media Center.  The integration thus far proof-of-concept quality.  You should go way past that – both products will benefit immeasurably.   7. Set Up a Partner Platform for Custom Installers There’s a whole sub-industry of companies that install, integrate and configure home theater, security and connected home products.  They have an industry group. They are influential in the high-end of the consumer electronics industry, and so are their customers.  They love Media Center and they love Windows Home Server.  But I have talked to several of them at the Consumer Electronics Show and they tell me you don’t love them.  They find it very difficult to do business with Microsoft, even though they want nothing more than to sell and evangelize your platform.  This is a travesty.  Please fix it.  Get Allison Watson and the Microsoft Partner Network on board and have her hire someone who knows how to run a channel program for consumer electronics companies.  Problem solved.  Markets expanded.   8. Make Your Own Hardware In other areas, I know you love your partners.  I help run one, so I appreciate that.  But when it came to Xbox and Zune you built them it yourself (albeit on a contract basis, which is fine).  Windows Phone 7 has a chance to work as an OEM play, but it would work better if you produced the devices.  At least consider building a reference device that sells alongside your OEMs’ offerings.  That’s what Google did with the Nexxus One.  And while that phone was not itself a big seller, it catalyzed two wonderful things : (1) a quality bar was set and (2) partners exceeded it.  Before the Nexxus One, the best Android handset out there was the Motorola Droid. The Nexxus One was better, and the HTC Droid Incredible and Evo 4G are now even better than Google’s phone, which is why Verizon and Sprint decided not to carry it.  Imagine if all Windows Phone 6.x devices were on par with the HTC HD2.  I tend to believe you’d have a lot bigger market share than you do now.   9. Continue with Your Retail Initiative From what I hear, it sounds like it’s going well.  And this goes right along with making your own hardware.  When you build it, they will come.  And then it makes the likes of Best Buy and Staples do better.   10. Make an Acquisition (or Two) TiVo and/or Moxi look ripe for the picking.  With their ability to build stuff people love and your ability to run a business, you might just have something.  But do a better job than you did when you bought Danger.  Buy the ideas, not just the customers, eh?   11. Make Beautiful Stuff You’ve heard this one before, I know.  But I have some head-shrinking advice on this one.  You know that Apple obsesses over its industrial design.  You know that appeals to consumers.  But it seems you think doing so is Apple’s game exclusively and so you shouldn’t even try.  Bull dinky.  Come to New York and visit the Museum of Modern Art’s Architecture and Design gallery.  You’ll see that lots of companies and product categories have had very high design value well before Apple existed.  You can do this, and the Zune HD was a great start.  Now run with that.  Find those negative voices in your head that are telling you that you can’t and shut them up.  For good.   12. Burst the Bubble Some of the products you’ve built seem like they were conceived in a bizarro world.  That would appear to be the result of groupthink.  You must do better.  And there’s lots of people willing to advise you.  This includes just about everyone in the Regional Director program, and probably a bunch of MVPs.  Heck, I bet the guys at Engadget could help out too.  Imagine if you let them see the Kin before it shipped.  Talk to high-end gear consumers.  Talk to Best Buy and CostCo customers too.   Signing Off I hope this was of value to you.  As I wrote this I kept telling myself how obvious, even trite, some of these pieces of advice were and then, because of that, doubting they’d really help.  But I decided that they must not be obvious to Microsoft.  Sometimes when you get wrapped up in stuff, it’s hard to clear your head.  I think my head’s pretty clear here though (I’m wrapped up in other stuff), so maybe my perspective can help.  If not, well, then, I guess they all can’t be super nice.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 10, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 10, 2012Popular ReleasesPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 Metro (BETA): Player Framework for HTML/JavaScript and XAML/C# Metro Style Applications.WPF Application Framework (WAF): WAF for .NET 4.5 (Experimental): Version: 2.5.0.440 (Experimental): This is an experimental release! It can be used to investigate the new .NET Framework 4.5 features. The ideas shown in this release might come in a future release (after 2.5) of the WPF Application Framework (WAF). More information can be found in this dicussion post. Requirements .NET Framework 4.5 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 11) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 11 Professional Changelog All: Upgrade all proje...SSH.NET Library: 2012.3.9: There are still few outstanding issues I wanted to include in this release but since its been a while and there are few new features already I decided to create a new release now. New Features Add SOCKS4, SOCKS5 and HTTP Proxy support when connecting to remote server. For silverlight only IP address can be used for server address when using proxy. Add dynamic port forwarding support using ForwardedPortDynamic class. Add new ShellStream class to work with SSH Shell. Add supports for mu...Test Case Import Utilities for Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 11 Beta: V1.2 RTM: This release (V1.2 RTM) includes: Support for connecting to Hosted Team Foundation Server Preview. Support for connecting to Team Foundation Server 11 Beta. Fix to issue with read-only attribute being set for LinksMapping-ReportFile which may have led to problems when saving the report file. Fix to issue with “related links” not being set properly in certain conditions. Fix to ensure that tool works fine when the Excel file contained rich text data. Note: Data is still imported in pl...Audio Pitch & Shift: Audio Pitch And Shift 3.5.0: Modules (mod, xm, it, etc..) supportcallisto: callisto 2.0.19: BUG FIX: Autorun.load() function in scripting now has sandboxed path (Thanks Mikey!) BUG FIX: UserObject.Name property now allows full 20 byte string replacements. FEATURE REQUEST: File.* script functions now allow file extensions.EntitiesToDTOs - Entity Framework DTO Generator: EntitiesToDTOs.v2.1: Changelog Fixed template file access issue on Win7. Fix on configuration load when target project was not found and "Use project default namespace" was checked. Minor fix on loading latest configuration at startup. Minor fix in VisualStudioHelper class. DTO's properties accessors are now in one line. Improvements in PropertyHelper to get a cleaner and more performant code. Added Website project type as a not supported project type. Using Error List pane from VS IDE to show Enti...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.01.04: Major Highlights Fixed issue with loading the splash page skin in the login, privacy and terms of use pages Fixed issue when searching for words with special characters in them Fixed redirection issue when the user does not have permissions to access a resource Fixed issue when clearing the cache using the ClearHostCache() function Fixed issue when displaying the site structure in the link to page feature Fixed issue when inline editing the title of modules Fixed issue with ...Mayhem: Mayhem Developer Preview: This is the developer preview of Mayhem. Enjoy!Team Foundation Server Process Template Customization Guidance: v1 - For Visual Studio 11: Welcome to the BETA release of the Team Foundation Server Process Template Customization preview. As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has not been through an independent technical review Documentation has not been rev...Magelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 1.2: Medium trust compliant lot of small change for medium trust compliance full refactoring of user management refactoring of Client Refactoring of user management Magelia.WebStore.Client no longer reference Magelia.WebStore.Services.Contract Refactoring page category multi parent category added copy category feature added Refactoring page catalog copy catalog feature added variant management improvement ability to define a default variant for a variable product ability to ord...PDFsharp - A .NET library for processing PDF: PDFsharp and MigraDoc Foundation 1.32: PDFsharp and MigraDoc Foundation 1.32 is a stable version that fixes a few bugs that were found with version 1.31. Version 1.32 includes solutions for Visual Studio 2010 only (but it should be possible to add the project files to existing solutions for VS 2005 or VS 2008). Users of VS 2005 or VS 2008 can still download version 1.31 with the solutions for those versions that allow them to easily try the samples that are included. While it may create smaller PDF files than version 1.30 because...Terminals: Version 2.0 - Release: Changes since version 1.9a:New art works New usability in Organize favorites window Improved usability of imports/exports and scans Large number of fixes Improvements in single instance mode Comparing November beta 4, this corrects: New application icons Doesn't show Logon error codes Fixed command line arguments exception for single instance mode Fixed detaching of tabs improved usability in detached window Fixed option settings for Capture manager Fixed system tray noti...MFCMAPI: March 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1032 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeTortoiseHg: TortoiseHg 2.3.1: bugfix releaseSimple Injector: Simple Injector v1.4.1: This release adds two small improvements to the SimpleInjector.Extensions.dll. No changes have been made to the core library. New features and improvements in this release for the SimpleInjector.Extensions.dll The RegisterManyForOpenGeneric extension methods now accept non-generic decorator, as long as they implement the given open generic service type. GetTypesToRegister methods added to the OpenGenericBatchRegistrationExtensions class which allows to customize the behavior. Note that the...CommonLibrary: Code: CodeVidCoder: 1.3.1: Updated HandBrake core to 0.9.6 release (svn 4472). Removed erroneous "None" container choice. Change some logic and help text to stop assuming you have to pick the VIDEO_TS folder for a DVD scan. This should make previewing DVD titles on the Queue Multiple Titles window possible when you've picked the root DVD directory.Google Books Downloader for Windows: Google Books Downloader: Google Books Downloader 1.8ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.0: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-03-04 v3.1.0 -??Hidden???????（〓?〓）。 -?PageManager??...New ProjectsAres Backup: Ares Backup is a Backup software which can save bytediffs and provides several storage plugins.BackItUp: Backup-Tool für Visual Studio Projektebinbin domain: binbin domain Blexus Service Plattform: Some cool stuff about Wcf Services. - can communicate files - can communicate xaml objects (generate dynamically Gui) CardPlay - a Solitaire Framework for .Net: CardPlay is a C# framework for developing Solitaire card games. The solution includes a sample WPF client along with over 100 games.Cloud Files Upload: Windows application to script cloud file uploads.Code First API Library, Scaffolding & Guidance for Coded UI Tests: Code first Coded UI Tests for web apps. Library, Scaffolding and Guidance.CPEBook by FMUG & TPAY: CPEBook by MUG & TPAY Projet dot NET CPEBookDot Net Application String Resources Viewer: Dot Net Application String Resources ViewerFilter for SharePoint Web Settings Page: This solution show a simple way to integrate a filter box by using jquery, a global farm feature and a simple delegate control for AdditionalPageHead.Google Books Downloader for Windows: Save Google books in PDF, JPEG or PNG format.GUIToolkit: C++ Windowless GUI，DirectUIHarvest Sports: Harvest SportsInfoPath Analyzer: InfoPath Analyzer makes InfoPath form development and troubleshooting much easier. You're easy to find the relationship between controls and data fields, search data fields or controls by name, edit InfoPath inner html directly.Kinectsignlanguage project: This project will help kinect be used for sign language to speech so that sign language people can be understood while talking to important people. LotteryVote: ????manager123: Trying out CodePlexMcRegister: McRegister is an asp.net mvc 3 razor website that enables you to register users on your minecraft server it works in conjunction with a minecraft mod called EasyAuth.MetroTipi: HelloTipi Sous l'interface Metro de Windows 8Microsoft AppFactory: AppFactory is a powerful data-driven build system for Windows Phone (and soon Windows 8) projects. Its purpose is to help developers start with template projects and turn them into suites of applications.MiniStock: MiniStock is an experimental reference architecture for scalable cloud-based architectures. Implemented in .net.online book shopping: online book shoppingScopa: Carousel Team Scopa per WP7 XNA testtom03092012tfs01: testtom03092012tfs01UsingLib: A library of automatically removed utilities: 1.Changing cursor to hourglass in Windows Forms 2.Logging It's developed in C#WHMCS Library: WHMCS is an all-in-one client management, billing & support solution for online businesses. Handling everything from signup to termination, WHMCS is a powerful business automation tool that puts you firmly in control. The WHMCS Library is a .NET wrapper for the WHMCS API. Written entirely in C# but really easy to port over to VB.NET. Coming from a VB.NET background we tried hard to make sure porting would be simple for VB.NET community members. ZoneEditService: Windows service to update ZoneEdit for dynamic dns.

  Read the article

• Cryptographic Validation Explained

  - by MarkPearl

  We have been using LogicNP’s CryptoLicensing for some of our software and I was battling to understand how exactly the whole process worked. I was sent the following document which really helped explain it – so if you ever use the same tool it is well worth a read. Licensing Basics LogicNP CryptoLicensing For .Net is the most advanced and state-of-the art licensing and copy protection system you can use for your software. LogicNP CryptoLicensing System uses the latest cryptographic technology to generate and validate licenses. The cryptographic algorithm used is the RSA algorithm which consists of a pair of keys called as the generation key and the validation key. Data encrypted using the generation key can only be decrypted using the corresponding validation key. How does cryptographic validation work? When a new license project is created, a unique validation-generation key pair is created for the project. When LogicNP CryptoLicensing For .Net generates licenses, it encrypts the license settings using the generation key. The validation key can be safely distributed with your software and is used during validation. During license validation, LogicNP CryptoLicensing For .Net attempts to decrypt the encrypted license code using the validation key. If the decryption is successful, this means that the data was encrypted using the generation key, since only the corresponding validation key can decrypt data encrypted with the generation key. This further means that not only is the license valid but that it was generated by you and only you since nobody else has access to the generation key. Generation Key This key is used by CryptoLicensing Generator to generate encrypted license codes. This key is stored in the license project file, so the license project file must be kept secure and confidential and must be accorded the same care as any other critical asset such as source code. Validation Key This key is used for validating generated license codes. It is the same key displayed in the 'Get Validation Key And Code' dialog (Ctrl+K) and is used by your software when validating license codes (using LogicNP.CryptoLicensing.dll). Unlike the generation key, it is not necessary to keep this key secure and confidential. Note that the generation key pair is stored in the project file created by LogicNP CryptoLicensing For .Net, so it is very important to backup this file and to keep it secure. Once the file is lost, it is not possible to retrieve the key pair. FAQ Do I use the same validation key to validate all license codes? Yes, the validation key (and generation key) for the project remains the same; you use the same key to validate all license codes generated using the project. You can retrieve the validation key using the "Project" menu --> "Get Validation Key & Code" menu item. Can license codes generated using generation key from one project be validated using validation key of another project? No! Q. Is every generated license code unique? A. Yes, every license code generated by CryptoLicensing is guaranteed to be unique, even if you generate thousands of codes at a time. Q. What makes CryptoLicensing so secure? A. CryptoLicensing uses the latest cryptographic technology to generate and validate licenses. The cryptographic algorithm used is the RSA asymmetric key algorithm which can use upto 3072-bit keys. Given current computing power, it takes years to break a 3072-bit key. Q. Is is possible for a hacker to develop a keygen for my software? A. Impossible. The cryptographic algorithm used by CryptoLicensing consists of a pair of keys called as the generation key and the validation key. Data encrypted with one key can only be decrypted by the other key and vice versa. Licenses are generated using the generation key and validated using the validation key. Without the generation key, it is impossible to generate valid licenses. Q. What is the difference between validation key and generation key? Generation Key This key is used by CryptoLicensing Generator to generate encrypted license codes. This key is stored in the license project file, so the license project file must be kept secure and confidential and must be accorded the same care as any other critical asset such as source code. Validation Key This key is used for validating generated license codes. It is the same key displayed in the 'Get Validation Key And Code' dialog (Ctrl+K) and is used by your software when validating license codes (using LogicNP.CryptoLicensing.dll). Unlike the generation key, it is not necessary to keep this key secure and confidential. Q. Do I have to include the license project file (.licproj) with my software? A. No!!! This goes against the very essence of the security of the asymmetric cryptographic scheme because the project file contains both the validation and generation key. With your software, you only need to include the validation key which will be used to validate licenses generated by CryptoLicensing using the generation key. The license project file should be treated as any other valuable and confidential asset such as your source code. Q. Does the license service need the license project file? A. Yes. The license project file is needed whenever new licenses are generated (via the UI, via the API or via the license service). As just one example, the license service generates new machine-locked licenses when activated licenses are presented to it for activation, therefore the license service needs the license project file. Q. Is it possible to embed my own data in the generated licenses? A. Yes. You can embed any amount of additional data in the licenses. This data will have the same amount of security as the license code itself and will be tamper-proof. The embedded user data can be retrieved from your software. Q. What additional steps can I take to ensure that my software does not get cracked? A. There are many methods and techniques which can make it extremely difficult for a hacker to crack your software. See Writing Effective License Checking Code And Designing Effective Licenses for more information. Q. Why is the license service not working? A. The most common cause is not setting the CryptoLicense.LicenseServiceURL property before trying to validate a license. Make sure that this property is set to the correct URL where your license service is hosted. The most common cause after this is that the license project file on the web server where your license service is hosted is not the latest. This happens if you make changes to the license project (for example, set the 'Enable With Serials' setting for a profile), but don't upload the updated project file to your web server. Q. Why are my serials not working? Serial codes require the user of a license service. See Using Serial Codes for more details. Also see the earlier question 'Why is the license service not working?' Q. Is the same validation key used to validate license codes generated from different profiles. A. Yes. Profiles are just pre specified license settings for quickly generating licenses having those settings. The actual license code is still generated using the license project's cryptographic generation key and thus, can be validated using the project's validation key. Q. Why are changes made to a profile not getting saved? A. Simply changing license settings via UI and saving the license project does not save those license settings to the active profile. You must first save the license settings to a profile using the Save/Save As command from the Profiles menu (see above). Q. Why is validation of activated licenses failing from CryptoLicensing Generator, but works from my software? A. Make sure that you have specified the URL of the license service using the Project Properties Dialog. Also see the earlier question 'Why is the license service not working?' Q. How can I extend the trial period of my customer? A. To extend the evaluation period of the customer, simply send him a new license code specifying the desired evaluation limits. Evaluation information such as the current used days, executions, etc are stored in garbled form in a registry location which is derived from the license code. Therefore, when a new license code is used, the old evaluation information will not be used and a new evaluation period will be started.

  Read the article

• Migrating from SQL Trace to Extended Events

  - by extended_events

  In SQL Server codenamed “Denali” we are moving our diagnostic tracing capabilities forward by building a system on top of Extended Events. With every new system you face the specter of migration which is always a bit of a hassle. I’m obviously motivated to see everyone move their diagnostic tracing systems over to the new extended events based system, so I wanted to make sure we lowered the bar for the migration process to help ease your trials. In my initial post on Denali CTP 1 I described a couple tables that we created that will help map the existing SQL Trace Event Classes to the equivalent Extended Events events. In this post I’ll describe the tables in a bit more details, explain the relationship between the SQL Trace objects (Event Class & Column) and Extended Event objects (Events & Actions) and at the end provide some sample code for a managed stored procedure that will take an existing SQL Trace session (eg. a trace that you can see in sys.Traces) and converts it into event session DDL. Can you relate? In some ways, SQL Trace and Extended Events is kind of like the Standard and Metric measuring systems in the United States. If you spend too much time trying to figure out how to convert between the two it will probably make your head hurt. It’s often better to just use the new system without trying to translate between the two. That said, people like to relate new things to the things they’re comfortable with, so, with some trepidation, I will now explain how these two systems are related to each other. First, some terms… SQL Trace is made up of Event Classes and Columns. The Event Class occurs as the result of some activity in the database engine, for example, SQL:Batch Completed fires when a batch has completed executing on the server. Each Event Class can have any number of Columns associated with it and those Columns contain the data that is interesting about the Event Class, such as the duration or database name. In Extended Events we have objects named Events, EventData field and Actions. The Event (some people call this an xEvent but I’ll stick with Event) is equivalent to the Event Class in SQL Trace since it is the thing that occurs as the result of some activity taking place in the server. An  EventData field (from now on I’ll just refer to these as fields) is a piece of information that is highly correlated with the event and is always included as part of the schema of an Event. An Action is something that can be associated with any Event and it will cause some additional “action” to occur when ever the parent Event occurs. Actions can do a number of different things for example, there are Actions that collect additional data and, take memory dumps. When mapping SQL Trace onto Extended Events, Columns are covered by a combination of both fields and Actions. Knowing exactly where a Column is covered by a field and where it is covered by an Action is a bit of an art, so we created the mapping tables to make you an Artist without the years of practice. Let me draw you a map. Event Mapping The table dbo.trace_xe_event_map exists in the master database with the following structure: Column_name Type trace_event_id smallint package_name nvarchar xe_event_name nvarchar By joining this table sys.trace_events using trace_event_id and to the sys.dm_xe_objects using xe_event_name you can get a fair amount of information about how Event Classes are related to Events. The most basic query this lends itself to is to match an Event Class with the corresponding Event. SELECT     t.trace_event_id,     t.name [event_class],     e.package_name,     e.xe_event_name FROM sys.trace_events t INNER JOIN dbo.trace_xe_event_map e     ON t.trace_event_id = e.trace_event_id There are a couple things you’ll notice as you peruse the output of this query: For the most part, the names of Events are fairly close to the original Event Class; eg. SP:CacheMiss == sp_cache_miss, and so on. We’ve mostly stuck to a one to one mapping between Event Classes and Events, but there are a few cases where we have combined when it made sense. For example, Data File Auto Grow, Log File Auto Grow, Data File Auto Shrink & Log File Auto Shrink are now all covered by a single event named database_file_size_change. This just seemed like a “smarter” implementation for this type of event, you can get all the same information from this single event (grow/shrink, Data/Log, Auto/Manual growth) without having multiple different events. You can use Predicates if you want to limit the output to just one of the original Event Class measures. There are some Event Classes that did not make the cut and were not migrated. These fall into two categories; there were a few Event Classes that had been deprecated, or that just did not make sense, so we didn’t migrate them. (You won’t find an Event related to mounting a tape – sorry.) The second class is bigger; with rare exception, we did not migrate any of the Event Classes that were related to Security Auditing using SQL Trace. We introduced the SQL Audit feature in SQL Server 2008 and that will be the compliance and auditing feature going forward. Doing this is a very deliberate decision to support separation of duties for DBAs. There are separate permissions required for SQL Audit and Extended Events tracing so you can assign these tasks to different people if you choose. (If you’re wondering, the permission for Extended Events is ALTER ANY EVENT SESSION, which is covered by CONTROL SERVER.) Action Mapping The table dbo.trace_xe_action_map exists in the master database with the following structure: Column_name Type trace_column_id smallint package_name nvarchar xe_action_name nvarchar You can find more details by joining this to sys.trace_columns on the trace_column_id field. SELECT     c.trace_column_id,     c.name [column_name],     a.package_name,     a.xe_action_name FROM sys.trace_columns c INNER JOIN    dbo.trace_xe_action_map a     ON c.trace_column_id = a.trace_column_id If you examine this list, you’ll notice that there are relatively few Actions that map to SQL Trace Columns given the number of Columns that exist. This is not because we forgot to migrate all the Columns, but because much of the data for individual Event Classes is included as part of the EventData fields of the equivalent Events so there is no need to specify them as Actions. Putting it all together If you’ve spent a bunch of time figuring out the inner workings of SQL Trace, and who hasn’t, then you probably know that the typically set of Columns you find associated with any given Event Class in SQL Profiler is not fix, but is determine by the contents of the table sys.trace_event_bindings. We’ve used this table along with the mapping tables to produce a list of Event + Action combinations that duplicate the SQL Profiler Event Class definitions using the following query, which you can also find in the Books Online topic How To: View the Extended Events Equivalents to SQL Trace Event Classes. USE MASTER; GO SELECT DISTINCT    tb.trace_event_id,    te.name AS 'Event Class',    em.package_name AS 'Package',    em.xe_event_name AS 'XEvent Name',    tb.trace_column_id,    tc.name AS 'SQL Trace Column',    am.xe_action_name as 'Extended Events action' FROM (sys.trace_events te LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.trace_xe_event_map em    ON te.trace_event_id = em.trace_event_id) LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.trace_event_bindings tb    ON em.trace_event_id = tb.trace_event_id LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.trace_columns tc    ON tb.trace_column_id = tc.trace_column_id LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.trace_xe_action_map am    ON tc.trace_column_id = am.trace_column_id ORDER BY te.name, tc.name As you might imagine, it’s also possible to map an existing trace definition to the equivalent event session by judicious use of fn_trace_geteventinfo joined with the two mapping tables. This query extracts the list of Events and Actions equivalent to the trace with ID = 1, which is most likely the Default Trace. You can find this query, along with a set of other queries and steps required to migrate your existing traces over to Extended Events in the Books Online topic How to: Convert an Existing SQL Trace Script to an Extended Events Session. USE MASTER; GO DECLARE @trace_id int SET @trace_id = 1 SELECT DISTINCT el.eventid, em.package_name, em.xe_event_name AS 'event'    , el.columnid, ec.xe_action_name AS 'action' FROM (sys.fn_trace_geteventinfo(@trace_id) AS el    LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.trace_xe_event_map AS em       ON el.eventid = em.trace_event_id) LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.trace_xe_action_map AS ec    ON el.columnid = ec.trace_column_id WHERE em.xe_event_name IS NOT NULL AND ec.xe_action_name IS NOT NULL You’ll notice in the output that the list doesn’t include any of the security audit Event Classes, as I wrote earlier, those were not migrated. But wait…there’s more! If this were an infomercial there’d by some obnoxious guy next to me blogging “Well Mike…that’s pretty neat, but I’m sure you can do more. Can’t you make it even easier to migrate from SQL Trace?”  Needless to say, I’d blog back, in an overly excited way, “You bet I can' obnoxious blogger side-kick!” What I’ve got for you here is a Extended Events Team Blog only special – this tool will not be sold in any store; it’s a special offer for those of you reading the blog. I’ve wrapped all the logic of pulling the configuration information out of an existing trace and and building the Extended Events DDL statement into a handy, dandy CLR stored procedure. Once you load the assembly and register the procedure you just supply the trace id (from sys.traces) and provide a name for the event session. Run the procedure and out pops the DDL required to create an equivalent session. Any aspects of the trace that could not be duplicated are included in comments within the DDL output. This procedure does not actually create the event session – you need to copy the DDL out of the message tab and put it into a new query window to do that. It also requires an existing trace (but it doesn’t have to be running) to evaluate; there is no functionality to parse t-sql scripts. I’m not going to spend a bunch of time explaining the code here – the code is pretty well commented and hopefully easy to follow. If not, you can always post comments or hit the feedback button to send us some mail. Sample code: TraceToExtendedEventDDL   Installing the procedure Just in case you’re not familiar with installing CLR procedures…once you’ve compile the assembly you can load it using a script like this: -- Context to master USE master GO -- Create the assembly from a shared location. CREATE ASSEMBLY TraceToXESessionConverter FROM 'C:\Temp\TraceToXEventSessionConverter.dll' WITH PERMISSION_SET = SAFE GO -- Create a stored procedure from the assembly. CREATE PROCEDURE CreateEventSessionFromTrace @trace_id int, @session_name nvarchar(max) AS EXTERNAL NAME TraceToXESessionConverter.StoredProcedures.ConvertTraceToExtendedEvent GO Enjoy! -Mike

  Read the article

• Windows Azure Evolution &ndash; Caching (Preview)

  - by Shaun

  Caching is a popular topic when we are building a high performance and high scalable system not only on top of the cloud platform but the on-premise environment as well. On March 2011 the Windows Azure AppFabric Caching had been production launched. It provides an in-memory, distributed caching service over the cloud. And now, in this June 2012 update, the cache team announce a grand new caching solution on Windows Azure, which is called Windows Azure Caching (Preview). And the original Windows Azure AppFabric Caching was renamed to Windows Azure Shared Caching.   What’s Caching (Preview) If you had been using the Shared Caching you should know that it is constructed by a bunch of cache servers. And when you want to use you should firstly create a cache account from the developer portal and specify the size you want to use, which means how much memory you can use to store your data that wanted to be cached. Then you can add, get and remove them through your code through the cache URL. The Shared Caching is a multi-tenancy system which host all cached items across all users. So you don’t know which server your data was located. This caching mode works well and can take most of the cases. But it has some problems. The first one is the performance. Since the Shared Caching is a multi-tenancy system, which means all cache operations should go through the Shared Caching gateway and then routed to the server which have the data your are looking for. Even though there are some caches in the Shared Caching system it also takes time from your cloud services to the cache service. Secondary, the Shared Caching service works as a block box to the developer. The only thing we know is my cache endpoint, and that’s all. Someone may satisfied since they don’t want to care about anything underlying. But if you need to know more and want more control that’s impossible in the Shared Caching. The last problem would be the price and cost-efficiency. You pay the bill based on how much cache you requested per month. But when we host a web role or worker role, it seldom consumes all of the memory and CPU in the virtual machine (service instance). If using Shared Caching we have to pay for the cache service while waste of some of our memory and CPU locally. Since the issues above Microsoft offered a new caching mode over to us, which is the Caching (Preview). Instead of having a separated cache service, the Caching (Preview) leverage the memory and CPU in our cloud services (web role and worker role) as the cache clusters. Hence the Caching (Preview) runs on the virtual machines which hosted or near our cloud applications. Without any gateway and routing, since it located in the same data center and same racks, it provides really high performance than the Shared Caching. The Caching (Preview) works side-by-side to our application, initialized and worked as a Windows Service running in the virtual machines invoked by the startup tasks from our roles, we could get more information and control to them. And since the Caching (Preview) utilizes the memory and CPU from our existing cloud services, so it’s free. What we need to pay is the original computing price. And the resource on each machines could be used more efficiently.   Enable Caching (Preview) It’s very simple to enable the Caching (Preview) in a cloud service. Let’s create a new windows azure cloud project from Visual Studio and added an ASP.NET Web Role. Then open the role setting and select the Caching page. This is where we enable and configure the Caching (Preview) on a role. To enable the Caching (Preview) just open the “Enable Caching (Preview Release)” check box. And then we need to specify which mode of the caching clusters we want to use. There are two kinds of caching mode, co-located and dedicate. The co-located mode means we use the memory in the instances we run our cloud services (web role or worker role). By using this mode we must specify how many percentage of the memory will be used as the cache. The default value is 30%. So make sure it will not affect the role business execution. The dedicate mode will use all memory in the virtual machine as the cache. In fact it will reserve some for operation system, azure hosting etc.. But it will try to use as much as the available memory to be the cache. As you can see, the Caching (Preview) was defined based on roles, which means all instances of this role will apply the same setting and play as a whole cache pool, and you can consume it by specifying the name of the role, which I will demonstrate later. And in a windows azure project we can have more than one role have the Caching (Preview) enabled. Then we will have more caches. For example, let’s say I have a web role and worker role. The web role I specified 30% co-located caching and the worker role I specified dedicated caching. If I have 3 instances of my web role and 2 instances of my worker role, then I will have two caches. As the figure above, cache 1 was contributed by three web role instances while cache 2 was contributed by 2 worker role instances. Then we can add items into cache 1 and retrieve it from web role code and worker role code. But the items stored in cache 1 cannot be retrieved from cache 2 since they are isolated. Back to our Visual Studio we specify 30% of co-located cache and use the local storage emulator to store the cache cluster runtime status. Then at the bottom we can specify the named caches. Now we just use the default one. Now we had enabled the Caching (Preview) in our web role settings. Next, let’s have a look on how to consume our cache.   Consume Caching (Preview) The Caching (Preview) can only be consumed by the roles in the same cloud services. As I mentioned earlier, a cache contributed by web role can be connected from a worker role if they are in the same cloud service. But you cannot consume a Caching (Preview) from other cloud services. This is different from the Shared Caching. The Shared Caching is opened to all services if it has the connection URL and authentication token. To consume the Caching (Preview) we need to add some references into our project as well as some configuration in the Web.config. NuGet makes our life easy. Right click on our web role project and select “Manage NuGet packages”, and then search the package named “WindowsAzure.Caching”. In the package list install the “Windows Azure Caching Preview”. It will download all necessary references from the NuGet repository and update our Web.config as well. Open the Web.config of our web role and find the “dataCacheClients” node. Under this node we can specify the cache clients we are going to use. For each cache client it will use the role name to identity and find the cache. Since we only have this web role with the Caching (Preview) enabled so I pasted the current role name in the configuration. Then, in the default page I will add some code to show how to use the cache. I will have a textbox on the page where user can input his or her name, then press a button to generate the email address for him/her. And in backend code I will check if this name had been added in cache. If yes I will return the email back immediately. Otherwise, I will sleep the tread for 2 seconds to simulate the latency, then add it into cache and return back to the page. 1: protected void btnGenerate_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3: // check if name is specified 4: var name = txtName.Text; 5: if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(name)) 6: { 7: lblResult.Text = "Error. Please specify name."; 8: return; 9: } 10:  11: bool cached; 12: var sw = new Stopwatch(); 13: sw.Start(); 14:  15: // create the cache factory and cache 16: var factory = new DataCacheFactory(); 17: var cache = factory.GetDefaultCache(); 18:  19: // check if the name specified is in cache 20: var email = cache.Get(name) as string; 21: if (email != null) 22: { 23: cached = true; 24: sw.Stop(); 25: } 26: else 27: { 28: cached = false; 29: // simulate the letancy 30: Thread.Sleep(2000); 31: email = string.Format("{0}@igt.com", name); 32: // add to cache 33: cache.Add(name, email); 34: } 35:  36: sw.Stop(); 37: lblResult.Text = string.Format( 38: "Cached = {0}. Duration: {1}s. {2} => {3}", 39: cached, sw.Elapsed.TotalSeconds.ToString("0.00"), name, email); 40: } The Caching (Preview) can be used on the local emulator so we just F5. The first time I entered my name it will take about 2 seconds to get the email back to me since it was not in the cache. But if we re-enter my name it will be back at once from the cache. Since the Caching (Preview) is distributed across all instances of the role, so we can scaling-out it by scaling-out our web role. Just use 2 instances and tweak some code to show the current instance ID in the page, and have another try. Then we can see the cache can be retrieved even though it was added by another instance.   Consume Caching (Preview) Across Roles As I mentioned, the Caching (Preview) can be consumed by all other roles within the same cloud service. For example, let’s add another web role in our cloud solution and add the same code in its default page. In the Web.config we add the cache client to one enabled in the last role, by specifying its role name here. Then we start the solution locally and go to web role 1, specify the name and let it generate the email to us. Since there’s no cache for this name so it will take about 2 seconds but will save the email into cache. And then we go to web role 2 and specify the same name. Then you can see it retrieve the email saved by the web role 1 and returned back very quickly. Finally then we can upload our application to Windows Azure and test again. Make sure you had changed the cache cluster status storage account to the real azure account.   More Awesome Features As a in-memory distributed caching solution, the Caching (Preview) has some fancy features I would like to highlight here. The first one is the high availability support. This is the first time I have heard that a distributed cache support high availability. In the distributed cache world if a cache cluster was failed, the data it stored will be lost. This behavior was introduced by Memcached and is followed by almost all distributed cache productions. But Caching (Preview) provides high availability, which means you can specify if the named cache will be backup automatically. If yes then the data belongs to this named cache will be replicated on another role instance of this role. Then if one of the instance was failed the data can be retrieved from its backup instance. To enable the backup just open the Caching page in Visual Studio. In the named cache you want to enable backup, change the Backup Copies value from 0 to 1. The value of Backup Copies only for 0 and 1. “0” means no backup and no high availability while “1” means enabled high availability with backup the data into another instance. But by using the high availability feature there are something we need to make sure. Firstly the high availability does NOT means the data in cache will never be lost for any kind of failure. For example, if we have a role with cache enabled that has 10 instances, and 9 of them was failed, then most of the cached data will be lost since the primary and backup instance may failed together. But normally is will not be happened since MS guarantees that it will use the instance in the different fault domain for backup cache. Another one is that, enabling the backup means you store two copies of your data. For example if you think 100MB memory is OK for cache, but you need at least 200MB if you enabled backup. Besides the high availability, the Caching (Preview) support more features introduced in Windows Server AppFabric Caching than the Windows Azure Shared Caching. It supports local cache with notification. It also support absolute and slide window expiration types as well. And the Caching (Preview) also support the Memcached protocol as well. This means if you have an application based on Memcached, you can use Caching (Preview) without any code changes. What you need to do is to change the configuration of how you connect to the cache. Similar as the Windows Azure Shared Caching, MS also offers the out-of-box ASP.NET session provider and output cache provide on top of the Caching (Preview).   Summary Caching is very important component when we building a cloud-based application. In the June 2012 update MS provides a new cache solution named Caching (Preview). Different from the existing Windows Azure Shared Caching, Caching (Preview) runs the cache cluster within the role instances we have deployed to the cloud. It gives more control, more performance and more cost-effect. So now we have two caching solutions in Windows Azure, the Shared Caching and Caching (Preview). If you need a central cache service which can be used by many cloud services and web sites, then you have to use the Shared Caching. But if you only need a fast, near distributed cache, then you’d better use Caching (Preview).   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.

  Read the article

• Getting RINGING response on SIP UAC without sending it from the other UAC

  - by TacB0sS

  Hi, I hope this would be my last question about this SIP subject, I have managed to overcome the last issue I had by asking a friend to help me from a remote computer, I'm able to connect between the computers, but here is the thing, according to all the examples I saw, the Callee should invoke the Ringing response, but in my application case I didn't implement it yet, but I still receive on the Caller UAC a Ringing response, this is the SIP messages that are on the caller end: Outgoing Request 5: INVITE sip:[email protected] SIP/2.0 Contact: "Client 310" <sip:[email protected]> From: "Client 310" <sip:[email protected]> Max-Forwards: 32 CSeq: 2 INVITE Call-ID: [email protected] Allow: INVITE,CANCEL,ACK,BYE,OPTIONS Content-Type: application/sdp Proxy-Authorization: Digest username="310",nonce="012afffb",realm="asterisk",uri="sip:[email protected]",algorithm=MD5,response="d19ca5b98450b4be7bd4045edb8a3a2f" Via: SIP/2.0/UDP hostName.hn:5060 To: "Client 320" <sip:[email protected]>;tag=as5a8fa200 Content-Length: 257 v=0 o=310 7108915969559970847 7108915969559970847 IN IP4 xxx.xxx.x.xxx s=- i=Nu-Art Software - TacB0sS VoIP information c=IN IP4 xxx.xxx.x.xxx m=audio 3312 RTP/AVP 0 8 101 a=rtpmap:0 PCMU/8000 a=rtpmap:8 PCMA/8000 a=rtpmap:101 telephone-event/8000 Incoming Response 6: SIP/2.0 100 Trying Via: SIP/2.0/UDP hostName.hn:5060;branch=f8d171d3278788df9e03eb9cf3acba70-xxx.xxx.x.xxx-2-invite-hostName.hn-5060333732;received=79.181.6.233 From: "Client 310" <sip:[email protected]> To: "Client 320" <sip:[email protected]>;tag=as5a8fa200 Call-ID: [email protected] CSeq: 2 INVITE User-Agent: Freeswitch 1.2.3 Allow: INVITE,ACK,CANCEL,OPTIONS,BYE,REFER,SUBSCRIBE,NOTIFY,INFO Supported: replaces Contact: <sip:[email protected]> Content-Length: 0 Incoming Response 7: SIP/2.0 180 Ringing Via: SIP/2.0/UDP hostName.hn:5060;branch=f8d171d3278788df9e03eb9cf3acba70-xxx.xxx.x.xxx-2-invite-hostName.hn-5060333732;received=79.181.6.233 From: "Client 310" <sip:[email protected]> To: "Client 320" <sip:[email protected]>;tag=as5a8fa200 Call-ID: [email protected] CSeq: 2 INVITE User-Agent: Freeswitch 1.2.3 Allow: INVITE,ACK,CANCEL,OPTIONS,BYE,REFER,SUBSCRIBE,NOTIFY,INFO Supported: replaces Contact: <sip:[email protected]> Content-Length: 0 Call to: [email protected] is Ringing Incoming Response 8: SIP/2.0 183 Session Progress Via: SIP/2.0/UDP hostName.hn:5060;branch=f8d171d3278788df9e03eb9cf3acba70-xxx.xxx.x.xxx-2-invite-hostName.hn-5060333732;received=79.181.6.233 From: "Client 310" <sip:[email protected]> To: "Client 320" <sip:[email protected]>;tag=as5a8fa200 Call-ID: [email protected] CSeq: 2 INVITE User-Agent: Freeswitch 1.2.3 Allow: INVITE,ACK,CANCEL,OPTIONS,BYE,REFER,SUBSCRIBE,NOTIFY,INFO Supported: replaces Contact: <sip:[email protected]> Content-Type: application/sdp Content-Length: 264 v=0 o=root 27669 27669 IN IP4 yy.yy.yy.yy s=session c=IN IP4 yy.yy.yy.yy t=0 0 m=audio 10914 RTP/AVP 0 8 101 a=rtpmap:0 PCMU/8000 a=rtpmap:8 PCMA/8000 a=rtpmap:101 telephone-event/8000 a=fmtp:101 0-16 a=silenceSupp:off - - - - a=ptime:20 a=sendrecv Incoming Response 9: SIP/2.0 503 Service Unavailable Via: SIP/2.0/UDP hostName.hn:5060;branch=f8d171d3278788df9e03eb9cf3acba70-xxx.xxx.x.xxx-2-invite-hostName.hn-5060333732;received=79.181.6.233 From: "Client 310" <sip:[email protected]> To: "Client 320" <sip:[email protected]>;tag=as5a8fa200 Call-ID: [email protected] CSeq: 2 INVITE User-Agent: Freeswitch 1.2.3 Allow: INVITE,ACK,CANCEL,OPTIONS,BYE,REFER,SUBSCRIBE,NOTIFY,INFO Supported: replaces Content-Length: 0 I do not respond to the invite, that is why all this is happening, but why am I getting a ringing if I'm not the one sending it. Thanks, Adam.

  Read the article

• Looking Back at MIX10

  - by WeigeltRo

  It’s the sad truth of my life that even though I’m fascinated by airplanes and flight in general since my childhood days, my body doesn’t like flying. Even the ridiculously short flights inside Germany are taking their toll on me each time. Now combine this with sitting in the cramped space of economy class for many hours on a transatlantic flight from Germany to Las Vegas and back, and factor in some heavy dose of jet lag (especially on my way eastwards), and you get an idea why after coming back home I had this question on my mind: Was it really worth it to attend MIX10? This of course is a question that will also be asked by my boss at Comma Soft (for other reasons, obviously), who decided to send me and my colleague Jens Schaller, to the MIX10 conference. (A note to my German readers: An dieser Stelle der Hinweis, dass Comma Soft noch Silverlight-Entwickler und/oder UI-Designer für den Standort Bonn sucht – aussagekräftige Bewerbungen bitte an [email protected]) Too keep things short: My answer is yes. Before I’ll go into detail, let me ask the heretical questions whether tech conferences in general still make sense. There was a time, where actually being at a tech conference gave you a head-start in regard to learning about new technologies. Nowadays this is no longer true, where every bit of information and every detail is immediately twittered, blogged and whatevered to death. In the case of MIX10 you even can download the video-taped sessions shortly after. So: Does visiting a conference still make sense? It depends on what you expect from a conference. It should be clear to everybody that you’ll neither get exclusive information, nor receive training in a small group. What a conference does offer that sitting in front of your computer does not can be summarized as follows: Focus Being away from work and home will help you to focus on the presented information. Of course there are always the poor guys who are haunted by their work (with mails and short text messages reporting the latest showstopper problem), but in general being out of your office makes a huge difference. Inspiration With the focus comes the emotional involvement. I find it much easier to absorb information if I feel that certain vibe when sitting in a session. This still means that I have put work into reviewing the information later, but it’s a better starting point. And all the impressions collected at a (good) conference combined lead to a higher motivation – be it by the buzz (“this is gonna be sooo cool!”) or by the fear to fall behind (“man, we’ll have work on this, or else…”). People At a conference it’s pretty easy to get into contact with other people during breakfast, lunch and other breaks. This is a good opportunity to get a feel for what other development teams are doing (on a very general level of course, nobody will tell you about their secret formula) and what they are thinking about specific technologies. So MIX10 did offer focus, inspiration and people, but that would have meant nothing without valuable content. When I (being a frontend developer with a strong interest in UI/UX) planned my visit to MIX10, I made the decision to focus on the "soft" topics of design, interaction and user experience. I figured that I would be bombarded with all the technical details about Silverlight 4 anyway in the weeks and months to come. Actually, I would have liked to catch a few technical sessions, but the agenda wasn’t exactly in favor of people interested in any kind of Silverlight and UI/UX/Design topics. That’s one of my few complaints about the conference – I would have liked one more day and/or more sessions per day. Overall, the quality of the workshops and sessions was pretty high. In fact, looking back at my collection of conferences I’ve visited in the past I’d say that MIX10 ranks somewhere near the top spot. Here’s an overview of the workshops/sessions I attended (I’ll leave out the keynotes): Day 0 (Workshops on Sunday) Design Fundamentals for Developers Robby Ingebretsen is the man! Great workshop in three parts with the perfect mix of examples, well-structured definition of terminology and the right dose of humor. Robby was part of the WPF team before founding his own company so he not only has a strong interest in design (and the skillz!) but also the technical background.   Design Tools and Techniques Originally announced to be held by Arturo Toledo, the Rosso brothers from ArcheType filled in for the first two parts, and Corrina Black had a pretty general part about the Windows Phone UI. The first two thirds were a mixed bag; the two guys definitely knew what they were talking about, and the demos were great, but the talk lacked the preparation and polish of a truly great presentation. Corrina was not allowed to go into too much detail before the keynote on Monday, but the session was still very interesting as it showed how much thought went into the Windows Phone UI (and there’s always a lot to learn when people talk about their thought process). Day 1 (Monday) Designing Rich Experiences for Data-Centric Applications I wonder whether there was ever a test-run for this session, but what Ken Azuma and Yoshihiro Saito delivered in the first 15 minutes of a 30-minutes-session made me walk out. A commercial for a product (just great: a video showing a SharePoint plug-in in an all-Japanese UI) combined with the most generic blah blah one could imagine. EPIC FAIL.   Great User Experiences: Seamlessly Blending Technology & Design I switched to this session from the one above but I guess I missed the interesting part – what I did catch was what looked like a “look at the cool stuff we did” without being helpful. Or maybe I was just in a bad mood after the other session.   The Art, Technology and Science of Reading This talk by Kevin Larson was very interesting, but was more a presentation of what Microsoft is doing in research (pretty impressive) and in the end lacked a bit the helpful advice one could have hoped for.   10 Ways to Attack a Design Problem and Come Out Winning Robby Ingebretsen again, and again a great mix of theory and practice. The clean and simple, yet effective, UI of the reader app resulted in a simultaneous “wow” of Jens and me. If you’d watch only one session video, this should be it. Microsoft has to bring Robby back next year! Day 2 (Tuesday) Touch in Public: Multi-touch Interaction Design for Kiosks & Architectural Experiences Very interesting session by Jason Brush, a great inspiration with many details to look out for in the examples. Exactly what I was hoping for – and then some!   Designing Bing: Heart and Science How hard can it be to design the UI for a search engine? An input field and a list of results, that should be it, right? Well, not so fast! The talk by Paul Ray showed the many iterations to finally get it right (up to the choice of a specific blue for the links). And yes, I want an eye-tracking device to play around with!   The Elephant in the Room When Nishant Kothary presented a long list of what his session was not about, I told to myself (not having the description text present) “Am I in the wrong talk? Should I leave?”. Boy, was I wrong. A great talk about human factors in the process of designing stuff.   An Hour with Bill Buxton Having seen Bill Buxton’s presentation in the keynote, I just had to see this man again – even though I didn’t know what to expect. Being more or less unplanned and intended to be more of a conversation, the session didn’t provide a wealth of immediately useful information. Nevertheless Bill Buxton was impressive with his huge knowledge of seemingly everything. But this could/should have been a session some when in the evening and not in parallel to at least two other interesting talks. Day 3 (Wednesday) Design the Ordinary, Like the Fixie This session by DL Byron and Kevin Tamura started really well and brought across the message to keep things simple. But towards the end the talk lost some of its steam. And, as a member of the audience pointed out, they kind of ignored their own advice when they used a fancy presentation software other then PowerPoint that sometimes got in the way of showing things.   Developing Natural User Interfaces Speaking of alternative presentation software, Joshua Blake definitely had the most remarkable alternative to PowerPoint, a self-written program called NaturalShow that was controlled using multi-touch on a touch screen. Not a PowerPoint-killer, but impressive nevertheless. The (excellent) talk itself was kind of eye-opening in regard to what “multi-touch support” on various platforms (WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone) actually means.   Treat your Content Right The talk by Tiffani Jones Brown wasn’t even on my planned schedule, but somehow I ended up in that session – and it was great. And even for people who don’t necessarily have to write content for websites, some points made by Tiffani are valid in many places, notably wherever you put texts with more than a single word into your UI. Creating Effective Info Viz in Microsoft Silverlight The last session of MIX10 I attended was kind of disappointing. At first things were very promising, with Matthias Shapiro giving a brief but well-structured introduction to info graphics and interactive visualizations. Then the live-coding began and while the result was interesting, too much time was spend on wrestling to get the code working. Ending earlier than planned, the talk was a bit light on actual content, but at least it included a nice list of resources. Conclusion It could be felt all across MIX10, UIs will take a huge leap forward; in fact, there are enough examples that have already. People who both have the technical know-how and at least a basic understanding of design (“literacy” as Bill Buxton called it) are in high demand. The concept of the MIX conference and initiatives like design.toolbox shows that Microsoft understands very well that frontend developers have to acquire new knowledge besides knowing how to hack code and putting buttons on a form. There are extremely exciting times before us, with lots of opportunity for those who are eager to develop their skills, that is for sure.

  Read the article

• Experience your music in a whole new way with Zune for PC

  - by Matthew Guay

  Tired of the standard Media Player look and feel, and want something new and innovative?  Zune offers a fresh, new way to enjoy your music, videos, pictures, and podcasts, whether or not you own a Zune device. Microsoft started out on a new multimedia experience for PCs and mobile devices with the launch of the Zune several years ago.  The Zune devices have been well received and noted for their innovative UI, and the Zune HD’s fluid interface is the foundation for the widely anticipated Windows Phone 7.  But regardless of whether or not you have a Zune Device, you can still use the exciting new UI and services directly from your PC.  Zune for Windows is a very nice media player that offers a music and video store and wide support for multimedia formats including those used in Apple products.  And if you enjoy listening to a wide variety of music, it also offers the Zune Pass which lets you stream an unlimited number of songs to your computer and download 10 songs for keeps per month for $14.99/month. Or you can do a pre-paid music card as well.  It does all this using the new Metro UI which beautifully shows information using text in a whole new way.  Here’s a quick look at setting up and using Zune on your PC. Getting Started Download the installer (link below), and run it to begin setup.  Please note that Zune offers a separate version for computers running the 64 bit version of Windows Vista or 7, so choose it if your computer is running these. Once your download is finished, run the installer to setup Zune on your computer.  Accept the EULA when prompted. If there are any updates available, they will automatically download and install during the setup.  So, if you’re installing Zune from a disk (for example, one packaged with a Zune device), you don’t have to worry if you have the latest version.  Zune will proceed to install on your computer.   It may prompt you to restart your computer after installation; click Restart Now so you can proceed with your Zune setup.  The reboot appears to be for Zune device support, and the program ran fine otherwise without rebooting, so you could possibly skip this step if you’re not using a Zune device.  However, to be on the safe side, go ahead and reboot. After rebooting, launch Zune.  It will play a cute introduction video on first launch; press skip if you don’t want to watch it. Zune will now ask you if you want to keep the default settings or change them.  Choose Start to keep the defaults, or Settings to customize to your wishes.  Do note that the default settings will set Zune as your default media player, so click Settings if you wish to change this. If you choose to change the default settings, you can change how Zune finds and stores media on your computer.  In Windows 7, Zune will by default use your Windows 7 Libraries to manage your media, and will in fact add a new Podcasts library to Windows 7. If your media is stored on another location, such as on a server, then you can add this to the Library.  Please note that this adds the location to your system-wide library, not just the Zune player. There’s one last step.  Enter three of your favorite artists, and Zune will add Smart DJ mixes to your Quickplay list based on these.  Some less famous or popular artists may not be recognized, so you may have to try another if your choice isn’t available.  Or, you can click Skip if you don’t want to do this right now. Welcome to Zune!  This is the default first page, QuickPlay, where you can easily access your pinned and new items.   If you have a Zune account, or would like to create a new one, click Sign In on the top. Creating a new account is quick and simple, and if you’re new to Zune, you can try out a 14 day trial of Zune Pass for free if you want. Zune allows you to share your listening habits and favorites with friends or the world, but you can turn this off or change it if you like. Using Zune for Windows To access your media, click the Collection link on the top left.  Zune will show all the media you already have stored on your computer, organized by artist and album. Right-click on any album, and you choose to have Zune find album art or do a variety of other tasks with the media.   When playing media, you can view it in several unique ways.  First, the default Mix view will show related tracks to the music you’re playing from Smart DJ.  You can either play these fully if you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, or otherwise you can play 30 second previews. Then, for many popular artists, Zune will change the player background to show pictures and information in a unique way while the music is playing.  The information may range from history about the artist to the popularity of the song being played.   Zune also works as a nice viewer for the pictures on your computer. Start a slideshow, and Zune will play your pictures with nice transition effects and music from your library. Zune Store The Zune Store offers a wide variety of music, TV shows, and videos for purchase.  If you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, you can listen to or download any song without purchasing it; otherwise, you can preview a 30 second clip first. Zune also offers a wide selection of Podcasts you can subscribe to for free. Using Zune for PC with a Zune Device If you have a Zune device attached to your computer, you can easily add media files to it by simply dragging them to the Zune device icon in the left corner.  In the future, this will also work with Windows Phone 7 devices. If you have a Zune HD, you can also download and add apps to your device. Here’s the detailed information window for the weather app.  Click Download to add it to your device.   Mini Mode The Zune player generally takes up a large portion of your screen, and is actually most impressive when run maximized.  However, if you’re simply wanting to enjoy your tunes while you’re using your computer, you can use the Mini mode to still view music info and control Zune in a smaller mode.  Click the Mini Player button near the window control buttons in the top right to activate it. Now Zune will take up much less of your desktop.  This window will stay on top of other windows so you can still easily view and control it. Zune will display an image of the artist if one is available, and this shows up in Mini mode more often than it does in the full mode. And, in Windows 7, you could simply minimize Zune as you can control it directly from the taskbar thumbnail preview.   Even more controls are available from Zune’s jumplist in Windows 7.  You can directly access your Quickplay links or choose to shuffle all music without leaving the taskbar. Settings Although Zune is designed to be used without confusing menus and settings, you can tweak the program to your liking from the settings panel.  Click Settings near the top left of the window. Here you can change file storage, types, burn, metadata, and many more settings.  You can also setup Zune to stream media to your XBOX 360 if you have one.   You can also customize Zune’s look with a variety of modern backgrounds and gradients. Conclusion If you’re ready for a fresh way to enjoy your media, Zune is designed for you.  It’s innovative UI definitely sets it apart from standard media players, and is very pleasing to use.  Zune is especially nice if your computer is using XP, Vista Home Basic, or 7 Starter as these versions of Windows don’t include Media Center.  Additionally, the mini player mode is a nice touch that brings a feature of Windows 7’s Media Player to XP and Vista.  Zune is definitely one of our favorite music apps.  Try it out, and get a fresh view of your music today! Link Download Zune for Windows Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Redeem Pre-paid Zune Card Points for Zune Marketplace MediaUpdate Your Zune Player SoftwaredoubleTwist is an iTunes Alternative that Supports Several DevicesFind Free or Cheap Indie Music at Amie StreetAmie Street Downloader Makes Purchasing Music Easier TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 The Ultimate Guide For YouTube Lovers Will it Blend? iPad Edition Penolo Lets You Share Sketches On Twitter Visit Woolyss.com for Old School Games, Music and Videos Add a Custom Title in IE using Spybot or Spyware Blaster When You Need to Hail a Taxi in NYC

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63  | Next Page >