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• Integrating NetBeans for Raspberry Pi Java Development

  - by speakjava

  Raspberry Pi IDE Java Development The Raspberry Pi is an incredible device for building embedded Java applications but, despite being able to run an IDE on the Pi it really pushes things to the limit.  It's much better to use a PC or laptop to develop the code and then deploy and test on the Pi.  What I thought I'd do in this blog entry was to run through the steps necessary to set up NetBeans on a PC for Java code development, with automatic deployment to the Raspberry Pi as part of the build process. I will assume that your starting point is a Raspberry Pi with an SD card that has one of the latest Raspbian images on it.  This is good because this now includes the JDK 7 as part of the distro, so no need to download and install a separate JDK.  I will also assume that you have installed the JDK and NetBeans on your PC.  These can be downloaded here. There are numerous approaches you can take to this including mounting the file system from the Raspberry Pi remotely on your development machine.  I tried this and I found that NetBeans got rather upset if the file system disappeared either through network interruption or the Raspberry Pi being turned off.  The following method uses copying over SSH, which will fail more gracefully if the Pi is not responding. Step 1: Enable SSH on the Raspberry Pi To run the Java applications you create you will need to start Java on the Raspberry Pi with the appropriate class name, classpath and parameters.  For non-JavaFX applications you can either do this from the Raspberry Pi desktop or, if you do not have a monitor connected through a remote command line.  To execute the remote command line you need to enable SSH (a secure shell login over the network) and connect using an application like PuTTY. You can enable SSH when you first boot the Raspberry Pi, as the raspi-config program runs automatically.  You can also run it at any time afterwards by running the command: sudo raspi-config This will bring up a menu of options.  Select '8 Advanced Options' and on the next screen select 'A$ SSH'.  Select 'Enable' and the task is complete. Step 2: Configure Raspberry Pi Networking By default, the Raspbian distribution configures the ethernet connection to use DHCP rather than a static IP address.  You can continue to use DHCP if you want, but to avoid having to potentially change settings whenever you reboot the Pi using a static IP address is simpler. To configure this on the Pi you need to edit the /etc/network/interfaces file.  You will need to do this as root using the sudo command, so something like sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces.  In this file you will see this line: iface eth0 inet dhcp This needs to be changed to the following: iface eth0 inet static     address 10.0.0.2     gateway 10.0.0.254     netmask 255.255.255.0 You will need to change the values in red to an appropriate IP address and to match the address of your gateway. Step 3: Create a Public-Private Key Pair On Your Development Machine How you do this will depend on which Operating system you are using: Mac OSX or Linux Run the command: ssh-keygen -t rsa Press ENTER/RETURN to accept the default destination for saving the key.  We do not need a passphrase so simply press ENTER/RETURN for an empty one and once more to confirm. The key will be created in the file .ssh/id_rsa.pub in your home directory.  Display the contents of this file using the cat command: cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub Open a window, SSH to the Raspberry Pi and login.  Change directory to .ssh and edit the authorized_keys file (don't worry if the file does not exist).  Copy and paste the contents of the id_rsa.pub file to the authorized_keys file and save it. Windows Since Windows is not a UNIX derivative operating system it does not include the necessary key generating software by default.  To generate the key I used puttygen.exe which is available from the same site that provides the PuTTY application, here. Download this and run it on your Windows machine.  Follow the instructions to generate a key.  I remove the key comment, but you can leave that if you want. Click "Save private key", confirm that you don't want to use a passphrase and select a filename and location for the key. Copy the public key from the part of the window marked, "Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file".  Use PuTTY to connect to the Raspberry Pi and login.  Change directory to .ssh and edit the authorized_keys file (don't worry if this does not exist).  Paste the key information at the end of this file and save it. Logout and then start PuTTY again.  This time we need to create a saved session using the private key.  Type in the IP address of the Raspberry Pi in the "Hostname (or IP address)" field and expand "SSH" under the "Connection" category.  Select "Auth" (see the screen shot below). Click the "Browse" button under "Private key file for authentication" and select the file you saved from puttygen. Go back to the "Session" category and enter a short name in the saved sessions field, as shown below.  Click "Save" to save the session. Step 4: Test The Configuration You should now have the ability to use scp (Mac/Linux) or pscp.exe (Windows) to copy files from your development machine to the Raspberry Pi without needing to authenticate by typing in a password (so we can automate the process in NetBeans).  It's a good idea to test this using something like: scp /tmp/foo [email protected]:/tmp on Linux or Mac or pscp.exe foo pi@raspi:/tmp on Windows (Note that we use the saved configuration name instead of the IP address or hostname so the public key is picked up). pscp.exe is another tool available from the creators of PuTTY. Step 5: Configure the NetBeans Build Script Start NetBeans and create a new project (or open an existing one that you want to deploy automatically to the Raspberry Pi). Select the Files tab in the explorer window and expand your project.  You will see a build.xml file.  Double click this to edit it. This file will mostly be comments.  At the end (but within the </project> tag) add the XML for <target name="-post-jar">, shown below Here's the code again in case you want to use cut-and-paste: <target name="-post-jar">   <echo level="info" message="Copying dist directory to remote Pi"/>   <exec executable="scp" dir="${basedir}">     <arg line="-r"/>     <arg value="dist"/>     <arg value="[email protected]:NetBeans/CopyTest"/>   </exec>  </target> For Windows it will be slightly different: <target name="-post-jar">   <echo level="info" message="Copying dist directory to remote Pi"/>   <exec executable="C:\pi\putty\pscp.exe" dir="${basedir}">     <arg line="-r"/>     <arg value="dist"/>     <arg value="pi@raspi:NetBeans/CopyTest"/>   </exec> </target> You will also need to ensure that pscp.exe is in your PATH (or specify a fully qualified pathname). From now on when you clean and build the project the dist directory will automatically be copied to the Raspberry Pi ready for testing.

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• Adding an Admin user to an ASP.NET MVC 4 application using a single drop-in file

  - by Jon Galloway

  I'm working on an ASP.NET MVC 4 tutorial and wanted to set it up so just dropping a file in App_Start would create a user named "Owner" and assign them to the "Administrator" role (more explanation at the end if you're interested). There are reasons why this wouldn't fit into most application scenarios: It's not efficient, as it checks for (and creates, if necessary) the user every time the app starts up The username, password, and role name are hardcoded in the app (although they could be pulled from config) Automatically creating an administrative account in code (without user interaction) could lead to obvious security issues if the user isn't informed However, with some modifications it might be more broadly useful - e.g. creating a test user with limited privileges, ensuring a required account isn't accidentally deleted, or - as in my case - setting up an account for demonstration or tutorial purposes. Challenge #1: Running on startup without requiring the user to install or configure anything I wanted to see if this could be done just by having the user drop a file into the App_Start folder and go. No copying code into Global.asax.cs, no installing addition NuGet packages, etc. That may not be the best approach - perhaps a NuGet package with a dependency on WebActivator would be better - but I wanted to see if this was possible and see if it offered the best experience. Fortunately ASP.NET 4 and later provide a PreApplicationStartMethod attribute which allows you to register a method which will run when the application starts up. You drop this attribute in your application and give it two parameters: a method name and the type that contains it. I created a static class named PreApplicationTasks with a static method named, then dropped this attribute in it: [assembly: PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(PreApplicationTasks), "Initializer")] That's it. One small gotcha: the namespace can be a problem with assembly attributes. I decided my class didn't need a namespace. Challenge #2: Only one PreApplicationStartMethod per assembly In .NET 4, the PreApplicationStartMethod is marked as AllMultiple=false, so you can only have one PreApplicationStartMethod per assembly. This was fixed in .NET 4.5, as noted by Jon Skeet, so you can have as many PreApplicationStartMethods as you want (allowing you to keep your users waiting for the application to start indefinitely!). The WebActivator NuGet package solves the multiple instance problem if you're in .NET 4 - it registers as a PreApplicationStartMethod, then calls any methods you've indicated using [assembly: WebActivator.PreApplicationStartMethod(type, method)]. David Ebbo blogged about that here:  Light up your NuGets with startup code and WebActivator. In my scenario (bootstrapping a beginner level tutorial) I decided not to worry about this and stick with PreApplicationStartMethod. Challenge #3: PreApplicationStartMethod kicks in before configuration has been read This is by design, as Phil explains. It allows you to make changes that need to happen very early in the pipeline, well before Application_Start. That's fine in some cases, but it caused me problems when trying to add users, since the Membership Provider configuration hadn't yet been read - I got an exception stating that "Default Membership Provider could not be found." The solution here is to run code that requires configuration in a PostApplicationStart method. But how to do that? Challenge #4: Getting PostApplicationStartMethod without requiring WebActivator The WebActivator NuGet package, among other things, provides a PostApplicationStartMethod attribute. That's generally how I'd recommend running code that needs to happen after Application_Start: [assembly: WebActivator.PostApplicationStartMethod(typeof(TestLibrary.MyStartupCode), "CallMeAfterAppStart")] This works well, but I wanted to see if this would be possible without WebActivator. Hmm. Well, wait a minute - WebActivator works in .NET 4, so clearly it's registering and calling PostApplicationStartup tasks somehow. Off to the source code! Sure enough, there's even a handy comment in ActivationManager.cs which shows where PostApplicationStartup tasks are being registered: public static void Run() { if (!_hasInited) { RunPreStartMethods(); // Register our module to handle any Post Start methods. But outside of ASP.NET, just run them now if (HostingEnvironment.IsHosted) { Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper.DynamicModuleUtility.RegisterModule(typeof(StartMethodCallingModule)); } else { RunPostStartMethods(); } _hasInited = true; } } Excellent. Hey, that DynamicModuleUtility seems familiar... Sure enough, K. Scott Allen mentioned it on his blog last year. This is really slick - a PreApplicationStartMethod can register a new HttpModule in code. Modules are run right after application startup, so that's a perfect time to do any startup stuff that requires configuration to be read. As K. Scott says, it's this easy: using System; using System.Web; using Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper; [assembly:PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(MyAppStart), "Start")] public class CoolModule : IHttpModule { // implementation not important // imagine something cool here } public static class MyAppStart { public static void Start() { DynamicModuleUtility.RegisterModule(typeof(CoolModule)); } } Challenge #5: Cooperating with SimpleMembership The ASP.NET MVC Internet template includes SimpleMembership. SimpleMembership is a big improvement over traditional ASP.NET Membership. For one thing, rather than forcing a database schema, it can work with your database schema. In the MVC 4 Internet template case, it uses Entity Framework Code First to define the user model. SimpleMembership bootstrap includes a call to InitializeDatabaseConnection, and I want to play nice with that. There's a new [InitializeSimpleMembership] attribute on the AccountController, which calls \Filters\InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute.cs::OnActionExecuting(). That comment in that method that says "Ensure ASP.NET Simple Membership is initialized only once per app start" which sounds like good advice. I figured the best thing would be to call that directly: new Mvc4SampleApplication.Filters.InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute().OnActionExecuting(null); I'm not 100% happy with this - in fact, it's my least favorite part of this solution. There are two problems - first, directly calling a method on a filter, while legal, seems odd. Worse, though, the Filter lives in the application's namespace, which means that this code no longer works well as a generic drop-in. The simplest workaround would be to duplicate the relevant SimpleMembership initialization code into my startup code, but I'd rather not. I'm interested in your suggestions here. Challenge #6: Module Init methods are called more than once When debugging, I noticed (and remembered) that the Init method may be called more than once per page request - it's run once per instance in the app pool, and an individual page request can cause multiple resource requests to the server. While SimpleMembership does have internal checks to prevent duplicate user or role entries, I'd rather not cause or handle those exceptions. So here's the standard single-use lock in the Module's init method: void IHttpModule.Init(HttpApplication context) { lock (lockObject) { if (!initialized) { //Do stuff } initialized = true; } } Putting it all together With all of that out of the way, here's the code I came up with: using Mvc4SampleApplication.Filters; using System.Web; using System.Web.Security; using WebMatrix.WebData; [assembly: PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(PreApplicationTasks), "Initializer")] public static class PreApplicationTasks { public static void Initializer() { Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper.DynamicModuleUtility .RegisterModule(typeof(UserInitializationModule)); } } public class UserInitializationModule : IHttpModule { private static bool initialized; private static object lockObject = new object(); private const string _username = "Owner"; private const string _password = "p@ssword123"; private const string _role = "Administrator"; void IHttpModule.Init(HttpApplication context) { lock (lockObject) { if (!initialized) { new InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute().OnActionExecuting(null); if (!WebSecurity.UserExists(_username)) WebSecurity.CreateUserAndAccount(_username, _password); if (!Roles.RoleExists(_role)) Roles.CreateRole(_role); if (!Roles.IsUserInRole(_username, _role)) Roles.AddUserToRole(_username, _role); } initialized = true; } } void IHttpModule.Dispose() { } } The Verdict: Is this a good thing? Maybe. I think you'll agree that the journey was undoubtedly worthwhile, as it took us through some of the finer points of hooking into application startup, integrating with membership, and understanding why the WebActivator NuGet package is so useful Will I use this in the tutorial? I'm leaning towards no - I think a NuGet package with a dependency on WebActivator might work better: It's a little more clear what's going on Installing a NuGet package might be a little less error prone than copying a file A novice user could uninstall the package when complete It's a good introduction to NuGet, which is a good thing for beginners to see This code either requires either duplicating a little code from that filter or modifying the file to use the namespace Honestly I'm undecided at this point, but I'm glad that I can weigh the options. If you're interested: Why are you doing this? I'm updating the MVC Music Store tutorial to ASP.NET MVC 4, taking advantage of a lot of new ASP.NET MVC 4 features and trying to simplify areas that are giving people trouble. One change that addresses both needs us using the new OAuth support for membership as much as possible - it's a great new feature from an application perspective, and we get a fair amount of beginners struggling with setting up membership on a variety of database and development setups, which is a distraction from the focus of the tutorial - learning ASP.NET MVC. Side note: Thanks to some great help from Rick Anderson, we had a draft of the tutorial that was looking pretty good earlier this summer, but there were enough changes in ASP.NET MVC 4 all the way up to RTM that there's still some work to be done. It's high priority and should be out very soon. The one issue I ran into with OAuth is that we still need an Administrative user who can edit the store's inventory. I thought about a number of solutions for that - making the first user to register the admin, or the first user to use the username "Administrator" is assigned to the Administrator role - but they both ended up requiring extra code; also, I worried that people would use that code without understanding it or thinking about whether it was a good fit.

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• SQL Server Split() Function

  - by HighAltitudeCoder

  Title goes here   Ever wanted a dbo.Split() function, but not had the time to debug it completely?  Let me guess - you are probably working on a stored procedure with 50 or more parameters; two or three of them are parameters of differing types, while the other 47 or so all of the same type (id1, id2, id3, id4, id5...).  Worse, you've found several other similar stored procedures with the ONLY DIFFERENCE being the number of like parameters taped to the end of the parameter list. If this is the situation you find yourself in now, you may be wondering, "why am I working with three different copies of what is basically the same stored procedure, and why am I having to maintain changes in three different places?  Can't I have one stored procedure that accomplishes the job of all three? My answer to you: YES!  Here is the Split() function I've created.    /******************************************************************************                                       Split.sql   ******************************************************************************/ /******************************************************************************   Split a delimited string into sub-components and return them as a table.   Parameter 1: Input string which is to be split into parts. Parameter 2: Delimiter which determines the split points in input string. Works with space or spaces as delimiter. Split() is apostrophe-safe.   SYNTAX: SELECT * FROM Split('Dvorak,Debussy,Chopin,Holst', ',') SELECT * FROM Split('Denver|Seattle|San Diego|New York', '|') SELECT * FROM Split('Denver is the super-awesomest city of them all.', ' ')   ******************************************************************************/ USE AdventureWorks GO   IF EXISTS       (SELECT *       FROM sysobjects       WHERE xtype = 'TF'       AND name = 'Split'       ) BEGIN       DROP FUNCTION Split END GO   CREATE FUNCTION Split (       @InputString                  VARCHAR(8000),       @Delimiter                    VARCHAR(50) )   RETURNS @Items TABLE (       Item                          VARCHAR(8000) )   AS BEGIN       IF @Delimiter = ' '       BEGIN             SET @Delimiter = ','             SET @InputString = REPLACE(@InputString, ' ', @Delimiter)       END         IF (@Delimiter IS NULL OR @Delimiter = '')             SET @Delimiter = ','   --INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@Delimiter) -- Diagnostic --INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@InputString) -- Diagnostic         DECLARE @Item                 VARCHAR(8000)       DECLARE @ItemList       VARCHAR(8000)       DECLARE @DelimIndex     INT         SET @ItemList = @InputString       SET @DelimIndex = CHARINDEX(@Delimiter, @ItemList, 0)       WHILE (@DelimIndex != 0)       BEGIN             SET @Item = SUBSTRING(@ItemList, 0, @DelimIndex)             INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@Item)               -- Set @ItemList = @ItemList minus one less item             SET @ItemList = SUBSTRING(@ItemList, @DelimIndex+1, LEN(@ItemList)-@DelimIndex)             SET @DelimIndex = CHARINDEX(@Delimiter, @ItemList, 0)       END -- End WHILE         IF @Item IS NOT NULL -- At least one delimiter was encountered in @InputString       BEGIN             SET @Item = @ItemList             INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@Item)       END         -- No delimiters were encountered in @InputString, so just return @InputString       ELSE INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@InputString)         RETURN   END -- End Function GO   ---- Set Permissions --GRANT SELECT ON Split TO UserRole1 --GRANT SELECT ON Split TO UserRole2 --GO   The syntax is basically as follows: SELECT <fields> FROM Table 1 JOIN Table 2 ON ... JOIN Table 3 ON ... WHERE LOGICAL CONDITION A AND LOGICAL CONDITION B AND LOGICAL CONDITION C AND TABLE2.Id IN (SELECT * FROM Split(@IdList, ',')) @IdList is a parameter passed into the stored procedure, and the comma (',') is the delimiter you have chosen to split the parameter list on. You can also use it like this: SELECT <fields> FROM Table 1 JOIN Table 2 ON ... JOIN Table 3 ON ... WHERE LOGICAL CONDITION A AND LOGICAL CONDITION B AND LOGICAL CONDITION C HAVING COUNT(SELECT * FROM Split(@IdList, ',') Similarly, it can be used in other aggregate functions at run-time: SELECT MIN(SELECT * FROM Split(@IdList, ','), <fields> FROM Table 1 JOIN Table 2 ON ... JOIN Table 3 ON ... WHERE LOGICAL CONDITION A AND LOGICAL CONDITION B AND LOGICAL CONDITION C GROUP BY <fields> Now that I've (hopefully effectively) explained the benefits to using this function and implementing it in one or more of your database objects, let me warn you of a caveat that you are likely to encounter.  You may have a team member who waits until the right moment to ask you a pointed question: "Doesn't this function just do the same thing as using the IN function?  Why didn't you just use that instead?  In other words, why bother with this function?" What's happening is, one or more team members has failed to understand the reason for implementing this kind of function in the first place.  (Note: this is THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF THIS POST). Allow me to outline a few pros to implementing this function, so you may effectively parry this question.  Touche. 1) Code consolidation.  You don't have to maintain what is basically the same code and logic, but with varying numbers of the same parameter in several SQL objects.  I'm not going to go into the cons related to using this function, because the afore mentioned team member is probably more than adept at pointing these out.  Remember, the real positive contribution is ou are decreasing the liklihood that your team fails to update all (x) duplicate copies of what are basically the same stored procedure, and so on...  This is the classic downside to duplicate code.  It is a virus, and you should kill it. You might be better off rejecting your team member's question, and responding with your own: "Would you rather maintain the same logic in multiple different stored procedures, and hope that the team doesn't forget to always update all of them at the same time?".  In his head, he might be thinking "yes, I would like to maintain several different copies of the same stored procedure", although you probably will not get such a direct response.  2) Added flexibility - you can use the Split function elsewhere, and for splitting your data in different ways.  Plus, you can use any kind of delimiter you wish.  How can you know today the ways in which you might want to examine your data tomorrow?  Segue to my next point. 3) Because the function takes a delimiter parameter, you can split the data in any number of ways.  This greatly increases the utility of such a function and enables your team to work with the data in a variety of different ways in the future.  You can split on a single char, symbol, word, or group of words.  You can split on spaces.  (The list goes on... test it out). Finally, you can dynamically define the behavior of a stored procedure (or other SQL object) at run time, through the use of this function.  Rather than have several objects that accomplish almost the same thing, why not have only one instead?

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• Move penetrating OBB out of another OBB to resolve collision

  - by Milo

  I'm working on collision resolution for my game. I just need a good way to get an object out of another object if it gets stuck. In this case a car. Here is a typical scenario. The red car is in the green object. How do I correctly get it out so the car can slide along the edge of the object as it should. I tried: if(buildings.size() > 0) { Entity e = buildings.get(0); Vector2D vel = new Vector2D(); vel.x = vehicle.getVelocity().x; vel.y = vehicle.getVelocity().y; vel.normalize(); while(vehicle.getRect().overlaps(e.getRect())) { vehicle.setCenter(vehicle.getCenterX() - vel.x * 0.1f, vehicle.getCenterY() - vel.y * 0.1f); } colided = true; } But that does not work too well. Is there some sort of vector I could calculate to use as the vector to move the car away from the object? Thanks Here is my OBB2D class: public class OBB2D { // Corners of the box, where 0 is the lower left. private Vector2D corner[] = new Vector2D[4]; private Vector2D center = new Vector2D(); private Vector2D extents = new Vector2D(); private RectF boundingRect = new RectF(); private float angle; //Two edges of the box extended away from corner[0]. private Vector2D axis[] = new Vector2D[2]; private double origin[] = new double[2]; public OBB2D(Vector2D center, float w, float h, float angle) { set(center,w,h,angle); } public OBB2D(float left, float top, float width, float height) { set(new Vector2D(left + (width / 2), top + (height / 2)),width,height,0.0f); } public void set(Vector2D center,float w, float h,float angle) { Vector2D X = new Vector2D( (float)Math.cos(angle), (float)Math.sin(angle)); Vector2D Y = new Vector2D((float)-Math.sin(angle), (float)Math.cos(angle)); X = X.multiply( w / 2); Y = Y.multiply( h / 2); corner[0] = center.subtract(X).subtract(Y); corner[1] = center.add(X).subtract(Y); corner[2] = center.add(X).add(Y); corner[3] = center.subtract(X).add(Y); computeAxes(); extents.x = w / 2; extents.y = h / 2; computeDimensions(center,angle); } private void computeDimensions(Vector2D center,float angle) { this.center.x = center.x; this.center.y = center.y; this.angle = angle; boundingRect.left = Math.min(Math.min(corner[0].x, corner[3].x), Math.min(corner[1].x, corner[2].x)); boundingRect.top = Math.min(Math.min(corner[0].y, corner[1].y),Math.min(corner[2].y, corner[3].y)); boundingRect.right = Math.max(Math.max(corner[1].x, corner[2].x), Math.max(corner[0].x, corner[3].x)); boundingRect.bottom = Math.max(Math.max(corner[2].y, corner[3].y),Math.max(corner[0].y, corner[1].y)); } public void set(RectF rect) { set(new Vector2D(rect.centerX(),rect.centerY()),rect.width(),rect.height(),0.0f); } // Returns true if other overlaps one dimension of this. private boolean overlaps1Way(OBB2D other) { for (int a = 0; a < axis.length; ++a) { double t = other.corner[0].dot(axis[a]); // Find the extent of box 2 on axis a double tMin = t; double tMax = t; for (int c = 1; c < corner.length; ++c) { t = other.corner[c].dot(axis[a]); if (t < tMin) { tMin = t; } else if (t > tMax) { tMax = t; } } // We have to subtract off the origin // See if [tMin, tMax] intersects [0, 1] if ((tMin > 1 + origin[a]) || (tMax < origin[a])) { // There was no intersection along this dimension; // the boxes cannot possibly overlap. return false; } } // There was no dimension along which there is no intersection. // Therefore the boxes overlap. return true; } //Updates the axes after the corners move. Assumes the //corners actually form a rectangle. private void computeAxes() { axis[0] = corner[1].subtract(corner[0]); axis[1] = corner[3].subtract(corner[0]); // Make the length of each axis 1/edge length so we know any // dot product must be less than 1 to fall within the edge. for (int a = 0; a < axis.length; ++a) { axis[a] = axis[a].divide((axis[a].length() * axis[a].length())); origin[a] = corner[0].dot(axis[a]); } } public void moveTo(Vector2D center) { Vector2D centroid = (corner[0].add(corner[1]).add(corner[2]).add(corner[3])).divide(4.0f); Vector2D translation = center.subtract(centroid); for (int c = 0; c < 4; ++c) { corner[c] = corner[c].add(translation); } computeAxes(); computeDimensions(center,angle); } // Returns true if the intersection of the boxes is non-empty. public boolean overlaps(OBB2D other) { if(right() < other.left()) { return false; } if(bottom() < other.top()) { return false; } if(left() > other.right()) { return false; } if(top() > other.bottom()) { return false; } if(other.getAngle() == 0.0f && getAngle() == 0.0f) { return true; } return overlaps1Way(other) && other.overlaps1Way(this); } public Vector2D getCenter() { return center; } public float getWidth() { return extents.x * 2; } public float getHeight() { return extents.y * 2; } public void setAngle(float angle) { set(center,getWidth(),getHeight(),angle); } public float getAngle() { return angle; } public void setSize(float w,float h) { set(center,w,h,angle); } public float left() { return boundingRect.left; } public float right() { return boundingRect.right; } public float bottom() { return boundingRect.bottom; } public float top() { return boundingRect.top; } public RectF getBoundingRect() { return boundingRect; } public boolean overlaps(float left, float top, float right, float bottom) { if(right() < left) { return false; } if(bottom() < top) { return false; } if(left() > right) { return false; } if(top() > bottom) { return false; } return true; } };

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Fun With Enum Methods

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again lets dive into the Little Wonders of .NET, those small things in the .NET languages and BCL classes that make development easier by increasing readability, maintainability, and/or performance. So probably every one of us has used an enumerated type at one time or another in a C# program.  The enumerated types we create are a great way to represent that a value can be one of a set of discrete values (or a combination of those values in the case of bit flags). But the power of enum types go far beyond simple assignment and comparison, there are many methods in the Enum class (that all enum types “inherit” from) that can give you even more power when dealing with them. IsDefined() – check if a given value exists in the enum Are you reading a value for an enum from a data source, but are unsure if it is actually a valid value or not?  Casting won’t tell you this, and Parse() isn’t guaranteed to balk either if you give it an int or a combination of flags.  So what can we do? Let’s assume we have a small enum like this for result codes we want to return back from our business logic layer: 1: public enum ResultCode 2: { 3: Success, 4: Warning, 5: Error 6: } In this enum, Success will be zero (unless given another value explicitly), Warning will be one, and Error will be two. So what happens if we have code like this where perhaps we’re getting the result code from another data source (could be database, could be web service, etc)? 1: public ResultCode PerformAction() 2: { 3: // set up and call some method that returns an int. 4: int result = ResultCodeFromDataSource(); 5:  6: // this will suceed even if result is < 0 or > 2. 7: return (ResultCode) result; 8: } So what happens if result is –1 or 4?  Well, the cast does not fail, so what we end up with would be an instance of a ResultCode that would have a value that’s outside of the bounds of the enum constants we defined. This means if you had a block of code like: 1: switch (result) 2: { 3: case ResultType.Success: 4: // do success stuff 5: break; 6:  7: case ResultType.Warning: 8: // do warning stuff 9: break; 10:  11: case ResultType.Error: 12: // do error stuff 13: break; 14: } That you would hit none of these blocks (which is a good argument for always having a default in a switch by the way). So what can you do?  Well, there is a handy static method called IsDefined() on the Enum class which will tell you if an enum value is defined.  1: public ResultCode PerformAction() 2: { 3: int result = ResultCodeFromDataSource(); 4:  5: if (!Enum.IsDefined(typeof(ResultCode), result)) 6: { 7: throw new InvalidOperationException("Enum out of range."); 8: } 9:  10: return (ResultCode) result; 11: } In fact, this is often recommended after you Parse() or cast a value to an enum as there are ways for values to get past these methods that may not be defined. If you don’t like the syntax of passing in the type of the enum, you could clean it up a bit by creating an extension method instead that would allow you to call IsDefined() off any isntance of the enum: 1: public static class EnumExtensions 2: { 3: // helper method that tells you if an enum value is defined for it's enumeration 4: public static bool IsDefined(this Enum value) 5: { 6: return Enum.IsDefined(value.GetType(), value); 7: } 8: }   HasFlag() – an easier way to see if a bit (or bits) are set Most of us who came from the land of C programming have had to deal extensively with bit flags many times in our lives.  As such, using bit flags may be almost second nature (for a quick refresher on bit flags in enum types see one of my old posts here). However, in higher-level languages like C#, the need to manipulate individual bit flags is somewhat diminished, and the code to check for bit flag enum values may be obvious to an advanced developer but cryptic to a novice developer. For example, let’s say you have an enum for a messaging platform that contains bit flags: 1: // usually, we pluralize flags enum type names 2: [Flags] 3: public enum MessagingOptions 4: { 5: None = 0, 6: Buffered = 0x01, 7: Persistent = 0x02, 8: Durable = 0x04, 9: Broadcast = 0x08 10: } We can combine these bit flags using the bitwise OR operator (the ‘|’ pipe character): 1: // combine bit flags using 2: var myMessenger = new Messenger(MessagingOptions.Buffered | MessagingOptions.Broadcast); Now, if we wanted to check the flags, we’d have to test then using the bit-wise AND operator (the ‘&’ character): 1: if ((options & MessagingOptions.Buffered) == MessagingOptions.Buffered) 2: { 3: // do code to set up buffering... 4: // ... 5: } While the ‘|’ for combining flags is easy enough to read for advanced developers, the ‘&’ test tends to be easy for novice developers to get wrong.  First of all you have to AND the flag combination with the value, and then typically you should test against the flag combination itself (and not just for a non-zero)!  This is because the flag combination you are testing with may combine multiple bits, in which case if only one bit is set, the result will be non-zero but not necessarily all desired bits! Thanks goodness in .NET 4.0 they gave us the HasFlag() method.  This method can be called from an enum instance to test to see if a flag is set, and best of all you can avoid writing the bit wise logic yourself.  Not to mention it will be more readable to a novice developer as well: 1: if (options.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Buffered)) 2: { 3: // do code to set up buffering... 4: // ... 5: } It is much more concise and unambiguous, thus increasing your maintainability and readability. It would be nice to have a corresponding SetFlag() method, but unfortunately generic types don’t allow you to specialize on Enum, which makes it a bit more difficult.  It can be done but you have to do some conversions to numeric and then back to the enum which makes it less of a payoff than having the HasFlag() method.  But if you want to create it for symmetry, it would look something like this: 1: public static T SetFlag<T>(this Enum value, T flags) 2: { 3: if (!value.GetType().IsEquivalentTo(typeof(T))) 4: { 5: throw new ArgumentException("Enum value and flags types don't match."); 6: } 7:  8: // yes this is ugly, but unfortunately we need to use an intermediate boxing cast 9: return (T)Enum.ToObject(typeof (T), Convert.ToUInt64(value) | Convert.ToUInt64(flags)); 10: } Note that since the enum types are value types, we need to assign the result to something (much like string.Trim()).  Also, you could chain several SetFlag() operations together or create one that takes a variable arg list if desired. Parse() and ToString() – transitioning from string to enum and back Sometimes, you may want to be able to parse an enum from a string or convert it to a string - Enum has methods built in to let you do this.  Now, many may already know this, but may not appreciate how much power are in these two methods. For example, if you want to parse a string as an enum, it’s easy and works just like you’d expect from the numeric types: 1: string optionsString = "Persistent"; 2:  3: // can use Enum.Parse, which throws if finds something it doesn't like... 4: var result = (MessagingOptions)Enum.Parse(typeof (MessagingOptions), optionsString); 5:  6: if (result == MessagingOptions.Persistent) 7: { 8: Console.WriteLine("It worked!"); 9: } Note that Enum.Parse() will throw if it finds a value it doesn’t like.  But the values it likes are fairly flexible!  You can pass in a single value, or a comma separated list of values for flags and it will parse them all and set all bits: 1: // for string values, can have one, or comma separated. 2: string optionsString = "Persistent, Buffered"; 3:  4: var result = (MessagingOptions)Enum.Parse(typeof (MessagingOptions), optionsString); 5:  6: if (result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Persistent) && result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Buffered)) 7: { 8: Console.WriteLine("It worked!"); 9: } Or you can parse in a string containing a number that represents a single value or combination of values to set: 1: // 3 is the combination of Buffered (0x01) and Persistent (0x02) 2: var optionsString = "3"; 3:  4: var result = (MessagingOptions) Enum.Parse(typeof (MessagingOptions), optionsString); 5:  6: if (result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Persistent) && result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Buffered)) 7: { 8: Console.WriteLine("It worked again!"); 9: } And, if you really aren’t sure if the parse will work, and don’t want to handle an exception, you can use TryParse() instead: 1: string optionsString = "Persistent, Buffered"; 2: MessagingOptions result; 3:  4: // try parse returns true if successful, and takes an out parm for the result 5: if (Enum.TryParse(optionsString, out result)) 6: { 7: if (result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Persistent) && result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Buffered)) 8: { 9: Console.WriteLine("It worked!"); 10: } 11: } So we covered parsing a string to an enum, what about reversing that and converting an enum to a string?  The ToString() method is the obvious and most basic choice for most of us, but did you know you can pass a format string for enum types that dictate how they are written as a string?: 1: MessagingOptions value = MessagingOptions.Buffered | MessagingOptions.Persistent; 2:  3: // general format, which is the default, 4: Console.WriteLine("Default : " + value); 5: Console.WriteLine("G (default): " + value.ToString("G")); 6:  7: // Flags format, even if type does not have Flags attribute. 8: Console.WriteLine("F (flags) : " + value.ToString("F")); 9:  10: // integer format, value as number. 11: Console.WriteLine("D (num) : " + value.ToString("D")); 12:  13: // hex format, value as hex 14: Console.WriteLine("X (hex) : " + value.ToString("X")); Which displays: 1: Default : Buffered, Persistent 2: G (default): Buffered, Persistent 3: F (flags) : Buffered, Persistent 4: D (num) : 3 5: X (hex) : 00000003 Now, you may not really see a difference here between G and F because I used a [Flags] enum, the difference is that the “F” option treats the enum as if it were flags even if the [Flags] attribute is not present.  Let’s take a non-flags enum like the ResultCode used earlier: 1: // yes, we can do this even if it is not [Flags] enum. 2: ResultCode value = ResultCode.Warning | ResultCode.Error; And if we run that through the same formats again we get: 1: Default : 3 2: G (default): 3 3: F (flags) : Warning, Error 4: D (num) : 3 5: X (hex) : 00000003 Notice that since we had multiple values combined, but it was not a [Flags] marked enum, the G and default format gave us a number instead of a value name.  This is because the value was not a valid single-value constant of the enum.  However, using the F flags format string, it broke out the value into its component flags even though it wasn’t marked [Flags]. So, if you want to get an enum to display appropriately for whether or not it has the [Flags] attribute, use G which is the default.  If you always want it to attempt to break down the flags, use F.  For numeric output, obviously D or  X are the best choice depending on whether you want decimal or hex. Summary Hopefully, you learned a couple of new tricks with using the Enum class today!  I’ll add more little wonders as I think of them and thanks for all the invaluable input!   Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Little Wonders,Enum,BlackRabbitCoder

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• MSCC: Purpose and benefits of Version Control Systems (VCS)

  Unfortunately, there was no monthly meetup during May. Which means that it was even more important and interesting to go forward with a great topic for this month. Earlier this year I already spoke to Nayar Joolfoo about doing a presentation on version control systems (VCS), and he gladly agreed since then. It was just about finding the right date for the action. Furthermore, it was also a great coincidence that Avinash Meetoo announced on social media networks that Knowledge 7 is about to have a new training on "Effective git" - which correlates to a book title Avinash is currently working on - all the best with your approach on this and reach out to our MSCC craftsmen for recessions. Once again a big Thank you to Orange Ebene Accelerator on providing the venue for us, and the MSCC members involved on securing the time slot for our event. Unfortunately, it's kind of tough to get an early confirmation for our meetups these days. I'll keep you posted on that one as there are some interesting and exciting options coming up soon. Okay, let's talk about the meeting and version control systems again. As usual, I'm going to put my first impression of the meetup: "Absolutely great topic, questions and discussions on version control systems, like git or VSO. I was also highly pleased by the number of first timers and female IT geeks. Hopefully, we will be able to keep this trend for future get-togethers." And I really have to emphasise the amount of fresh blood coming to our gathering. Also, during the initial phase it was surprising to see that exactly those first-timers, most of them students at various campuses here on the island, had absolutely no idea about version control systems. More about further down... Reactions of other attendees If I counted correctly, we had a total of 17 attendees this month, and I'd like to give you feedback from some of them: "Inspiring. Helped me understand more about GIT." -- Sean on event comments "Joined the meetup today with literally no idea what is a version control system. I have several reasons why I should be starting to use VCS as from NOW in my projects. Thanks Nayar, Jochen and other participants :)" -- Yudish on event comments "Was present today and I'm very satisfied.I was not aware if there was a such tool like git available. Thanks to those who contributed for this meetup.It was great. Learned a lot from this meetup!!" -- Leonardo on event comments "Seriously, I can see how it’s going to ease my task and help me save time. Gone are the issues with files backups.  And since I’ll be doing my dissertation this year, using Git would help me a lot for my backups and I’m grateful to Nayar for the great explanation." -- Swan-Iyah on MSCC meetup : Version Controls Hopefully, I'll be able to get some other sources - personal blogs preferred - on our meeting. Geeks, thank you so much for those encouraging comments. It's really great to experience that we, all members of the MSCC, are doing the right thing to get more IT information out, and to help each other to improve and evolve in our professional careers. Our agenda of the day Honestly, we had a bumpy start... First, I was battling a little bit with the movable room divider in order to maximize the space. I mean, we had 24 RSVPs and usually there might additional people coming along. Then, for what ever reason, we were facing power outages - actually twice in short periods. Not too good for the projector after all, but hey it went smooth for the rest of the time being. And last but not least... our first speaker Nayar got stuck somewhere on the road. ;-) Anyway, not a real show-stopper and we used the time until Nayar's arrival to introduce ourselves a little bit. It is always important for me to get to know the "newbies" a little bit, and as a result we had lots of students of university - first year, second year and recent graduates - among them. Surprisingly, none of them was ever in contact with version control systems at all. I mean, this is a shocking discovery! Similar to the ability of touch-typing I'd say that being able to use (and master) any kind of version control system is compulsory in any job in the IT industry. Seriously, I'm wondering what is being taught during the classes on the campus. All of them have to work on semester assessments or final projects, even in small teams of 2-4 people. That's the perfect occasion to get started with VCS. Already in this phase, we had great input from more experienced VCS users, like Sean, Avinash and myself. git - a modern approach to VCS - Nayar What a tour! Nayar gave us the full round of git from start to finish, even touching some more advanced techniques. First, he started to explain about the importance of version control systems as an essential tool for software developers, even working alone on a project, and the ability to have a kind of "time machine" that allows you to inspect and revert to a previous version of source code at any time. Then he showed how easy it is to install git on an Ubuntu based system but also mentioned that git is literally available for any operating system, like Windows, Mac OS X and of course other Linux distributions. Next, he showed us how to set the initial configuration values of user name and email address which simplifies the daily usage of the git client while working with your repositories. Then he initialised and added a new repository for some local development of a blogging software. All commands were done using the command line interface (CLI) so that they can be repeated on any system as reference. The syntax and the procedure is always the same, and Nayar clearly mentioned this to the attendees. Now, having a git repository in place it was about time to work on some "important" changes on the blogging software - just for the sake of demonstrating the ease of use and power of git. One interesting question came very early: "How many commands do we have to learn? It looks quite difficult at the moment" - Well, rest assured that during daily development circles you will need less than 10 git commands on a regular base: git add, commit, push, pull, checkout, and merge And Nayar demo'd all of them. Much to the delight of everyone he also showed gitk which is the git repository browser. It's an UI tool to display changes in a repository or a selected set of commits. This includes visualizing the commit graph, showing information related to each commit, and the files in the trees of each revision. Using gitk to display and browse information of a local git repository And last but not least, we took advantage of the internet connectivity and reached out to various online portals offering git hosting for free. Nayar showed us how to push the local repository into a remote system on github. Showing the web-based git browser and history handling, and then also explained and demo'd on how to connect to existing online repositories in order to get access to either your own source code or other people's open source projects. Next to github, we also spoke about bitbucket and gitlab as potential online platforms for your projects. Have a look at the conditions and details about their free service packages and what you can get additionally as a paying customer. Usually, you already get a lot of services for up to five users for free but there might be other important aspects that might have an impact on your decision. Anyways, moving git-based repositories between systems is a piece of cake, and changing online platforms is possible at any stage of your development. Visual Studio Online (VSO) - Jochen Well, Nayar literally covered all elements of working with git during his session, including the use of external online platforms. So, what would be the advantage of talking about Visual Studio Online (VSO)? First of all, VSO is "just another" online platform for hosting and managing git repositories on remote systems, equivalent to github, bitbucket, or any other web site. At the moment (of writing), Microsoft also provides a free package of up to five users / developers on a git repository but there is more in that package. Of course, it is related to software development on the Windows systems and the bonds are tightened towards the use of Visual Studio but out of experience you are absolutely not restricted to that. Connecting a Linux or Mac OS X machine with a git client or an integrated development environment (IDE) like Eclipse or Xcode works as smooth as expected. So, why should one opt in for VSO? Well, one of the main aspects that I would like to mention here is that VSO integrates the Application Life Cycle Methodology (ALM) of Microsoft in their platform. Meaning that you get agile project management with Backlogs, Sprints, Burn-down charts as well as the ability to track tasks, bug reports and work items next to collaborative team chats. It's the whole package of agile development you'll get. And, something I mentioned briefly during the begin of our meeting, VSO gives you the possibility of an automated continuous integrated (CI) process which builds and can run tests of your source code after each commit of changes. Having a proper CI strategy is also part of the Clean Code Developer practices - on Level Green actually -, and not only simplifies your life as a software developer but also reduces the sources of potential errors. Seamless integration and automated deployment between Microsoft Azure Web Sites and git repository But my favourite feature is the seamless continuous deployment to Microsoft Azure. Especially, while working on web projects it's absolutely astounishing that as soon as you commit your chances it just takes a couple of seconds until your modifications are deployed and available on your Azure-hosted web sites. Upcoming Events and networking Due to the adjusted times, everybody was kind of hungry and we didn't follow up on networking or upcoming events - very unfortunate to my opinion and this will have an impact on future planning of our meetups. Because I rather would like to see more conversations during and at the end of our meetings than everyone just packing their laptops, bags and accessories and rush off to grab some food. I was hoping to get some information regarding this year's Code Challenge - supposedly to be organised during July? Maybe someone could leave a comment on that - but I couldn't get any updates. Well, I'll keep digging... In case that you would like to get more into git and how to use it effectively, please check out Knowledge 7's upcoming course on "Effective git". Thanks Avinash for your vital input into today's conversation and I'm looking forward to get a grip on your book title very soon. My resume of the day Do not work in IT without any kind of version control system! Seriously, without a VCS in place you're doing it wrong. It's like driving a car without seat belts attached or riding your bike without safety helmet. You don't do that! End of discussion. ;-) Nowadays, having access to free (as in cost) tools to install on your machine and numerous online platforms to host your source code for free for up to five users it's a no-brainer to get yourself familiar with VCS. Today's sessions gave a good overview on how to start using git and how to connect to various remote services like github or VSO.

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• Using the BAM Interceptor with Continuation

  - by Charles Young

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/cyoung/archive/2014/06/02/using-the-bam-interceptor-with-continuation.aspxI’ve recently been resurrecting some code written several years ago that makes extensive use of the BAM Interceptor provided as part of BizTalk Server’s BAM event observation library.  In doing this, I noticed an issue with continuations.  Essentially, whenever I tried to configure one or more continuations for an activity, the BAM Interceptor failed to complete the activity correctly.   Careful inspection of my code confirmed that I was initializing and invoking the BAM interceptor correctly, so I was mystified.  However, I eventually found the problem.  It is a logical error in the BAM Interceptor code itself. The BAM Interceptor provides a useful mechanism for implementing dynamic tracking.  It supports configurable ‘track points’.  These are grouped into named ‘locations’.  BAM uses the term ‘step’ as a synonym for ‘location’.   Each track point defines a BAM action such as starting an activity, extracting a data item, enabling a continuation, etc.  Each step defines a collection of track points. Understanding Steps The BAM Interceptor provides an abstract model for handling configuration of steps.  It doesn’t, however, define any specific configuration mechanism (e.g., config files, SSO, etc.)  It is up to the developer to decide how to store, manage and retrieve configuration data.  At run time, this configuration is used to register track points which then drive the BAM Interceptor. The full semantics of a step are not immediately clear from Microsoft’s documentation.  They represent a point in a business activity where BAM tracking occurs.  They are named locations in the code.  What is less obvious is that they always represent either the full tracking work for a given activity or a discrete fragment of that work which commences with the start of a new activity or the continuation of an existing activity.  The BAM Interceptor enforces this by throwing an error if no ‘start new’ or ‘continue’ track point is registered for a named location. This constraint implies that each step must marked with an ‘end activity’ track point.  One of the peculiarities of BAM semantics is that when an activity is continued under a correlated ID, you must first mark the current activity as ‘ended’ in order to ensure the right housekeeping is done in the database.  If you re-start an ended activity under the same ID, you will leave the BAM import tables in an inconsistent state.  A step, therefore, always represents an entire unit of work for a given activity or continuation ID.  For activities with continuation, each unit of work is termed a ‘fragment’. Instance and Fragment State Internally, the BAM Interceptor maintains state data at two levels.  First, it represents the overall state of the activity using a ‘trace instance’ token.  This token contains the name and ID of the activity together with a couple of state flags.  The second level of state represents a ‘trace fragment’.   As we have seen, a fragment of an activity corresponds directly to the notion of a ‘step’.  It is the unit of work done at a named location, and it must be bounded by start and end, or continue and end, actions. When handling continuations, the BAM Interceptor differentiates between ‘root’ fragments and other fragments.  Very simply, a root fragment represents the start of an activity.  Other fragments represent continuations.  This is where the logic breaks down.  The BAM Interceptor loses state integrity for root fragments when continuations are defined. Initialization Microsoft’s BAM Interceptor code supports the initialization of BAM Interceptors from track point configuration data.  The process starts by populating an Activity Interceptor Configuration object with an array of track points.  These can belong to different steps (aka ‘locations’) and can be registered in any order.  Once it is populated with track points, the Activity Interceptor Configuration is used to initialise the BAM Interceptor.  The BAM Interceptor sets up a hash table of array lists.  Each step is represented by an array list, and each array list contains an ordered set of track points.  The BAM Interceptor represents track points as ‘executable’ components.  When the OnStep method of the BAM Interceptor is called for a given step, the corresponding list of track points is retrieved and each track point is executed in turn.  Each track point retrieves any required data using a call back mechanism and then serializes a BAM trace fragment object representing a specific action (e.g., start, update, enable continuation, stop, etc.).  The serialised trace fragment is then handed off to a BAM event stream (buffered or direct) which takes the appropriate action. The Root of the Problem The logic breaks down in the Activity Interceptor Configuration.  Each Activity Interceptor Configuration is initialised with an instance of a ‘trace instance’ token.  This provides the basic metadata for the activity as a whole.  It contains the activity name and ID together with state flags indicating if the activity ID is a root (i.e., not a continuation fragment) and if it is completed.  This single token is then shared by all trace actions for all steps registered with the Activity Interceptor Configuration. Each trace instance token is automatically initialised to represent a root fragment.  However, if you subsequently register a ‘continuation’ step with the Activity Interceptor Configuration, the ‘root’ flag is set to false at the point the ‘continue’ track point is registered for that step.   If you use a ‘reflector’ tool to inspect the code for the ActivityInterceptorConfiguration class, you can see the flag being set in one of the overloads of the RegisterContinue method.    This makes no sense.  The trace instance token is shared across all the track points registered with the Activity Interceptor Configuration.  The Activity Interceptor Configuration is designed to hold track points for multiple steps.  The ‘root’ flag is clearly meant to be initialised to ‘true’ for the preliminary root fragment and then subsequently set to false at the point that a continuation step is processed.  Instead, if the Activity Interceptor Configuration contains a continuation step, it is changed to ‘false’ before the root fragment is processed.  This is clearly an error in logic. The problem causes havoc when the BAM Interceptor is used with continuation.  Effectively the root step is no longer processed correctly, and the ultimate effect is that the continued activity never completes!   This has nothing to do with the root and the continuation being in the same process.  It is due to a fundamental mistake of setting the ‘root’ flag to false for a continuation before the root fragment is processed. The Workaround Fortunately, it is easy to work around the bug.  The trick is to ensure that you create a new Activity Interceptor Configuration object for each individual step.  This may mean filtering your configuration data to extract the track points for a single step or grouping the configured track points into individual steps and the creating a separate Activity Interceptor Configuration for each group.  In my case, the first approach was required.  Here is what the amended code looks like: // Because of a logic error in Microsoft's code, a separate ActivityInterceptorConfiguration must be used // for each location. The following code extracts only those track points for a given step name (location). var trackPointGroup = from ResolutionService.TrackPoint tp in bamActivity.TrackPoints                       where (string)tp.Location == bamStepName                       select tp; var bamActivityInterceptorConfig =     new Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.EventObservation.ActivityInterceptorConfiguration(activityName); foreach (var trackPoint in trackPointGroup) {     switch (trackPoint.Type)     {         case TrackPointType.Start:             bamActivityInterceptorConfig.RegisterStartNew(trackPoint.Location, trackPoint.ExtractionInfo);             break; etc… I’m using LINQ to filter a list of track points for those entries that correspond to a given step and then registering only those track points on a new instance of the ActivityInterceptorConfiguration class.   As soon as I re-wrote the code to do this, activities with continuations started to complete correctly.

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• Why version of chrome does not matter much more then firefox and firefox does not matter much as IE

  - by anirudha

  Everything not perfect. in software the software make and growth by user feedback like what user expected from the software and want in next version of software. In a chrome Event i hear about the Chromium. you can find some interesting things here Video 1 Video 2 come to the point. when i hear about some good website of india. many of them talking a little thing in common that. We are #1 because we not thing that we make a great application and deploy them and think that we finished own works preharps in a small days we make a small website deploy them and improve them always latter. what the point they all talking about:- the conclusion is that software make by user feedback. they tell that he not spent much time and wait for a long time when their project was finish and they launch their website. preharps they tell that they make a small website in a small time and launched them. make a research on them later and make them better later and website growth as they thing. if they are late then someone else can win even their project was much good them other. not more but a little story:-  before few month i hear about a great website who sold many of books daily i myself purchase some from them to track how they work and how they provided service. i not found any problem with their service. the service they provided is good but when i see their website i found that the mockup code was very badly designed. i am not know the matter how they growth because they used very other stuff who make their website slow. when i research something more i found that their is very hard to implement the website look like them. on their blog they writing about a mail they have. the clone of them make by many other but not goes good as well as they make. after few month later website is looking great. many thing they improved and make them better as  other thing. a another conclusion that same as another story that user feedback. well now come to the point. we talking about Chrome,firefox and IE. what thing is goes common that they all are browser. but something goes different that Chrome is a one of the best browser. from a month many of issue submitted to chrome that user found when they use them. so what is make this different the different is that when feedback goes to someone they take a action and think to make them better so improvement of chrome based on feedback user put using many things. secondly because it's goes open-source many of developer contribute them and make them real browser not real [tape] browser as like IE [a good example]. as you see in video they talking about silent update in chrome and futurecoming chromium. the thing they implement is too good. because by this thing user not worry about a new version. i myself never find a problem that you need to user new version as we found same problem in other application. Well think are great in chrome and now talking about Firefox. Firefox is a best option for development as well as chrome best for surfing the internet. in firefox many thing are great like plugin [ex: Firebug] , addons personas themes and many other thing and customization in firefox make them really a browser not like a joker [IE a good example]. well now come to IE. are IE really great no. someone from Microsoft can say that ha ha hi hi because they can't see the power of open-source. they thing that they make a software and they never need user feedback because they produced windows who really great for user because they used them. example :- before few month Microsoft shipped Windows live. when i use them that i found that their is no sense make for using this one software. suppose you need to write a post through Live writer. the old version are great i myself have no problem but in 2011 i found that they changed everything in user interface. so learn a new thing and spent sometime more to learn a new version whenever need are same and feature are same so why user spent a little time more to learn a lesson who they want to teach even their is no sense to learn them. the problem in 2011 Live not only of mine their are many other have same problem as mine and forget live 2011 after the see a badly design user interface. even they tell we maked in WPF yeah yeah WPF we make in .net. are you can say that what is the matter .net for user. the user have no problem to use WPF based application even you make them fool as we make them in WPF 2020 they are future technologies and we launch it 10 year before only for you yeah you dear customer of mine. yeah they thing WPF is best and thing to implement every software they make even they forget to make better user interface but they also remember to make them next version in WPF. the IE 9 Rc release on 10 febuary. but are they really cool. how much feedback they take and take action of them. their is no answer because they thing to launch a software they never thing what user want and off-course not care of user feedback. as we mention in Firefox and in chrome user feedback have a big matter because sound come from a public and user who use the software not only who make them software as IE 9 have. so feedback take a opportunities to make their software better and less hassel to use them in user hands not only in developer hands. so IE9 is not a good guys who still need of user if they really want a experience. well what Microsoft implemented in IE. i am not talking about that furthure more but i found in article last days[why not say reading a google blog]  yeah see them in http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-google-search.html Well their is nothing good for developer in IE9. the blah blah blah they can always said on MSDN and many other site they have. many from public talking about them because they never can see a good software outside Microsoft. they never talking about Firebug even in books they never show you that. well i know competitor never show you a stuff of competitor i have same issue from Yahoo. on a days i hear from newsletter from them they write a subline on the bottom that USE IE or Firefox to exerience better Web. i am agree with Firefox and i am not know they really talking about IE or joking but i never believe they forget to put chrome. well i know their is corporate rule everyone should follow first. so no problem yahoo i know the matter. well IE:- so what is IE and Why We should use IE. well their is no sense to use IE. the thing we expect from IE but never found that:- first thing is that as a developer we thing the customization as well as other browser have like in chrome have it's own customization and firefox is also great in this matter. but IE really for Web development. are you joking:- the thing they mention in their blog is that IE9 have a new developer tool who have three new panel or tabs. are this joke whenever Firefox and chrome have everyday a new plugin or great upgrade of old plugin they tell we add three new panel first is network second is blah third is blah. well nice joke you make all MSDN blogger i like the way you talking about IE.  even we know what matter the browser have. i thing whenever they make IE 6 they talking about IE as same as they talking today. Secondly their is no other tool to use with IE deveoper tool like Firebug is avilable in IE but not make by IE. firebug team themselves make them for IE. because many of developer thing to use firebug but can't use because they still goes mad about IE because day and night they only hear about tools maked by Microsoft. so no plugin [even very small developer tool] no customized no personas on themse. no update yeah why forget these topic come with us and share a little thing more. IE launch IE 6 after 7 after 8 and now 9 [even in future] but what they do. they do nothing on user feedback they still thing WPF is great because colors make user cool and they forget to implement other things as other already provide. Chrome and Firefox are come after IE. Mozilla firefox come in 2004 and chrome is late in 2008. even they are late they still focus on Developer and thing they feel first is that customization like developer tool , themese and perfsonas and many other great things. are they can find in IE even next i means 10 yeah IE10 never because they thing only making a software or force user to use new version of OS. i am confused that why not wait and force user to purchase windows 8 instead of 7. so IE have no customization even small developer tool i thing that they make a customizable interface like in firefox who configure by about:config. so thing is discussed about really not a point we thing to goes but now it's clear what is making no matter for version in Firefox and chrome. because chrome and firefox not wait for  a long time and explode a bomb to make publicity. they still work and make upgrade possible to user as soon as possible. [chrome never tell about they goes old they himself update them].so update comes soon in Firefox and in chrome but in IE their is a long time to wait and they make them without feedback. so IE really not for human and not really for us. whenver you found a bug in chrome and in firefox you report them and found that they are work in progressed and can be see in next version of firefox. but what you see whenever you see IE. you found that what the bug can found in IE whenver they not implemented same feature in IE. well IE 9 is next IE6 for developer. conclusion:-  after reading a whole post you find that i hate all thing about IE. why are i write a big post on a small pity software IE. why i open the poll of IE. are their anything in IE break my heart. are their is something goes wrong with me and with my IE9. are their is anything i got with IE9. why i write a big post. well as a developer play a trick that give sometime to chrome to make them better and some other to make firefox better and feel something you contribute really have a matter as a contribute you find some other and their thought on same software. some are great maybe some of them blah blah. but are their is true that outside Microsoft their is no good sollution can make because it's outside Microsoft. their is not true. the thing developer make not have matter even using Microsoft technologies or outside technologies of MS. so stop this i not want to talking some other things just stop it. i means their is no more blah i want to talking with you for IE.i still hate them and believe it is next IE6 for Web. Answers: if you still need a answer in lines that the answer is that IE late update as long as they can and also make force user to upgrade IE9 because they want to promote windows first then thing about IE and chrome and firefox not do that as same as IE. so IE is late and user forced software. in firefox and chrome upgrade come soon as soon as they possible. Thanks to give me a great time and red my blah on Blah i means IE9 Thanks again Anirudha

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• Mysql performance problem & Failed DIMM

  - by murdoch

  Hi I have a dedicated mysql database server which has been having some performance problems recently, under normal load the server will be running fine, then suddenly out of the blue the performance will fall off a cliff. The server isn't using the swap file and there is 12GB of RAM in the server, more than enough for its needs. After contacting my hosting comapnies support they have discovered that there is a failed 2GB DIMM in the server and have scheduled to replace it tomorow morning. My question is could a failed DIMM result in the performance problems I am seeing or is this just coincidence? My worry is that they will replace the ram tomorrow but the problems will persist and I will still be lost of explanations so I am just trying to think ahead. The reason I ask is that there is plenty of RAM in the server, more than required and simply missing 2GB should be a problem, so if this failed DIMM is causing these performance problems then the OS must be trying to access the failed DIMM and slowing down as a result. Does that sound like a credible explanation? This is what DELLs omreport program says about the RAM, notice one dimm is "Critical" Memory Information Health : Critical Memory Operating Mode Fail Over State : Inactive Memory Operating Mode Configuration : Optimizer Attributes of Memory Array(s) Attributes : Location Memory Array 1 : System Board or Motherboard Attributes : Use Memory Array 1 : System Memory Attributes : Installed Capacity Memory Array 1 : 12288 MB Attributes : Maximum Capacity Memory Array 1 : 196608 MB Attributes : Slots Available Memory Array 1 : 18 Attributes : Slots Used Memory Array 1 : 6 Attributes : ECC Type Memory Array 1 : Multibit ECC Total of Memory Array(s) Attributes : Total Installed Capacity Value : 12288 MB Attributes : Total Installed Capacity Available to the OS Value : 12004 MB Attributes : Total Maximum Capacity Value : 196608 MB Details of Memory Array 1 Index : 0 Status : Ok Connector Name : DIMM_A1 Type : DDR3-Registered Size : 2048 MB Index : 1 Status : Ok Connector Name : DIMM_A2 Type : DDR3-Registered Size : 2048 MB Index : 2 Status : Ok Connector Name : DIMM_A3 Type : DDR3-Registered Size : 2048 MB Index : 3 Status : Critical Connector Name : DIMM_B1 Type : DDR3-Registered Size : 2048 MB Index : 4 Status : Ok Connector Name : DIMM_B2 Type : DDR3-Registered Size : 2048 MB Index : 5 Status : Ok Connector Name : DIMM_B3 Type : DDR3-Registered Size : 2048 MB the command free -m shows this, the server seems to be using more than 10GB of ram which would suggest it is trying to use the DIMM total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 12004 10766 1238 0 384 4809 -/+ buffers/cache: 5572 6432 Swap: 2047 0 2047 iostat output while problem is occuring avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 52.82 0.00 11.01 0.00 0.00 36.17 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sda 47.00 0.00 576.00 0 576 sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda2 1.00 0.00 32.00 0 32 sda3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda5 46.00 0.00 544.00 0 544 avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 53.12 0.00 7.81 0.00 0.00 39.06 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sda 49.00 0.00 592.00 0 592 sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda5 49.00 0.00 592.00 0 592 avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 56.09 0.00 7.43 0.37 0.00 36.10 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sda 232.00 0.00 64520.00 0 64520 sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda2 159.00 0.00 63728.00 0 63728 sda3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda5 73.00 0.00 792.00 0 792 avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 52.18 0.00 9.24 0.06 0.00 38.51 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sda 49.00 0.00 600.00 0 600 sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda5 49.00 0.00 600.00 0 600 avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 54.82 0.00 8.64 0.00 0.00 36.55 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sda 100.00 0.00 2168.00 0 2168 sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda5 100.00 0.00 2168.00 0 2168 avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 54.78 0.00 6.75 0.00 0.00 38.48 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sda 84.00 0.00 896.00 0 896 sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda5 84.00 0.00 896.00 0 896 avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 54.34 0.00 7.31 0.00 0.00 38.35 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sda 81.00 0.00 840.00 0 840 sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda5 81.00 0.00 840.00 0 840 avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 55.18 0.00 5.81 0.44 0.00 38.58 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sda 317.00 0.00 105632.00 0 105632 sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda2 224.00 0.00 104672.00 0 104672 sda3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda5 93.00 0.00 960.00 0 960 avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 55.38 0.00 7.63 0.00 0.00 36.98 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sda 74.00 0.00 800.00 0 800 sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda5 74.00 0.00 800.00 0 800 avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 56.43 0.00 7.80 0.00 0.00 35.77 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sda 72.00 0.00 784.00 0 784 sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda5 72.00 0.00 784.00 0 784 avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 54.87 0.00 6.49 0.00 0.00 38.64 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sda 80.20 0.00 855.45 0 864 sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda5 80.20 0.00 855.45 0 864 avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 57.22 0.00 5.69 0.00 0.00 37.09 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sda 33.00 0.00 432.00 0 432 sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda5 33.00 0.00 432.00 0 432 avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 56.03 0.00 7.93 0.00 0.00 36.04 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sda 41.00 0.00 560.00 0 560 sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda2 2.00 0.00 88.00 0 88 sda3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda5 39.00 0.00 472.00 0 472 avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 55.78 0.00 5.13 0.00 0.00 39.09 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sda 29.00 0.00 392.00 0 392 sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda5 29.00 0.00 392.00 0 392 avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 53.68 0.00 8.30 0.06 0.00 37.95 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sda 78.00 0.00 4280.00 0 4280 sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 sda5 78.00 0.00 4280.00 0 4280

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• Finding the normal of OBB face with an OBB penetrating

  - by Milo

  Below is an illustration: I have an OBB in an OBB (see below for OBB2D code if needed). What I need to determine is, what face it is in, and what direction do I point the normal? The goal is to get the OBB out of the OBB so the normal needs to face outward of the OBB. How could I go about: Finding what face the line is penetrating given the 4 corners of the OBB and the class below: if we define dx=x2-x1 and dy=y2-y1, then the normals are (-dy, dx) and (dy, -dx). Which normal points outward of the OBB? Thanks public class OBB2D { // Corners of the box, where 0 is the lower left. private Vector2D corner[] = new Vector2D[4]; private Vector2D center = new Vector2D(); private Vector2D extents = new Vector2D(); private RectF boundingRect = new RectF(); private float angle; //Two edges of the box extended away from corner[0]. private Vector2D axis[] = new Vector2D[2]; private double origin[] = new double[2]; public OBB2D(Vector2D center, float w, float h, float angle) { set(center,w,h,angle); } public OBB2D(float left, float top, float width, float height) { set(new Vector2D(left + (width / 2), top + (height / 2)),width,height,0.0f); } public void set(Vector2D center,float w, float h,float angle) { Vector2D X = new Vector2D( (float)Math.cos(angle), (float)Math.sin(angle)); Vector2D Y = new Vector2D((float)-Math.sin(angle), (float)Math.cos(angle)); X = X.multiply( w / 2); Y = Y.multiply( h / 2); corner[0] = center.subtract(X).subtract(Y); corner[1] = center.add(X).subtract(Y); corner[2] = center.add(X).add(Y); corner[3] = center.subtract(X).add(Y); computeAxes(); extents.x = w / 2; extents.y = h / 2; computeDimensions(center,angle); } private void computeDimensions(Vector2D center,float angle) { this.center.x = center.x; this.center.y = center.y; this.angle = angle; boundingRect.left = Math.min(Math.min(corner[0].x, corner[3].x), Math.min(corner[1].x, corner[2].x)); boundingRect.top = Math.min(Math.min(corner[0].y, corner[1].y),Math.min(corner[2].y, corner[3].y)); boundingRect.right = Math.max(Math.max(corner[1].x, corner[2].x), Math.max(corner[0].x, corner[3].x)); boundingRect.bottom = Math.max(Math.max(corner[2].y, corner[3].y),Math.max(corner[0].y, corner[1].y)); } public void set(RectF rect) { set(new Vector2D(rect.centerX(),rect.centerY()),rect.width(),rect.height(),0.0f); } // Returns true if other overlaps one dimension of this. private boolean overlaps1Way(OBB2D other) { for (int a = 0; a < axis.length; ++a) { double t = other.corner[0].dot(axis[a]); // Find the extent of box 2 on axis a double tMin = t; double tMax = t; for (int c = 1; c < corner.length; ++c) { t = other.corner[c].dot(axis[a]); if (t < tMin) { tMin = t; } else if (t > tMax) { tMax = t; } } // We have to subtract off the origin // See if [tMin, tMax] intersects [0, 1] if ((tMin > 1 + origin[a]) || (tMax < origin[a])) { // There was no intersection along this dimension; // the boxes cannot possibly overlap. return false; } } // There was no dimension along which there is no intersection. // Therefore the boxes overlap. return true; } //Updates the axes after the corners move. Assumes the //corners actually form a rectangle. private void computeAxes() { axis[0] = corner[1].subtract(corner[0]); axis[1] = corner[3].subtract(corner[0]); // Make the length of each axis 1/edge length so we know any // dot product must be less than 1 to fall within the edge. for (int a = 0; a < axis.length; ++a) { axis[a] = axis[a].divide((axis[a].length() * axis[a].length())); origin[a] = corner[0].dot(axis[a]); } } public void moveTo(Vector2D center) { Vector2D centroid = (corner[0].add(corner[1]).add(corner[2]).add(corner[3])).divide(4.0f); Vector2D translation = center.subtract(centroid); for (int c = 0; c < 4; ++c) { corner[c] = corner[c].add(translation); } computeAxes(); computeDimensions(center,angle); } // Returns true if the intersection of the boxes is non-empty. public boolean overlaps(OBB2D other) { if(right() < other.left()) { return false; } if(bottom() < other.top()) { return false; } if(left() > other.right()) { return false; } if(top() > other.bottom()) { return false; } if(other.getAngle() == 0.0f && getAngle() == 0.0f) { return true; } return overlaps1Way(other) && other.overlaps1Way(this); } public Vector2D getCenter() { return center; } public float getWidth() { return extents.x * 2; } public float getHeight() { return extents.y * 2; } public void setAngle(float angle) { set(center,getWidth(),getHeight(),angle); } public float getAngle() { return angle; } public void setSize(float w,float h) { set(center,w,h,angle); } public float left() { return boundingRect.left; } public float right() { return boundingRect.right; } public float bottom() { return boundingRect.bottom; } public float top() { return boundingRect.top; } public RectF getBoundingRect() { return boundingRect; } public boolean overlaps(float left, float top, float right, float bottom) { if(right() < left) { return false; } if(bottom() < top) { return false; } if(left() > right) { return false; } if(top() > bottom) { return false; } return true; } };

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 15, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 15, 2013Popular ReleasesFFXIV Crafting Simulator: Crafting Simulator 2.4.1: -Fixed the offset for the new patch (Auto Loading function)iBoxDB.EX - Fast Transactional NoSQL Database Resources: iBoxDB.net fast transactional nosql database 1.5.2: Easily process objects and documents, zero configuration. fast embeddable transactional nosql document database, includes CURD, QueryLanguage, Master-Master-Slave Replication, MVCC, etc. supports .net2, .net4, windows phone, mono, unity3d, node.js , copy and run. http://download-codeplex.sec.s-msft.com/Download?ProjectName=iboxdb&DownloadId=737783 Benchmark with MongoDB Compatibility more platforms for java versionneurogoody: slicebox: this is the slice box jsEvent-Based Components AppBuilder: AB3.AppDesigner.55: Iteration 55 (Feature): Moving of TargetEdge (simple wires only) by mouse.Sandcastle Help File Builder: SHFB v1.9.8.0 with Visual Studio Package: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This new release contains bug fixes and feature enhancements. There are some potential breaking changes in this release as some features of the Help File Builder have been moved into...SharpConfig: SharpConfig 1.2: Implemented comment parsing. Comments are now part of settings and setting categories. New properties: Setting: Comment PreComments SettingCategory: Comment PreCommentsC++ REST SDK (codename "Casablanca"): C++ REST SDK 1.3.0: This release fixes multiple customer reported issues as well as the following: Full support for Dev12 binaries and project files Full support for Windows XP New sample highlighting the Client and Server APIs : BlackJack Expose underlying native handle to set custom options on http_client Improvements to Listener Library Note: Dev10 binaries have been dropped as of this release, however the Dev10 project files are still available in the Source CodeAD ACL Scanner: 1.3.2: Minor bug fixed: Powershell 4.0 will report: Select—Object: Parameter cannot be processed because the parameter name p is ambiguous.Json.NET: Json.NET 5.0 Release 7: New feature - Added support for Immutable Collections New feature - Added WriteData and ReadData settings to DataExtensionAttribute New feature - Added reference and type name handling support to extension data New feature - Added default value and required support to constructor deserialization Change - Extension data is now written when serializing Fix - Added missing casts to JToken Fix - Fixed parsing large floating point numbers Fix - Fixed not parsing some ISO date ...RESX Manager: ResxManager 0.2.1: FIXED: Many critical bugs have been fixed. New Features Error logging for improved exception handling New toolbar Improvements of user interfaceFast YouTube Downloader: YouTube Downloader 2.2.0: YouTube Downloader 2.2.0VidCoder: 1.5.8 Beta: Added hardware acceleration options: Bicubic OpenCL scaling algorithm, QSV decoding/encoding and DXVA decoding. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5834. Updated VidCoder setup icon. Fixed crash when choosing the mp4v2 container on x86 and opening on x64. Warning: the hardware acceleration features require specific hardware or file types to work correctly: QSV: Need an Intel processor that supports Quick Sync Video encoding, with a monitor hooked up to the Intel HD Graphics output and the lat...ASP.net MVC Awesome - jQuery Ajax Helpers: 3.5.2: version 3.5.2 - fix for setting single value to multivalue controls - datepicker min max date offset fix - html encoding for keys fix - enable Column.ClientFormatFunc to be a function call that will return a function version 3.5.1 - fixed html attributes rendering - fixed loading animation rendering - css improvements version 3.5 ========================== - autosize for all popups ( can be turned off by calling in js awe.autoSize = false ) - added Parent, Paremeter extensions ...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1310.12: Allow the Update Creation Wizard to be set in full screen mode. Fix a bug which prevent WPP to Reset Remote Sus Client ID. Change the behavior of links in the Update Detail Viewer. Left-Click to open, Right-Click to copy to the Clipboard.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v7 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: This is a complete overhaul but has the same core style. I hope you enjoy it. This version is compatible with 1.2.0.3 Please send issues to my Twitter or https://github.com/TJChap2840WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.6.maint: I think this covers all of the issues. new additions: fixed the thumbnail problem for backgrounds. general clean up and error checking. need to get this put through the wringer and all feedback is welcome.BIDS Helper: BIDS Helper 1.6.4: This BIDS Helper release brings the following new features and fixes: New Features: A new Bus Matrix style report option when you run the Printer Friendly Dimension Usage report for an SSAS cube. The Biml engine is now fully in sync with the supported subset of Varigence Mist 3.4. This includes a large number of language enhancements, bugfixes, and project deployment support. Fixed Issues: Fixed Biml execution for project connections fixing a bug with Tabular Translations Editor not a...MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.3: =========== =New Features= =========== New Markers added for Plantera's Bulb, Heart Fruits and Gold Cache. Markers now correctly display for the gems found in rock debris on the floor. =========== =Compatibility= =========== Fixed header changes found in Terraria 1.0.3.1Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.581b: Fix in place for TVDB xml issue. New* Movie - General Preferences, allow saving of ignored 'The' or 'A' to end of movie title, stored in sorttitle field. * Movie - New Way for Cropping Posters. Fixed* Movie - Rename of folders/filename. caught error message. * Movie - Fixed Bug in Save Cropped image, only saving in Pre-Frodo format if Both model selected. * Movie - Fixed Cropped image didn't take zoomed ratio into effect. * Movie - Separated Folder Renaming and File Renaming fuctions durin...SmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 1.2.0: HighlightsMulti-store support "Trusted Shops" plugins Highly improved SmartStore.biz Importer plugin Add custom HTML content to pages Performance optimization New FeaturesMulti-store-support: now multiple stores can be managed within a single application instance (e.g. for building different catalogs, brands, landing pages etc.) Added 3 new Trusted Shops plugins: Seal, Buyer Protection, Store Reviews Added Display as HTML Widget to CMS Topics (store owner now can add arbitrary HT...New ProjectsArtezio SharePoint 2013 Workflow Activities: SharePoint Workflow 2013 doesn’t provide activities to work with permissions, we've fixed it using HttpSend activity that makes REST API calls.Dependency.Injection: An attempt to write a really simple dependency injection framework. Does property-based and recursive dependency injection. Handles singletons. Yay!DHGMS SUO Killer: SUO Killer is a Visual Studio extension to deal with the removal of SUO file to mitigate SUO related issues in Visual Studio. This project is written in C#.dynamicsheet: dynamicsheetExcel Comparator: Excel Comparator is an add-in for Microsoft Excel that allows the user to compare a range between two sheets. FetchAIP: FetchAIP is a utility to download the various sections of the Aeronautical Information Publication (AIP) for New Zealand.Fluent Method and Type Builder: Still working on the summary.getboost: NuGet package for Boost framework.Goldstone Forum: WebForms Forum - TelerikAcademy Team ProjectGroupMe Software Development Kit: .NET Software Development Kit for http://groupme.com/ chat service.GSLMS: ----Import Excel Files Into SQL Server: Load Excel files into SQL Database without schema changes.Inaction: ?????????? jBegin: Learning ASP.net MVC from beginning, then here will be the source code for jbegin.comKDG's Statistical Quality Control Solver: This tool will include methods that can solve sample standard deviation, sample variance, median, mode, moving average, percentiles, margin of error, etc.kpi: Key Performance Indicator (KPI)????; visual studio 2010 with .NET 4.0 runtimeLECO Remote Control Client Application: Sample code and binaries are provided to demonstrate the remote control capability of a LECO Cornerstone instrument.LinkPad: My first Windows Store app intended for student to sketch up thoughts and concepts in quick diagrams.Modler.NET - Automating Graphical Data Model Co-Evolution: Modler.NET was the tool created for a Master's thesis project, which automates the co-evolution of graphical data models and the database that they represent.MyFileManager1: SummaryNever Lotto: Korean 465 Lotto Analyzer and Simulator. The real purpose of this project is to show that this kind of lotto things are just shit.NHibernate: The purpose of this project is to demo CRUD operations using NHibernate with Mono in Visual Studio 2012 using C# language. OAuth2 Authorizer: OAuth2 Authorizer helps you get the access code for a standard OAuth2 REST service that implements 3-legged authentication.Regular Expression for Excel: Regular Expression For Excel is an Excel Plugin. It provides a regular expressions EXCEL support. We can use it in the EXCEL function.Service Tester: Service Tester is an Azure Cloud based load testing application targeted at Soap Web Services which allows you to invoke your Web Service by random parameters.Simple TypeScript and C# Class Generator: Simple GUI application to generate compatible class source code for C# and TypeScript for communications between C# and TypeScript. Soccer team management: ---Spanner: No more stringly-typed web development! Build statically typed single page web applications in C#, automatically generating all HTML, JavaScript, and Knockout.

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• DTracing a PHPUnit Test: Looking at Functional Programming

  - by cj

  Here's a quick example of using DTrace Dynamic Tracing to work out what a PHP code base does. I was reading the article Functional Programming in PHP by Patkos Csaba and wondering how efficient this stype of programming is. I thought this would be a good time to fire up DTrace and see what is going on. Since DTrace is "always available" even in production machines (once PHP is compiled with --enable-dtrace), this was easy to do. I have Oracle Linux with the UEK3 kernel and PHP 5.5 with DTrace static probes enabled, as described in DTrace PHP Using Oracle Linux 'playground' Pre-Built Packages I installed the Functional Programming sample code and Sebastian Bergmann's PHPUnit. Although PHPUnit is included in the Functional Programming example, I found it easier to separately download and use its phar file: cd ~/Desktop wget -O master.zip https://github.com/tutsplus/functional-programming-in-php/archive/master.zip wget https://phar.phpunit.de/phpunit.phar unzip master.zip I created a DTrace D script functree.d: #pragma D option quiet self int indent; BEGIN { topfunc = $1; } php$target:::function-entry /copyinstr(arg0) == topfunc/ { self->follow = 1; } php$target:::function-entry /self->follow/ { self->indent += 2; printf("%*s %s%s%s\n", self->indent, "->", arg3?copyinstr(arg3):"", arg4?copyinstr(arg4):"", copyinstr(arg0)); } php$target:::function-return /self->follow/ { printf("%*s %s%s%s\n", self->indent, "<-", arg3?copyinstr(arg3):"", arg4?copyinstr(arg4):"", copyinstr(arg0)); self->indent -= 2; } php$target:::function-return /copyinstr(arg0) == topfunc/ { self->follow = 0; } This prints a PHP script function call tree starting from a given PHP function name. This name is passed as a parameter to DTrace, and assigned to the variable topfunc when the DTrace script starts. With this D script, choose a PHP function that isn't recursive, or modify the script to set self->follow = 0 only when all calls to that function have unwound. From looking at the sample FunSets.php code and its PHPUnit test driver FunSetsTest.php, I settled on one test function to trace: function testUnionContainsAllElements() { ... } I invoked DTrace to trace function calls invoked by this test with # dtrace -s ./functree.d -c 'php phpunit.phar \ /home/cjones/Desktop/functional-programming-in-php-master/FunSets/Tests/FunSetsTest.php' \ '"testUnionContainsAllElements"' The core of this command is a call to PHP to run PHPUnit on the FunSetsTest.php script. Outside that, DTrace is called and the PID of PHP is passed to the D script $target variable so the probes fire just for this invocation of PHP. Note the quoting around the PHP function name passed to DTrace. The parameter must have double quotes included so DTrace knows it is a string. The output is: PHPUnit 3.7.28 by Sebastian Bergmann. ......-> FunSetsTest::testUnionContainsAllElements -> FunSets::singletonSet <- FunSets::singletonSet -> FunSets::singletonSet <- FunSets::singletonSet -> FunSets::union <- FunSets::union -> FunSets::contains -> FunSets::{closure} -> FunSets::contains -> FunSets::{closure} <- FunSets::{closure} <- FunSets::contains <- FunSets::{closure} <- FunSets::contains -> PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::assertTrue -> PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::isTrue <- PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::isTrue -> PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::assertThat -> PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint::count <- PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint::count -> PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint::evaluate -> PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint_IsTrue::matches <- PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint_IsTrue::matches <- PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint::evaluate <- PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::assertThat <- PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::assertTrue -> FunSets::contains -> FunSets::{closure} -> FunSets::contains -> FunSets::{closure} <- FunSets::{closure} <- FunSets::contains -> FunSets::contains -> FunSets::{closure} <- FunSets::{closure} <- FunSets::contains <- FunSets::{closure} <- FunSets::contains -> PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::assertTrue -> PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::isTrue <- PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::isTrue -> PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::assertThat -> PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint::count <- PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint::count -> PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint::evaluate -> PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint_IsTrue::matches <- PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint_IsTrue::matches <- PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint::evaluate <- PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::assertThat <- PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::assertTrue -> FunSets::contains -> FunSets::{closure} -> FunSets::contains -> FunSets::{closure} <- FunSets::{closure} <- FunSets::contains -> FunSets::contains -> FunSets::{closure} <- FunSets::{closure} <- FunSets::contains <- FunSets::{closure} <- FunSets::contains -> PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::assertFalse -> PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::isFalse -> {closure} -> main <- main <- {closure} <- PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::isFalse -> PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::assertThat -> PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint::count <- PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint::count -> PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint::evaluate -> PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint_IsFalse::matches <- PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint_IsFalse::matches <- PHPUnit_Framework_Constraint::evaluate <- PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::assertThat <- PHPUnit_Framework_Assert::assertFalse <- FunSetsTest::testUnionContainsAllElements ... Time: 1.85 seconds, Memory: 3.75Mb OK (9 tests, 23 assertions) The periods correspond to the successful tests before and after (and from) the test I was tracing. You can see the function entry ("->") and return ("<-") points. Cross checking with the testUnionContainsAllElements() source code confirms the two singletonSet() calls, one union() call, two assertTrue() calls and finally an assertFalse() call. These assertions have a contains() call as a parameter, so contains() is called before the PHPUnit assertion functions are run. You can see contains() being called recursively, and how the closures are invoked. If you want to focus on the application logic and suppress the PHPUnit function trace, you could turn off tracing when assertions are being checked by adding D clauses checking the entry and exit of assertFalse() and assertTrue(). But if you want to see all of PHPUnit's code flow, you can modify the functree.d code that sets and unsets self-follow, and instead change it to toggle the variable in request-startup and request-shutdown probes: php$target:::request-startup { self->follow = 1 } php$target:::request-shutdown { self->follow = 0 } Be prepared for a large amount of output!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 01, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 01, 2013Popular ReleasesDotNetNuke® Form and List: 06.00.06: DotNetNuke Form and List 06.00.06 Changes to 6.0.6•Add in Sql to remove 'text on row' setting for UserDefinedTable to make SQL Azure compatible. •Add new azureCompatible element to manifest. •Added a fix for importing templates. Changes to 6.0.2•Fix: MakeThumbnail was broken if the application pool was configured to .Net 4 •Change: Data is now stored in nvarchar(max) instead of ntext Changes to 6.0.1•Scripts now compatible with SQL Azure. Changes to 6.0.0•Icons are shown in module action b...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.6: 2013.09.30 Ver5.9.6 (1)SMTP???????、???????????????? (2)WinAPI??????? (3)Web???????CGI???????????????????????Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 5.2: Mostly internal code tweaks. added -nosize switch to turn off the size- and gzip-calculations done after minification. removed the comments in the build targets script for the old AjaxMin build task (discussion #458831). Fixed an issue with extended Unicode characters encoded inside a string literal with adjacent \uHHHH\uHHHH sequences. Fixed an IndexOutOfRange exception when encountering a CSS identifier that's a single underscore character (_). In previous builds, the net35 and net20...AJAX Control Toolkit: September 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - September 2013 Release Version 7.0930September 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - Instructions for using the AJAX Control Toolkit with ASP.NET 4.5 can b...WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha is for testers to figure out if we got the NEW api plugged in ok. thanksVisual Log Parser: VisualLogParser: Portable Visual Log Parser for Dotnet 4.0Random searcher i pochodne: Generatorek playlisty: Generuje playlisty w formacie .m3u. Na razie beta z bety - ale juz dziala i mozna uzywac.sb0t v.5: sb0t 5.15: Fixed bug in join filter. Fixed bug in pm blocking. Added new Crypto and Entities static classes to scripting. Updated the default node list.Trace Reader for Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Trace Reader (1.2013.9.29): Initial releaseAudioWordsDownloader: AudioWordsDownloader 1.1 build 88: New features list of words (mp3 files) is available upon typing when a download path is defined list of download paths is added paths history settings added Bug fixed case mismatch in word search field fixed path not exist bug fixed when history has been used path, when filled from dialog, not stored refresh autocomplete list after path change word sought is deleted when path is changed at the end sought word list is deleted word list not refreshed download ends. word lis...HD-Trailers.NET Downloader: HD-Trailer.Net Downloader v 2.1.5: This started out as an effort to improve the search for the corr3ct IMDB page for the movie. I think I have done that here. I have run about 200 movies and the correct movie was identified in all cases including some entries that were problematic in the past. I also swatted several bugs that popped up under special circumstances and resulted in exceptions. This version should be quite a bit better than previous versions. Let me know if there are any issues.Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1309.28: Fix a bug, where WPP crash when running on a computer where Windows was installed in another language than Fr, En or De, and launching the Update Creation Wizard. Fix a bug, where WPP crash if some Multi-Thread job are launch with more than 64 items. Add a button to abort "Install This Update" wizard. Allow WPP to remember which columns are shown last time. Make URL clickable on the Update Information Tab. Add a new feature, when Double-Clicking on an update, the default action exec...Tweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Alpha 0.8.3.0: Version 0.8.3.0 emphasis on the FIlteredStream and ease how to manage Exceptions that can occur due to the network or any other issue you might encounter. Will be available through nuget the 29/09/2013. FilteredStream Features provided by the Twitter Stream API - Ability to track specific keywords - Ability to track specific users - Ability to track specific locations Additional features - Detect the reasons the tweet has been retrieved from the Filtered API. You have access to both the ma...AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.5: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.5 ???? AcPlay????????v3.5 ????????，???????????30% ?? ???????GoodManga.net???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??Acfun?????????? ??Bilibili??????????? ?????????flvcd???????? ??SfAcg????????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ????32...C# Intellisense for Notepad++: Release v1.0.6.0: Added support for classless scripts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.SimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.02: SourceCode and SampleMagick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.7.001: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.7.0. Breaking changes: - ToBitmap method of MagickImage returns a png instead of a bmp. - Changed the value for full transparency from 255(Q8)/65535(Q16) to 0. - MagickColor now uses floats instead of Byte/UInt16.Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.578b: With the feedback received over the renaming of Movie Folders, and files, there has been some refinement done. As well as I would like to introduce Blu-Ray movie folder support, for Pre-Frodo and Frodo onwards versions of XBMC. To start with, Context menu option for renaming movies, now has three sub options: Movie & Folder, Movie only & Folder only. The option Manual Movie Rename needs to be selected from Movie Preferences, but the autoscrape boxes do not need to be selected. Blu Ray Fo...FFXIV Crafting Simulator: Crafting Simulator 2.3: - Major refactoring of the code behind. - Added a current durability and a current CP textbox.DNN CMS Platform: 07.01.02: Major HighlightsAdded the ability to manage the Vanity URL prefix Added the ability to filter members in the member directory by role Fixed issue where the user could inadvertently click the login button multiple times Fixed issues where core classes could not be used in out of process cache provider Fixed issue where profile visibility submenu was not displayed correctly Fixed issue where the member directory was broken when Convert URL to lowercase setting was enabled Fixed issu...New Projects.netProject: .Net Project 3TINafs-m: Secure file storageASP.NET dhtmlxChart Class: Create different types of charts and render them to webforms.ASP.NET dhtmxGantt Class: Add tasks Add dependencies Use lighboxBestCodeTrainer: Project BestCode is for Training. Black Dragon Online Shop: An online shop with basic functionalities implemented with ASP.NET MVC as a team project in Telerik Academy 2012/2013.Central fovea -X: ????: 1.???????????Cell,??RGB,HSL,X,Y 2.???????? 3.???????????? 4.????????，???????? 5.????????CorvusSKK: SKK-like Japanese Input Method for Windowsdaneshjoo: ?? ??? ???????DBA Toolbox: A tool for the production DBA. A place to store all those scripts, tools, references and queries that make your job as a DBA easier.Devpad IDE: Basic integrated development environment.DXUT for Direct3D 11: Latest version of the Microsoft DXUT framework for Direct3D 11 Win32 desktop applications formerly in the now legacy DirectX SDK.Dynamics CRM Messaging Integration: This project shows how to implement a simple custom messaging solution using Microsoft Dynamics CRM and based on its standard development components.Kockafölde: Kliens program.Medusa's Ebay: Teamwork assignment @ TelerikAcademy 2012/2013. Project is for creating simple (or more complicated) interneTeamwork assignment @ TelerikAcademy 2012/2013.Nauplius.PAS: Nauplius.PAS allows end users to leverage the PowerPoint Conversion Services within SharePoint 2013 to convert PowerPoint documents from one format to another.PayBox payment gateway provider for NB_Store: PayBox payment provider for NB_StorePet passport: This is a teamwork projectProject Euler solutions: Solutions to the ProjectEuler problemsRoboSubSync: Fixes an unsynchronized subtitle in any language according to an already synced subtitle in english, with the help of some advanced algorithm magic... ShopBook: Shopbooksliders: jQuery slidersSQLite to JSON: A simple program to convert SQLite data to JSON.Super64: This is a Commodore 64 emulator that is determined to have extremely unnecessary accuracy.TeamProject1: This is just Demo ProjectXnaHelper: A collection of tools for making 2D XNA Games

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• Surface RT: To Be Or Not To Be (Part 1)

  - by smehaffie

  So the Surface RT has been out for 9 months and Microsoft just declared a $900 million dollar write-down. So how did this happen and what does it mean for Microsoft’s efforts to break into the tablet market? I have been thinking a lot about most of the information below since the Surface product line was released. If you are looking for a “Microsoft Is Dead” story, then don’t read any further. But if you want an honest look at what I think led Microsoft to this point and what I think can be done to make Surface RT devices better, then please continue reading. What Led Microsoft To The $900 Million Write-Down Surface Unveiling:Microsoft totally missed the boat when they unveiled the Surface product line on June 18th, 2012. Microsoft should’ve been ready to post the specifications of both devices that night. Microsoft should’ve had a site up and running right after the event so people could pre-order the devices. This would have given them a good idea what the interest was in each device.  They could also have used this data to make a better estimate for the number of units to to have available for the launch and beyond.  They also lost out on taking advantage of the excitement generated by the Surface RT and Surface Pro announcement. They could have thrown in a free touch keyboard to anyone who pre-ordered. The advertising should have started right after the announcement and gotten bigger as launch day approached. Push for as many pre-order as possible and build excitement for the launch. Actual Launch (Surface RT): By this time all excitement was gone from the initial announcement, except for the Micorsoft faithful. Microsoft should have been ready to sell the Surface in as many markets as possible at launch. The limited market release was a real letdown for a lot of people.  A limited release right after the initial announce is understandable, but not at the official launch of the product. Microsoft overpriced the device and now they are lowering it to what it should have been to start with. The $349 price is within the range I suggested it should be at before pricing was announced. (Surface Tablets: The Price Must Be Right). Limited ordering options online was also a killer. User should have been able to buy the base unit of each device and then add on whatever keyboard they wanted to (this applies more to the Surface Pro).  There should have also been a place where users could order any additional add-ins that they wanted to buy (covers, extra power supplies, etc.) Marketing was better and the dancing “Click In” commercial was cool, but the ads comparing the iPad with Siri should have been on the air from day one of the announcement (or at least the launch).  Consumers want to know why you tablet is better, not just that is has a clickable keyboard and built-in kickstand. They could have also compared it to some of the other mid-range tablets if they had not overprices it to begin with. Stock Applications (Mail, People, Calendar, Music, Video, Reader and IE): This is where Microsoft really blew it. They had all the time in the world to make these applications the best of breed and instead we got applications that seemed thrown together.  Some updates have made these application better, but they are all still lacking in features that should have been there from day one. This did not help to enhance a new users experience any. ** I will admit that the applications that were data driven were first class citizen’s and that makes it even more perplexing why MS could knock it out of the park with the Weather, Travel, Finance, Bing, etc.) and fail so miserably on the core applications users would use the most on a tablet. Desktop on Tablet: The desktop just is so out of place on the tablet  I understand it was needed for Office but think it would have been better to not have the desktop in Windows RT, but instead open up the Office applications in full screen mode, in a desktop shell (same goes for  IE11).That way the user wouldn’t realize they are leaving Metro and going to the desktop. The other option would have been to just not include Office on Windows RT devices. Instead they could have made awesome Widows Store Apps for Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint. In addition, they could have made the stock Mail, People, and Calendar applications contain all the functions that Outlook gives desktop users. Having some of the settings in desktop mode and others under “Change PC Settings” made Windows RT seemed unfinished and rushed to market. What Can Be Done To Make Windows RT Based Tablets Better (At least in my opinion) Either eliminate the desktop all together from Windows RT or at least make the user experience better by hiding the fact the user is running Office/IE in the desktop. Personally I ‘d like them to totally get rid of it and just make awesome Windows Store Application version of Word, Excel PowerPoint & OneNote.  This might also make the OS smaller and give the user more available disk space. I doubt there will ever be a Windows Store App versions of Office, but I still think it is a good idea. Make is so users can easily direct their documents, picture, videos and music to their extra storage and can access these files from the standard libraries.  A user should not have to create a VM on their microSD card or create symbolic links to get this to work properly. Most consumers would not be able to do this. Then users get frustrated when they run out or room on their main storage because nothing is automatically save to their microSD card when saved to libraries.  This is a major bug that needs to be fixed, otherwise Microsoft’s selling point of having a microSD slot is worthless. Allows users to uninstall and re-install any of the Office product that come with the Surface. That way people can free up storage space by uninstalling the Office applications they do not need. Everyone’s needs are different, so make the options flexible. Don’t take up storage space for applications the user will not use. Make the Core applications the “Cream of the Crop” Windows App Store applications. The should set the bar for all other Store applications. Improve performance as much as possible, if it seems to be sluggish on a tablet consumer will not buy it. They need to price the next line of Surface product very aggressive to undercut not only iPad but also Android low end tablets (Nook, Kindle Fire, and Nexus, etc.) Give developers incentives to write quality applications for the devices. Don’t reward developers for cranking out cookie cutter, low quality applications. I’d even suggest Microsoft consider implementing some new store certification guideline to stop these type of applications being published. Allow users to easily move the recover disk “partition between their microSD card and main storage. My Predictions for the Surface RT and Windows RT I honestly think even with all the missteps MS has made since the announcement  about the Surface product line, that they are on the right path. I was excited the Surface tablets when they were announced, and I still am. The truth be told, Windows 8 on a tablet (aka: Windows RT) is better than both iOS and Android. My nephew who is an Apple fan boy told me after he saw and used Windows 8 (he got the beta running on his iPad), that Windows 8 kicked Apples butt as a tablet OS. So there is hope for all Windows RT based tablets. I agree with my nephew and that is why whenever anyone asks me about my Surface, I love showing it off and recommend it. The 6 keys to gaining market share in the tablet market are; Aggressive pricing by both Microsoft and their OEM’s Good quality devices put out by Microsoft and their OEM’s (there are some out there, but not enough) Marketing, Marketing, Marketing from both Microsoft and their OEM’s (Need more ads showing why windows based tablets are better than iPads and Android tablets) Getting Widows tablets in retails stores all over, and giving sales people incentive to sell them. Consumers like to try electronics out before they buy them, and most will listen to what the sales person suggest. Microsoft needs sales people in retail stores directing people to buy windows based tablets over iPads and Android tablets. I think the Microsoft Stores within Best Buy is a good start, but they also need to get prominent displays in Walmart, Target, etc.. Release a smaller form factor Surface, Hopefully the 8”-10” next generation Surface is not a rumor. Make “Surface” the brand name for all Microsoft tablets and hybrid devices that they come out with. They cannot change the name with each new release.  Make Surface synonymous with quality, the same way that iPad  is for Apple. Well, that is my 2 cents on the subject. Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment below. Soon to follow will be my thought on the Surface Pro, so keep an eye out for it. var addthis_pub="smehaffie"; var addthis_options="email, print, digg, slashdot, delicious, twitter, live, myspace, facebook, google, stumbleupon, newsvine";

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• European Interoperability Framework - a new beginning?

  - by trond-arne.undheim

  The most controversial document in the history of the European Commission's IT policy is out. EIF is here, wrapped in the Communication "Towards interoperability for European public services", and including the new feature European Interoperability Strategy (EIS), arguably a higher strategic take on the same topic. Leaving EIS aside for a moment, the EIF controversy has been around IPR, defining open standards and about the proper terminology around standardization deliverables. Today, as the document finally emerges, what is the verdict? First of all, to be fair to those among you who do not spend your lives in the intricate labyrinths of Commission IT policy documents on interoperability, let's define what we are talking about. According to the Communication: "An interoperability framework is an agreed approach to interoperability for organisations that want to collaborate to provide joint delivery of public services. Within its scope of applicability, it specifies common elements such as vocabulary, concepts, principles, policies, guidelines, recommendations, standards, specifications and practices." The Good - EIF reconfirms that "The Digital Agenda can only take off if interoperability based on standards and open platforms is ensured" and also confirms that "The positive effect of open specifications is also demonstrated by the Internet ecosystem." - EIF takes a productive and pragmatic stance on openness: "In the context of the EIF, openness is the willingness of persons, organisations or other members of a community of interest to share knowledge and stimulate debate within that community, the ultimate goal being to advance knowledge and the use of this knowledge to solve problems" (p.11). "If the openness principle is applied in full: - All stakeholders have the same possibility of contributing to the development of the specification and public review is part of the decision-making process; - The specification is available for everybody to study; - Intellectual property rights related to the specification are licensed on FRAND terms or on a royalty-free basis in a way that allows implementation in both proprietary and open source software" (p. 26). - EIF is a formal Commission document. The former EIF 1.0 was a semi-formal deliverable from the PEGSCO, a working group of Member State representatives. - EIF tackles interoperability head-on and takes a clear stance: "Recommendation 22. When establishing European public services, public administrations should prefer open specifications, taking due account of the coverage of functional needs, maturity and market support." - The Commission will continue to support the National Interoperability Framework Observatory (NIFO), reconfirming the importance of coordinating such approaches across borders. - The Commission will align its internal interoperability strategy with the EIS through the eCommission initiative. - One cannot stress the importance of using open standards enough, whether in the context of open source or non-open source software. The EIF seems to have picked up on this fact: What does the EIF says about the relation between open specifications and open source software? The EIF introduces, as one of the characteristics of an open specification, the requirement that IPRs related to the specification have to be licensed on FRAND terms or on a royalty-free basis in a way that allows implementation in both proprietary and open source software. In this way, companies working under various business models can compete on an equal footing when providing solutions to public administrations while administrations that implement the standard in their own software (software that they own) can share such software with others under an open source licence if they so decide. - EIF is now among the center pieces of the Digital Agenda (even though this demands extensive inter-agency coordination in the Commission): "The EIS and the EIF will be maintained under the ISA Programme and kept in line with the results of other relevant Digital Agenda actions on interoperability and standards such as the ones on the reform of rules on implementation of ICT standards in Europe to allow use of certain ICT fora and consortia standards, on issuing guidelines on essential intellectual property rights and licensing conditions in standard-setting, including for ex-ante disclosure, and on providing guidance on the link between ICT standardisation and public procurement to help public authorities to use standards to promote efficiency and reduce lock-in.(Communication, p.7)" All in all, quite a few good things have happened to the document in the two years it has been on the shelf or was being re-written, depending on your perspective, in any case, awaiting the storms to calm. The Bad - While a certain pragmatism is required, and governments cannot migrate to full openness overnight, EIF gives a bit too much room for governments not to apply the openness principle in full. Plenty of reasons are given, which should maybe have been put as challenges to be overcome: "However, public administrations may decide to use less open specifications, if open specifications do not exist or do not meet functional interoperability needs. In all cases, specifications should be mature and sufficiently supported by the market, except if used in the context of creating innovative solutions". - EIF does not use the internationally established terminology: open standards. Rather, the EIF introduces the notion of "formalised specification". How do "formalised specifications" relate to "standards"? According to the FAQ provided: The word "standard" has a specific meaning in Europe as defined by Directive 98/34/EC. Only technical specifications approved by a recognised standardisation body can be called a standard. Many ICT systems rely on the use of specifications developed by other organisations such as a forum or consortium. The EIF introduces the notion of "formalised specification", which is either a standard pursuant to Directive 98/34/EC or a specification established by ICT fora and consortia. The term "open specification" used in the EIF, on the one hand, avoids terminological confusion with the Directive and, on the other, states the main features that comply with the basic principle of openness laid down in the EIF for European Public Services. Well, this may be somewhat true, but in reality, Europe is 30 year behind in terminology. Unless the European Standardization Reform gets completed in the next few months, most Member States will likely conclude that they will go on referencing and using standards beyond those created by the three European endorsed monopolists of standardization, CEN, CENELEC and ETSI. Who can afford to begin following the strict Brussels rules for what they can call open standards when, in reality, standards stemming from global standardization organizations, so-called fora/consortia, dominate in the IT industry. What exactly is EIF saying? Does it encourage Member States to go on using non-ESO standards as long as they call it something else? I guess I am all for it, although it is a bit cumbersome, no? Why was there so much interest around the EIF? The FAQ attempts to explain: Some Member States have begun to adopt policies to achieve interoperability for their public services. These actions have had a significant impact on the ecosystem built around the provision of such services, e.g. providers of ICT goods and services, standardisation bodies, industry fora and consortia, etc... The Commission identified a clear need for action at European level to ensure that actions by individual Member States would not create new electronic barriers that would hinder the development of interoperable European public services. As a result, all stakeholders involved in the delivery of electronic public services in Europe have expressed their opinions on how to increase interoperability for public services provided by the different public administrations in Europe. Well, it does not take two years to read 50 consultation documents, and the EU Standardization Reform is not yet completed, so, more pragmatically, you finally had to release the document. Ok, let's leave some of that aside because the document is out and some people are happy (and others definitely not). The Verdict Considering the controversy, the delays, the lobbying, and the interests at stake both in the EU, in Member States and among vendors large and small, this document is pretty impressive. As with a good wine that has not yet come to full maturity, let's say that it seems to be coming in in the 85-88/100 range, but only a more fine-grained analysis, enjoyment in good company, and ultimately, implementation, will tell. The European Commission has today adopted a significant interoperability initiative to encourage public administrations across the EU to maximise the social and economic potential of information and communication technologies. Today, we should rally around this achievement. Tomorrow, let's sit down and figure out what it means for the future.

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• C#/.NET &ndash; Finding an Item&rsquo;s Index in IEnumerable&lt;T&gt;

  - by James Michael Hare

  Sorry for the long blogging hiatus.  First it was, of course, the holidays hustle and bustle, then my brother and his wife gave birth to their son, so I’ve been away from my blogging for two weeks. Background: Finding an item’s index in List<T> is easy… Many times in our day to day programming activities, we want to find the index of an item in a collection.  Now, if we have a List<T> and we’re looking for the item itself this is trivial: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // can find the exact item using IndexOf() 5: var pos = list.IndexOf(64); This will return the position of the item if it’s found, or –1 if not.  It’s easy to see how this works for primitive types where equality is well defined.  For complex types, however, it will attempt to compare them using EqualityComparer<T>.Default which, in a nutshell, relies on the object’s Equals() method. So what if we want to search for a condition instead of equality?  That’s also easy in a List<T> with the FindIndex() method: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // finds index of first even number or -1 if not found. 5: var pos = list.FindIndex(i => i % 2 == 0);   Problem: Finding an item’s index in IEnumerable<T> is not so easy... This is all well and good for lists, but what if we want to do the same thing for IEnumerable<T>?  A collection of IEnumerable<T> has no indexing, so there’s no direct method to find an item’s index.  LINQ, as powerful as it is, gives us many tools to get us this information, but not in one step.  As with almost any problem involving collections, there are several ways to accomplish the same goal.  And once again as with almost any problem involving collections, the choice of the solution somewhat depends on the situation. So let’s look at a few possible alternatives.  I’m going to express each of these as extension methods for simplicity and consistency. Solution: The TakeWhile() and Count() combo One of the things you can do is to perform a TakeWhile() on the list as long as your find condition is not true, and then do a Count() of the items it took.  The only downside to this method is that if the item is not in the list, the index will be the full Count() of items, and not –1.  So if you don’t know the size of the list beforehand, this can be confusing. 1: // a collection of extra extension methods off IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // Finds an item in the collection, similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: // note if item not found, result is length and not -1! 8: return list.TakeWhile(i => !finder(i)).Count(); 9: } 10: } Personally, I don’t like switching the paradigm of not found away from –1, so this is one of my least favorites.  Solution: Select with index Many people don’t realize that there is an alternative form of the LINQ Select() method that will provide you an index of the item being selected: 1: list.Select( (item,index) => do something here with the item and/or index... ) This can come in handy, but must be treated with care.  This is because the index provided is only as pertains to the result of previous operations (if any).  For example: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // you'd hope this would give you the indexes of the even numbers 5: // which would be 2, 3, 8, but in reality it gives you 0, 1, 2 6: list.Where(item => item % 2 == 0).Select((item,index) => index); The reason the example gives you the collection { 0, 1, 2 } is because the where clause passes over any items that are odd, and therefore only the even items are given to the select and only they are given indexes. Conversely, we can’t select the index and then test the item in a Where() clause, because then the Where() clause would be operating on the index and not the item! So, what we have to do is to select the item and index and put them together in an anonymous type.  It looks ugly, but it works: 1: // extensions defined on IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // finds an item in a collection, similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: // if you don't name the anonymous properties they are the variable names 8: return list.Select((item, index) => new { item, index }) 9: .Where(p => finder(p.item)) 10: .Select(p => p.index + 1) 11: .FirstOrDefault() - 1; 12: } 13: }     So let’s look at this, because i know it’s convoluted: First Select() joins the items and their indexes into an anonymous type. Where() filters that list to only the ones matching the predicate. Second Select() picks the index of the matches and adds 1 – this is to distinguish between not found and first item. FirstOrDefault() returns the first item found from the previous clauses or default (zero) if not found. Subtract one so that not found (zero) will be –1, and first item (one) will be zero. The bad thing is, this is ugly as hell and creates anonymous objects for each item tested until it finds the match.  This concerns me a bit but we’ll defer judgment until compare the relative performances below. Solution: Convert ToList() and use FindIndex() This solution is easy enough.  We know any IEnumerable<T> can be converted to List<T> using the LINQ extension method ToList(), so we can easily convert the collection to a list and then just use the FindIndex() method baked into List<T>. 1: // a collection of extension methods for IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // find the index of an item in the collection similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: return list.ToList().FindIndex(finder); 8: } 9: } This solution is simplicity itself!  It is very concise and elegant and you need not worry about anyone misinterpreting what it’s trying to do (as opposed to the more convoluted LINQ methods above). But the main thing I’m concerned about here is the performance hit to allocate the List<T> in the ToList() call, but once again we’ll explore that in a second. Solution: Roll your own FindIndex() for IEnumerable<T> Of course, you can always roll your own FindIndex() method for IEnumerable<T>.  It would be a very simple for loop which scans for the item and counts as it goes.  There’s many ways to do this, but one such way might look like: 1: // extension methods for IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // Finds an item matching a predicate in the enumeration, much like List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: int index = 0; 8: foreach (var item in list) 9: { 10: if (finder(item)) 11: { 12: return index; 13: } 14:  15: index++; 16: } 17:  18: return -1; 19: } 20: } Well, it’s not quite simplicity, and those less familiar with LINQ may prefer it since it doesn’t include all of the lambdas and behind the scenes iterators that come with deferred execution.  But does having this long, blown out method really gain us much in performance? Comparison of Proposed Solutions So we’ve now seen four solutions, let’s analyze their collective performance.  I took each of the four methods described above and run them over 100,000 iterations of lists of size 10, 100, 1000, and 10000 and here’s the performance results.  Then I looked for targets at the begining of the list (best case), middle of the list (the average case) and not in the list (worst case as must scan all of the list). Each of the times below is the average time in milliseconds for one execution as computer over the 100,000 iterations: Searches Matching First Item (Best Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0003 0.0003 0.0003 0.0003 Select 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 ToList 0.0002 0.0003 0.0013 0.0121 Manual 0.0001 0.0001 0.0001 0.0001   Searches Matching Middle Item (Average Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0004 0.0020 0.0191 0.1889 Select 0.0008 0.0042 0.0387 0.3802 ToList 0.0002 0.0007 0.0057 0.0562 Manual 0.0002 0.0013 0.0129 0.1255   Searches Where Not Found (Worst Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0006 0.0039 0.0381 0.3770 Select 0.0012 0.0081 0.0758 0.7583 ToList 0.0002 0.0012 0.0100 0.0996 Manual 0.0003 0.0026 0.0253 0.2514   Notice something interesting here, you’d think the “roll your own” loop would be the most efficient, but it only wins when the item is first (or very close to it) regardless of list size.  In almost all other cases though and in particular the average case and worst case, the ToList()/FindIndex() combo wins for performance, even though it is creating some temporary memory to hold the List<T>.  If you examine the algorithm, the reason why is most likely because once it’s in a ToList() form, internally FindIndex() scans the internal array which is much more efficient to iterate over.  Thus, it takes a one time performance hit (not including any GC impact) to create the List<T> but after that the performance is much better. Summary If you’re concerned about too many throw-away objects, you can always roll your own FindIndex() method, but for sheer simplicity and overall performance, using the ToList()/FindIndex() combo performs best on nearly all list sizes in the average and worst cases.    Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Litte Wonders,BlackRabbitCoder,Software,LINQ,List

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• KVM/Libvirt bridged/routed networking not working on newer guest kernels

  - by SharkWipf

  I have a dedicated server running Debian 6, with Libvirt (0.9.11.3) and Qemu-KVM (qemu-kvm-1.0+dfsg-11, Debian). I am having a problem getting bridged/routed networking to work in KVM guests with newer kernels (2.6.38). NATted networking works fine though. Older kernels work perfectly fine as well. The host kernel is at version 3.2.0-2-amd64, the problem was also there on an older host kernel. The contents of the host's /etc/network/interfaces (ip removed): # Loopback device: auto lo iface lo inet loopback # bridge auto br0 iface br0 inet static address 176.9.xx.xx broadcast 176.9.xx.xx netmask 255.255.255.224 gateway 176.9.xx.xx pointopoint 176.9.xx.xx bridge_ports eth0 bridge_stp off bridge_maxwait 0 bridge_fd 0 up route add -host 176.9.xx.xx dev br0 # VM IP post-up mii-tool -F 100baseTx-FD br0 # default route to access subnet up route add -net 176.9.xx.xx netmask 255.255.255.224 gw 176.9.xx.xx br0 The output of ifconfig -a on the host: br0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 54:04:a6:8a:66:13 inet addr:176.9.xx.xx Bcast:176.9.xx.xx Mask:255.255.255.224 inet6 addr: fe80::5604:a6ff:fe8a:6613/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:20216729 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:19962220 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:14144528601 (13.1 GiB) TX bytes:7990702656 (7.4 GiB) eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 54:04:a6:8a:66:13 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:26991788 errors:0 dropped:12066 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:19737261 errors:270082 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:270082 collisions:1686317 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:15459970915 (14.3 GiB) TX bytes:6661808415 (6.2 GiB) Interrupt:17 Memory:fe500000-fe520000 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:6240133 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:6240133 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:6081956230 (5.6 GiB) TX bytes:6081956230 (5.6 GiB) virbr0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 52:54:00:79:e4:5a inet addr:192.168.100.1 Bcast:192.168.100.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:225016 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:412958 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:16284276 (15.5 MiB) TX bytes:687827984 (655.9 MiB) virbr0-nic Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 52:54:00:79:e4:5a BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:500 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) vnet0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr fe:54:00:93:4e:68 inet6 addr: fe80::fc54:ff:fe93:4e68/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:607670 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:5932089 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:500 RX bytes:83574773 (79.7 MiB) TX bytes:1092482370 (1.0 GiB) vnet1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr fe:54:00:ed:6a:43 inet6 addr: fe80::fc54:ff:feed:6a43/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:922132 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:6342375 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:500 RX bytes:251091242 (239.4 MiB) TX bytes:1629079567 (1.5 GiB) vnet2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr fe:54:00:0d:cb:3d inet6 addr: fe80::fc54:ff:fe0d:cb3d/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:9461 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:665189 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:500 RX bytes:4990275 (4.7 MiB) TX bytes:49229647 (46.9 MiB) vnet3 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr fe:54:cd:83:eb:aa inet6 addr: fe80::fc54:cdff:fe83:ebaa/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:1649 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:12177 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:500 RX bytes:77233 (75.4 KiB) TX bytes:2127934 (2.0 MiB) The guest's /etc/network/interfaces, in this case running Ubuntu 12.04 (ip removed): # This file describes the network interfaces available on your system # and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5). # The loopback network interface auto lo iface lo inet loopback auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 176.9.xx.xx netmask 255.255.255.248 gateway 176.9.xx.xx # Host IP pointopoint 176.9.xx.xx # Host IP dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4 The output of ifconfig -a on the guest: eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 52:54:cd:83:eb:aa inet addr:176.9.xx.xx Bcast:0.0.0.0 Mask:255.255.255.255 inet6 addr: fe80::5054:cdff:fe83:ebaa/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:14190 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:1768 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:2614642 (2.6 MB) TX bytes:82700 (82.7 KB) lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:954 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:954 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:176679 (176.6 KB) TX bytes:176679 (176.6 KB) Output of ping -c4 on the guest: PING google.nl (173.194.35.151) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from muc03s01-in-f23.1e100.net (173.194.35.151): icmp_req=1 ttl=55 time=14.7 ms From static.174.82.xx.xx.clients.your-server.de (176.9.xx.xx): icmp_seq=2 Redirect Host(New nexthop: static.161.82.9.176.clients.your-server.de (176.9.82.161)) 64 bytes from muc03s01-in-f23.1e100.net (173.194.35.151): icmp_req=2 ttl=55 time=15.1 ms From static.198.170.9.176.clients.your-server.de (176.9.170.198) icmp_seq=3 Destination Host Unreachable From static.198.170.9.176.clients.your-server.de (176.9.170.198) icmp_seq=4 Destination Host Unreachable --- google.nl ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 2 received, +2 errors, 50% packet loss, time 3002ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 14.797/14.983/15.170/0.223 ms, pipe 2 The static.174.82.xx.xx.clients.your-server.de (176.9.xx.xx) is the host's IP. I have encountered this problem with every guest OS I've tried, that being Fedora, Ubuntu (server/desktop) and Debian with an upgraded kernel. I've also tried compiling the guest kernel myself, to no avail. I have no problem with recompiling a kernel, though the host cannot afford any downtime. Any ideas on this problem are very welcome. EDIT: I can ping the host from inside the guest.

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Timeout static class

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. When I started the “Little Wonders” series, I really wanted to pay homage to parts of the .NET Framework that are often small but can help in big ways.  The item I have to discuss today really is a very small item in the .NET BCL, but once again I feel it can help make the intention of code much clearer and thus is worthy of note. The Problem - Magic numbers aren’t very readable or maintainable In my first Little Wonders Post (Five Little Wonders That Make Code Better) I mention the TimeSpan factory methods which, I feel, really help the readability of constructed TimeSpan instances. Just to quickly recap that discussion, ask yourself what the TimeSpan specified in each case below is 1: // Five minutes? Five Seconds? 2: var fiveWhat1 = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 5); 3: var fiveWhat2 = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 5, 0); 4: var fiveWhat3 = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 5, 0, 0); You’d think they’d all be the same unit of time, right?  After all, most overloads tend to tack additional arguments on the end.  But this is not the case with TimeSpan, where the constructor forms are:     TimeSpan(int hours, int minutes, int seconds);     TimeSpan(int days, int hours, int minutes, int seconds);     TimeSpan(int days, int hours, int minutes, int seconds, int milliseconds); Notice how in the 4 and 5 parameter version we suddenly have the parameter days slipping in front of hours?  This can make reading constructors like those above much harder.  Fortunately, there are TimeSpan factory methods to help make your intention crystal clear: 1: // Ah! Much clearer! 2: var fiveSeconds = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5); These are great because they remove all ambiguity from the reader!  So in short, magic numbers in constructors and methods can be ambiguous, and anything we can do to clean up the intention of the developer will make the code much easier to read and maintain. Timeout – Readable identifiers for infinite timeout values In a similar way to TimeSpan, let’s consider specifying timeouts for some of .NET’s (or our own) many methods that allow you to specify timeout periods. For example, in the TPL Task class, there is a family of Wait() methods that can take TimeSpan or int for timeouts.  Typically, if you want to specify an infinite timeout, you’d just call the version that doesn’t take a timeout parameter at all: 1: myTask.Wait(); // infinite wait But there are versions that take the int or TimeSpan for timeout as well: 1: // Wait for 100 ms 2: myTask.Wait(100); 3:  4: // Wait for 5 seconds 5: myTask.Wait(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5); Now, if we want to specify an infinite timeout to wait on the Task, we could pass –1 (or a TimeSpan set to –1 ms), which what the .NET BCL methods with timeouts use to represent an infinite timeout: 1: // Also infinite timeouts, but harder to read/maintain 2: myTask.Wait(-1); 3: myTask.Wait(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(-1)); However, these are not as readable or maintainable.  If you were writing this code, you might make the mistake of thinking 0 or int.MaxValue was an infinite timeout, and you’d be incorrect.  Also, reading the code above it isn’t as clear that –1 is infinite unless you happen to know that is the specified behavior. To make the code like this easier to read and maintain, there is a static class called Timeout in the System.Threading namespace which contains definition for infinite timeouts specified as both int and TimeSpan forms: Timeout.Infinite An integer constant with a value of –1 Timeout.InfiniteTimeSpan A static readonly TimeSpan which represents –1 ms (only available in .NET 4.5+) This makes our calls to Task.Wait() (or any other calls with timeouts) much more clear: 1: // intention to wait indefinitely is quite clear now 2: myTask.Wait(Timeout.Infinite); 3: myTask.Wait(Timeout.InfiniteTimeSpan); But wait, you may say, why would we care at all?  Why not use the version of Wait() that takes no arguments?  Good question!  When you’re directly calling the method with an infinite timeout that’s what you’d most likely do, but what if you are just passing along a timeout specified by a caller from higher up?  Or perhaps storing a timeout value from a configuration file, and want to default it to infinite? For example, perhaps you are designing a communications module and want to be able to shutdown gracefully, but if you can’t gracefully finish in a specified amount of time you want to force the connection closed.  You could create a Shutdown() method in your class, and take a TimeSpan or an int for the amount of time to wait for a clean shutdown – perhaps waiting for client to acknowledge – before terminating the connection.  So, assume we had a pub/sub system with a class to broadcast messages: 1: // Some class to broadcast messages to connected clients 2: public class Broadcaster 3: { 4: // ... 5:  6: // Shutdown connection to clients, wait for ack back from clients 7: // until all acks received or timeout, whichever happens first 8: public void Shutdown(int timeout) 9: { 10: // Kick off a task here to send shutdown request to clients and wait 11: // for the task to finish below for the specified time... 12:  13: if (!shutdownTask.Wait(timeout)) 14: { 15: // If Wait() returns false, we timed out and task 16: // did not join in time. 17: } 18: } 19: } We could even add an overload to allow us to use TimeSpan instead of int, to give our callers the flexibility to specify timeouts either way: 1: // overload to allow them to specify Timeout in TimeSpan, would 2: // just call the int version passing in the TotalMilliseconds... 3: public void Shutdown(TimeSpan timeout) 4: { 5: Shutdown(timeout.TotalMilliseconds); 6: } Notice in case of this class, we don’t assume the caller wants infinite timeouts, we choose to rely on them to tell us how long to wait.  So now, if they choose an infinite timeout, they could use the –1, which is more cryptic, or use Timeout class to make the intention clear: 1: // shutdown the broadcaster, waiting until all clients ack back 2: // without timing out. 3: myBroadcaster.Shutdown(Timeout.Infinite); We could even add a default argument using the int parameter version so that specifying no arguments to Shutdown() assumes an infinite timeout: 1: // Modified original Shutdown() method to add a default of 2: // Timeout.Infinite, works because Timeout.Infinite is a compile 3: // time constant. 4: public void Shutdown(int timeout = Timeout.Infinite) 5: { 6: // same code as before 7: } Note that you can’t default the ShutDown(TimeSpan) overload with Timeout.InfiniteTimeSpan since it is not a compile-time constant.  The only acceptable default for a TimeSpan parameter would be default(TimeSpan) which is zero milliseconds, which specified no wait, not infinite wait. Summary While Timeout.Infinite and Timeout.InfiniteTimeSpan are not earth-shattering classes in terms of functionality, they do give you very handy and readable constant values that you can use in your programs to help increase readability and maintainability when specifying infinite timeouts for various timeouts in the BCL and your own applications. Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,Timeout,Task

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #049

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Two Connections Related Global Variables Explained – @@CONNECTIONS and @@MAX_CONNECTIONS @@CONNECTIONS Returns the number of attempted connections, either successful or unsuccessful since SQL Server was last started. @@MAX_CONNECTIONS Returns the maximum number of simultaneous user connections allowed on an instance of SQL Server. The number returned is not necessarily the number currently configured. Query Editor – Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio This post may be very simple for most of the users of SQL Server 2005. Earlier this year, I have received one question many times – Where is Query Analyzer in SQL Server 2005? I wrote small post about it and pointed many users to that post – SQL SERVER – 2005 Query Analyzer – Microsoft SQL SERVER Management Studio. Recently I have been receiving similar question. OUTPUT Clause Example and Explanation with INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE SQL Server 2005 has a new OUTPUT clause, which is quite useful. OUTPUT clause has access to insert and deleted tables (virtual tables) just like triggers. OUTPUT clause can be used to return values to client clause. OUTPUT clause can be used with INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE to identify the actual rows affected by these statements. OUTPUT clause can generate a table variable, a permanent table, or temporary table. Even though, @@Identity will still work with SQL Server 2005, however I find the OUTPUT clause very easy and powerful to use. Let us understand the OUTPUT clause using an example. Find Name of The SQL Server Instance Based on database server stored procedures has to run different logic. We came up with two different solutions. 1) When database schema is very much changed, we wrote completely new stored procedure and deprecated older version once it was not needed. 2) When logic depended on Server Name we used global variable @@SERVERNAME. It was very convenient while writing migrating script which depended on the server name for the same database. Explanation of TRY…CATCH and ERROR Handling With RAISEERROR Function One of the developers at my company thought that we can not use the RAISEERROR function in new feature of SQL Server 2005 TRY… CATCH. When asked for an explanation he suggested SQL SERVER – 2005 Explanation of TRY… CATCH and ERROR Handling article as excuse suggesting that I did not give example of RAISEERROR with TRY…CATCH. We all thought it was funny. Just to keep records straight, TRY… CATCH can sure use RAISEERROR function. Different Types of Cache Objects Serveral kinds of objects can be stored in the procedure cache: Compiled Plans: When the query optimizer finishes compiling a query plan, the principal output is compiled plan. Execution contexts: While executing a compiled plan, SQL Server has to keep track of information about the state of execution. Cursors: Cursors track the execution state of server-side cursors, including the cursor’s current location within a resultset. Algebrizer trees: The Algebrizer’s job is to produce an algebrizer tree, which represents the logic structure of a query. Open SSMS From Command Prompt – sqlwb.exe Example This article is written by request and suggestion of Sr. Web Developer at my organization. Due to the nature of this article most of the content is referred from Book On-Line. sqlwbcommand prompt utility which opens SQL Server Management Studio. Squib command does not run queries from the command prompt. sqlcmd utility runs queries from command prompt, read for more information. 2008 Puzzle – Solution – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation Just a day before I wrote article SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation which was inspired by SQL Server MVP Jacob Sebastian. I suggest that before continuing this article read the original puzzle question SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation.The question was if the computed column was of datatype TINYINT how to create a Computed Column of datatype INT? 2008 – Find If Index is Being Used in Database It is very often I get a query that how to find if any index is being used in the database or not. If any database has many indexes and not all indexes are used it can adversely affect performance. If the number of indices are higher it reduces the INSERT / UPDATE / DELETE operation but increase the SELECT operation. It is recommended to drop any unused indexes from table to improve the performance. 2009 Interesting Observation – Execution Plan and Results of Aggregate Concatenation Queries If you want to see what’s going on here, I think you need to shift your point of view from an implementation-centric view to an ANSI point of view. ANSI does not guarantee processing the order. Figure 2 is interesting, but it will be potentially misleading if you don’t understand the ANSI rule-set SQL Server operates under in most cases. Implementation thinking can certainly be useful at times when you really need that multi-million row query to finish before the backup fire off, but in this case, it’s counterproductive to understanding what is going on. SQL Server Management Studio and Client Statistics Client Statistics are very important. Many a times, people relate queries execution plan to query cost. This is not a good comparison. Both parameters are different, and they are not always related. It is possible that the query cost of any statement is less, but the amount of the data returned is considerably larger, which is causing any query to run slow. How do we know if any query is retrieving a large amount data or very little data? 2010 I encourage all of you to go through complete series and write your own on the subject. If you write an article and send it to me, I will publish it on this blog with due credit to you. If you write on your own blog, I will update this blog post pointing to your blog post. SQL SERVER – ORDER BY Does Not Work – Limitation of the View 1 SQL SERVER – Adding Column is Expensive by Joining Table Outside View – Limitation of the View 2 SQL SERVER – Index Created on View not Used Often – Limitation of the View 3 SQL SERVER – SELECT * and Adding Column Issue in View – Limitation of the View 4 SQL SERVER – COUNT(*) Not Allowed but COUNT_BIG(*) Allowed – Limitation of the View 5 SQL SERVER – UNION Not Allowed but OR Allowed in Index View – Limitation of the View 6 SQL SERVER – Cross Database Queries Not Allowed in Indexed View – Limitation of the View 7 SQL SERVER – Outer Join Not Allowed in Indexed Views – Limitation of the View 8 SQL SERVER – SELF JOIN Not Allowed in Indexed View – Limitation of the View 9 SQL SERVER – Keywords View Definition Must Not Contain for Indexed View – Limitation of the View 10 SQL SERVER – View Over the View Not Possible with Index View – Limitations of the View 11 SQL SERVER – Get Query Running in Session I was recently looking for syntax where I needed a query running in any particular session. I always remembered the syntax and ha d actually written it down before, but somehow it was not coming to mind quickly this time. I searched online and I ended up on my own article written last year SQL SERVER – Get Last Running Query Based on SPID. I felt that I am getting old because I forgot this really simple syntax. Find Total Number of Transaction on Interval In one of my recent Performance Tuning assignments I was asked how do someone know how many transactions are happening on a server during certain interval. I had a handy script for the same. Following script displays transactions happened on the server at the interval of one minute. You can change the WAITFOR DELAY to any other interval and it should work. 2011 Here are two DMV’s which are newly introduced in SQL Server 2012 and provides vital information about SQL Server. DMV – sys.dm_os_volume_stats – Information about operating system volume DMV – sys.dm_os_windows_info – Information about Operating System SQL Backup and FTP – A Quick and Handy Tool I have used this tool extensively since 2009 at numerous occasion and found it to be very impressive. What separates it from the crowd the most – it is it’s apparent simplicity and speed. When I install SQLBackupAndFTP and configure backups – all in 1 or 2 minutes, my clients are always impressed. Quick Note about JOIN – Common Questions and Simple Answers In this blog post we are going to talk about join and lots of things related to the JOIN. I recently started office hours to answer questions and issues of the community. I receive so many questions that are related to JOIN. I will share a few of the same over here. Most of them are basic, but note that the basics are of great importance. 2012 Importance of User Without Login Question: “In recent version of SQL Server we can create user without login. What is the use of it?” Great question indeed. Let me first attempt to answer this question but after reading my answer I need your help. I want you to help him as well with adding more value to it. Preserve Leading Zero While Coping to Excel from SSMS Earlier I wrote two articles about how to efficiently copy data from SSMS to Excel. Since I wrote that post there are plenty of interest generated on this subject. There are a few questions I keep on getting over this subject. One of the question is how to get the leading zero preserved while copying the data from SSMS to Excel. Well it is almost the same way as my earlier post SQL SERVER – Excel Losing Decimal Values When Value Pasted from SSMS ResultSet. The key here is in EXCEL and not in SQL Server. Solution – 2 T-SQL Puzzles – Display Star and Shortest Code to Display 1 Earlier on this blog we had asked two puzzles. The response from all of you is nothing but Amazing. I have received 350+ responses. Many are valid and many were indeed something I had not thought about it. I strongly suggest you read all the puzzles and their answers here - trust me if you start reading the comments you will not stop till you read every single comment. Seriously trust me on it. Personally I have learned a lot from it. Identify Most Resource Intensive Queries – SQL in Sixty Seconds #028 – Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvlYy-TGaaA Importance of User Without Login – T-SQL Demo Script Earlier I wrote a blog post about SQL SERVER – Importance of User Without Login and my friend and SQL Expert Vinod Kumar has written excellent follow up blog post about Contained Databases inside SQL Server 2012. Now lots of people asked me if I can also explain the same concept again so here is the small demonstration for it. Let me show you how login without user can help. Before we continue on this subject I strongly recommend that you read my earlier blog post here. In following demo I am going to demonstrate following situation. Login using the System Admin account Create a user without login Checking Access Impersonate the user without login Checking Access Revert Impersonation Give Permission to user without login Impersonate the user without login Checking Access Revert Impersonation Clean up Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Windows Azure Myths

  - by BuckWoody

  Windows Azure is part of the Microsoft "stack" - the suite of software and services we offer. Because we have so many products in almost every part of technology, it's hard to know everything about all parts of what we do - even for those of us who work here. So it's no surprise that some folks are not as familiar with Windows and SQL Azure as they are, say Windows Server or XBox. As I chat with folks about a solution for a business or organization need, I put Windows Azure into the mix. I always start off with "What do you already know about Windows Azure?" so that I don't bore folks with information they already have. I some cases they've checked out the product ahead of time and have specific questions, in others they aren't as familiar, and in still others there is a fair amount of mis-information. Sometimes that's because of a marketing failure, sometimes it's hearsay, and somtetimes it's active misinformation. I thought I might lay out a few of these misconceptions. As always - do your fact-checking! Never take anyone's word alone (including mine) as gospel. Make sure you educate yourself on your options. Your company or your clients depend on you to have the right information on IT, so make sure you live up to that. Myth 1: Nobody uses Windows Azure It's true that we don't give out numbers on the amount of clients on Windows and SQL Azure. But lots of folks are here - companies you may have heard of like Boeing, NASA, Fujitsu, The City of London, Nuedesic, and many others. I deal with firms small and large that use Windows Azure for mission-critical applications, sometimes totally on Windows and/or SQL Azure, sometimes in conjunction with an on-premises system, sometimes for only a specific component in Windows Azure like storage. The interesting thing is that many sites you visit have a Windows Azure component, or are running on Windows Azure. They just don't announce it. Just like the other cloud providers, the companies have asked to be completely branded themselves - they don't want you to be aware or care that they are on Windows Azure. Sometimes that's for security, other times it's for different reasons. It's just like the web sites you visit. For the most part, they don't advertise which OS or Web Server they use. It really just shouldn't matter. The point is that they just use what works to solve a given problem. Check out a few public case studies here: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/case-studies/ Myth 2: It's only for Microsoft stuff - can't use Open Source This is the one I face the most, and am the most dismayed by. We work just fine with many open source products, including Java, NodeJS, PHP, Ruby, Python, Hadoop, and many other languages and applications. You can quickly deploy a Wordpress, Umbraco and other "kits". We have software development kits (SDK's) for iPhones, iPads, Android, Windows phones and more. We have an SDK to work with FaceBook and other social networks. In short, we play well with others. More on the languages and runtimes we support here: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/overview/ More on the SDK's here: http://www.wadewegner.com/2011/05/windows-azure-toolkit-for-ios/, http://www.wadewegner.com/2011/08/windows-azure-toolkits-for-devices-now-with-android/, http://azuretoolkit.codeplex.com/ Myth 3: Microsoft expects me to switch everything to "the cloud" No, we don't. That would be disasterous, unless the only things you run in your company uses works perfectly in Azure. Use Windows Azure  - or any cloud for that matter - where it works. Whenever I talk to companies, I focus on two things: Something that is broken and needs to be re-architected Something you want to do that is new If something is broken, and you need new tools to scale, extend, add capacity dynamically and so on, then you can consider using Windows or SQL Azure. It can help solve problems that you have, or it may include a component you don't want to write or architect yourself. Sometimes you want to do something new, like extend your company's offerings to mobile phones, to the web, or to a social network. More info on where it works here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx Myth 4: I have to write code to use Windows and SQL Azure If Windows Azure is a PaaS - a Platform as a Service - then don't you have to write code to use it? Nope. Windows and SQL Azure are made up of various components. Some of those components allow you to write and deploy code (like Compute) and others don't. We have lots of customers using Windows Azure storage as a backup, to securely share files instead of using DropBox, to distribute videos or code or firmware, and more. Others use our High Performance Computing (HPC) offering to rent a supercomputer when they need one. You can even throw workloads at that using Excel! In addition there are lots of other components in Windows Azure you can use, from the Windows Azure Media Services to others. More here: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/scenarios/saas/ Myth 5: Windows Azure is just another form of "vendor lock-in" Windows Azure uses .NET, OSS languages and standard interfaces for the code. Sure, you're not going to take the code line-for-line and run it on a mainframe, but it's standard code that you write, and can port to something else. And the data is yours - you can bring it back whever you want. It's either in text or binary form, that you have complete control over. There are no licenses - you can "pay as you go", and when you're done, you can leave the service and take all your code, data and IP with you.   So go out there, read up, try it. Use it where it works. And don't believe everything you hear - sometimes the Internet doesn't get it all correct. :)

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• Making a Case For The Command Line

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2013/06/30/making-a-case-for-the-command-line.aspxI have had an idea percolating in the back of my mind for over a year now that I’ve just recently started to implement. This idea relates to building out “internal tools” to ease the maintenance and on-going support of a software system. The system that I currently work on is (mostly) web-based, so we traditionally we have built these internal tools in the form of pages within the app that are only accessible by our developers and support personnel. These pages allow us to perform tasks within the system that, for one reason or another, we don’t want to let our end users perform (e.g. mass create/update/delete operations on data, flipping switches that turn paid modules of the system on or off, etc). When we try to build new tools like this we often struggle with the level of effort required to build them. Effort Required Creating a whole new page in an existing web application can be a fairly large undertaking. You need to create the page and ensure it will have a layout that is consistent with the other pages in the app. You need to decide what types of input controls need to go onto the page. You need to ensure that everything uses the same style as the rest of the site. You need to figure out what the text on the page should say. Then, when you figure out that you forgot about an input that should really be present you might have to go back and re-work the entire thing. Oh, and in addition to all of that, you still have to, you know, write the code that actually performs the task. Everything other than the code that performs the task at hand is just overhead. We don’t need a fancy date picker control in a nicely styled page for the vast majority of our internal tools. We don’t even really need a page, for that matter. We just need a way to issue a command to the application and have it, in turn, execute the code that we’ve written to accomplish a given task. All we really need is a simple console application! Plumbing Problems A former co-worker of mine, John Sonmez, always advocated the Unix philosophy for building internal tools: start with something that runs at the command line, and then build a UI on top of that if you need to. John’s idea has a lot of merit, and we tried building out some internal tools as simple Console applications. Unfortunately, this was often easier said that done. Doing a “File –> New Project” to build out a tool for a mature system can be pretty daunting because that new project is totally empty.  In our case, the web application code had a lot of of “plumbing” built in: it managed authentication and authorization, it handled database connection management for our multi-tenanted architecture, it managed all of the context that needs to follow a user around the application such as their timezone and regional/language settings. In addition, the configuration file for the web application  (a web.config in our case because this is an ASP .NET application) is large and would need to be reproduced into a similar configuration file for a Console application. While most of these problems are could be solved pretty easily with some refactoring of the codebase, building Console applications for internal tools still potentially suffers from one pretty big drawback: you’d have to execute them on a machine with network access to all of the needed resources. Obviously, our web servers can easily communicate the the database servers and can publish messages to our service bus, but the same is not true for all of our developer and support personnel workstations. We could have everyone run these tools remotely via RDP or SSH, but that’s a bit cumbersome and certainly a lot less convenient than having the tools built into the web application that is so easily accessible. Mix and Match So we need a way to build tools that are easily accessible via the web application but also don’t require the overhead of creating a user interface. This is where my idea comes into play: why not just build a command line interface into the web application? If it’s part of the web application we get all of the plumbing that comes along with that code, and we’re executing everything on the web servers which means we’ll have access to any external resources that we might need. Rather than having to incur the overhead of creating a brand new page for each tool that we want to build, we can create one new page that simply accepts a command in text form and executes it as a request on the web server. In this way, we can focus on writing the code to accomplish the task. If the tool ends up being heavily used, then (and only then) should we consider spending the time to build a better user experience around it. To be clear, I’m not trying to downplay the importance of building great user experiences into your system; we should all strive to provide the best UX possible to our end users. I’m only advocating this sort of bare-bones interface for internal consumption by the technical staff that builds and supports the software. This command line interface should be the “back end” to a highly polished and eye-pleasing public face. Implementation As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this is an idea that I’ve had for awhile but have only recently started building out. I’ve outlined some general guidelines and design goals for this effort as follows: Text in, text out: In the interest of keeping things as simple as possible, I want this interface to be purely text-based. Users will submit commands as plain text, and the application will provide responses in plain text. Obviously this text will be “wrapped” within the context of HTTP requests and responses, but I don’t want to have to think about HTML or CSS when taking input from the user or displaying responses back to the user. Task-oriented code only: After building the initial “harness” for this interface, the only code that should need to be written to create a new internal tool should be code that is expressly needed to accomplish the task that the tool is intended to support. If we want to encourage and enable ourselves to build good tooling, we need to lower the barriers to entry as much as possible. Built-in documentation: One of the great things about most command line utilities is the ‘help’ switch that provides usage guidelines and details about the arguments that the utility accepts. Our web-based command line utility should allow us to build the documentation for these tools directly into the code of the tools themselves. I finally started trying to implement this idea when I heard about a fantastic open-source library called CLAP (Command Line Auto Parser) that lets me meet the guidelines outlined above. CLAP lets you define classes with public methods that can be easily invoked from the command line. Here’s a quick example of the code that would be needed to create a new tool to do something within your system: 1: public class CustomerTools 2: { 3: [Verb] 4: public void UpdateName(int customerId, string firstName, string lastName) 5: { 6: //invoke internal services/domain objects/hwatever to perform update 7: } 8: } This is just a regular class with a single public method (though you could have as many methods as you want). The method is decorated with the ‘Verb’ attribute that tells the CLAP library that it is a method that can be invoked from the command line. Here is how you would invoke that code: Parser.Run(args, new CustomerTools()); Note that ‘args’ is just a string[] that would normally be passed passed in from the static Main method of a Console application. Also, CLAP allows you to pass in multiple classes that define [Verb] methods so you can opt to organize the code that CLAP will invoke in any way that you like. You can invoke this code from a command line application like this: SomeExe UpdateName -customerId:123 -firstName:Jesse -lastName:Taber ‘SomeExe’ in this example just represents the name of .exe that is would be created from our Console application. CLAP then interprets the arguments passed in order to find the method that should be invoked and automatically parses out the parameters that need to be passed in. After a quick spike, I’ve found that invoking the ‘Parser’ class can be done from within the context of a web application just as easily as it can from within the ‘Main’ method entry point of a Console application. There are, however, a few sticking points that I’m working around: Splitting arguments into the ‘args’ array like the command line: When you invoke a standard .NET console application you get the arguments that were passed in by the user split into a handy array (this is the ‘args’ parameter referenced above). Generally speaking they get split by whitespace, but it’s also clever enough to handle things like ignoring whitespace in a phrase that is surrounded by quotes. We’ll need to re-create this logic within our web application so that we can give the ‘args’ value to CLAP just like a console application would. Providing a response to the user: If you were writing a console application, you might just use Console.WriteLine to provide responses to the user as to the progress and eventual outcome of the command. We can’t use Console.WriteLine within a web application, so I’ll need to find another way to provide feedback to the user. Preferably this approach would allow me to use the same handler classes from both a Console application and a web application, so some kind of strategy pattern will likely emerge from this effort. Submitting files: Often an internal tool needs to support doing some kind of operation in bulk, and the easiest way to submit the data needed to support the bulk operation is in a file. Getting the file uploaded and available to the CLAP handler classes will take a little bit of effort. Mimicking the console experience: This isn’t really a requirement so much as a “nice to have”. To start out, the command-line interface in the web application will probably be a single ‘textarea’ control with a button to submit the contents to a handler that will pass it along to CLAP to be parsed and run. I think it would be interesting to use some javascript and CSS trickery to change that page into something with more of a “shell” interface look and feel. I’ll be blogging more about this effort in the future and will include some code snippets (or maybe even a full blown example app) as I progress. I also think that I’ll probably end up either submitting some pull requests to the CLAP project or possibly forking/wrapping it into a more web-friendly package and open sourcing that.

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• Rockmelt, the technology adoption model, and Facebook's spare internet

  - by Roger Hart

  Regardless of how good it is, you'd have to have a heart of stone not to make snide remarks about Rockmelt. After all, on the surface it looks a lot like some people spent two years building a browser instead of just bashing out a Chrome extension over a wet weekend. It probably does some more stuff. I don't know for sure because artificial scarcity is cool, apparently, so the "invitation" is still in the post*. I may in fact never know for sure, because I'm not wild about Facebook sign-in as a prerequisite for anything. From the video, and some initial reviews, my early reaction was: I have a browser, I have a Twitter client; what on earth is this for? The answer, of course, is "not me". Rockmelt is, in a way, quite audacious. Oh, sure, on launch day it's Bay Area bar-chat for the kids with no lenses in their retro specs and trousers that give you deep-vein thrombosis, but it's not really about them. Likewise,  Facebook just launched Google Wave, or something. And all the tech snobbery and scorn packed into describing it that way is irrelevant next to what they're doing with their platform. Here's something I drew in MS Paint** because I don't want to get sued: (see: The technology adoption lifecycle) A while ago in the Guardian, John Lanchester dusted off the idiom that "technology is stuff that doesn't work yet". The rest of the article would be quite interesting if it wasn't largely about MySpace, and he's sort of got a point. If you bolt on the sentiment that risk-averse businessmen like things that work, you've got the essence of Crossing the Chasm. Products for the mainstream market don't look much like technology. Think for  a second about early (1980s ish) hi-fi systems, with all the knobs and fiddly bits, their ostentatious technophile aesthetic. Then consider their sleeker and less (or at least less conspicuously) functional successors in the 1990s. The theory goes that innovators and early adopters like technology, it's a hobby in itself. The rest of the humans seem to like magic boxes with very few buttons that make stuff happen and never trouble them about why. Personally, I consider Apple's maddening insistence that iTunes is an acceptable way to move files around to be more or less morally unacceptable. Most people couldn't care less. Hence Rockmelt, and hence Facebook's continued growth. Rockmelt looks pointless to me, because I aggregate my social gubbins with Digsby, or use TweetDeck. But my use case is different and so are my enthusiasms. If I want to share photos, I'll use Flickr - but Facebook has photo sharing. If I want a short broadcast message, I'll use Twitter - Facebook has status updates. If I want to sell something with relatively little hassle, there's eBay - or Facebook marketplace. YouTube - check, FB Video. Email - messaging. Calendaring apps, yeah there are loads, or FB Events. What if I want to host a simple web page? Sure, they've got pages. Also Notes for blogging, and more games than I can count. This stuff is right there, where millions and millions of users are already, and for what they need it just works. It's not about me, because I'm not in the big juicy area under the curve. It's what 1990s portal sites could never have dreamed of achieving. Facebook is AOL on speed, crack, and some designer drugs it had specially imported from the future. It's a n00b-friendly gateway to the internet that just happens to serve up all the things you want to do online, right where you are. Oh, and everybody else is there too. The price of having all this and the social graph too is that you have all of this, and the social graph too. But plenty of folks have more incisive things to say than me about the whole privacy shebang, and it's not really what I'm talking about. Facebook is maintaining a vast, and fairly fully-featured training-wheels internet. And it makes up a large proportion of the online experience for a lot of people***. It's the entire web (2.0?) experience for the early and late majority. And sure, no individual bit of it is quite as slick or as fully-realised as something like Flickr (which wows me a bit every time I use it. Those guys are good at the web), but it doesn't have to be. It has to be unobtrusively good enough for the regular humans. It has to not feel like technology. This is what Rockmelt sort of is. You're online, you want something nebulously social, and you don't want to faff about with, say, Twitter clients. Wow! There it is on a really distracting sidebar, right in your browser. No effort! Yeah - fish nor fowl, much? It might work, I guess. There may be a demographic who want their social web experience more simply than tech tinkering, and who aren't just getting it from Facebook (or, for that matter, mobile devices). But I'd be surprised. Rockmelt feels like an attempt to grab a slice of Facebook-style "Look! It's right here, where you already are!", but it's still asking the mature market to install a new browser. Presumably this is where that Facebook sign-in predicate comes in handy, though it'll take some potent awareness marketing to make it fly. Meanwhile, Facebook quietly has the entire rest of the internet as a product management resource, and can continue to give most of the people most of what they want. Something that has not gone un-noticed in its potential to look a little sinister. But heck, they might even make Google Wave popular.     *This was true last week when I drafted this post. I got an invite subsequently, hence the screenshot. **MS Paint is no fun any more. It's actually good in Windows 7. Farewell ironically-shonky diagrams. *** It's also behind a single sign-in, lending a veneer of confidence, and partially solving the problem of usernames being crummy unique identifiers. I'll be blogging about that at some point.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, May 20, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, May 20, 2010New ProjectsAlphaChannel: Closed projectAragon Online Client: The Aragon Online Client is a front-end application allowing users to play the online game http://aragon-online.net The client fetches game data a...BISBCarManager: Car managerBlammo.Net: Blammo.Net is a simple logging system that allows for multiple files, has simple configuration, and is modular.C# IMAPI2 Samples: This project is my effort to port the VB Script IMAPI2 samples to C# 4.0 and provide CD/DVD Burning capabilities in C#. This takes advantage of th...DemotToolkit: A toolbox to help you enjoy the demotivators.FMI Silverlight Course: This is the site for the final project of the Silverlight course taught at the Sofia University in the summer semester of 2010.InfoPath Publisher Helper: Building a large set of InfoPath Templates? Bored of the repetive stsadm commands to deploy an online form? This tool will allow you to submit ...JSBallBounce - HTML5 Stereocopy: A demo of basic stereoscopy in HTML5Kindler: Kindler allows you to easily convert simply HTML into documents that can be easily read on the Amazon Kindle.Maybe: Maybe or IfNotNull using lambdas for deep expressions. int? CityId= employee.Maybe(e=>e.Person.Address.City);PopCorn Project : play music with system beeps: PopCorn is an application that can play monophonic music through system beeps. You can launch music on the local machine, or on a remote server thr...RuneScape 2 Chronos - Emulation done right.: RuneScape 2 Chronos is a RuneScape 2 Emulator framework. It is completely open-source and is programmed in a way in which should be simpler for it'...RWEntregas: Projeto do Rogrigo e Wender referente a entregasSilverAmp: A media player to demonstrate lots of new Silverlight 4 features. Running out of browser and reading files from the MyMusic folder are two of them....Silverlight Scheduler: A light-weight silverlight scheduler control.SimpleContainer: SimpleContainer is very simple IoC container that consists of one class that implements two remarkable methods: one for registration and one for re...sqlserverextensions: This project will provide some use operations for files and directories. Further development will include extended string operations.TechWorks Portugal Sample BI Project: Techworks is a complete Microsoft BI sample project customized for Portugal to be used in demo and learning scenarios. It is based in SQL Server 20...Test4Proj: Test4ProjTV Show Renamer: TV Show Renamer is a program that is designed to take files downloaded off the internet and rename them to a more user friendly file name. It is fo...UnFreeZeMouSeW7: This small application disable or enable the standby mode on Windows 7 devices. As the mouse pointer freezes or the latency increase on some device...VianaNET - Videoanalysis for physical motion: The VianaNET project targets physics education. The software enables to analyze the motion of colored objects in life-video and video files. The da...Visual Studio 2010 extension for helping SharePoint 2010 debugging: This is a Visual Studio 2010 extensibility project that extends the debugging support for the built-in SharePoint 2010 tools with new menu items an...Visual Studio 2010 Load Test Plugins Library: Useful plugin library for Visual Studio Load Test 2010 version. (Best for web tests).VMware Lab Manager Powershell Cmdlet: This is a simple powershell cmdlet which connects you with the VMware lab manager internal soap api.Webgame UI: Bot to webgameNew ReleasesActipro WPF Controls Contrib: v2010.1: Minor tweaks and updated to target Actipro WPF Studio 2010.1. Addition of Editors.Interop.Datagrid project, which allows Actipro Editors for WPF t...Blammo.Net: Blammo.Net 1.0: This is the initial release of Blammo.Net.Build Version Increment Add-In Visual Studio: Shared Assembly Info Setup: Example solution that makes use of one shared assembly info file.CSS 360 Planetary Calendar: Zero Feature Release: =============================================================================== Zero Feature Release Version: 0.0 Description: This is a binar...DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.04.02: Updated the Installation Wizard's Polish & German language packs. Improved performance of Sql script for listing modules by portal. Improved De...DotNetNuke® Store: 02.01.36: What's New in this release? Bugs corrected: - The reference to resource.zip has been commented in the Install package. Sorry for that it's my mista...Extend SmallBasic: Teaching Extensions v.016: added turtle tree quizExtremeML: ExtremeML v1.0 Beta 2: Following the decision to terminate development of the Premium Edition of ExtremeML, this release includes all code previously restricted to the Pr...InfoPath Publisher Helper: 1st Release: InfoPath Publisher Helper Tool The version is mostly stable. There are some UI errors, which can be ignored. The code has not been cleaned up so t...JSBallBounce - HTML5 Stereocopy: HTML5 Stereoscopic Bouncing Balls Demo: Stereoscopic rendering in HTML5kdar: KDAR 0.0.22: KDAR - Kernel Debugger Anti Rootkit - signature's bases updated - ALPC port jbject check added - tcpip internal critical area checks added - some ...Lightweight Fluent Workflow: Objectflow core: Release Notes Fixed minor defects Framework changes Added IsFalse for boolean conditions Defects fixed IsTrue works with Not operator Installati...LiquidSilver SharePoint Framework: LiquidSilver 0.2.0.0 Beta: Changes in this version: - Fixed a bug in HgListItem when parsing double and int fields. - Added the LiquidSilver.Extra project. - Added the Liquid...Matrix: MatrixPlugin-0.5.1: Works with UniqueRoutes plugin on Google Code Works in Linux (path changes, variable usage etc) Builds .st2plugin by default Adapted to ST3MRDS Samples: MRDS Samples 1.0: Initial Release Please read the installation instructions on the Read Me page carefully before you unzip the samples. This ZIP file contains sourc...PopCorn Project : play music with system beeps: Popcorn v0.1: 1st beta releaseRuneScape 2 Chronos - Emulation done right.: Revision 0: Alpha stage of the Chronos source.SCSI Interface for Multimedia and Block Devices: Release 13 - Integrated Shell, x64 Fixes, and more: Changes from the previous version: - Added an integrated shell browser to the program and removed the Add/Remove File/Folder buttons, since the she...Silverlight Console: Silverlight Console Release 2: Release contains: - Orktane.Console.dll - Orktane.ScriptActions.dll Release targets: - Silverlight 4 Dependencies: - nRoute.Toolkit for Silverlig...SimpleContainer: SimpleContainer: Initial release of SimpleContainer library.Springshield Sample Site for EPiServer CMS: Springshield 1.0: City of Springshield - The accessible sample site for EPiServer CMS 6. Read the readme.txt on how to install.SQL Trim: 20100519: Improved releasesqlserverextensions: V 0.1 alpha: Version 0.1 Alphasvchost viewer: svchost viewer ver. 0.5.0.1: Got some feedback from a user, with some nice ideas so here they are: • Made the program resizable. • Program now saves the size and position when...Tribe.Cache: Tribe.Cache RC: Release Candidate There are breaking changes between BETA and RC :- 1) Cache Dictionary is now not exposed to the client. 2) Completly Thread Sa...TV Show Renamer: TV Show Renamer: This is the first public release. Don't worry that it is version 2.1 that is because i keep adding features to it and then upping the version numbe...UnFreeZeMouSeW7: UnFreeZeMouSeW7 0.1: First releaseVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30519.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVianaNET - Videoanalysis for physical motion: VianaNET V1.1 - alpha: This is the first alpha release of the completely rewritten Viana. Known issues are: - sometimes black frame at initial load of video - no abilit...visinia: visinia_1: The beta is gone, the visinia is here with visinia 1. now you can confidently install visinia use visinia and enjoy visinia. This version of visini...visinia: visinia_1_Src: The beta is gone, the visinia is here with visinia 1. now you can confidently install visinia use visinia and enjoy visinia. This version of visini...Visual Studio 2010 extension for helping SharePoint 2010 debugging: 1.0 First public release: The extension is released as a Visual Studio 2010 solution. See my related blog post at http://pholpar.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/visual-studio-2010-...Visual Studio 2010 Load Test Plugins Library: version 1 stable: version 1 stableVMware Lab Manager Powershell Cmdlet: LMCmdlet 1.0.0: first Release. You need to be an Administrator to install this cmdlet. After you run setup open powershell type: Get-PSSnapin -Registered you sh...WF Personalplaner: Personalplaner v1.7.29.10139: - Wenn ein Schema erstellt wird mit der Checkbox "Als neues Schema speichern" wurde pro Person ein Schema erstellt - Wenn ein Pensum geändert wurde...XAM.NET: XAM 1.0p2 + Issue Tracker 8396: Patch release for Issue Tracker 8396Xrns2XMod: Xrns2XMod 1.2: Fixed 32 bit flac conversion - Thanks to Yuri for updating FlacBox librariesMost Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelASP.NETMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrPHPExcelGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationCustomer Portal Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRMBlogEngine.NETWindows Azure Command-line Tools for PHP DevelopersCassiniDev - Cassini 3.5/4.0 Developers EditionSQL Server PowerShell ExtensionsFluent Ribbon Control Suite

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• Exploring the Excel Services REST API

  - by jamiet

  Over the last few years Analysis Services guru Chris Webb and I have been on something of a crusade to enable better access to data that is locked up in countless Excel workbooks that litter the hard drives of enterprise PCs. The most prominent manifestation of that crusade up to now has been a forum thread that Chris began on Microsoft Answers entitled Excel Web App API? Chris began that thread with: I was wondering whether there was an API for the Excel Web App? Specifically, I was wondering if it was possible (or if it will be possible in the future) to expose data in a spreadsheet in the Excel Web App as an OData feed, in the way that it is possible with Excel Services? Up to recently the last 10 words of that paragraph "in the way that it is possible with Excel Services" had completely washed over me however a comment on my recent blog post Thoughts on ExcelMashup.com (and a rant) by Josh Booker in which Josh said: Excel Services is a service application built for sharepoint 2010 which exposes a REST API for excel documents. We're looking forward to pros like you giving it a try now that Office365 makes sharepoint more easily accessible.  Can't wait for your future blog about using REST API to load data from Excel on Offce 365 in SSIS. made me think that perhaps the Excel Services REST API is something I should be looking into and indeed that is what I have been doing over the past few days. And you know what? I'm rather impressed with some of what Excel Services' REST API has to offer. Unfortunately Excel Services' REST API also has one debilitating aspect that renders this blog post much less useful than it otherwise would be; namely that it is not publicly available from the Excel Web App on SkyDrive. Therefore all I can do in this blog post is show you screenshots of what the REST API provides in Sharepoint rather than linking you directly to those REST resources; that's a great shame because one of the benefits of a REST API is that it is easily and ubiquitously demonstrable from a web browser. Instead I am hosting a workbook on Sharepoint in Office 365 because that does include Excel Services' REST API but, again, all I can do is show you screenshots. N.B. If anyone out there knows how to make Office-365-hosted spreadsheets publicly-accessible (i.e. without requiring a username/password) please do let me know (because knowing which forum on which to ask the question is an exercise in futility). In order to demonstrate Excel Services' REST API I needed some decent data and for that I used the World Tourism Organization Statistics Database and Yearbook - United Nations World Tourism Organization dataset hosted on Azure Datamarket (its free, by the way); this dataset "provides comprehensive information on international tourism worldwide and offers a selection of the latest available statistics on international tourist arrivals, tourism receipts and expenditure" and you can explore the data for yourself here. If you want to play along at home by viewing the data as it exists in Excel then it can be viewed here. Let's dive in.   The root of Excel Services' REST API is the model resource which resides at: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model Note that this is true for every workbook hosted in a Sharepoint document library - each Excel workbook is a RESTful resource. (Update: Mark Stacey on Twitter tells me that "It's turned off by default in onpremise Sharepoint (1 tickbox to turn on though)". Thanks Mark!) The data is provided as an ATOM feed but I have Firefox's feed reading ability turned on so you don't see the underlying XML goo. As you can see there are four top level resources, Ranges, Charts, Tables and PivotTables; exploring one of those resources is where things get interesting. Let's take a look at the Tables Resource: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables Our workbook contains only one table, called ‘Table1’ (to reiterate, you can explore this table yourself here). Viewing that table via the REST API is pretty easy, we simply append the name of the table onto our previous URI: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables('Table1') As you can see, that quite simply gives us a representation of the data in that table. What you cannot see from this screenshot is that this is pure HTML that is being served up; that is all well and good but actually we can do more interesting things. If we specify that the data should be returned not as HTML but as: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables('Table1')?$format=image then that data comes back as a pure image and can be used in any web page where you would ordinarily use images. This is the thing that I really like about Excel Services’ REST API – we can embed an image in any web page but instead of being a copy of the data, that image is actually live – if the underlying data in the workbook were to change then hitting refresh will show a new image. Pretty cool, no? The same is true of any Charts or Pivot Tables in your workbook - those can be embedded as images too and if the underlying data changes, boom, the image in your web page changes too. There is a lot of data in the workbook so the image returned by that previous URI is too large to show here so instead let’s take a look at a different resource, this time a range: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Ranges('Data!A1|C15') That URI returns cells A1 to C15 from a worksheet called “Data”: And if we ask for that as an image again: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Ranges('Data!A1|C15')?$format=image Were this image resource not behind a username/password then this would be a live image of the data in the workbook as opposed to one that I had to copy and upload elsewhere. Nonetheless I hope this little wrinkle doesn't detract from the inate value of what I am trying to articulate here; that an existing image in a web page can be changed on-the-fly simply by inserting some data into an Excel workbook. I for one think that that is very cool indeed! I think that's enough in the way of demo for now as this shows what is possible using Excel Services' REST API. Of course, not all features work quite how I would like and here is a bulleted list of some of my more negative feedback: The URIs are pig-ugly. Are "_vti_bin" & "ExcelRest.aspx" really necessary as part of the URI? Would this not be better: http://server/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/Model/Tables(‘Table1’) That URI provides the necessary addressability and is a lot easier to remember. Discoverability of these resources is not easy, we essentially have to handcrank a URI ourselves. Take the example of embedding a chart into a blog post - would it not be better if I could browse first through the document library to an Excel workbook and THEN through the workbook to the chart/range/table that I am interested in? Call it a wizard if you like. That would be really cool and would, I am sure, promote this feature and cut down on the copy-and-paste disease that the REST API is meant to alleviate. The resources that I demonstrated can be returned as feeds as well as images or HTML simply by changing the format parameter to ?$format=atom however for some inexplicable reason they don't return OData and no-one on the Excel Services team can tell me why (believe me, I have asked). $format is an OData parameter however other useful parameters such as $top and $filter are not supported. It would be nice if they were. Although I haven't demonstrated it here Excel Services' REST API does provide a makeshift way of altering the data by changing the value of specific cells however what it does not allow you to do is add new data into the workbook. Google Docs allows this and was one of the motivating factors for Chris Webb's forum post that I linked to above. None of this works for Excel workbooks hosted on SkyDrive This blog post is as long as it needs to be for a short introduction so I'll stop now. If you want to know more than I recommend checking out a few links: Excel Services REST API documentation on MSDNSo what does REST on Excel Services look like??? by Shahar PrishExcel Services in SharePoint 2010 REST API Syntax by Christian Stich. Any thoughts? Let's hear them in the comments section below! @Jamiet 

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• Of C# Iterators and Performance

  - by James Michael Hare

  Some of you reading this will be wondering, "what is an iterator" and think I'm locked in the world of C++.  Nope, I'm talking C# iterators.  No, not enumerators, iterators.   So, for those of you who do not know what iterators are in C#, I will explain it in summary, and for those of you who know what iterators are but are curious of the performance impacts, I will explore that as well.   Iterators have been around for a bit now, and there are still a bunch of people who don't know what they are or what they do.  I don't know how many times at work I've had a code review on my code and have someone ask me, "what's that yield word do?"   Basically, this post came to me as I was writing some extension methods to extend IEnumerable<T> -- I'll post some of the fun ones in a later post.  Since I was filtering the resulting list down, I was using the standard C# iterator concept; but that got me wondering: what are the performance implications of using an iterator versus returning a new enumeration?   So, to begin, let's look at a couple of methods.  This is a new (albeit contrived) method called Every(...).  The goal of this method is to access and enumeration and return every nth item in the enumeration (including the first).  So Every(2) would return items 0, 2, 4, 6, etc.   Now, if you wanted to write this in the traditional way, you may come up with something like this:       public static IEnumerable<T> Every<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, int interval)     {         List<T> newList = new List<T>();         int count = 0;           foreach (var i in list)         {             if ((count++ % interval) == 0)             {                 newList.Add(i);             }         }           return newList;     }     So basically this method takes any IEnumerable<T> and returns a new IEnumerable<T> that contains every nth item.  Pretty straight forward.   The problem?  Well, Every<T>(...) will construct a list containing every nth item whether or not you care.  What happens if you were searching this result for a certain item and find that item after five tries?  You would have generated the rest of the list for nothing.   Enter iterators.  This C# construct uses the yield keyword to effectively defer evaluation of the next item until it is asked for.  This can be very handy if the evaluation itself is expensive or if there's a fair chance you'll never want to fully evaluate a list.   We see this all the time in Linq, where many expressions are chained together to do complex processing on a list.  This would be very expensive if each of these expressions evaluated their entire possible result set on call.    Let's look at the same example function, this time using an iterator:       public static IEnumerable<T> Every<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, int interval)     {         int count = 0;         foreach (var i in list)         {             if ((count++ % interval) == 0)             {                 yield return i;             }         }     }   Notice it does not create a new return value explicitly, the only evidence of a return is the "yield return" statement.  What this means is that when an item is requested from the enumeration, it will enter this method and evaluate until it either hits a yield return (in which case that item is returned) or until it exits the method or hits a yield break (in which case the iteration ends.   Behind the scenes, this is all done with a class that the CLR creates behind the scenes that keeps track of the state of the iteration, so that every time the next item is asked for, it finds that item and then updates the current position so it knows where to start at next time.   It doesn't seem like a big deal, does it?  But keep in mind the key point here: it only returns items as they are requested. Thus if there's a good chance you will only process a portion of the return list and/or if the evaluation of each item is expensive, an iterator may be of benefit.   This is especially true if you intend your methods to be chainable similar to the way Linq methods can be chained.    For example, perhaps you have a List<int> and you want to take every tenth one until you find one greater than 10.  We could write that as:       List<int> someList = new List<int>();         // fill list here         someList.Every(10).TakeWhile(i => i <= 10);     Now is the difference more apparent?  If we use the first form of Every that makes a copy of the list.  It's going to copy the entire list whether we will need those items or not, that can be costly!    With the iterator version, however, it will only take items from the list until it finds one that is > 10, at which point no further items in the list are evaluated.   So, sounds neat eh?  But what's the cost is what you're probably wondering.  So I ran some tests using the two forms of Every above on lists varying from 5 to 500,000 integers and tried various things.    Now, iteration isn't free.  If you are more likely than not to iterate the entire collection every time, iterator has some very slight overhead:   Copy vs Iterator on 100% of Collection (10,000 iterations) Collection Size Num Iterated Type Total ms 5 5 Copy 5 5 5 Iterator 5 50 50 Copy 28 50 50 Iterator 27 500 500 Copy 227 500 500 Iterator 247 5000 5000 Copy 2266 5000 5000 Iterator 2444 50,000 50,000 Copy 24,443 50,000 50,000 Iterator 24,719 500,000 500,000 Copy 250,024 500,000 500,000 Iterator 251,521   Notice that when iterating over the entire produced list, the times for the iterator are a little better for smaller lists, then getting just a slight bit worse for larger lists.  In reality, given the number of items and iterations, the result is near negligible, but just to show that iterators come at a price.  However, it should also be noted that the form of Every that returns a copy will have a left-over collection to garbage collect.   However, if we only partially evaluate less and less through the list, the savings start to show and make it well worth the overhead.  Let's look at what happens if you stop looking after 80% of the list:   Copy vs Iterator on 80% of Collection (10,000 iterations) Collection Size Num Iterated Type Total ms 5 4 Copy 5 5 4 Iterator 5 50 40 Copy 27 50 40 Iterator 23 500 400 Copy 215 500 400 Iterator 200 5000 4000 Copy 2099 5000 4000 Iterator 1962 50,000 40,000 Copy 22,385 50,000 40,000 Iterator 19,599 500,000 400,000 Copy 236,427 500,000 400,000 Iterator 196,010       Notice that the iterator form is now operating quite a bit faster.  But the savings really add up if you stop on average at 50% (which most searches would typically do):     Copy vs Iterator on 50% of Collection (10,000 iterations) Collection Size Num Iterated Type Total ms 5 2 Copy 5 5 2 Iterator 4 50 25 Copy 25 50 25 Iterator 16 500 250 Copy 188 500 250 Iterator 126 5000 2500 Copy 1854 5000 2500 Iterator 1226 50,000 25,000 Copy 19,839 50,000 25,000 Iterator 12,233 500,000 250,000 Copy 208,667 500,000 250,000 Iterator 122,336   Now we see that if we only expect to go on average 50% into the results, we tend to shave off around 40% of the time.  And this is only for one level deep.  If we are using this in a chain of query expressions it only adds to the savings.   So my recommendation?  If you have a resonable expectation that someone may only want to partially consume your enumerable result, I would always tend to favor an iterator.  The cost if they iterate the whole thing does not add much at all -- and if they consume only partially, you reap some really good performance gains.   Next time I'll discuss some of my favorite extensions I've created to make development life a little easier and maintainability a little better.

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