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• Rob Blackwell on interoperability and Azure

  - by Eric Nelson

  At QCon in March we had a sample Azure application implemented in both Java and Ruby to demonstrate that the Windows Azure Platform is not just about .NET. The following is an interesting interview with Rob Blackwell, the R&D director of the partner who implemented the application. UK Interoperability Team Interviews Rob Blackwell, R&D Director at Active Web Solutions. Is Microsoft taking interoperability seriously? Yes. In the past, I think Microsoft has, quite rightly come in for criticism, but architects and developers should look at this again. The Interoperability Bridges site (http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/ ) shows a wide range of projects that allow interoperability from Java, Ruby and PHP for example. The Windows Azure platform has been architected with interoperable APIs in mind. It's straightforward to access the various storage facilities from just about any language or platform. Azure compute is capable of running more than just C# applications! Why is interoperability important to you? My company provides consultancy and bespoke development services. We're a Microsoft Gold Partner, but we live in the real world where companies have a mix of technologies provided by a variety of vendors. When developing an enterprise software solution, you rarely have a completely blank canvas. We often see integration scenarios where we need to exchange data with legacy systems. It's not unusual to see modern Silverlight applications being built on top of Java or Mainframe based back ends. Could you give us some examples of where interoperability has been important for your projects? We developed an innovative Sea Safety system for the RNLI Lifeboats here in the UK. Commercial Fishing is one of the most dangerous professions and we helped developed the MOB Guardian System which uses satellite technology and man overboard devices to raise the alarm when a fisherman gets into trouble. The solution is implemented in .NET running on Windows, but without interoperable standards, it would have been impossible to communicate with the satellite gateway technology. For more information, please see the case study: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000005892 More recently, we were asked to build a web site to accompany the QCon 2010 conference in London to help demonstrate and promote interoperability. We built the site using Java and Restlet and hosted it in Windows Azure Compute. The site accepts feedback from visitors and all the data is stored in Windows Azure Storage. We also ported the application to Ruby on Rails for demonstration purposes. Visitors to the stand were surprised that this was even possible. Why should Java developers be interested in Windows Azure? Windows Azure Storage consists of Blobs, Queues and Tables. The storage is scalable, durable, secure and cost-effective. Using the WindowsAzure4j library, it's easy to use, and takes just a few lines of code. If you are writing an application with large data storage requirements, or you want an offsite backup, it makes a lot of sense. Running Java applications in Azure Compute is straightforward with tools like the Tomcat Solution Accelerator (http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/winazuretomcat )and AzureRunMe (http://azurerunme.codeplex.com/ ). The Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus can also be used to connect heterogeneous systems running on different networks and in different data centres. How can The Service Bus be considered an interoperability solution? I think that the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus is one of Microsoft’s best kept secrets. Think of it as “a globally scalable application plumbing kit in the sky”. If you have used Enterprise Service Buses before, you’ll be familiar with the concept. Applications can connect to the service bus to securely exchange data – these can be point to point or multicast links. With the AppFabric Service Bus, the applications can exist anywhere that has access to the Internet and the connections can traverse firewalls. This makes it easy to extend or scale your application or reach out to other networks and technologies. For example, let’s say you have a SQL Server database running on premises and you want to expose the data to a Java application running in the cloud. You could set up a point to point Service Bus connection and use JDBC. Traditionally this would have been difficult or impossible without punching holes in firewalls and compromising security. Rob Blackwell is R&D Director at Active Web Solutions, www.aws.net , a Microsoft Gold Partner specialising in leading edge software solutions. He is an occasional writer and conference speaker and blogs at www.robblackwell.org.uk Related Links: UK Azure Online Community – join today. UK Windows Azure Site Start working with Windows Azure

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• Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Posts

  - by jkauffman

  From a consumption point of view, tech blogging is a great resource for one-off articles on niche subjects. If you spend any time reading tech blogs, you may find yourself running into several common, useless types of posts tech bloggers slip into. Some of these lame posts may just be natural due to common nerd psychology, and some others are probably due to lame, lemming-like laziness. I’m sure I’ll do my fair share of fitting the mold, but I quickly get bored when I happen upon posts that hit these patterns without any real purpose or personal touches. 1. The Content Regurgitation Posts This is a common pattern fueled by the starving pan-handlers in the web traffic economy. These are posts that are terse opinions or addendums to an existing post. I commonly see these involve huge block quotes from the linked article which almost always produces over 50% of the post itself. I’ve accidentally gone to these posts when I’m knowingly only interested in the source material. Web links can degrade as well, so if the source link is broken, then, well, I’m pretty steamed. I see this occur with simple opinions on technologies, Stack Overflow solutions, or various tech news like posts from Microsoft. It’s not uncommon to go to the linked article and see the author announce that he “added a blog post” as a response or summary of the topic. This is just rude, but those who do it are probably aware of this. It’s a matter of winning that sweet, juicy web traffic. I doubt this leeching is fooling anybody these days. I would like to rally human dignity and urge people to avoid these types of posts, and just leave a comment on the source material. 2. The “Sorry I Haven’t Posted In A While” Posts This one is far too common. You’ll most likely see this quote somewhere in the body of the offending post: I have been really busy. If the poster is especially guilt-ridden, you’ll see a few volleys of excuses. Here are some common reasons I’ve seen, which I’ll list from least to most painfully awkward. Out of town Vague allusions to personal health problems (these typically includes phrases like “sick”, “treatment'”, and “all better now!”) “Personal issues” (which I usually read as "divorce”) Graphic or specific personal health problems (maximum awkwardness potential is achieved if you see links to charity fund websites) I can’t help but to try over-analyzing why this occurs. Personally, I see this an an amalgamation of three plain factors: Life happens Us nerds are duty-driven, and driven to guilt at personal inefficiencies Tech blogs can become personal journals I don’t think we can do much about the first two, but on the third I think we could certainly contain our urges. I’m a pretty boring guy and, whether or I like it or not, I have an unspoken duty to protect the world from hearing about my unremarkable existence. Nobody cares what kind of sandwich I’m eating. Similarly, if I disappear for a while, it’s unlikely that anybody who happens upon my blog would care why. Rest assured, if I stop posting for a while due to a vasectomy, you will be the first to know. 3. The “At A Conference”, or “Conference Review” Posts I don’t know if I’m like everyone else on this one, but I have never been successfully interested in these posts. It even sounds like a good idea: if I can’t make it to a particular conference (like the KCDC this year), wouldn’t I be interested in a concentrated summary of events? Apparently, no! Within this realm, I’ve never read a post by a blogger that held my interest. What really baffles is is that, for whatever reason, I am genuinely engaged and interested when talking to someone in person regarding the same topic. I have noticed the same phenomenon when hearing about others’ vacations. If someone sends me an email about their vacation, I gloss over it and forget about it quickly. In contrast, if I’m speaking to that individual in person about their vacation, I’m actually interested. I’m unsure why the written medium eradicates the intrigue. I was raised by a roaming pack of friendly wild video games, so that may be a factor. 4. The “Top X Number of Y’s That Z” Posts I’ve seen this one crop up a lot more in the past few of years. Here are some fabricated examples: 5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Code Top 7 Good Habits Programmers Learn From Experience The 8 Things to Consider When Giving Estimates Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Posts These are attention-grabbing headlines, and I’d assume they rack up hits. In fact, I enjoy a good number of these. But, I’ve been drawn to articles like this just to find an endless list of identically formatted posts on the blog’s archive sidebar. Often times these posts have overlapping topics, too. These types of posts give the impression that the author has given thought to prioritize and organize the points as a result of a comprehensive consideration of a particular topic. Did the author really weigh all the possibilities when identifying the “Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Patterns”? Unfortunately, probably not. What a tool. To reiterate, I still enjoy the format, but I feel it is abused. Nowadays, I’m pretty skeptical when approaching posts in this format. If these trends continue, my brain will filter these blog posts out just as effectively as it ignores the encroaching “do xxx with this one trick” advertisements. Conclusion To active blog readers, I hope my guide has served you precious time in being able to identify lame blog posts at a glance. Save time and energy by skipping over the chaff of the internet! And if you author a blog, perhaps my insight will help you to avoid the occasional urge to produce these needless filler posts.

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• 6 Reasons Why You Can’t Move Your Cell Phone To Any Carrier You Want

  - by Chris Hoffman

  You can buy a laptop or Wi-Fi tablet and use it on Wi-Fi anywhere in the world, so why are cell phones and devices with mobile data not portable between different cellular networks in the same country? Unlike with Wi-Fi, there are many different competing cellular network standards — both around the world and within countries. Cellular carriers also like locking you to their specific network and making it difficult to move. That’s what contracts are for. Phone Locking Many phones are sold locked to a specific network. When you buy a phone from a cellular carrier, they often lock that phone to their network so you can’t take it to a competitor’s network. That’s why you’ll often need to unlock a phone before you can move it to a different cellular provider or take it to a different country and use it on a local provider instead of roaming. Cellular carriers will generally unlock your phone for you as long as you’re no longer in a contract with them. However, unlocking a cell phone you’ve paid for without your carrier’s permission is currently a crime in the USA. GSM vs. CDMA Some cellular networks use the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) standard, while some use CDMA (Code-division multiple access). Worldwide, most cellular networks use GSM. In the USA, both GSM and CDMA are popular. Verizon, Sprint, and other carriers that use their networks use CDMA. AT&T, T-Mobile, and other carriers that use their networks are use GSM. These are two competing standards and are not interoperable. This means you can’t simply take a phone from Verizon to T-Mobile, or from AT&T to Sprint. These carriers have incompatible phones. CDMA Restrictions CDMA is more restricted than GSM. GSM phones have SIM cards. Simply open the phone, pop out the SIM card, and pop in a new SIM card to switch carriers. (In reality, it’s more complicated thanks to phone locking and other factors here.) CDMA phones don’t have removable modules like this. All CDMA phones ship locked to a specific network and you’d have to get both your old carrier and your new carrier to cooperate to switch phones between them. In reality, many people just consider CDMA phones eternally locked to a specific carrier. Frequencies Different cellular networks throughout the USA and the rest of the world use different frequencies. These radio frequencies have to be supported by your phone’s hardware or your phone simply can’t work on a network using those frequencies. Many GSM phones support three or four bands of frequencies — 900/1800/1900 MHz, 850/1800/1900 MHz, or 850/900/1800/1900 MHz. These are sometimes called “world phones” because they allow easier roaming. This allows the manufacturer to produce a phone that will support all GSM networks in the world and allows their customers to travel with those phones. If your phone doesn’t support the appropriate frequencies, it won’t work on certain networks. LTE Bands When it comes to newer, faster LTE networks, different frequencies are still a concern. LTE frequencies are generally known as “LTE bands.” To use a smartphone on a certain LTE network, that smartphone will have to support that LTE network’s frequency. Different models of phones are often created to work on different LTE networks around the world. However, phones are generally supporting more and more LTE networks and becoming more and more interoperable over time. SIM Card Sizes The SIM cards used in GSM phones come in different sizes. Newer phones use smaller SIM cards to save space and be more compact. This isn’t a big obstacle, as the different sizes of SIM cards — full-size SIM, mini-SIM, micro-SIM, and nano-SIM are actually compatible. The only difference between them is the size of the plastic card surrounding the SIM’s chip. The actual chip is the same size between all the SIM cards. This means you can take an old SIM card and cut the plastic off until it becomes a smaller-size SIM card that fits in a modern phone. Or, you can take a smaller-size SIM card and insert it into a tray so that it becomes a larger-size SIM card that fits in an older phone. Be aware that it’s very possible to damage your SIM card and make it not work properly by cutting it to the wrong dimensions. Your cellular carrier will often be able to cut your SIM card for you or give you a new one if you want to use an old SIM card in a new phone. Hopefully they won’t overcharge you for this service, too. Be sure to check what types of networks, frequencies, and LTE bands your phone supports before trying to move it between networks. You may have to buy a new phone when moving between certain cellular carriers. Image Credit: Morgan on Flickr, 22n on Flickr

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• Play Your Favorite DOS Games in XP, Vista, and Windows 7

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to take a trip down memory lane with old school DOS games?  D-Fend Reloaded makes it easy for you to play your favorite DOS games directly on XP, Vista, and Windows 7. D-Fend Reloaded is a great frontend for DOSBox, the popular DOS emulator.  It lets you install and run many DOS games and applications directly from its interface without ever touching a DOS prompt.  It works great on XP, Vista, and Windows 7 32 & 64-bit versions.   Getting Started Download D-Fend Reloaded (link below), and install with the default settings.  You don’t need to install DOSBox, as D-Fend Reloaded will automatically install all the components you need to run DOS games on Windows. D-Fend Reloaded can also be installed as a portable application, so you can run it from a flash drive on any Windows computer by selecting User defined installation. Then select Portable mode installation. Once D-Fend Reloaded is installed, you can go ahead and open the program. Then simply click “Accept all settings” to apply the default settings.   D-Fend is now ready to run all of your favorite DOS games. Installing DOS Games and Applications: To install a DOS game or application, simply drag-and-drop a zip file of the app into D-Fend Reloaded’s window.  D-Fend Reloaded will automatically extract the program… Then will ask you to name the application and choose where to store it — by default it uses the name of the DOS app. Now you’ll see a new entry for the app you just installed.  Simply double-click to run it.   D-Fend will remind you that you can switch out of fullscreen mode by pressing Alt+Enter, and can also close the DOS application by pressing Ctrl+F9.  Press Ok to run the program. Here we’re running Ms. PacPC, a remake of the classic game Ms. Pac-Man, in full-screen mode.  All features work automatically, including sound, and you never have to setup anything from DOS command line — it just works. Here it’s in windowed mode running on Windows 7. Please note that your color scheme may change to Windows Basic while running DOS applications. You can run DOS application just as easily.  Here’s Word 5.5 running in in DOSBox through D-Fend Reloaded… Game Packs: Want to quickly install many old DOS freeware and trial games?  D-Fend Reloaded offers several game packs that let you install dozens of DOS games with only four clicks…just download and run the game pack installer of your choice (link below). Now you’ve got a selection of DOS games to choose from. Here’s a group of poor lemmings walking around … in Windows 7. Conclusion D-Fend Reloaded gives you a great way to run your favorite DOS games and applications directly from XP, Vista, and Windows 7.  Give it a try, and relive your DOS days from the comfort of your Windows desktop. What were some of your favorite DOS games and applications? Leave a comment and let us know. Links Download D-Fend Reloaded Download DOS game packs for D-Fend Reloaded Download Ms. Pac-PC Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Friday Fun: Get Your Mario OnFriday Fun: Go Retro with PacmanThursday’s Pre-Holiday Lazy Links RoundupFriday Fun: Five More Time Wasting Online GamesFriday Fun: Holiday Themed Games TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional The Growth of Citibank Quickly Switch between Tabs in IE Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier

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• 2010 Collaboration Summit Impressions

  - by Elena Zannoni

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

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• SharePoint Saturday Michigan 2010 Recap, Slides, and Photos

  - by Brian Jackett

  This past weekend I attended SharePoint Saturday Michigan (SPSMI) in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  For those unfamiliar, SharePoint Saturday is a community driven event where various speakers gather to present at a FREE conference on all topics related to SharePoint.  This made my third SharePoint Saturday attended and second I’ve spoken at.  I believe today it was announced that about 210 people total attended the event.  I was very happy with the turnout, especially the ratio of male to female attendees.  Typically with computer related conferences the ratio leans towards more males attending, but both Peter Serzo (one of conference organizers) and I both commented to each other that at the end of the day it appeared to be close to 40% women in the crowd.  So here’s my recap of the weekend. Arrival     Friday afternoon I drove up from Columbus, OH to Ann Arbor, MI and arrived around 4pm.  I was attempting to avoid the rush hour traffic and construction backups.  Turned out to be a good idea because other speakers coming up Friday got stuck on a highway which literally closed down in both directions due to a bad accident.  I was talking my friend Sean McDonough through the highway closing and this was the first time I had seen a solid black traffic line on Google Maps.  Most of us are familiar with Green, Yellow, and Red, but this line was black if that tells you how bad it got. Speaker “Dinner”     Fast forward a few hours and it was time for the speaker “dinner.”  I put “dinner” in quotes because with this night alone SPSMI set a new bar for nicest and most extravagant speaker appreciation events for SharePoint Saturday.  By tapping into some very influential contacts, the conference organizers were able to provide a truck limo (yep you heard right) with refreshments, access to an underground suite at the Palace of Auburn Hills, and courtside tickets to see the Detroit Pistons play that night.  Being a Michigan native I have to say that I was absolutely floored by this experience and very thankful to our conference organizers Peter, Sebastian, and Jesse along with Trillium Teamologies. Sessions     The actual conference started Saturday morning at 9am with the keynote by Rob Collie who is the Microsoft program manager for PowerPivot.  The day continued and I attended the following sessions: Mike Watson (@mikewat) – “SharePoint 2010 Fight Night: Devs vs. Admins” Karl Swedeberg (@kswedberg) – “A Walk on the Client Side with jQuery“ [my session] Brian Jackett (@briantjackett) - “Real World Deployment of SharePoint 2007 Solutions” Jeff Willinger (@jwillie) - “Social Computing and Collaboration Inside and Outside the 4 Walls” Paul Schaeflein (@paulschaeflein) – “PowerShell for the SharePoint Developer” My Presentation     I had a great time presenting my session on Deploying SharePoint 2007 Solutions, but it wasn’t without its fair share of technical issues.  As my session was right after lunch I came in to my room 10 mins early to set up my laptop, slides, and demos.  As a quick background note, a few months ago I got an upgraded laptop from my company Sogeti and have been dual booting it between XP (factory installed) and Windows Server 2008 R2 w/ Hyper-V.  As such I had prepared all of my demo virtual machines to run under Hyper-V.  About 3 minutes before my session was scheduled to start though it became apparent that I did not have the correct display drivers to connect Windows Server 2008 R2 to the projector…     As you can imagine this was a slight cause for concern as I was potentially going to be unable to give my presentation.  Luckily for me I usually prepare for such unforeseen issues and had my presentation and some spare VMs that would run on XP on my external hard drive.  Knowing this I rebooted my machine into XP and began my presentation without slides until about 5 mins into the session when everything was up and running on XP.  Despite this being the first time I gave this presentation I have to say it was one of my favorites I’ve given so far.  The audience was very engaged in the session and I received some great, positive feedback afterwards.  Thanks to all who attended my session, I appreciate it very much. Link to Presentation Files     For those of you who attended my session and would like my slides or demo PowerShell scripts they can be found on my SkyDrive at the link below.  Also, if you have a few minutes and wouldn’t mind rating my session I have this session posted on SpeakerRate.  As speakers we always appreciate any and all feedback attendees offer, so thank you if you are able to provide any. SkyDrive folder with session files Rate my SharePoint 2007 Solutions session   Picture Albums     For everyone else, here are my pictures from the weekend.  The first link is to my FaceBook album which will have tagging (recommend this one.)  The second is to my Live album if you care for higher resolution images. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2154482&id=21905041&l=a3fb72ee8c View Full Album Conclusion     A big thank you goes out to all of the organizers, speakers, sponsors, and attendees of SPSMI.  As I’ve said so many times, without each and every one of you these events wouldn’t be possible.  I thoroughly enjoyed this trip back to my home state and presenting a new session.  For those interested in my upcoming schedule I will be giving two sessions on PowerShell at SharePoint Saturday Charlotte in April, helping plan Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition in May, and I’m submitting sessions to Day of .Net Ann Arbor in May as well.  Beyond that I haven’t planned out any travels.  Thanks for reading my recap.  Look forward to more technical posts now that I have a short break in conferences.         -Frog Out   links: Michigan image

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• Why Software Sucks...and What You Can Do About It – book review

  - by DigiMortal

      How do our users see the products we are writing for them and how happy they are with our work? Are they able to get their work done without fighting with cool features and crashes or are they just switching off resistance part of their brain to survive our software? Yeah, the overall picture of software usability landscape is not very nice. Okay, it is not even nice. But, fortunately, Why Software Sucks...and What You Can Do About It by David S. Platt explains everything. Why Software Sucks… is book for software users but I consider it as a-must reading also for developers and specially for their managers whose politics often kills all usability topics as soon as they may appear. For managers usability is soft topic that can be manipulated the way it is best in current state of project. Although developers are not UI designers and usability experts they are still very often forced to deal with these topics and this is how usability problems start (of course, also designers are able to produce designs that are stupid and too hard to use for users, but this blog here is about development). I found this book to be very interesting and funny reading. It is not humor book but it explains you all so you remember later very well what you just read. It took me about three evenings to go through this book and I am still enjoying what I found and how author explains our weird young working field to end users. I suggest this book to all developers – while you are demanding your management to hire or outsource usability expert you are at least causing less pain to end users. So, go and buy this book, just like I did. And… they thanks to mr. Platt :) There is one book more I suggest you to read if you are interested in usability - Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition by Steve Krug. Editorial review from Amazon Today’s software sucks. There’s no other good way to say it. It’s unsafe, allowing criminal programs to creep through the Internet wires into our very bedrooms. It’s unreliable, crashing when we need it most, wiping out hours or days of work with no way to get it back. And it’s hard to use, requiring large amounts of head-banging to figure out the simplest operations. It’s no secret that software sucks. You know that from personal experience, whether you use computers for work or personal tasks. In this book, programming insider David Platt explains why that’s the case and, more importantly, why it doesn’t have to be that way. And he explains it in plain, jargon-free English that’s a joy to read, using real-world examples with which you’re already familiar. In the end, he suggests what you, as a typical user, without a technical background, can do about this sad state of our software—how you, as an informed consumer, don’t have to take the abuse that bad software dishes out. As you might expect from the book’s title, Dave’s expose is laced with humor—sometimes outrageous, but always dead on. You’ll laugh out loud as you recall incidents with your own software that made you cry. You’ll slap your thigh with the same hand that so often pounded your computer desk and wished it was a bad programmer’s face. But Dave hasn’t written this book just for laughs. He’s written it to give long-overdue voice to your own discovery—that software does, indeed, suck, but it shouldn’t. Table of contents Acknowledgments xiii Introduction Chapter 1: Who’re You Calling a Dummy? Where We Came From Why It Still Sucks Today Control versus Ease of Use I Don’t Care How Your Program Works A Bad Feature and a Good One Stopping the Proceedings with Idiocy Testing on Live Animals Where We Are and What You Can Do Chapter 2: Tangled in the Web Where We Came From How It Works Why It Still Sucks Today Client-Centered Design versus Server-Centered Design Where’s My Eye Opener? It’s Obvious—Not! Splash, Flash, and Animation Testing on Live Animals What You Can Do about It Chapter 3: Keep Me Safe The Way It Was Why It Sucks Today What Programmers Need to Know, but Don’t A Human Operation Budgeting for Hassles Users Are Lazy Social Engineering Last Word on Security What You Can Do Chapter 4: Who the Heck Are You? Where We Came From Why It Still Sucks Today Incompatible Requirements OK, So Now What? Chapter 5: Who’re You Looking At? Yes, They Know You Why It Sucks More Than Ever Today Users Don’t Know Where the Risks Are What They Know First Milk You with Cookies? Privacy Policy Nonsense Covering Your Tracks The Google Conundrum Solution Chapter 6: Ten Thousand Geeks, Crazed on Jolt Cola See Them in Their Native Habitat All These Geeks Who Speaks, and When, and about What Selling It The Next Generation of Geeks—Passing It On Chapter 7: Who Are These Crazy Bastards Anyway? Homo Logicus Testosterone Poisoning Control and Contentment Making Models Geeks and Jocks Jargon Brains and Constraints Seven Habits of Geeks Chapter 8: Microsoft: Can’t Live With ’Em and Can’t Live Without ’Em They Run the World Me and Them Where We Came From Why It Sucks Today Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t We Love to Hate Them Plus ça Change Growing-Up Pains What You Can Do about It The Last Word Chapter 9: Doing Something About It 1. Buy 2. Tell 3. Ridicule 4. Trust 5. Organize Epilogue About the Author

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• LLBLGen Pro v3.5 has been released!

  - by FransBouma

  Last weekend we released LLBLGen Pro v3.5! Below the list of what's new in this release. Of course, not everything is on this list, like the large amount of work we put in refactoring the runtime framework. The refactoring was necessary because our framework has two paradigms which are added to the framework at a different time, and from a design perspective in the wrong order (the paradigm we added first, SelfServicing, should have been built on top of Adapter, the other paradigm, which was added more than a year after the first released version). The refactoring made sure the framework re-uses more code across the two paradigms (they already shared a lot of code) and is better prepared for the future. We're not done yet, but refactoring a massive framework like ours without breaking interfaces and existing applications is ... a bit of a challenge ;) To celebrate the release of v3.5, we give every customer a 30% discount! Use the coupon code NR1ORM with your order :) The full list of what's new: Designer Rule based .NET Attribute definitions. It's now possible to specify a rule using fine-grained expressions with an attribute definition to define which elements of a given type will receive the attribute definition. Rules can be assigned to attribute definitions on the project level, to make it even easier to define attribute definitions in bulk for many elements in the project. More information... Revamped Project Settings dialog. Multiple project related properties and settings dialogs have been merged into a single dialog called Project Settings, which makes it easier to configure the various settings related to project elements. It also makes it easier to find features previously not used  by many (e.g. type conversions) More information... Home tab with Quick Start Guides. To make new users feel right at home, we added a home tab with quick start guides which guide you through four main use cases of the designer. System Type Converters. Many common conversions have been implemented by default in system type converters so users don't have to develop their own type converters anymore for these type conversions. Bulk Element Setting Manipulator. To change setting values for multiple project elements, it was a little cumbersome to do that without a lot of clicking and opening various editors. This dialog makes changing settings for multiple elements very easy. EDMX Importer. It's now possible to import entity model data information from an existing Entity Framework EDMX file. Other changes and fixes See for the full list of changes and fixes the online documentation. LLBLGen Pro Runtime Framework WCF Data Services (OData) support has been added. It's now possible to use your LLBLGen Pro runtime framework powered domain layer in a WCF Data Services application using the VS.NET tools for WCF Data Services. WCF Data Services is a Microsoft technology for .NET 4 to expose your domain model using OData. More information... New query specification and execution API: QuerySpec. QuerySpec is our new query specification and execution API as an alternative to Linq and our more low-level API. It's build, like our Linq provider, on top of our lower-level API. More information... SQL Server 2012 support. The SQL Server DQE allows paging using the new SQL Server 2012 style. More information... System Type converters. For a common set of types the LLBLGen Pro runtime framework contains built-in type conversions so you don't need to write your own type converters anymore. Public/NonPublic property support. It's now possible to mark a field / navigator as non-public which is reflected in the runtime framework as an internal/friend property instead of a public property. This way you can hide properties from the public interface of a generated class and still access it through code added to the generated code base. FULL JOIN support. It's now possible to perform FULL JOIN joins using the native query api and QuerySpec. It's left to the developer to check whether the used target database supports FULL (OUTER) JOINs. Using a FULL JOIN with entity fetches is not recommended, and should only be used when both participants in the join aren't the target of the fetch. Dependency Injection Tracing. It's now possible to enable tracing on dependency injection. Enable tracing at level '4' on the traceswitch 'ORMGeneral'. This will emit trace information about which instance of which type got an instance of type T injected into property P. Entity Instances in projections in Linq. It's now possible to return an entity instance in a custom Linq projection. It's now also possible to pass this instance to a method inside the query projection. Inheritance fully supported in this construct. Entity Framework support The Entity Framework has been updated in the recent year with code-first support and a new simpler context api: DbContext (with DbSet). The amount of code to generate is smaller and the context simpler. LLBLGen Pro v3.5 comes with support for DbContext and DbSet and generates code which utilizes these new classes. NHibernate support NHibernate v3.2+ built-in proxy factory factory support. By default the built-in ProxyFactoryFactory is selected. FluentNHibernate Session Manager uses 1.2 syntax. Fluent NHibernate mappings generate a SessionManager which uses the v1.2 syntax for the ProxyFactoryFactory location Optionally emit schema / catalog name in mappings Two settings have been added which allow the user to control whether the catalog name and/or schema name as known in the project in the designer is emitted into the mappings.

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• New .NET Library for Accessing the Survey Monkey API

  - by Ben Emmett

  I’ve used Survey Monkey’s API for a while, and though it’s pretty powerful, there’s a lot of boilerplate each time it’s used in a new project, and the json it returns needs a bunch of processing to be able to use the raw information. So I’ve finally got around to releasing a .NET library you can use to consume the API more easily. The main advantages are: Only ever deal with strongly-typed .NET objects, making everything much more robust and a lot faster to get going Automatically handles things like rate-limiting and paging through results Uses combinations of endpoints to get all relevant data for you, and processes raw response data to map responses to questions To start, either install it using NuGet with PM> Install-Package SurveyMonkeyApi (easier option), or grab the source from https://github.com/bcemmett/SurveyMonkeyApi if you prefer to build it yourself. You’ll also need to have signed up for a developer account with Survey Monkey, and have both your API key and an OAuth token. A simple usage would be something like: string apiKey = "KEY"; string token = "TOKEN"; var sm = new SurveyMonkeyApi(apiKey, token); List<Survey> surveys = sm.GetSurveyList(); The surveys object is now a list of surveys with all the information available from the /surveys/get_survey_list API endpoint, including the title, id, date it was created and last modified, language, number of questions / responses, and relevant urls. If there are more than 1000 surveys in your account, the library pages through the results for you, making multiple requests to get a complete list of surveys. All the filtering available in the API can be controlled using .NET objects. For example you might only want surveys created in the last year and containing “pineapple” in the title: var settings = new GetSurveyListSettings { Title = "pineapple", StartDate = DateTime.Now.AddYears(-1) }; List<Survey> surveys = sm.GetSurveyList(settings); By default, whenever optional fields can be requested with a response, they will all be fetched for you. You can change this behaviour if for some reason you explicitly don’t want the information, using var settings = new GetSurveyListSettings { OptionalData = new GetSurveyListSettingsOptionalData { DateCreated = false, AnalysisUrl = false } }; Survey Monkey’s 7 read-only endpoints are supported, and the other 4 which make modifications to data might be supported in the future. The endpoints are: Endpoint Method Object returned /surveys/get_survey_list GetSurveyList() List<Survey> /surveys/get_survey_details GetSurveyDetails() Survey /surveys/get_collector_list GetCollectorList() List<Collector> /surveys/get_respondent_list GetRespondentList() List<Respondent> /surveys/get_responses GetResponses() List<Response> /surveys/get_response_counts GetResponseCounts() Collector /user/get_user_details GetUserDetails() UserDetails /batch/create_flow Not supported Not supported /batch/send_flow Not supported Not supported /templates/get_template_list Not supported Not supported /collectors/create_collector Not supported Not supported The hierarchy of objects the library can return is Survey List<Page> List<Question> QuestionType List<Answer> List<Item> List<Collector> List<Response> Respondent List<ResponseQuestion> List<ResponseAnswer> Each of these classes has properties which map directly to the names of properties returned by the API itself (though using PascalCasing which is more natural for .NET, rather than the snake_casing used by SurveyMonkey). For most users, Survey Monkey imposes a rate limit of 2 requests per second, so by default the library leaves at least 500ms between requests. You can request higher limits from them, so if you want to change the delay between requests just use a different constructor: var sm = new SurveyMonkeyApi(apiKey, token, 200); //200ms delay = 5 reqs per sec There’s a separate cap of 1000 requests per day for each API key, which the library doesn’t currently enforce, so if you think you’ll be in danger of exceeding that you’ll need to handle it yourself for now.  To help, you can see how many requests the current instance of the SurveyMonkeyApi object has made by reading its RequestsMade property. If the library encounters any errors, including communicating with the API, it will throw a SurveyMonkeyException, so be sure to handle that sensibly any time you use it to make calls. Finally, if you have a survey (or list of surveys) obtained using GetSurveyList(), the library can automatically fill in all available information using sm.FillMissingSurveyInformation(surveys); For each survey in the list, it uses the other endpoints to fill in the missing information about the survey’s question structure, respondents, and responses. This results in at least 5 API calls being made per survey, so be careful before passing it a large list. It also joins up the raw response information to the survey’s question structure, so that for each question in a respondent’s set of replies, you can access a ProcessedAnswer object. For example, a response to a dropdown question (from the /surveys/get_responses endpoint) might be represented in json as { "answers": [ { "row": "9384627365", } ], "question_id": "615487516" } Separately, the question’s structure (from the /surveys/get_survey_details endpoint) might have several possible answers, one of which might look like { "text": "Fourth item in dropdown list", "visible": true, "position": 4, "type": "row", "answer_id": "9384627365" } The library understands how this mapping works, and uses that to give you the following ProcessedAnswer object, which first describes the family and type of question, and secondly gives you the respondent’s answers as they relate to the question. Survey Monkey has many different question types, with 11 distinct data structures, each of which are supported by the library. If you have suggestions or spot any bugs, let me know in the comments, or even better submit a pull request .

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• Review of Samsung Focus Windows Phone 7

  - by mbcrump

  I recently acquired a Samsung Focus Windows Phone 7 device from AT&T and wanted to share what I thought of it as an end-user. Before I get started, here are several of my write-ups for the Windows Phone 7. You may want to check out the second article titled: Hands-on WP7 Review of Prototype Hardware. From start to finish with the final version of Visual Studio Tools for Windows Phone 7 Hands-on : Windows Phone 7 Review on Prototype Hardware. Deploying your Windows Phone 7 Application to the actual hardware. Profile your Windows Phone 7 Application for Free Submitting a Windows Phone 7 Application to the Market. Samsung Focus i917 Phone Size: Perfect! I have been carrying around a Dell Streak (Android) and it is about half the size. It is really nice to have a phone that fits in your pocket without a lot of extra bulk. I bought a case for the Focus and it is still a perfect size.  The phone just feels right. Screen: It has a beautiful Super AMOLED 480x800 screen. I only wish it supported a higher resolution. The colors are beautiful especially in an Xbox Live Game.   3G: I use AT&T and I've had spotty reception. This really can't be blamed on the phone as much as the actual carrier. Battery: I've had excellent battery life compared to my iPhone and Android devices. I usually use my phone throughout the day on and off and still have a charge at the end of the day.  Camera/Video: I'm still looking for the option to send the video to YouTube or the Image to Twitter. The images look good, but the phone needs a forward facing camera. I like the iPhone/Android (Dell Streak) camera better. Built-in Speaker: Sounds great. It’s not a wimpy speaker that you cannot hear.  CPU: Very smooth transitioning from one screen to another. The prototype Windows Phone 7 that I had, was no where near as smooth. (It was also running a slower processor though). OS: I actually like the OS but a few things could be better. CONS: Copy and Paste (Supposed to come in the next update) We need more apps (Pandora missing was a big one for me and Slacker’s advertisement sucks!). As time passes, and more developers get on board then this will be fixed. The browser needs some major work. I have tried to make cross-platform (WP7, Android, iPhone and iPad) web apps and the browser that ships with WP7 just can’t handle it.  Apps need to be organized better. Instead of throw them all on one screen, it would help to allow the user to create categories. PROS: Hands down the best gaming experience on a phone. I have all three major phones (iphone, android and wp7). Nothing compares to the gaming experience on the WP7. The phone just works. I’ve had a LOT of glitches with my Android device. I’ve had maybe 2 with my WP7 device. Exchange and Office support are great. Nice integration with Twitter/Facebook and social media. Easy to navigate and find the information you need on one screen. Let’s look at a few pictures and we will wrap up with my final thoughts on the phone. WP7 Home Screen. Back of the phone is as stylish. It is hard to see due to the shadow but it is a very thin phone. What’s included? Manuals Ear buds Data Cable plus Power Adapter Phone Click a picture to enlarge So, what are my final thoughts on the Phone/OS? I love the Samsung Focus and would recommend it to anyone looking for a WP7 device. Like any first generation product, you need to give it a little while to mature. Right now the phone is missing several features that we are all used to using. That doesn’t mean a year from now it will be in the same situation. (I sure hope we won’t). If you are looking to get into mobile development, I believe WP7 is the easiest platform to develop from. This is especially true if you have a background in Silverlight or WPF.    Subscribe to my feed

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• Big Data – Buzz Words: Importance of Relational Database in Big Data World – Day 9 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned what is HDFS. In this article we will take a quick look at the importance of the Relational Database in Big Data world. A Big Question? Here are a few questions I often received since the beginning of the Big Data Series - Does the relational database have no space in the story of the Big Data? Does relational database is no longer relevant as Big Data is evolving? Is relational database not capable to handle Big Data? Is it true that one no longer has to learn about relational data if Big Data is the final destination? Well, every single time when I hear that one person wants to learn about Big Data and is no longer interested in learning about relational database, I find it as a bit far stretched. I am not here to give ambiguous answers of It Depends. I am personally very clear that one who is aspiring to become Big Data Scientist or Big Data Expert they should learn about relational database. NoSQL Movement The reason for the NoSQL Movement in recent time was because of the two important advantages of the NoSQL databases. Performance Flexible Schema In personal experience I have found that when I use NoSQL I have found both of the above listed advantages when I use NoSQL database. There are instances when I found relational database too much restrictive when my data is unstructured as well as they have in the datatype which my Relational Database does not support. It is the same case when I have found that NoSQL solution performing much better than relational databases. I must say that I am a big fan of NoSQL solutions in the recent times but I have also seen occasions and situations where relational database is still perfect fit even though the database is growing increasingly as well have all the symptoms of the big data. Situations in Relational Database Outperforms Adhoc reporting is the one of the most common scenarios where NoSQL is does not have optimal solution. For example reporting queries often needs to aggregate based on the columns which are not indexed as well are built while the report is running, in this kind of scenario NoSQL databases (document database stores, distributed key value stores) database often does not perform well. In the case of the ad-hoc reporting I have often found it is much easier to work with relational databases. SQL is the most popular computer language of all the time. I have been using it for almost over 10 years and I feel that I will be using it for a long time in future. There are plenty of the tools, connectors and awareness of the SQL language in the industry. Pretty much every programming language has a written drivers for the SQL language and most of the developers have learned this language during their school/college time. In many cases, writing query based on SQL is much easier than writing queries in NoSQL supported languages. I believe this is the current situation but in the future this situation can reverse when No SQL query languages are equally popular. ACID (Atomicity Consistency Isolation Durability) – Not all the NoSQL solutions offers ACID compliant language. There are always situations (for example banking transactions, eCommerce shopping carts etc.) where if there is no ACID the operations can be invalid as well database integrity can be at risk. Even though the data volume indeed qualify as a Big Data there are always operations in the application which absolutely needs ACID compliance matured language. The Mixed Bag I have often heard argument that all the big social media sites now a days have moved away from Relational Database. Actually this is not entirely true. While researching about Big Data and Relational Database, I have found that many of the popular social media sites uses Big Data solutions along with Relational Database. Many are using relational databases to deliver the results to end user on the run time and many still uses a relational database as their major backbone. Here are a few examples: Facebook uses MySQL to display the timeline. (Reference Link) Twitter uses MySQL. (Reference Link) Tumblr uses Sharded MySQL (Reference Link) Wikipedia uses MySQL for data storage. (Reference Link) There are many for prominent organizations which are running large scale applications uses relational database along with various Big Data frameworks to satisfy their various business needs. Summary I believe that RDBMS is like a vanilla ice cream. Everybody loves it and everybody has it. NoSQL and other solutions are like chocolate ice cream or custom ice cream – there is a huge base which loves them and wants them but not every ice cream maker can make it just right  for everyone’s taste. No matter how fancy an ice cream store is there is always plain vanilla ice cream available there. Just like the same, there are always cases and situations in the Big Data’s story where traditional relational database is the part of the whole story. In the real world scenarios there will be always the case when there will be need of the relational database concepts and its ideology. It is extremely important to accept relational database as one of the key components of the Big Data instead of treating it as a substandard technology. Ray of Hope – NewSQL In this module we discussed that there are places where we need ACID compliance from our Big Data application and NoSQL will not support that out of box. There is a new termed coined for the application/tool which supports most of the properties of the traditional RDBMS and supports Big Data infrastructure – NewSQL. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about NewSQL. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• How to create a new Team Project Collection in TFS2010:

  - by jehan

  TFS 2010 has introduced the notion of Team Project Collection (TPC).  I have already discussed about TPC in my earlier post, you can check it out here. In this post, I will demonstrate how to create a new Team Project Collection in TFS2010. First, you have to open the TFS Administration Console (Start à All Programs à Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 à Team Foundation Server Administration Console), expand the Application Tier node in TFS Administration Console and click on Team Project Collection. Here you will see the TPC’s which are already exist, I am having only one TPC named New Collection and I’m going to create a new TPC called Demo Collection. To create a new Team Project Collection, you need to click on Create Collection; it will open the Create New Team Project Collection window.     Under the Name tab, you have to enter the name of Collection which you want to give for your new TPC (I naming it as Demo Collection). You can also provide some description about your TPC in Description tab which is optional and click next. Here, you need to enter the name of SQL Server Instance where you want your new TPC data to reside. You have the option either to choose the creating a Database for this TPC or use the already existing empty database and then click next.   In next screen, you have to choose SharePoint configuration. Here you have the options to either configure SharePoint Site for TPC at default collections or you can specify the your existing SharePoint site and  you can also choose not  to configure the SharePoint for this collection, if you choose last option then you cannot configure the Share Point sites for the all the Team Projects under this Project Collection. You also have the flexibility to create a Share Point site for this TPC later on, then if you need you have to configure SharePoint site for the existing team projects manually.   In next screen, you will have the Reports configuration. Here you have the options to either configure the Reports for TPC at default path or you can specify the path for at existing Reports folder, you can also choose not to configure the Reports for this collection, if you choose last option then you cannot create  the Reports  for the all the Team Projects under this Project Collection. Here also you can enable reporting for this TPC later on. The next screen is related to Lab Management Configuration, Lab Management is the new feature in TFS2010 which enables the users to create and manage virtual test environments where you can deploy and test your application. There are no options available here as I don’t have the Lab Management configured for my Team Foundation Server. The next screen is Review Configuration window, which will show up all the configuration settings you have specified, so that you can review the configurations before creating the Team Project Collection. If you want to make any changes to the configurations then you can go back to the previous windows and can make the changes. After Reviewing the configuration settings, you can click on verify button. Which will verify that if you’re Team Project Collection is ready to be created or not, it will show up the errors and warning (if any) which can make your Team Project Collection fail. You can then choose to create the Team Project Collection if the verify option doesn’t throw any warnings and errors. If the verify option throws any errors, then it is strongly suggested that you have to first rectify the issues then only go for TPC creation especially in case of warnings as it is a common practice to overlook the warnings.   If you choose the create TPC option, then it will start the process of creating a Team Project Collection  and once its completed you can check the status of configuration different components  during Team Project Collection. You can see in below screen that all the components are configured successfully.   In next screen, you can find the location of log file created for this Team Project Creation, this log file is really important in case of Team Project creation failure because it will help you to find  the root cause for the failure. Now, you can see that the New Team Projection (Demo Collection) which was created is now available in Team Foundation Collection tab and its status is Online.   You can now try to connect to this Team Project Collection from Team Explorer. Choose the newly created Team Project Collection and click on connect.     This Team Project Collection is empty because no Team Projects are created yet. Now, you can create the new Team Projects and start working.

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• The Winds of Change are a Blowin&rsquo;

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

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

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• On Contract Employment

  - by kerry

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

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• Knockoutjs - stringify to handling observables and custom events

  - by Renso

  Goal: Once you viewmodel has been built and populated with data, at some point it goal of it all is to persist the data to the database (or some other media). Regardless of where you want to save it, your client-side viewmodel needs to be converted to a JSON string and sent back to the server. Environment considerations: jQuery 1.4.3+ Knockoutjs version 1.1.2   How to: So let’s set the stage, you are using Knockoutjs and you have a viewmodel with some Knockout dependencies. You want to make sure it is in the proper JSON format and via ajax post it to the server for persistence.   First order of business is to deal with the viewmodel (JSON) object. To most the JSON stringifier sounds familiar. The JSON stringifier converts JavaScript data structures into JSON text. JSON does not support cyclic data structures, so be careful to not give cyclical structures to the JSON stringifier. You may ask, is this the best way to do it? What about those observables and other Knockout properties that I don’t want to persist or want their actual value persisted and not their function, etc. Not sure if you were aware, but KO already has a method; ko.utils.stringifyJson() - it's mostly just a wrapper around JSON.stringify. (which is native in some browsers, and can be made available by referencing json2.js in others). What does it do that the regular stringify does not is that it automatically converts observable, dependentObservable, or observableArray to their underlying value to JSON. Hold on! There is a new feature in this version of Knockout, the ko.toJSON. It is part of the core library and it will clone the view model’s object graph, so you don’t mess it up after you have stringified  it and unwrap all its observables. It's smart enough to avoid reference cycles. Since you are using the MVVM pattern it would assume you are not trying to reference DOM nodes from your view. Wait a minute. I can already see this info on the http://knockoutjs.com/examples/contactsEditor.html website, why mention it all here? First of this is a much nicer blog, no orange ? At this time, you may want to have a look at the blog and see what I am talking about. See the save event, how they stringify the view model’s contacts only? That’s cool but what if your view model is a representation of your object you want to persist, meaning it has no property that represents the json object you want to persist, it is the view model itself. The example in http://knockoutjs.com/examples/contactsEditor.html assumes you have a list of contacts you may want to persist. In the example here, you want to persist the view model itself. The viewmodel here looks something like this:     var myViewmodel = {         accountName: ko.observable(""),         accountType: ko.observable("Active")     };     myViewmodel.isItActive = ko.dependentObservable(function () {         return myViewmodel.accountType() == "Active";     });     myViewmodel.clickToSaveMe = function() {         SaveTheAccount();     }; Here is the function in charge of saving the account: Function SaveTheAccount() {     $.ajax({         data: ko.toJSON(viewmodel),         url: $('#ajaxSaveAccountUrl').val(),         type: "POST",         dataType: "json",         async: false,         success: function (result) {             if (result && result.Success == true) {                 $('#accountMessage').html('<span class="fadeMyContainerSlowly">The account has been saved</span>').show();                 FadeContainerAwaySlowly();             }         },         error: function (xmlHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) {             alert('An error occurred: ' + errorThrown);         }     }); //ajax }; Try run this and your browser will eventually freeze up or crash. Firebug will tell you that you have a repetitive call to the first function call in your model that keeps firing infinitely.  What is happening is that Knockout serializes the view model to a JSON string by traversing the object graph and firing off the functions, again-and-again. Not sure why it does that, but it does. So what is the work around: Nullify your function calls and then post it:         var lightweightModel = viewmodel.clickToSaveMe = null;         data: ko.toJSON(lightweightModel), So then I traced the JSON string on the server and found it having issues with primitive types. C#, by the way. So I changed ko.toJSON(model) to ko.toJS(model), and that solved my problem. Of course you could just create a property on the viewmodel for the account itself, so you only have to serialize the property and not the entire viewmodel. If that is an option then that would be the way to go. If your view model contains other properties in the view model that you also want to post then that would not be an option and then you’ll know what to watch out for. Hope this helps.

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• Finding the problem on a partially succeeded build

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Now that I have the Build failing because of a genuine bug and not just because of a test framework failure, lets see if we can trace through to finding why the first test in our new application failed. Lets look at the build and see if we can see why there is a red cross on it. First, lets open that build list. On Team Explorer Expand your Team Project Collection | Team Project and then Builds. Double click the offending build. Figure: Opening the Build list is a key way to see what the current state of your software is.   Figure: A test is failing, but we can now view the Test Results to find the problem      Figure: You can quite clearly see that the test has failed with “The device is not ready”. To me the “The Device is not ready” smacks of a System.IO exception, but it passed on my local computer, so why not on the build server? Its a FaultException so it is most likely coming from the Service and not the client, so lets take a look at the client method that the test is calling: bool IProfileService.SaveDefaultProjectFile(string strComputerName) { ProjectFile file = new ProjectFile() { ProjectFileName = strComputerName + "_" + System.DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMddhhmmsss") + ".xml", ConnectionString = "persist security info=False; pooling=False; data source=(local); application name=SSW.SQLDeploy.vshost.exe; integrated security=SSPI; initial catalog=SSWSQLDeployNorthwindSample", DateCreated = System.DateTime.Now, DateUpdated = System.DateTime.Now, FolderPath = @"C:\Program Files\SSW SQL Deploy\SampleData\", IsComplete=false, Version = "1.3", NewDatabase = true, TimeOut = 5, TurnOnMSDE = false, Mode="AutomaticMode" }; string strFolderPath = "D:\\"; //LocalSettings.ProjectFileBasePath; string strFileName = strFolderPath + file.ProjectFileName; try { using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(strFileName, FileMode.Create)) { DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(ProjectFile)); using (XmlDictionaryWriter writer = XmlDictionaryWriter.CreateTextWriter(fs)) { serializer.WriteObject(writer, file); } } } catch (Exception ex) { //TODO: Log the exception throw ex; return false; } return true; } Figure: You can see on lines 9 and 18 that there are calls being made to specific folders and disks. What is wrong with this code? What assumptions mistakes could the developer have made to make this look OK: That every install would be to “C:\Program Files\SSW SQL Deploy” That every computer would have a “D:\\” That checking in code at 6pm because the had to go home was a good idea. lets solve each of these problems: We are in a web service… lets store data within the web root. So we can call “Server.MapPath(“~/App_Data/SSW SQL Deploy\SampleData”) instead. Never reference an explicit path. If you need some storage for your application use IsolatedStorage. Shelve your code instead. What else could have been done? Code review before check-in – The developer should have shelved their code and asked another dev to look at it. Use Defensive programming – Make sure that any code that has the possibility of failing has checks. Any more options? Let me know and I will add them. What do we do? The correct things to do is to add a Bug to the backlog, but as this is probably going to be fixed in sprint, I will add it directly to the sprint backlog. Right click on the failing test Select “Create Work Item | Bug” Figure: Create an associated bug to add to the backlog. Set the values for the Bug making sure that it goes into the right sprint and Area. Make your steps to reproduce as explicit as possible, but “See test” is valid under these circumstances.   Figure: Add it to the correct Area and set the Iteration to the Area name or the Sprint if you think it will be fixed in Sprint and make sure you bring it up at the next Scrum Meeting. Note: make sure you leave the “Assigned To” field blank as in Scrum team members sign up for work, you do not give it to them. The developer who broke the test will most likely either sign up for the bug, or say that they are stuck and need help. Note: Visual Studio has taken care of associating the failing test with the Bug. Save… Technorati Tags: WCF,MSTest,MSBuild,Team Build 2010,Team Test 2010,Team Build,Team Test

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• Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC Review

  - by Ben Griswold

  A few years back I started dallying with test-driven development, but I never fully committed to the practice. This wasn’t because I didn’t believe in the value of TDD; it was more a matter of not completely understanding how to incorporate “test first” into my everyday development. Back in my web forms days, I could point fingers at the framework for my ignorance and laziness. After all, web forms weren’t exactly designed for testability so who could blame me for not embracing TDD in those conditions, right? But when I switched to ASP.NET MVC and quickly found myself fresh out of excuses and it became instantly clear that it was time to get my head around red-green-refactor once and for all or I would regretfully miss out on one of the biggest selling points the new framework had to offer. I have previously written about how I learned ASP.NET MVC. It was primarily hands on learning but I did read a couple of ASP.NET MVC books along the way. The books I read dedicated a chapter or two to TDD and they certainly addressed the benefits of TDD and how MVC was designed with testability in mind, but TDD was merely an afterthought compared to, well, teaching one how to code the model, view and controller. This approach made some sense, and I learned a bunch about MVC from those books, but when it came to TDD the books were just a teaser and an opportunity missed.  But then I got lucky – Jonathan McCracken contacted me and asked if I’d review his book, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC, and it was just what I needed to get over the TDD hump. As the title suggests, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC takes a different approach to learning MVC as it focuses on testing right from the very start. McCracken wastes no time and swiftly familiarizes us with the framework by building out a trivial Quote-O-Matic application and then dedicates the better part of his book to testing first – first by explaining TDD and then coding a full-featured Getting Organized application inspired by David Allen’s popular book, Getting Things Done. If you are a learn-by-example kind of coder (like me), you will instantly appreciate and enjoy McCracken’s style – its fast-moving, pragmatic and focused on only the most relevant information required to get you going with ASP.NET MVC and TDD. The book continues with the test-first theme but McCracken moves away from the sample application and incorporates other practical skills like persisting models with NHibernate, leveraging Inversion of Control with the IControllerFactory and building a RESTful web service. What I most appreciated about this section was McCracken’s use of and praise for open source libraries like Rhino Mocks, SQLite and StructureMap (to name just a few) and productivity tools like ReSharper, Web Platform Installer and ASP.NET SQL Server Setup Wizard.  McCracken’s emphasis on real world, pragmatic development was clearly demonstrated in every tool choice, straight-forward code block and developer tip. Whether one is already familiar with the tools/tips or not, McCracken’s thought process is easily understood and appreciated. The final section of the book walks the reader through security and deployment – everything from error handling and logging with ELMAH, to ASP.NET Health Monitoring, to using MSBuild with automated builds, to the deployment  of ASP.NET MVC to various web environments. These chapters, like those prior, offer enough information and explanation to simply help you get the job done.  Do I believe Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC will turn you into an expert MVC developer overnight?  Well, no.  I don’t think any book can make that claim.  If that were possible, I think book list prices would skyrocket!  That said, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC provides a solid foundation and a unique (and dare I say necessary) approach to learning ASP.NET MVC.  Along the way McCracken shares loads of very practical software development tips and references numerous tools and libraries. The bottom line is it’s a great ASP.NET MVC primer – if you’re new to ASP.NET MVC it’s just what you need to get started.  Do I believe Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC will give you everything you need to start employing TDD in your everyday development?  Well, I used to think that learning TDD required a lot of practice and, if you’re lucky enough, the guidance of a mentor or coach.  I used to think that one couldn’t learn TDD from a book alone. Well, I’m still no pro, but I’m testing first now and Jonathan McCracken and his book, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC, played a big part in making this happen.  If you are an MVC developer and a TDD newb, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC is just the book for you.

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• SQLAuthority News – Learning Trip – Traveling to Learn SQL Server

  - by pinaldave

  I am currently traveling to Delhi to learn SQL Server in person from my friend. You can read more details about why am I learning SQL Server.  I have signed up for the course End to End SQL Server Business Intelligence at Koenig Solutions. Yesterday I blogged about my registration experience and today I am going to write about my  experience once I arrived at Delhi. From Ahmedabad to Delhi I stay with my wife and daughter in Bangalore (IT Hub of India), my hometown is Ahmedabad. My parents stay in city nearby Ahmedabad. I decided to spend few days with my folks before I sign up for 3 days of solid learning. I had selected an early morning flight to Delhi. I landed at 8:30 AM in Delhi. As soon as I checked email in my mobile I was really glad that I had received details of my pick up vehicle from Koenig. I walked out of the airport and I noticed that a driver was waiting with a placard with my name and photo associated with it. He was in Koenig uniform so there was no chance to make mistakes. In minutes of landing in Delhi I was in my transport heading to the Koenig Training Center. After the quick introduction driver handed me a bag (to be precise Eco friendly bag). The bag contained following items: My registration form All necessary documents in print which I had received earlier A Printed Book of the course next day INR 1000 (What?) I was glad to receive the bag but I was very confused with the Rs 1000. I decided to figure this out once I reach to the training center. Arriving at Koenig Inn Deluxe Koenig registration fees include all the stay and meals. I had opted for Koenig Inn Deluxe as my stay as it was recommended by my friend as well it was the right economical choice for me. When I reached to my accommodation, they were well aware of my arrival and was immediately led to my spacious room. The room is well equipped with all the amenities (hot water, air condition, coffee table, munching snacks,  and free internet) and the staff is very friendly. I immediately got ready as I had to go to Koenig Training Center to meet Center Head for a quick introduction. Koenig Inn Delux Koenig Training Center The training center is within five minutes of distance from the accommodation. I was lead to center head right away and had a very meaningful conversation with Ms Hema regarding my learning goals. She gave me a quick tour of the training center. I was amazed with the numbers of lab rooms they have in the center. The labs are spacious and give the most needed hand’s on experience to the users. I was led to the lab where I was suppose to learn my class the very next day as well I was provided my trainer’s profile. Mystery of Rs 1000 Well, after all this I have still not forgotten why I was provided Rs 1000 when arrived at the airport. When I asked about that I was told that because many students comes from foreign places and they may not have Indian Currency when they land at airport. This was for their immediate consumption till they arrive at the training center. Later on they can get their currency converted to local currency at Koenig Travel Desk. My curiosity was satisfied but I had not expected this answer. I am amazed at the attention to the details. Koenig Travel Desk When I heard about Koenig Travel Desk, I remembered that I have few friends in Delhi and Gurgaon. I had completed all of the formalities so I had reset of the day on my hand. I requested the travel desk if they can arrange a day cab for me so I can visit my friends in Guragon. Within 10 minutes I was on my way to Gurgaon. Telerik India Office Visit What did I do in Guragaon? I met my friends Abhishek Kant, Dhananjay Kumar and Amit Chowdhary. I visited Telerik India office and we had an excellent conversation on various aspects of technology and community. The Telerik India office is very spacious and Abhishek Kant (Telerik India Country Manager) gave us a quick tour of the office. We had an excellent lunch and dinner. One thing is for sure – the day was well spent. Pinal Dave, Dhananjay Kumar and Abhishek Kant Later evening I returned to my accommodation and decided to read up a few of the topics which I was going to learn next day. In tomorrow’s blog post I will discuss about my learning experience. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, T SQL, Technology

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• SQLAuthority News – A Real Story of Book Getting ‘Out of Stock’ to A 25% Discount Story Available

  - by pinaldave

  As many of my readers may know, I have recently written a few books.  Right now I’d like to talk about SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers (http://bit.ly/sqlinterviewbook ), my newest release. What inspired me to write this book was similar to my motivations for my previous titles – I wanted to help people understand SQL Server concepts and ace interview questions so that they could get a great job they love, as much as I love my own job. If you are new to SQL Server, don’t think I left you out of my book writing efforts. If you are new to the subject or have not had to deal with SQL Server in a long time, this book is perfect for someone who wants or needs a last minute refresher. If you are facing an upcoming interview and want to impress your future bosses, this book is perfect for getting you up to speed in a short time. However, if you are already an expert, you will still find a lot to learn and many pointers and suggestions that go deep into the subject. As I said before, I wrote this book in order to help my community, and I certainly hoped that this book would become popular. However, we decided to print a very limited number of copies to begin with. We did not think that it would sell out since much of the information is available for free online. We could not have been more wrong! We incorrectly estimated what people wanted. We did not realize that there is still a need and an interest for structured learning. So, with great reservations, we printed quite a large number of copies – and it still ran out in 36 hours! We got call from the online store with a request for more copies within 12 hours. But we had printed only as many as we had sent them. There were no extra copies. We finally talked to the printer to get more copies. However, due to festivals and holidays the copies could not be shipped to the online retailer for two days. We knew for sure that they were going to be out of the book for 48 hours. 48 hours – this was very difficult as the book was very highly anticipated. Many people wanted to buy this book quickly, and receive it soon in order to meet a deadline or to study for an upcoming test of their knowledge. But now this book was out of stock on the retail store. The way the online store works is that if the Indian-priced book is not there they list the US version of the book so that buyers will not be disappointed. The problem was that the US price of the book is three times more than the Indian price – which means one has to pay three times as much to buy this book instead of the previous very low price. We received a lot of communication on this subject, here are some examples: We are now businessmen and only focusing on money Why has the price tripled in 36 hours Why we are not honest with the price If the prices will ever come down And some of the letters we cannot post here! Well, finally after 48 hours the Indian stock was finally available online. Thanks to our printer who worked day and night to get all the copies printed. He divided the complete stock in two parts. The first part they sent immediately to online retailer  and the second part they kept with them to sell. Finally, the online retailer got them online promptly as well, and the price returned to normal. Our book once again got in business and became the eighth most popular new release in 36 hours. We appreciate your love and support. Without all of your interest and love we would have never come this far and the book would not be so successful. After thinking about all your support and how patient you were with our online troubles, the online retailer has decided to give an extra 25% discount for a limited time only. I think the 48 hours when the book was out of stock were very horrible and stressful and I’d like to apologize to my loyal readers for the mishap. I hope that the 25% off is enough to sooth any remaining hurt feelings, and that everyone will continue to learn and discover things in the book. Once again thank you so much and I truly hope that you all enjoy reading the book as much as I enjoyed writing it. My book SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers is available now. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Interview Questions and Answers, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Windows Phone 7 development: first impressions

  - by DigiMortal

  After hard week in work I got some free time to play with Windows Phone 7 CTP developer tools. Although my first test application is still unfinished I think it is good moment to share my first experiences to you. In this posting I will give you quick overview of Windows Phone 7 developer tools from developer perspective. If you are familiar with Visual Studio 2010 then you will feel comfortable because Windows Phone 7 CTP developer tools base on Visual Studio 2010 Express. Project templates There are five project templates available. Three of them are based on Silverlight and two on XNA Game Studio: Windows Phone Application (Silverlight) Windows Phone List Application (Silverlight) Windows Phone Class Library (Silverlight) Windows Phone Game (XNA Game Studio) Windows Phone Game Library (XNA Game Studio) Currently I am writing to test applications. One of them is based on Windows Phone Application and the other on Windows Phone List Application project template. After creating these projects you see the following views in Visual Studio. Windows Phone Application. Click on image to enlarge. Windows Phone List Application. Click on image to enlarge.  I suggest you to use some of these templates to get started more easily. Windows Phone 7 emulator You can run your Windows Phone 7 applications on Windows Phone 7 emulator that comes with developer tools CTP. If you run your application then emulator is started automatically and you can try out how your application works in phone-like emulator. You can see screenshot of emulator on right. Currently there is opened Windows Phone List Application as it is created by default. Click on image to enlarge it. Emulator is a little bit slow and uncomfortable but it works pretty well. This far I have caused only couple of crashes during my experiments. In these cases emulator works but Visual Studio gets stuck because it cannot communicate with emulator. One important note. Emulator is based on virtual machine although you can see only phone screen and options toolbar. If you want to run emulator you must close all virtual machines running on your machine and run Visual Studio 2010 as administrator. Once you run emulator you can keep it open because you can stop your application in Visual Studio, modify, compile and re-deploy it without restarting emulator. Designing user interfaces You can design user interface of your application in Visual Studio. When you open XAML-files it is displayed in window with two panels. Left panel shows you device screen and works as visual design environment while right panel shows you XAML mark-up and let’s you modify XML if you need it. As it is one of my very first Silverlight applications I felt more comfortable with XAML editor because property names in property boxes of visual designer confused me a little bit. Designer panel is not very good because it is visually hard to follow. It has black background that makes dark borders of controls very hard to see. If you have monitor with very high contrast then it is may be not a real problem. I have usual monitor and I have problem. :) Putting controls on design surface, dragging and resizing them is also pretty painful. Some controls are drawn correctly but for some controls you have to set width and height in XML so they can be resized. After some practicing it is not so annoying anymore. On the right you can see toolbox with some controllers. This is all you get out of the box. But it is sufficient to get started. After getting some experiences you can create your own controls or use existing ones from other vendors or developers. If it is your first time to do stuff with Silverlight then keep Google open – you need it hard. After getting over the first shock you get the point very quickly and start developing at normal speed. :) Writing source code Writing source code is the most familiar part of this action. Good old Visual Studio code editor with all nice features it has. But here you get also some surprises: The anatomy of Silverlight controls is a little bit different than the one of user controls in web and forms projects. Windows Phone 7 doesn’t run on full version of Windows (I bet it is some version of Windows CE or something like this) then there is less system classes you can use. Some familiar classes have less methods that in full version of .NET Framework and in these cases you have to write all the code by yourself or find libraries or source code from somewhere. These problems are really not so much problems than limitations and you get easily over them. Conclusion Windows Phone 7 CTP developer tools help you do a lot of things on Windows Phone 7. Although I expected better performance from tools I think that current performance is not a problem. This far my first test project is going very well and Google has answer for almost every question. Windows Phone 7 is mobile device and therefore it has less hardware resources than desktop computers. This is why toolset is so limited. The more you need memory the more slower is device and as you may guess it needs the more battery. If you are writing apps for mobile devices then make your best to get your application use as few resources as possible and act as fast as possible.

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• Part 14: Execute a PowerShell script

  In the series the following parts have been published Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Add arguments and variables Part 3: Use more complex arguments Part 4: Create your own activity Part 5: Increase AssemblyVersion Part 6: Use custom type for an argument Part 7: How is the custom assembly found Part 8: Send information to the build log Part 9: Impersonate activities (run under other credentials) Part 10: Include Version Number in the Build Number Part 11: Speed up opening my build process template Part 12: How to debug my custom activities Part 13: Get control over the Build Output Part 14: Execute a PowerShell script Part 15: Fail a build based on the exit code of a console application With PowerShell you can add powerful scripting to your build to for example execute a deployment. If you want more information on PowerShell, please refer to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa973757.aspx For this example we will create a simple PowerShell script that prints “Hello world!”. To create the script, create a new text file and name it “HelloWorld.ps1”. Add to the contents of the script: Write-Host “Hello World!” To test the script do the following: Open the command prompt To run the script you must change the execution policy. To do this execute in the command prompt: powershell set-executionpolicy remotesigned Now go to the directory where you have saved the PowerShell script Execute the following command powershell .\HelloWorld.ps1 In this example I use a relative path, but when the path to the PowerShell script contains spaces, you need to change the syntax to powershell "& '<full path to script>' " for example: powershell "& ‘C:\sources\Build Customization\SolutionToBuild\PowerShell Scripts\HellloWorld.ps1’ " In this blog post, I create a new solution and that solution includes also this PowerShell script. I want to create an argument on the Build Process Template that holds the path to the PowerShell script. In the Build Process Template I will add an InvokeProcess activity to execute the PowerShell command. This InvokeProcess activity needs the location of the script as an argument for the PowerShell command. Since you don’t know the full path at the build server of this script, you can either specify in the argument the relative path of the script, but it is hard to find out what the relative path is. I prefer to specify the location of the script in source control and then convert that server path to a local path. To do this conversion you can use the ConvertWorkspaceItem activity. So to complete the task, open the Build Process Template CustomTemplate.xaml that we created in earlier parts, follow the following steps Add a new argument called “DeploymentScript” and set the appropriate settings in the metadata. See Part 2: Add arguments and variables  for more information. Scroll down beneath the TryCatch activity called “Try Compile, Test, and Associate Changesets and Work Items” Add a new If activity and set the condition to "Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(DeploymentScript)" to ensure it will only run when the argument is passed. Add in the Then branch of the If activity a new Sequence activity and rename it to “Start deployment” Click on the activity and add a new variable called DeploymentScriptFilename (scoped to the “Start deployment” Sequence Add a ConvertWorkspaceItem activity on the “Start deployment” Sequence Add a InvokeProcess activity beneath the ConvertWorkspaceItem activity in the “Start deployment” Sequence Click on the ConvertWorkspaceItem activity and change the properties DisplayName = Convert deployment script filename Input = DeploymentScript Result = DeploymentScriptFilename Workspace = Workspace Click on the InvokeProcess activity and change the properties Arguments = String.Format(" ""& '{0}' "" ", DeploymentScriptFilename) DisplayName = Execute deployment script FileName = "PowerShell" To see results from the powershell command drop a WriteBuildMessage activity on the "Handle Standard Output" and pass the stdOutput variable to the Message property. Do the same for a WriteBuildError activity on the "Handle Error Output" To publish it, check in the Build Process Template This leads to the following result We now go to the build definition that depends on the template and set the path of the deployment script to the server path to the HelloWorld.ps1. (If you want to see the result of the PowerShell script, change the Logging verbosity to Detailed or Diagnostic). Save and run the build. A lot of the deployment scripts you have will have some kind of arguments (like username / password or environment variables) that you want to define in the Build Definition. To make the PowerShell configurable, you can follow the following steps. Create a new script and give it the name "HelloWho.ps1". In the contents of the file add the following lines: param (         $person     ) $message = [System.String]::Format(“Hello {0}!", $person) Write-Host $message When you now run the script on the command prompt, you will see the following So lets change the Build Process Template to accept one parameter for the deployment script. You can of course make it configurable to add a for-loop that reads through a collection of parameters but that is out of scope of this blog post. Add a new Argument called DeploymentScriptParameter In the InvokeProcess activity where the PowerShell command is executed, modify the Arguments property to String.Format(" ""& '{0}' '{1}' "" ", DeploymentScriptFilename, DeploymentScriptParameter) Check in the Build Process Template Now modify the build definition and set the Parameter of the deployment to any value and run the build. You can download the full solution at BuildProcess.zip. It will include the sources of every part and will continue to evolve.

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• Agile Testing Days 2012 – Day 1 – The birth of the #unicorn…

  - by Chris George

  Still riding the high from the tutorial day, I arrived at the conference venue eager to get cracking with the days talks. The opening Keynote was “Disciplined Agile Delivery: The Foundation for Scaling Agile” presented by Scott Ambler. The general ideas behind the methodology such as not re-inventing the wheel, and being goal driven, not prescriptive in how you work certainly struck chords with how we are trying to work in my team. Scott made some interesting observations about how scrum is quite prescriptive and is this really agile? I agreed with quite a few of his points on how what works for one team may not work for another. How a team works should be driven by context and reflection, not process and prescription. However was somewhat dubious about some of the statistics he rolled out towards the end. However, out of this keynote was born something that was to transcend this one presentation. During the talk, Scott mentioned on more than one occasion “In the real world”, and at one point made reference to people living in the land of unicorns and rainbows. The challenge was then laid down on twitter for all speakers to include a unicorn in their presentations… and for the most part this happened! It became an identity for this years conference, and I’m sure something that any attendee will always associate with Agile Testing Days 2012! Following this keynote, I attended “Going agile with Automated GUI Testing – Some personal insights” by Jan Zdunek from codecentric on the vendor track. My speciality is test automation, and in particular GUI testing, so this drew me to this talk more than the others. Thankfully, it was made clear from the very start that this was not peddling any particular product (even though it was on the vendor track), and Jan faithfully stuck to that. Most of the content was not new to me, but it was really comforting to hear someone else with very similar experiences to my own. In particular, things like how GUI testing is hard and is not a silver bullet; how record & replay is NOT a good thing to do (which drew a somewhat inflammatory tweet from an automation company when I tweeted that!). Something that I have started hearing around the place, and has certainly been murmuring at work is to push more of the automation coding onto the developers. After all they are the coding experts. I agree with this to a degree, but I personally enjoy coding and find it very rewarding doing so, therefore I’d be reluctant to give it up. I think there are some better alternatives such as pairing with a developer. Lastly, Jan mentioned, almost in passing, that we should consider virtualisation for gui testing for covering configuration combinations. On my project we’ve been running our win32/.NET GUI tests in cloud virtualisation for a couple of years now… I really should write about that! After lunch the second keynote of the day was by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory,”Myths about Agile Testing, De-Bunked”. It started off well… with the two ladies donning Medusa style head bands whilst they disbanding several myths about agile testing! I got the impression that it was perhaps not as slick as they would have liked, but then Janet was suffering with a very sore throat so kept losing her voice. Nevertheless, the presentation was captivating, and they debunked several myths such as : “Testing is dead”, “Testers must write code”, “Agile teams always deliver faster”. I didn’t take many notes for this because it was being recorded, but unfortunately the recordings have not been posted yet so I’ll write more about this when they are. The TestLab was held during a somewhat free for all time during most of the afternoon. It looked intriguing and proved to be one of the surprising experiences of the conference for me. Run by James Lyndsay and Bart Knaack, it consisted of a number of ‘stations’ that offered different testing problems. I opted for testing a mathematical drawing app call Geogebra, the task being to pair up and exploratory test it. After an allotted time, we discussed issues we’d found and decided if we wanted to continue ‘playing’ to which we all agreed! It was fun! The last track talk of the day was “Developers Exploratory Testing – Raising the bar” by Sigge Birgisson. One of the teams at Red Gate have tried Dev or Team exploratory testing a couple of times, and I was really interested to go to the presentation that prompted that. I was not disappointed! Sigge gave a first class presentation, and not only explained what DET was all about, but also how to go about implementing it. Little tips like calling it a ‘workshop’ rather than ‘testing’ I can really see working! Monday evening saw the presentation of the award for the Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person go to a much deserved Lisa Crispin. The evening was great, with acrobatics, magic and music. My Takeaway Triple from Day 1:  Some of the cool stuff that was suggested in the GUI Testing talk, we are already doing. I should write about that! Testing is not dead! Perhaps testing will become more of a skill than a specific role, but it is certainly not dead. Team/Developer exploratory testing… seems like a no-brainer assuming you have a team who is willing.  Day 2 – Coming soon…

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• Training on Demand Certification Packages for DBAs

  - by Antoinette O'Sullivan

  The demand for Database Administrators continues to grow.*Almost two-thirds of IT hiring managers indicate that they highly value certifications in validatingIT skills and expertise.** * Job satisfaction and DBA work growth rate: CNN Money's 2011 Best Jobs in America survey.** Survey among nearly 1,700 respondents by CompTIA, the nonprofit trade association for the IT industry, cited in Certification Magazine, Feb. 14 th., 2012. Get Certified with Training on DemandAre you an experienced Database professional eager to achieve certification?Is time your most precious resource?Then try our new Training On Demand Certification Value Package with 20% discount. These all-in-one packages give you everything you need to get certified with success: Why Training On Demand:  Expert training from Oracle’s top instructors Sophisticated streaming video recording Available for 90 days, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week White boarding and training labs for hands-on experience Start, stop, pause, jump or rewind sections of the course as needed  Oracle University instructor Q&A  A full-text search leads to the right video fragment in a matter of seconds. Watch this demo to see how it works. Additional Certification resources: Benefits of Oracle Certification Database Certification Paths Available Database Certification Exams Getting certified has never been easier!For assistance contact your local Oracle University Service Desk. Many organizations deploy both Oracle Database and MySQL side by side to serve different needs, and as a database professional you can find training courses on both topics at Oracle University! Check out the upcoming Oracle Database 11g training courses and MySQL training courses. Even if you're only managing Oracle Databases at this point of time, getting familiar with MySQL Database will broaden your career path with growing job demand. These Value Packages are also available with the following training formats: In-Class, Live Virtual Class and Self Study: MySQL Database Administration Value Packages Your Savings plus get a FREE Retake  save 5% save 20% save 20% save 20%   In Class Edition Live Virtual Class Edition Self-Study Edition Training On Demand MySQL Database Administrator Certification Value Package View Package View Package View Package View Package MySQL Developer Value Packages Your Savings plus get a FREE Retake  save 5% save 20% save 20% save 20%   In Class Edition Live Virtual Class Edition Self-Study Edition Training On Demand       MySQL Developer Certification Value Package View Package View Package     Oracle Database 10g Value Packages Your Savings plus get a FREE Retake  save 5% save 20% save 20% save 20%   In Class Edition Live Virtual Class Edition Self-Study Edition Training On Demand Oracle Database 10g Administrator Certified Associate Certification Value Package View Package View Package View Package   Oracle Database 10g Administrator Certified Professional Certification Value Package View Package View Package View Package   Oracle Database 11g Value Packages Your Savings plus get a FREE Retake  save 5% save 20% save 20% save 20%   In Class Edition Live Virtual Class Edition Self-Study Edition Training On Demand Oracle Database 11g Administrator Certified Associate Certification Value Package View Package View Package View Package View Package Oracle Database 11g Administrator Certified Professional Certification Value Package View Package View Package View Package View Package Exam Prep Seminar Value Package: Oracle Database Admin 1       View Package Oracle Database 11g Administrator Certified Professional UPGRADE Certification Value Package       View Package Oracle Real Application Clusters 11g and Grid Infrastructure Administraton Certified Expert Certification Value Package       View Package Exam Prep Seminar Value Package: Oracle Database Admin 2        View Package Exam Prep Seminar Value Package: Oracle RAC 11g and Grid Infrastructure Administration       View Package Exam Prep Seminar Value Package: Upgrade Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) to Oracle Database 11g       View Package SQL and PL/SQL Value Packages Your Savings plus get a FREE Retake  save 5% save 20% save 20% save 20%   In Class Edition Live Virtual Class Edition Self-Study Edition Training On Demand Oracle Database Sql Expert Certification Value Package View Package View Package View Package View Package Exam Prep Seminar Value Package: Oracle Database SQL       View Package View our Certification Value Packages Mention this code at the time of booking: E1245 Connect For a full list of MySQL Training courses and events, go to http://oracle.com/education/mysql.

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• SQL SERVER – Example of Performance Tuning for Advanced Users with DB Optimizer

  - by Pinal Dave

  Performance tuning is such a subject that everyone wants to master it. In beginning everybody is at a novice level and spend lots of time learning how to master the art of performance tuning. However, as we progress further the tuning of the system keeps on getting very difficult. I have understood in my early career there should be no need of ego in the technology field. There are always better solutions and better ideas out there and we should not resist them. Instead of resisting the change and new wave I personally adopt it. Here is a similar example, as I personally progress to the master level of performance tuning, I face that it is getting harder to come up with optimal solutions. In such scenarios I rely on various tools to teach me how I can do things better. Once I learn about tools, I am often able to come up with better solutions when I face the similar situation next time. A few days ago I had received a query where the user wanted to tune it further to get the maximum out of the performance. I have re-written the similar query with the help of AdventureWorks sample database. SELECT * FROM HumanResources.Employee e INNER JOIN HumanResources.EmployeeDepartmentHistory edh ON e.BusinessEntityID = edh.BusinessEntityID INNER JOIN HumanResources.Shift s ON edh.ShiftID = s.ShiftID; User had similar query to above query was used in very critical report and wanted to get best out of the query. When I looked at the query – here were my initial thoughts Use only column in the select statements as much as you want in the application Let us look at the query pattern and data workload and find out the optimal index for it Before I give further solutions I was told by the user that they need all the columns from all the tables and creating index was not allowed in their system. He can only re-write queries or use hints to further tune this query. Now I was in the constraint box – I believe * was not a great idea but if they wanted all the columns, I believe we can’t do much besides using *. Additionally, if I cannot create a further index, I must come up with some creative way to write this query. I personally do not like to use hints in my application but there are cases when hints work out magically and gives optimal solutions. Finally, I decided to use Embarcadero’s DB Optimizer. It is a fantastic tool and very helpful when it is about performance tuning. I have previously explained how it works over here. First open DBOptimizer and open Tuning Job from File >> New >> Tuning Job. Once you open DBOptimizer Tuning Job follow the various steps indicates in the following diagram. Essentially we will take our original script and will paste that into Step 1: New SQL Text and right after that we will enable Step 2 for Generating Various cases, Step 3 for Detailed Analysis and Step 4 for Executing each generated case. Finally we will click on Analysis in Step 5 which will generate the report detailed analysis in the result pan. The detailed pan looks like. It generates various cases of T-SQL based on the original query. It applies various hints and available hints to the query and generate various execution plans of the query and displays them in the resultant. You can clearly notice that original query had a cost of 0.0841 and logical reads about 607 pages. Whereas various options which are just following it has different execution cost as well logical read. There are few cases where we have higher logical read and there are few cases where as we have very low logical read. If we pay attention the very next row to original query have Merge_Join_Query in description and have lowest execution cost value of 0.044 and have lowest Logical Reads of 29. This row contains the query which is the most optimal re-write of the original query. Let us double click over it. Here is the query: SELECT * FROM HumanResources.Employee e INNER JOIN HumanResources.EmployeeDepartmentHistory edh ON e.BusinessEntityID = edh.BusinessEntityID INNER JOIN HumanResources.Shift s ON edh.ShiftID = s.ShiftID OPTION (MERGE JOIN) If you notice above query have additional hint of Merge Join. With the help of this Merge Join query hint this query is now performing much better than before. The entire process takes less than 60 seconds. Please note that it the join hint Merge Join was optimal for this query but it is not necessary that the same hint will be helpful in all the queries. Additionally, if the workload or data pattern changes the query hint of merge join may be no more optimal join. In that case, we will have to redo the entire exercise once again. This is the reason I do not like to use hints in my queries and I discourage all of my users to use the same. However, if you look at this example, this is a great case where hints are optimizing the performance of the query. It is humanly not possible to test out various query hints and index options with the query to figure out which is the most optimal solution. Sometimes, we need to depend on the efficiency tools like DB Optimizer to guide us the way and select the best option from the suggestion provided. Let me know what you think of this article as well your experience with DB Optimizer. Please leave a comment. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Joins, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Guest Post by Sandip Pani – SQL Server Statistics Name and Index Creation

  - by pinaldave

  Sometimes something very small or a common error which we observe in daily life teaches us new things. SQL Server Expert Sandip Pani (winner of Joes 2 Pros Contests) has come across similar experience. Sandip has written a guest post on an error he faced in his daily work. Sandip is working for QSI Healthcare as an Associate Technical Specialist and have more than 5 years of total experience. He blogs at SQLcommitted.com and contribute in various forums. His social media hands are LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Once I faced following error when I was working on performance tuning project and attempt to create an Index. Mug 1913, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 The operation failed because an index or statistics with name ‘Ix_Table1_1′ already exists on table ‘Table1′. The immediate reaction to the error was that I might have created that index earlier and when I researched it further I found the same as the index was indeed created two times. This totally makes sense. This can happen due to many reasons for example if the user is careless and executes the same code two times as well, when he attempts to create index without checking if there was index already on the object. However when I paid attention to the details of the error, I realize that error message also talks about statistics along with the index. I got curious if the same would happen if I attempt to create indexes with the same name as statistics already created. There are a few other questions also prompted in my mind. I decided to do a small demonstration of the subject and build following demonstration script. The goal of my experiment is to find out the relation between statistics and the index. Statistics is one of the important input parameter for the optimizer during query optimization process. If the query is nontrivial then only optimizer uses statistics to perform a cost based optimization to select a plan. For accuracy and further learning I suggest to read MSDN. Now let’s find out the relationship between index and statistics. We will do the experiment in two parts. i) Creating Index ii) Creating Statistics We will be using the following T-SQL script for our example. IF (OBJECT_ID('Table1') IS NOT NULL) DROP TABLE Table1 GO CREATE TABLE Table1 (Col1 INT NOT NULL, Col2 VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL) GO We will be using following two queries to check if there are any index or statistics on our sample table Table1. -- Details of Index SELECT OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) AS TableName, Name AS IndexName, type_desc FROM sys.indexes WHERE OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) = 'table1' GO -- Details of Statistics SELECT OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) TableName, Name AS StatisticsName FROM sys.stats WHERE OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) = 'table1' GO When I ran above two scripts on the table right after it was created it did not give us any result which was expected. Now let us begin our test. 1) Create an index on the table Create following index on the table. CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX Ix_Table1_1 ON Table1(Col1) GO Now let us use above two scripts and see their results. We can see that when we created index at the same time it created statistics also with the same name. Before continuing to next set of demo – drop the table using following script and re-create the table using a script provided at the beginning of the table. DROP TABLE table1 GO 2) Create a statistic on the table Create following statistics on the table. CREATE STATISTICS Ix_table1_1 ON Table1 (Col1) GO Now let us use above two scripts and see their results. We can see that when we created statistics Index is not created. The behavior of this experiment is different from the earlier experiment. Clean up the table setup using the following script: DROP TABLE table1 GO Above two experiments teach us very valuable lesson that when we create indexes, SQL Server generates the index and statistics (with the same name as the index name) together. Now due to the reason if we have already had statistics with the same name but not the index, it is quite possible that we will face the error to create the index even though there is no index with the same name. A Quick Check To validate that if we create statistics first and then index after that with the same name, it will throw an error let us run following script in SSMS. Make sure to drop the table and clean up our sample table at the end of the experiment. -- Create sample table CREATE TABLE TestTable (Col1 INT NOT NULL, Col2 VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL) GO -- Create Statistics CREATE STATISTICS IX_TestTable_1 ON TestTable (Col1) GO -- Create Index CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_TestTable_1 ON TestTable(Col1) GO -- Check error /*Msg 1913, Level 16, State 1, Line 2 The operation failed because an index or statistics with name 'IX_TestTable_1' already exists on table 'TestTable'. */ -- Clean up DROP TABLE TestTable GO While creating index it will throw the following error as statistics with the same name is already created. In simple words – when we create index the name of the index should be different from any of the existing indexes and statistics. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Error Messages, SQL Index, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: SQL Statistics

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