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• How-to filter table filter input to only allow numeric input

  - by frank.nimphius

  In a previous ADF Code Corner post, I explained how to change the table filter behavior by intercepting the query condition in a query filter. See sample #30 at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/adf/learnmore/index-101235.html In this OTN Harvest post I explain how to prevent users from providing invalid character entries as table filter criteria to avoid problems upon re-querying the table. In the example shown next, only numeric values are allowed for a table column filter. To create a table that allows data filtering, drag a View Object – or a data collection of a Web Service or JPA business service – from the DataControls panel and drop it as a table. Choose the Enable Filtering option in the Edit Table Columns dialog so the table renders with the column filter boxes displayed. The table filter fields are created using implicit af:inputText components that need to be customized for you to apply a custom filter input component, or to change the input behavior. To change the input filter, so only a defined set of input keys is allowed, you need to change the default filter field with your own af:inputText field to which you apply an af:clientListener tag that filters user keyboard entries. For this, in the Oracle JDeveloper visual editor, select the column which filter you want to change and expand the column node in the Oracle JDeveloper Structure Window. Part of the column definition is the Column facet node. Expand the facets so you see the filter facet entry. The filter facet is grayed out as there is no custom facet defined. In a next step, open theComponent Palette (ctrl+shift+P) and drag an Input Text component onto the facet. This demarks the first part in the filter customization. To make the custom filter component work, you need to map the af:inputText component value property to the ADF filter criteria that is exposed in the Expression Builder. Open the Expression Builder for the filter input component value property by clicking the arrow icon to its right. In the Expression Builder expand the JSP Objects | vs | filterCriteria node to select the attribute name represented by the table column. The vs entry is the name of a variable that is defined on the table and that grants you access to the table attributes. Now that the filter works as before – though using a custom filter input component – you can add the af:clientListener tag to your custom filter component – af:inputText – to call out to JavaScript when users type in the column filter field Point the client filter method property to a JavaScript function that you reference or add through using the af:resource tag and set the type property value to keyDown. <af:document id="d1">     <af:resource type="javascript" source="/js/filterHandler.js"/> … The filter definition looks as shown below <af:inputText label="Label 1" id="it1"                         value="#{vs.filterCriteria.Employe        <af:clientListener method="suppressCharacterInput"                                     type="keyDown"/> </af:inputText> The JavaScript code that you can use to either filter character inputs or numeric inputs is shown below. Just store this code in an external JavaScript (.js) file and reference it from the af:resource tag. //Allow numbers, cursor control keys and delete keys function suppressCharacterInput(evt) {     var _keyCode = evt.getKeyCode();     var _filterField = evt.getCurrentTarget();     var _oldValue = _filterField.getValue();     if (!((_keyCode < 57) ||(_keyCode > 96 && _keyCode < 105))) {         _filterField.setValue(_oldValue);         evt.cancel();     } } //Allow characters, cursor control keys and delete keys function suppressNumericInput(evt) {  var _keyCode = evt.getKeyCode();  var _filterField = evt.getCurrentTarget();  var _oldValue = _filterField.getValue();  //check for numbers  if ((_keyCode < 57 && _keyCode > 47) ||      (_keyCode > 96 && _keyCode < 105)){     _filterField.setValue(_oldValue);     evt.cancel();   } } But what if browsers don't allow JavaScript ? Don't worry about this. If browsers would not support JavaScript then ADF Faces as a whole would not work and you had a different problem.

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• SQL SERVER – Simple Example of Incremental Statistics – Performance improvements in SQL Server 2014 – Part 2

  - by Pinal Dave

  This is the second part of the series Incremental Statistics. Here is the index of the complete series. What is Incremental Statistics? – Performance improvements in SQL Server 2014 – Part 1 Simple Example of Incremental Statistics – Performance improvements in SQL Server 2014 – Part 2 DMV to Identify Incremental Statistics – Performance improvements in SQL Server 2014 – Part 3 In part 1 we have understood what is incremental statistics and now in this second part we will see a simple example of incremental statistics. This blog post is heavily inspired from my friend Balmukund’s must read blog post. If you have partitioned table and lots of data, this feature can be specifically very useful. Prerequisite Here are two things you must know before you start with the demonstrations. AdventureWorks – For the demonstration purpose I have installed AdventureWorks 2012 as an AdventureWorks 2014 in this demonstration. Partitions – You should know how partition works with databases. Setup Script Here is the setup script for creating Partition Function, Scheme, and the Table. We will populate the table based on the SalesOrderDetails table from AdventureWorks. -- Use Database USE AdventureWorks2014 GO -- Create Partition Function CREATE PARTITION FUNCTION IncrStatFn (INT) AS RANGE LEFT FOR VALUES (44000, 54000, 64000, 74000) GO -- Create Partition Scheme CREATE PARTITION SCHEME IncrStatSch AS PARTITION [IncrStatFn] TO ([PRIMARY], [PRIMARY], [PRIMARY], [PRIMARY], [PRIMARY]) GO -- Create Table Incremental_Statistics CREATE TABLE [IncrStatTab]( [SalesOrderID] [int] NOT NULL, [SalesOrderDetailID] [int] NOT NULL, [CarrierTrackingNumber] [nvarchar](25) NULL, [OrderQty] [smallint] NOT NULL, [ProductID] [int] NOT NULL, [SpecialOfferID] [int] NOT NULL, [UnitPrice] [money] NOT NULL, [UnitPriceDiscount] [money] NOT NULL, [ModifiedDate] [datetime] NOT NULL) ON IncrStatSch(SalesOrderID) GO -- Populate Table INSERT INTO [IncrStatTab]([SalesOrderID], [SalesOrderDetailID], [CarrierTrackingNumber], [OrderQty], [ProductID], [SpecialOfferID], [UnitPrice],   [UnitPriceDiscount], [ModifiedDate]) SELECT     [SalesOrderID], [SalesOrderDetailID], [CarrierTrackingNumber], [OrderQty], [ProductID], [SpecialOfferID], [UnitPrice],   [UnitPriceDiscount], [ModifiedDate] FROM       [Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] WHERE      SalesOrderID < 54000 GO Check Details Now we will check details in the partition table IncrStatSch. -- Check the partition SELECT * FROM sys.partitions WHERE OBJECT_ID = OBJECT_ID('IncrStatTab') GO You will notice that only a few of the partition are filled up with data and remaining all the partitions are empty. Now we will create statistics on the Table on the column SalesOrderID. However, here we will keep adding one more keyword which is INCREMENTAL = ON. Please note this is the new keyword and feature added in SQL Server 2014. It did not exist in earlier versions. -- Create Statistics CREATE STATISTICS IncrStat ON [IncrStatTab] (SalesOrderID) WITH FULLSCAN, INCREMENTAL = ON GO Now we have successfully created statistics let us check the statistical histogram of the table. Now let us once again populate the table with more data. This time the data are entered into a different partition than earlier populated partition. -- Populate Table INSERT INTO [IncrStatTab]([SalesOrderID], [SalesOrderDetailID], [CarrierTrackingNumber], [OrderQty], [ProductID], [SpecialOfferID], [UnitPrice],   [UnitPriceDiscount], [ModifiedDate]) SELECT     [SalesOrderID], [SalesOrderDetailID], [CarrierTrackingNumber], [OrderQty], [ProductID], [SpecialOfferID], [UnitPrice],   [UnitPriceDiscount], [ModifiedDate] FROM       [Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] WHERE      SalesOrderID > 54000 GO Let us check the status of the partition once again with following script. -- Check the partition SELECT * FROM sys.partitions WHERE OBJECT_ID = OBJECT_ID('IncrStatTab') GO Statistics Update Now here has the new feature come into action. Previously, if we have to update the statistics, we will have to FULLSCAN the entire table irrespective of which partition got the data. However, in SQL Server 2014 we can just specify which partition we want to update in terms of Statistics. Here is the script for the same. -- Update Statistics Manually UPDATE STATISTICS IncrStatTab (IncrStat) WITH RESAMPLE ON PARTITIONS(3, 4) GO Now let us check the statistics once again. -- Show Statistics DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS('IncrStatTab', IncrStat) WITH HISTOGRAM GO Upon examining statistics histogram, you will notice that now the distribution has changed and there is way more rows in the histogram. Summary The new feature of Incremental Statistics is indeed a boon for the scenario where there are partitions and statistics needs to be updated frequently on the partitions. In earlier version to update statistics one has to do FULLSCAN on the entire table which was wasting too many resources. With the new feature in SQL Server 2014, now only those partitions which are significantly changed can be specified in the script to update statistics. Cleanup You can clean up the database by executing following scripts. -- Clean up DROP TABLE [IncrStatTab] DROP PARTITION SCHEME [IncrStatSch] DROP PARTITION FUNCTION [IncrStatFn] GO Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: SQL Statistics, Statistics

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• C# 4.0: Covariance And Contravariance In Generics

  - by Paulo Morgado

  C# 4.0 (and .NET 4.0) introduced covariance and contravariance to generic interfaces and delegates. But what is this variance thing? According to Wikipedia, in multilinear algebra and tensor analysis, covariance and contravariance describe how the quantitative description of certain geometrical or physical entities changes when passing from one coordinate system to another.(*) But what does this have to do with C# or .NET? In type theory, a the type T is greater (>) than type S if S is a subtype (derives from) T, which means that there is a quantitative description for types in a type hierarchy. So, how does covariance and contravariance apply to C# (and .NET) generic types? In C# (and .NET), variance applies to generic type parameters and not to the resulting generic type. A generic type parameter is: covariant if the ordering of the generic types follows the ordering of the generic type parameters: Generic<T> = Generic<S> for T = S. contravariant if the ordering of the generic types is reversed from the ordering of the generic type parameters: Generic<T> = Generic<S> for T = S. invariant if neither of the above apply. If this definition is applied to arrays, we can see that arrays have always been covariant because this is valid code: object[] objectArray = new string[] { "string 1", "string 2" }; objectArray[0] = "string 3"; objectArray[1] = new object(); However, when we try to run this code, the second assignment will throw an ArrayTypeMismatchException. Although the compiler was fooled into thinking this was valid code because an object is being assigned to an element of an array of object, at run time, there is always a type check to guarantee that the runtime type of the definition of the elements of the array is greater or equal to the instance being assigned to the element. In the above example, because the runtime type of the array is array of string, the first assignment of array elements is valid because string = string and the second is invalid because string = object. This leads to the conclusion that, although arrays have always been covariant, they are not safely covariant – code that compiles is not guaranteed to run without errors. In C#, the way to define that a generic type parameter as covariant is using the out generic modifier: public interface IEnumerable<out T> { IEnumerator<T> GetEnumerator(); } public interface IEnumerator<out T> { T Current { get; } bool MoveNext(); } Notice the convenient use the pre-existing out keyword. Besides the benefit of not having to remember a new hypothetic covariant keyword, out is easier to remember because it defines that the generic type parameter can only appear in output positions — read-only properties and method return values. In a similar way, the way to define a type parameter as contravariant is using the in generic modifier: public interface IComparer<in T> { int Compare(T x, T y); } Once again, the use of the pre-existing in keyword makes it easier to remember that the generic type parameter can only be used in input positions — write-only properties and method non ref and non out parameters. Because covariance and contravariance apply only to the generic type parameters, a generic type definition can have both covariant and contravariant generic type parameters in its definition: public delegate TResult Func<in T, out TResult>(T arg); A generic type parameter that is not marked covariant (out) or contravariant (in) is invariant. All the types in the .NET Framework where variance could be applied to its generic type parameters have been modified to take advantage of this new feature. In summary, the rules for variance in C# (and .NET) are: Variance in type parameters are restricted to generic interface and generic delegate types. A generic interface or generic delegate type can have both covariant and contravariant type parameters. Variance applies only to reference types; if you specify a value type for a variant type parameter, that type parameter is invariant for the resulting constructed type. Variance does not apply to delegate combination. That is, given two delegates of types Action<Derived> and Action<Base>, you cannot combine the second delegate with the first although the result would be type safe. Variance allows the second delegate to be assigned to a variable of type Action<Derived>, but delegates can combine only if their types match exactly. If you want to learn more about variance in C# (and .NET), you can always read: Covariance and Contravariance in Generics — MSDN Library Exact rules for variance validity — Eric Lippert Events get a little overhaul in C# 4, Afterward: Effective Events — Chris Burrows Note: Because variance is a feature of .NET 4.0 and not only of C# 4.0, all this also applies to Visual Basic 10.

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• Entity Framework Batch Update and Future Queries

  - by pwelter34

  Entity Framework Extended Library A library the extends the functionality of Entity Framework. Features Batch Update and Delete Future Queries Audit Log Project Package and Source NuGet Package PM> Install-Package EntityFramework.Extended NuGet: http://nuget.org/List/Packages/EntityFramework.Extended Source: http://github.com/loresoft/EntityFramework.Extended Batch Update and Delete A current limitations of the Entity Framework is that in order to update or delete an entity you have to first retrieve it into memory. Now in most scenarios this is just fine. There are however some senerios where performance would suffer. Also, for single deletes, the object must be retrieved before it can be deleted requiring two calls to the database. Batch update and delete eliminates the need to retrieve and load an entity before modifying it. Deleting //delete all users where FirstName matches context.Users.Delete(u => u.FirstName == "firstname"); Update //update all tasks with status of 1 to status of 2 context.Tasks.Update( t => t.StatusId == 1, t => new Task {StatusId = 2}); //example of using an IQueryable as the filter for the update var users = context.Users .Where(u => u.FirstName == "firstname"); context.Users.Update( users, u => new User {FirstName = "newfirstname"}); Future Queries Build up a list of queries for the data that you need and the first time any of the results are accessed, all the data will retrieved in one round trip to the database server. Reducing the number of trips to the database is a great. Using this feature is as simple as appending .Future() to the end of your queries. To use the Future Queries, make sure to import the EntityFramework.Extensions namespace. Future queries are created with the following extension methods... Future() FutureFirstOrDefault() FutureCount() Sample // build up queries var q1 = db.Users .Where(t => t.EmailAddress == "[email protected]") .Future(); var q2 = db.Tasks .Where(t => t.Summary == "Test") .Future(); // this triggers the loading of all the future queries var users = q1.ToList(); In the example above, there are 2 queries built up, as soon as one of the queries is enumerated, it triggers the batch load of both queries. // base query var q = db.Tasks.Where(t => t.Priority == 2); // get total count var q1 = q.FutureCount(); // get page var q2 = q.Skip(pageIndex).Take(pageSize).Future(); // triggers execute as a batch int total = q1.Value; var tasks = q2.ToList(); In this example, we have a common senerio where you want to page a list of tasks. In order for the GUI to setup the paging control, you need a total count. With Future, we can batch together the queries to get all the data in one database call. Future queries work by creating the appropriate IFutureQuery object that keeps the IQuerable. The IFutureQuery object is then stored in IFutureContext.FutureQueries list. Then, when one of the IFutureQuery objects is enumerated, it calls back to IFutureContext.ExecuteFutureQueries() via the LoadAction delegate. ExecuteFutureQueries builds a batch query from all the stored IFutureQuery objects. Finally, all the IFutureQuery objects are updated with the results from the query. Audit Log The Audit Log feature will capture the changes to entities anytime they are submitted to the database. The Audit Log captures only the entities that are changed and only the properties on those entities that were changed. The before and after values are recorded. AuditLogger.LastAudit is where this information is held and there is a ToXml() method that makes it easy to turn the AuditLog into xml for easy storage. The AuditLog can be customized via attributes on the entities or via a Fluent Configuration API. Fluent Configuration // config audit when your application is starting up... var auditConfiguration = AuditConfiguration.Default; auditConfiguration.IncludeRelationships = true; auditConfiguration.LoadRelationships = true; auditConfiguration.DefaultAuditable = true; // customize the audit for Task entity auditConfiguration.IsAuditable<Task>() .NotAudited(t => t.TaskExtended) .FormatWith(t => t.Status, v => FormatStatus(v)); // set the display member when status is a foreign key auditConfiguration.IsAuditable<Status>() .DisplayMember(t => t.Name); Create an Audit Log var db = new TrackerContext(); var audit = db.BeginAudit(); // make some updates ... db.SaveChanges(); var log = audit.LastLog;

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• F# for the C# Programmer

  - by mbcrump

  Are you a C# Programmer and can’t make it past a day without seeing or hearing someone mention F#?  Today, I’m going to walk you through your first F# application and give you a brief introduction to the language. Sit back this will only take about 20 minutes. Introduction Microsoft's F# programming language is a functional language for the .NET framework that was originally developed at Microsoft Research Cambridge by Don Syme. In October 2007, the senior vice president of the developer division at Microsoft announced that F# was being officially productized to become a fully supported .NET language and professional developers were hired to create a team of around ten people to build the product version. In September 2008, Microsoft released the first Community Technology Preview (CTP), an official beta release, of the F# distribution . In December 2008, Microsoft announced that the success of this CTP had encouraged them to escalate F# and it is now will now be shipped as one of the core languages in Visual Studio 2010 , alongside C++, C# 4.0 and VB. The F# programming language incorporates many state-of-the-art features from programming language research and ossifies them in an industrial strength implementation that promises to revolutionize interactive, parallel and concurrent programming. Advantages of F# F# is the world's first language to combine all of the following features: Type inference: types are inferred by the compiler and generic definitions are created automatically. Algebraic data types: a succinct way to represent trees. Pattern matching: a comprehensible and efficient way to dissect data structures. Active patterns: pattern matching over foreign data structures. Interactive sessions: as easy to use as Python and Mathematica. High performance JIT compilation to native code: as fast as C#. Rich data structures: lists and arrays built into the language with syntactic support. Functional programming: first-class functions and tail calls. Expressive static type system: finds bugs during compilation and provides machine-verified documentation. Sequence expressions: interrogate huge data sets efficiently. Asynchronous workflows: syntactic support for monadic style concurrent programming with cancellations. Industrial-strength IDE support: multithreaded debugging, and graphical throwback of inferred types and documentation. Commerce friendly design and a viable commercial market. Lets try a short program in C# then F# to understand the differences. Using C#: Create a variable and output the value to the console window: Sample Program. using System;   namespace ConsoleApplication9 {     class Program     {         static void Main(string[] args)         {             var a = 2;             Console.WriteLine(a);             Console.ReadLine();         }     } } A breeze right? 14 Lines of code. We could have condensed it a bit by removing the “using” statment and tossing the namespace. But this is the typical C# program. Using F#: Create a variable and output the value to the console window: To start, open Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2008. Note: If using VS2008, then please download the SDK first before getting started. If you are using VS2010 then you are already setup and ready to go. So, click File-> New Project –> Other Languages –> Visual F# –> Windows –> F# Application. You will get the screen below. Go ahead and enter a name and click OK. Now, you will notice that the Solution Explorer contains the following: Double click the Program.fs and enter the following information. Hit F5 and it should run successfully. Sample Program. open System let a = 2        Console.WriteLine a As Shown below: Hmm, what? F# did the same thing in 3 lines of code. Show me the interactive evaluation that I keep hearing about. The F# development environment for Visual Studio 2010 provides two different modes of execution for F# code: Batch compilation to a .NET executable or DLL. (This was accomplished above). Interactive evaluation. (Demo is below) The interactive session provides a > prompt, requires a double semicolon ;; identifier at the end of a code snippet to force evaluation, and returns the names (if any) and types of resulting definitions and values. To access the F# prompt, in VS2010 Goto View –> Other Window then F# Interactive. Once you have the interactive window type in the following expression: 2+3;; as shown in the screenshot below: I hope this guide helps you get started with the language, please check out the following books for further information. F# Books for further reading   Foundations of F# Author: Robert Pickering An introduction to functional programming with F#. Including many samples, this book walks through the features of the F# language and libraries, and covers many of the .NET Framework features which can be leveraged with F#.       Functional Programming for the Real World: With Examples in F# and C# Authors: Tomas Petricek and Jon Skeet An introduction to functional programming for existing C# developers written by Tomas Petricek and Jon Skeet. This book explains the core principles using both C# and F#, shows how to use functional ideas when designing .NET applications and presents practical examples such as design of domain specific language, development of multi-core applications and programming of reactive applications.

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• SQL SERVER – SQL in Sixty Seconds – 5 Videos from Joes 2 Pros Series – SQL Exam Prep Series 70-433

  - by pinaldave

  Joes 2 Pros SQL Server Learning series is indeed fun. Joes 2 Pros series is written for beginners and who wants to build expertise for SQL Server programming and development from fundamental. In the beginning of the series author Rick Morelan is not shy to explain the simplest concept of how to open SQL Server Management Studio. Honestly the book starts with that much basic but as it progresses further Rick discussing about various advanced concepts from query tuning to Core Architecture. This five part series is written with keeping SQL Server Exam 70-433. Instead of just focusing on what will be there in exam, this series is focusing on learning the important concepts thoroughly. This book no way take short cut to explain any concepts and at times, will go beyond the topic at length. The best part is that all the books has many companion videos explaining the concepts and videos. Every Wednesday I like to post a video which explains something in quick few seconds. Today we will go over five videos which I posted in my earlier posts related to Joes 2 Pros series. Introduction to XML Data Type Methods – SQL in Sixty Seconds #015 The XML data type was first introduced with SQL Server 2005. This data type continues with SQL Server 2008 where expanded XML features are available, most notably is the power of the XQuery language to analyze and query the values contained in your XML instance. There are five XML data type methods available in SQL Server 2008: query() – Used to extract XML fragments from an XML data type. value() – Used to extract a single value from an XML document. exist() – Used to determine if a specified node exists. Returns 1 if yes and 0 if no. modify() – Updates XML data in an XML data type. node() – Shreds XML data into multiple rows (not covered in this blog post). [Detailed Blog Post] | [Quiz with Answer] Introduction to SQL Error Actions – SQL in Sixty Seconds #014 Most people believe that when SQL Server encounters an error severity level 11 or higher the remaining SQL statements will not get executed. In addition, people also believe that if any error severity level of 11 or higher is hit inside an explicit transaction, then the whole statement will fail as a unit. While both of these beliefs are true 99% of the time, they are not true in all cases. It is these outlying cases that frequently cause unexpected results in your SQL code. To understand how to achieve consistent results you need to know the four ways SQL Error Actions can react to error severity levels 11-16: Statement Termination – The statement with the procedure fails but the code keeps on running to the next statement. Transactions are not affected. Scope Abortion – The current procedure, function or batch is aborted and the next calling scope keeps running. That is, if Stored Procedure A calls B and C, and B fails, then nothing in B runs but A continues to call C. @@Error is set but the procedure does not have a return value. Batch Termination – The entire client call is terminated. XACT_ABORT – (ON = The entire client call is terminated.) or (OFF = SQL Server will choose how to handle all errors.) [Detailed Blog Post] | [Quiz with Answer] Introduction to Basics of a Query Hint – SQL in Sixty Seconds #013 Query hints specify that the indicated hints should be used throughout the query. Query hints affect all operators in the statement and are implemented using the OPTION clause. Cautionary Note: Because the SQL Server Query Optimizer typically selects the best execution plan for a query, it is highly recommended that hints be used as a last resort for experienced developers and database administrators to achieve the desired results. [Detailed Blog Post] | [Quiz with Answer] Introduction to Hierarchical Query – SQL in Sixty Seconds #012 A CTE can be thought of as a temporary result set and are similar to a derived table in that it is not stored as an object and lasts only for the duration of the query. A CTE is generally considered to be more readable than a derived table and does not require the extra effort of declaring a Temp Table while providing the same benefits to the user. However; a CTE is more powerful than a derived table as it can also be self-referencing, or even referenced multiple times in the same query. A recursive CTE requires four elements in order to work properly: Anchor query (runs once and the results ‘seed’ the Recursive query) Recursive query (runs multiple times and is the criteria for the remaining results) UNION ALL statement to bind the Anchor and Recursive queries together. INNER JOIN statement to bind the Recursive query to the results of the CTE. [Detailed Blog Post] | [Quiz with Answer] Introduction to SQL Server Security – SQL in Sixty Seconds #011 Let’s get some basic definitions down first. Take the workplace example where “Tom” needs “Read” access to the “Financial Folder”. What are the Securable, Principal, and Permissions from that last sentence? A Securable is a resource that someone might want to access (like the Financial Folder). A Principal is anything that might want to gain access to the securable (like Tom). A Permission is the level of access a principal has to a securable (like Read). [Detailed Blog Post] | [Quiz with Answer] Please leave a comment explain which one was your favorite video as that will help me understand what works and what needs improvement. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology, Video

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• Design a T-shirt for .NET Reflector Pro

  - by Laila

  Win a .NET Reflector Pro license, a box of Red Gate goodies, and a t-shirt printed with your design! Red Gate likes t-shirts. Each of our teams has one. In fact, each individual person has one, numbered according to when they joined the company: Red Gate's 1st, 2nd, and so on right up to Red Gate's 170th, with the slogan "More than just a number". Those t-shirts are important, chiefly because they remind the people wearing them that they are important. But that isn't enough. What really makes us great are the people who choose to use our tools. So we'd like to extend our tradition of t-shirts to include you and put the design of our next shirt entirely in your hands. We'd like you to come up with a witty slogan or create an inventive or simply beautiful t-shirt design for .NET Reflector Pro, our add-in for Visual Studio, which allows you to step into decompiled assemblies whilst debugging in Visual Studio. When you're done, post your masterpiece to Twitter with the hash tag #reflectortees, and @redgate will take a look! We'll pick the best design, and the winner will get a licensed copy of .NET Reflector Pro and a box of Red Gate goodies - not to mention a copy of their t-shirt. The winning design will go into production and be worn and given out at tradeshows, conferences, and user group events across the world, proudly bearing the name of their designer. We'll also pick three runners-up who will receive licenses for .NET Reflector Pro. Red Gate goodie box Interested? If you're up for the challenge, then we've got some resources to get you started. Inside the .zip file you'll find high-quality versions of the following: T-shirt templates: don't forget to design the front and the back! Different versions of the .NET Reflector Pro logo and Red Gate logo. Colour sheets to give you an easy reference to the Red Gate colours, including hex and RGB values. You can create and send us as many designs as you like, and each of them will be considered for the prize. To submit your designs, simply tweet including the competition hash tag, #reflectortees, and a link to somewhere we can see your design: either an image hosting site such as Twitpic, Flickr or Picasa, or a personal blog. You will need to create a Twitter account (which is free), if you don't already have one. You only have three limits: The background colour of the t-shirt should be one of our brand colours (red, light/dark grey or black), though you're welcome to use other colours in the rest of the design. You need to make use of either the .NET Reflector Pro logo OR the Red Gate logo (please keep them as they are) If you include any text or slogan, stick with just one or two colors for it. Apart from that, go wild. Go and do whatever it is you do when you get creative: whether you walk barefoot on the grass with a pencil and paper, sit cross-legged on a pile of cushions with a laptop, or simply close your eyes and float through a mist of ideas, now is your chance. Make sure you enjoy it. We're looking forward to seeing your creations. Terms and conditions 1. The closing date for entries is June 11th, 2010 (4 p.m. UK time). Red Gate Software Ltd reserves the right to extend the competition deadline at its discretion. If there is a revision, the revised date will be published on this blog and the date for announcing the results will be postponed accordingly. 2. The winning designer will be notified on June 14th, 2010 through Twitter. The winner must claim his/her prize by sending us a high-resolution image of their design via email (i.e. Illustrator EPS files or appropriate format, ideally at 300dpi). If the winner does not come forward within 3 days of the announcement, they will forfeit their prize and another winner will be selected from the runners-up. The names of the winner and runners-up will be posted on this blog by June 18th.  3. Entry is completed on the designer posting a link to their entry in a tweet with the correct hash tag, #reflectortees. 4. Red Gate Software needs to hold the rights to using the winning design in order to put the t-shirt into production. We will make sure that this is fine with the winner before we do so, but if you do not want us holding the rights to your design, please do not submit your designs. We reserve the right to slightly alter or adjust any artwork we decide to use (mainly to make it easier to print), but we will make sure we contact the winner for approval first. The winner will also need to allow us the use of his/her name for purposes of promoting your design. 5. Entries must be entirely your own original work and must not breach any copyright or third party rights. Red Gate Software Ltd will not be made partially or fully liable for any non-original work submitted by you. 6. This competition is free: you do not need to buy anything or be an existing customer to enter. 7. This competition is not open to employees of Red Gate Software Ltd, their families, or any other company directly connected with the administration of this promotion.

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• Persisting settings without using Options dialog in Visual Studio

  - by Utkarsh Shigihalli

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/onlyutkarsh/archive/2013/11/02/persisting-settings-without-using-options-dialog-in-visual-studio.aspxIn one of my previous blog post we have seen persisting settings using Visual Studio's options dialog. Visual Studio options has many advantages in automatically persisting user options for you. However, during our latest Team Rooms extension development, we decided to provide our users; ability to use our preferences directly from Team Explorer. The main reason was that we had only one simple option for user and we thought it is cumbersome for user to go to Tools –> Options dialog to change this. Another reason was, we wanted to highlight this setting to user as soon as he is using our extension.   So if you are in such a scenario where you do not want to use VS options window, but still would like to persist the settings, this post will guide you through. Visual Studio SDK provides two ways to persist settings in your extensions. One is using DialogPage as shown in my previous post. Another way is to use by implementing IProfileManager interface which I will explain in this post. Please note that the class implementing IProfileManager should be independent class. This is because, VS instantiates this class during Tools –> Import and Export Settings. IProfileManager provides 2 different sets of methods (total 4 methods) to persist the settings. They are LoadSettingsFromXml and SaveSettingsToXml – Implement these methods to persist settings to disk from VS settings storage. The VS will persist your settings along with other options to disk. LoadSettingsFromStorage and SaveSettingsToStorage – Implement these methods to persist settings to local storage, usually it be registry. VS calls LoadSettingsFromStorage method when it is initializing the package too. We are going to use the 2nd set of methods for this example. First, we are creating a separate class file called UserOptions.cs. Please note that, we also need to implement IComponent, which can be done by inheriting Component along with IProfileManager. [ComVisible(true)] [Guid("XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX")] public class UserOptions : Component, IProfileManager { private const string SUBKEY_NAME = "TForVS2013"; private const string TRAY_NOTIFICATIONS_STRING = "TrayNotifications"; ... } Define the property so that it can be used to set and get from other classes. public bool TrayNotifications { get; set; } Implement the members of IProfileManager. public void LoadSettingsFromStorage() { RegistryKey reg = null; try { using (reg = Package.UserRegistryRoot.OpenSubKey(SUBKEY_NAME)) { if (reg != null) { // Key already exists, so just update this setting. TrayNotifications = Convert.ToBoolean(reg.GetValue(TRAY_NOTIFICATIONS_STRING, true)); } } } catch (TeamRoomException exception) { TrayNotifications = true; ExceptionReporting.Report(exception); } finally { if (reg != null) { reg.Close(); } } } public void LoadSettingsFromXml(IVsSettingsReader reader) { reader.ReadSettingBoolean(TRAY_NOTIFICATIONS_STRING, out _isTrayNotificationsEnabled); TrayNotifications = (_isTrayNotificationsEnabled == 1); } public void ResetSettings() { } public void SaveSettingsToStorage() { RegistryKey reg = null; try { using (reg = Package.UserRegistryRoot.OpenSubKey(SUBKEY_NAME, true)) { if (reg != null) { // Key already exists, so just update this setting. reg.SetValue(TRAY_NOTIFICATIONS_STRING, TrayNotifications); } else { reg = Package.UserRegistryRoot.CreateSubKey(SUBKEY_NAME); reg.SetValue(TRAY_NOTIFICATIONS_STRING, TrayNotifications); } } } catch (TeamRoomException exception) { ExceptionReporting.Report(exception); } finally { if (reg != null) { reg.Close(); } } } public void SaveSettingsToXml(IVsSettingsWriter writer) { writer.WriteSettingBoolean(TRAY_NOTIFICATIONS_STRING, TrayNotifications ? 1 : 0); } Let me elaborate on the method implementation. The Package class provides UserRegistryRoot (which is HKCU\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0 for VS2013) property which can be used to create and read the registry keys. So basically, in the methods above, I am checking if the registry key exists already and if not, I simply create it. Also, in case there is an exception I return the default values. If the key already exists, I update the value. Also, note that you need to make sure that you close the key while exiting from the method. Very simple right? Accessing and settings is simple too. We just need to use the exposed property. UserOptions.TrayNotifications = true; UserOptions.SaveSettingsToStorage(); Reading settings is as simple as reading a property. UserOptions.LoadSettingsFromStorage(); var trayNotifications = UserOptions.TrayNotifications; Lastly, the most important step. We need to tell Visual Studio shell that our package exposes options using the UserOptions class. For this we need to decorate our package class with ProvideProfile attribute as below. [ProvideProfile(typeof(UserOptions), "TForVS2013", "TeamRooms", 110, 110, false, DescriptionResourceID = 401)] public sealed class TeamRooms : Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Package { ... } That's it. If everything is alright, once you run the package you will also see your options appearing in "Import Export settings" window, which allows you to export your options.

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• Extending QuickBooks Reporting with the QuickBooks ADO.NET Data Provider

  - by dataintegration

  The ADO.NET Provider for QuickBooks comes with several reports you may request from QuickBooks by default. However, there are many more that are not readily available. The ADO.NET Provider for QuickBooks makes it easy for you to create new reports and customize existing ones. In this article, we will illustrate how to create your own report and retrieve it from the Server Explorer in Visual Studio. For this example we will show how to create an Item Profitability Report. Creating the report script file Step 1: Download the sample reports available here. Extract them to a folder of your choice. Step 2: Make a copy of the ReportGeneralSummary.rsd file and rename it to ItemProfitability.rsd. Then open the file in any text editor. Step 3: Open the installation directory of the ADO.NET Provider for QuickBooks. Under the \db\ folder, locate the ReportJob.rsb file. Open this file in another text editor. Note: Although we are using ReportJob.rsb for this example, other reports may be contained in other Report*.rsb files. We recommend consulting the included help file and first locating the Report stored procedure and ReportType you are looking for. Otherwise, you may open each Report*.rsb file and look under the "reporttype" input for the report you are attempting to create. Step 4: First, let's rename the title of ItemProfitability.rsd. Near the top of the file you will see a title and description. Change the title to match the name of the file. Change the description to anything you like. For example: <rsb:info title="ItemProfitability" description="Executes my custom report."> Just below the Title, there are a number of columns. The Id represents the row number. The RowType represents the type of data returned by QuickBooks. The ColumnValue* columns represent all of the column data returned by QuickBooks. In some instances, we may need to add additional ColumnValue columns. Step 5: To add additional ColumnValue columns, simply copy the last column, paste it directly below, and continue increasing the numerical value at end of the attribute name. For example: <attr name="ColumnValue9" xs:type="string" readonly="true" required="false" desc="Represents a column of data."/> <attr name="ColumnValue10" xs:type="string" readonly="true" required="false" desc="Represents a column of data."/> <attr name="ColumnValue11" xs:type="string" readonly="true" required="false" desc="Represents a column of data."/> <attr name="ColumnValue12" xs:type="string" readonly="true" required="false" desc="Represents a column of data."/> ... Caution: Do not rename the ColumnValue* definitions themselves. They are generalized so that we can understand each type of report returned by QuickBooks. Renaming them to something other than ColumnValue* will cause your columns to return with null values. Step 6: Now let's update the available inputs for the table. From the ReportJob.rsb file, copy all of the input elements into ItemProfitability under the "Psuedo-Column definitions" comment. You will be replacing the existing input elements in ItemProfitability with inputs from ReportJob. When you are done, it should look like this: <!-- Psuedo-Column definitions --> <input name="reporttype" description="The type of the report." value="ITEMESTIMATESVSACTUALS,ITEMPROFITABILITY,JOBESTIMATESVSACTUALSDETAIL,JOBESTIMATESVSACTUALSSUMMARY,JOBPROFITABILITYDETAIL,JOBPROFITABILITYSUMMARY," default="ITEMESTIMATESVSACTUALS" /> <input name="reportperiod" description="Report date range in the format (fromdate:todate), and either value may be omitted for an open ended range (e.g. 2009-12-25:). Supported date format: yyyy-MM-dd." /> <input name="reportdaterangemacro" description="Use a predefined date range." value="ALL,TODAY,THISWEEK,THISWEEKTODATE,THISMONTH,THISMONTHTODATE,THISQUARTER,THISQUARTERTODATE,THISYEAR,THISYEARTODATE,YESTERDAY,LASTWEEK,LASTWEEKTODATE,LASTMONTH,LASTMONTHTODATE,LASTQUARTER,LASTQUARTERTODATE,LASTYEAR,LASTYEARTODATE,NEXTWEEK,NEXTFOURWEEKS,NEXTMONTH,NEXTQUARTER,NEXTYEAR," default="ALL" /> ... Step 7: Now let's update the operationname attribute. This needs to match the same operationname used by ReportJob. After you have copied the correct value from ReportJob.rsb, the operationname in ItemProfitability should look like so: <rsb:set attr="operationname" value="qbReportJob"/> Step 8: There is one more thing we can do to make this a true Item Profitability report. We can remove the reporttype input and hardcode the value. To do this, copy and paste the rsb:set used for operationname. Then rename the attr and value to match the name and value you want to use. For example: <rsb:set attr="operationname" value="qbReportJob"/> <rsb:set attr="reporttype" value="ITEMPROFITABILITY"/> After this you can remove the input for reporttype. Now that you have your own report file, we can move on to displaying the report in the Visual Studio server explorer. Accessing the report through the Data Provider Step 1: Open Visual Studio. In the Server Explorer, configure a new connection with the QuickBooks Data Provider. Step 2: For the Location connection string property, enter the directory where the new report has been saved to. Step 3: The new report should appear as a new view in the Server Explorer. Let's retrieve data from it. Step 4: You can specify any inputs in the WHERE clause. New Report Example Script To help you get started using this new QuickBooks Data Provider report, you will need to download the QuickBooks ADO.NET Data Provider and the fully functional sample script.

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• Joins in single-table queries

  - by Rob Farley

  Tables are only metadata. They don’t store data. I’ve written something about this before, but I want to take a viewpoint of this idea around the topic of joins, especially since it’s the topic for T-SQL Tuesday this month. Hosted this time by Sebastian Meine (@sqlity), who has a whole series on joins this month. Good for him – it’s a great topic. In that last post I discussed the fact that we write queries against tables, but that the engine turns it into a plan against indexes. My point wasn’t simply that a table is actually just a Clustered Index (or heap, which I consider just a special type of index), but that data access always happens against indexes – never tables – and we should be thinking about the indexes (specifically the non-clustered ones) when we write our queries. I described the scenario of looking up phone numbers, and how it never really occurs to us that there is a master list of phone numbers, because we think in terms of the useful non-clustered indexes that the phone companies provide us, but anyway – that’s not the point of this post. So a table is metadata. It stores information about the names of columns and their data types. Nullability, default values, constraints, triggers – these are all things that define the table, but the data isn’t stored in the table. The data that a table describes is stored in a heap or clustered index, but it goes further than this. All the useful data is going to live in non-clustered indexes. Remember this. It’s important. Stop thinking about tables, and start thinking about indexes. So let’s think about tables as indexes. This applies even in a world created by someone else, who doesn’t have the best indexes in mind for you. I’m sure you don’t need me to explain Covering Index bit – the fact that if you don’t have sufficient columns “included” in your index, your query plan will either have to do a Lookup, or else it’ll give up using your index and use one that does have everything it needs (even if that means scanning it). If you haven’t seen that before, drop me a line and I’ll run through it with you. Or go and read a post I did a long while ago about the maths involved in that decision. So – what I’m going to tell you is that a Lookup is a join. When I run SELECT CustomerID FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader WHERE SalesPersonID = 285; against the AdventureWorks2012 get the following plan: I’m sure you can see the join. Don’t look in the query, it’s not there. But you should be able to see the join in the plan. It’s an Inner Join, implemented by a Nested Loop. It’s pulling data in from the Index Seek, and joining that to the results of a Key Lookup. It clearly is – the QO wouldn’t call it that if it wasn’t really one. It behaves exactly like any other Nested Loop (Inner Join) operator, pulling rows from one side and putting a request in from the other. You wouldn’t have a problem accepting it as a join if the query were slightly different, such as SELECT sod.OrderQty FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS soh JOIN Sales.SalesOrderDetail as sod on sod.SalesOrderID = soh.SalesOrderID WHERE soh.SalesPersonID = 285; Amazingly similar, of course. This one is an explicit join, the first example was just as much a join, even thought you didn’t actually ask for one. You need to consider this when you’re thinking about your queries. But it gets more interesting. Consider this query: SELECT SalesOrderID FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader WHERE SalesPersonID = 276 AND CustomerID = 29522; It doesn’t look like there’s a join here either, but look at the plan. That’s not some Lookup in action – that’s a proper Merge Join. The Query Optimizer has worked out that it can get the data it needs by looking in two separate indexes and then doing a Merge Join on the data that it gets. Both indexes used are ordered by the column that’s indexed (one on SalesPersonID, one on CustomerID), and then by the CIX key SalesOrderID. Just like when you seek in the phone book to Farley, the Farleys you have are ordered by FirstName, these seek operations return the data ordered by the next field. This order is SalesOrderID, even though you didn’t explicitly put that column in the index definition. The result is two datasets that are ordered by SalesOrderID, making them very mergeable. Another example is the simple query SELECT CustomerID FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader WHERE SalesPersonID = 276; This one prefers a Hash Match to a standard lookup even! This isn’t just ordinary index intersection, this is something else again! Just like before, we could imagine it better with two whole tables, but we shouldn’t try to distinguish between joining two tables and joining two indexes. The Query Optimizer can see (using basic maths) that it’s worth doing these particular operations using these two less-than-ideal indexes (because of course, the best indexese would be on both columns – a composite such as (SalesPersonID, CustomerID – and it would have the SalesOrderID column as part of it as the CIX key still). You need to think like this too. Not in terms of excusing single-column indexes like the ones in AdventureWorks2012, but in terms of having a picture about how you’d like your queries to run. If you start to think about what data you need, where it’s coming from, and how it’s going to be used, then you will almost certainly write better queries. …and yes, this would include when you’re dealing with regular joins across multiples, not just against joins within single table queries.

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• Dynamic Bursting ... no really!

  - by Tim Dexter

  If any of you have seen me or my colleagues present BI Publisher to you then we have hopefully mentioned 'bursting.' You may have even seen a demo where we talk about being able to take a batch of data, say invoices. Then split them by some criteria, say customer id; format them with a template; generate the output and then deliver the documents to the recipients with a click. We and especially I, always say this can be completely dynamic! By this I mean, that you could store customer preferences in a database. What layout would each customer like; what output format they would like and how they would like the document delivered. We (I) talk a good talk, but typically don't do the walk in a demo. We hard code everything in the bursting query or bursting control file to get the concept across. But no more peeps! I have finally put together a dynamic bursting demo! Its been minutes in the making but its been tough to find those minutes! Read on ... It's nothing amazing in terms of making the burst dynamic. I created a CUSTOMER_PREFS table with some simple UI in an APEX application so that I can maintain their requirements. In EBS you have descriptive flexfields that could do the same thing or probably even 'contact' fields to store most of the info. Here's my table structure: Name                           Type ------------------------------ -------- CUSTOMER_ID                    NUMBER(6) TEMPLATE_TYPE                  VARCHAR2(20) TEMPLATE_NAME                  VARCHAR2(120) OUTPUT_FORMAT                  VARCHAR2(20) DELIVERY_CHANNEL               VARCHAR2(50) EMAIL                          VARCHAR2(255) FAX                            VARCHAR2(20) ATTACH                         VARCHAR2(20) FILE_LOC                       VARCHAR2(255) Simple enough right? Just need CUSTOMER_ID as the key for the bursting engine to join it to the customer data at burst time. I have not covered the full delivery options, just email, fax and file location. Remember, its a demo people :0) However the principal is exactly the same for each delivery type. They each have a set of attributes that need to be provided and you will need to handle that in your bursting query. On a side note, in EBS, you use a bursting control file, you can apply the same principals that I'm laying out here you just need to get the customer bursting info into the XML data stream so that you can refer to it in the control file using XPATH expressions. Next, we need to look up what attributes or parameters are required for each delivery method. that can be found in the documentation here.  Now we know the combinations of parameters and delivery methods we can construct the query using a series a decode statements: select distinct cp.customer_id "KEY", cp.template_name TEMPLATE, cp.template_type TEMPLATE_FORMAT, 'en-US' LOCALE, cp.output_format OUTPUT_FORMAT, 'false' SAVE_FORMAT, cp.delivery_channel DEL_CHANNEL, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE', cp.file_loc , 'EMAIL', cp.email , 'FAX', cp.fax) PARAMETER1, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE', c.cust_last_name||'_orders.pdf' ,'EMAIL','[email protected]' ,'FAX', 'faxserver.com') PARAMETER2, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE',NULL ,'EMAIL','[email protected]' ,'FAX', null) PARAMETER3, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE',NULL ,'EMAIL','Your current orders' ,'FAX',NULL) PARAMETER4, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE',NULL ,'EMAIL','Please find attached a copy of your current orders with BI Publisher, Inc' ,'FAX',NULL) PARAMETER5, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE',NULL ,'EMAIL','false' ,'FAX',NULL) PARAMETER6, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE',NULL ,'EMAIL','[email protected]' ,'FAX',NULL) PARAMETER7 from cust_prefs cp, customers c, orders_view ov where cp.customer_id = c.customer_id and cp.customer_id = ov.customer_id order by cp.customer_id Pretty straightforward, just need to test, test, test, the query and ensure it's bringing back the correct data based on each customers preferences. Notice the NULL values for parameters that are not relevant for a given delivery channel. You should end up with bursting control data that the bursting engine can use:  Now, your users can run the burst and documents will be formatted, generated and delivered based on the customer prefs. If you're interested in the example, I have used the sample OE schema data for the base report. The report files and CUST_PREFS table are zipped up here. The zip contains the data model (.xdmz), the report and templates (.xdoz) and the sql scripts to create and load data to the CUST_PREFS table.  Once you load the report into the catalog, you'll need to create the OE data connection and point the data model at it. You'll probably need to re-point the report to the data model too. Happy Bursting!

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• TFS 2010 SDK: Integrating Twitter with TFS Programmatically

  - by Tarun Arora

  Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,TFS API,Integrate Twitter TFS,TFS Programming,ALM,TwitterSharp   Friends at ‘Twitter Sharp’ have created a wonderful .net API for twitter. With this blog post i will try to show you a basic TFS – Twitter integration scenario where i will retrieve the Team Project details programmatically and then publish these details on my twitter page. In future blogs i will be demonstrating how to create a windows service to capture the events raised by TFS and then publishing them in your social eco-system. Download Working Demo: Integrate Twitter - Tfs Programmatically   1. Setting up Twitter API Download Tweet Sharp from => https://github.com/danielcrenna/tweetsharp  Before you can start playing around with this, you will need to register an application on twitter. This is because Twitter uses the OAuth authentication protocol and will not issue an Access token unless your application is registered with them. Go to https://dev.twitter.com/ and register your application   Once you have registered your application, you will need ‘Customer Key’, ‘Customer Secret’, ‘Access Token’, ‘Access Token Secret’ 2. Connecting to Twitter using the Tweet Sharp API Create a new C# windows forms project and add reference to ‘Hammock.ClientProfile’, ‘Newtonsoft.Json’, ‘TweetSharp’ Add the following keys to the App.config (Note – The values for the keys below are in correct and if you try and connect using them then you will get an authorization failure error). Add a new class ‘TwitterProxy’ and use the following code to connect to the TwitterService (Read more about OAuthentication - http://dev.twitter.com/pages/auth) using System;using System.Collections.Generic;using System.Linq;using System.Text;using System.Configuration;using TweetSharp; namespace WindowsFormsApplication2{ public class TwitterProxy { private static string _hero; private static string _consumerKey; private static string _consumerSecret; private static string _accessToken; private static string _accessTokenSecret;  public static TwitterService ConnectToTwitter() { _consumerKey = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ConsumerKey"]; _consumerSecret = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ConsumerSecret"]; _accessToken = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AccessToken"]; _accessTokenSecret = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AccessTokenSecret"];  return new TwitterService(_consumerKey, _consumerSecret, _accessToken, _accessTokenSecret); } }} Time to Tweet! _twitterService = Proxy.TwitterProxy.ConnectToTwitter(); _twitterService.SendTweet("Hello World"); SendTweet will return the TweetStatus, If you do not get a 200 OK status that means you have failed authentication, please revisit the Access tokens. --RESPONSE: https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.json HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Transaction: 1308476106-69292-41752 X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN X-Runtime: 0.03040 X-Transaction-Mask: a6183ffa5f44ef11425211f25 Pragma: no-cache X-Access-Level: read-write X-Revision: DEV X-MID: bd8aa0abeccb6efba38bc0a391a73fab98e983ea Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0 Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8 Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 09:35:06 GMT Expires: Tue, 31 Mar 1981 05:00:00 GMT Last-Modified: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 09:35:06 GMT Server: hi Vary: Accept-Encoding Content-Encoding: Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100 Connection: Keep-Alive Transfer-Encoding: chunked   3. Integrate with TFS In my blog post Connect to TFS Programmatically i have in depth demonstrated how to connect to TFS using the TFS API. 1: // Update the AppConfig with the URI of the Team Foundation Server you want to connect to, Make sure you have View Team Project Collection Details permissions on the server 2: private static string _myUri = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["TfsUri"]; 3: private static TwitterService _twitterService = null; 4:   5: private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 6: { 7: lblNotes.Text = string.Empty; 8:   9: try 10: { 11: StringBuilder notes = new StringBuilder(); 12:   13: _twitterService = Proxy.TwitterProxy.ConnectToTwitter(); 14:   15: _twitterService.SendTweet("Hello World"); 16:   17: TfsConfigurationServer configurationServer = 18: TfsConfigurationServerFactory.GetConfigurationServer(new Uri(_myUri)); 19:   20: CatalogNode catalogNode = configurationServer.CatalogNode; 21:   22: ReadOnlyCollection<CatalogNode> tpcNodes = catalogNode.QueryChildren( 23: new Guid[] { CatalogResourceTypes.ProjectCollection }, 24: false, CatalogQueryOptions.None); 25:   26: // tpc = Team Project Collection 27: foreach (CatalogNode tpcNode in tpcNodes) 28: { 29: Guid tpcId = new Guid(tpcNode.Resource.Properties["InstanceId"]); 30: TfsTeamProjectCollection tpc = configurationServer.GetTeamProjectCollection(tpcId); 31:   32: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Team Project Collection : {1}{0}", Environment.NewLine, tpc.Name); 33: _twitterService.SendTweet(String.Format("http://Lunartech.codeplex.com - Connecting to Team Project Collection : {0} ", tpc.Name)); 34:   35: // Get catalog of tp = 'Team Projects' for the tpc = 'Team Project Collection' 36: var tpNodes = tpcNode.QueryChildren( 37: new Guid[] { CatalogResourceTypes.TeamProject }, 38: false, CatalogQueryOptions.None); 39:   40: foreach (var p in tpNodes) 41: { 42: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Team Project : {1} - {2}{0}", Environment.NewLine, p.Resource.DisplayName,  "This is an open source project hosted on codeplex"); 43: _twitterService.SendTweet(String.Format(" Connected to Team Project: '{0}' – '{1}' ", p.Resource.DisplayName, "This is an open source project hosted on codeplex")); 44: } 45: } 46: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Updates posted on Twitter : {1} {0}", Environment.NewLine, @"http://twitter.com/lunartech1"); 47: lblNotes.Text = notes.ToString(); 48: } 49: catch (Exception ex) 50: { 51: lblError.Text = " Message : " + ex.Message + (ex.InnerException != null ? " Inner Exception : " + ex.InnerException : string.Empty); 52: } 53: }   The extensions you can build integrating TFS and Twitter are incredible!   Share this post :

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #006

  - by pinaldave

  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. 2006 This was my very first year of blogging so I was every day learning something new. As I have said many times, that blogging was never an intention. I had really not understood what exactly I am working on or beginning when I was beginning blogging in 2006. I had never knew that my life was going to change forever, once I started blogging. When I look back all of this year, I am happy that we are here together. 2007 IT Outsourcing to India – Top 10 Reasons Companies Outsource Outsourcing is about trust, collaboration and success. Helping other countries in need has been always the course of mankind, outsourcing is nothing different then that. With information technology and process improvements increasing the complexity, costs and skills required to accomplish routine tasks as well as challenging complex tasks, companies are outsourcing such tasks to providers who have the expertise to perform them at lower costs , with greater value and quality outcome. UDF – Remove Duplicate Chars From String This was a very interesting function I wrote in my early career. I am still using this function when I have to remove duplicate chars from strings. I have yet to come across a scenario where it does not work so I keep on using it till today. Please leave a comment if there is any better solution to this problem. FIX : Error : 3702 Cannot drop database because it is currently in use This is a very generic error when DROP Database is command is executed and the database is not dropped. The common mistake user is kept the connection open with this database and trying to drop the database. The database cannot be dropped if there is any other connection open along with it. It is always a good idea to take database in single user mode before dropping it. Here is the quick tutorial regarding how to bring the database in single user mode: Using T-SQL | Using SSMS. 2008 Install SQL Server 2008 – How to Upgrade to SQL Server 2008 – Installation Tutorial This was indeed one of the most popular articles in SQL Server 2008. Lots of people wanted to learn how to install SQL SErver 2008 but they were facing various issues while installation. I build this tutorial which becomes reference points for many. Default Collation of SQL Server 2008 What is the collation of SQL Server 2008 default installations? I often see this question confusing many experienced developers as well. Well the answer is in following image. Ahmedabad SQL Server User Group Meeting – November 2008 User group meetings are fun, now a days I am going to User Group meetings every week but there was a case when I have been just a beginner on this subject. The bug of the community was caught on me years ago when I started to present in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar SQ LServer User Groups. 2009 Validate an XML document in TSQL using XSD My friend Jacob Sebastian wrote an excellent article on the subject XML and XSD. Because of the ‘eXtensible’ nature of XML (eXtensible Markup Language), often there is a requirement to restrict and validate the content of an XML document to a pre-defined structure and values. XSD (XML Schema Definition Language) is the W3C recommended language for describing and validating XML documents. SQL Server implements XSD as XML Schema Collections. Star Join Query Optimization At present, when queries are sent to very large databases, millions of rows are returned. Also the users have to go through extended query response times when joining multiple tables are involved with such queries. ‘Star Join Query Optimization’ is a new feature of SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition. This mechanism uses bitmap filtering for improving the performance of some types of queries by the effective retrieval of rows from fact tables. 2010 These puzzles are very interesting and intriguing – there was lots of interest on this subject. If you have free time this weekend. You may want to try them out. SQL SERVER – Challenge – Puzzle – Usage of FAST Hint (Solution)  SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Challenge – Error While Converting Money to Decimal (Solution)  SQL SERVER – Challenge – Puzzle – Why does RIGHT JOIN Exists (Open)  Additionally, I had great fun presenting SQL Server Performance Tuning seminar at fantastic locations in Hyderabad. Installing AdventeWorks Database This has been the most popular request I have received on my blog. Here is the quick video about how one can install AdventureWorks. 2011 Effect of SET NOCOUNT on @@ROWCOUNT There was an interesting incident once while I was presenting a session. I wrote a code and suddenly 10 hands went up in the air.  This was a bit surprise to me as I do not know why they all got alerted. I assumed that there should be something wrong with either project, screen or my display. However the real reason was very interesting – I suggest you read the complete blog post to understand this interesting scenario. Error: Deleting Offline Database and Creating the Same Name This is very interesting because once a user deletes the offline database the MDF and LDF file still exists and if the user attempts to create a new database with the same name it will give error. I found this very interesting and the blog explains the concept very quickly. Have you ever faced a similar situation? 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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• Visual Studio Little Wonders: Box Selection

  - by James Michael Hare

  So this week I decided I’d do a Little Wonder of a different kind and focus on an underused IDE improvement: Visual Studio’s Box Selection capability. This is a handy feature that many people still don’t realize was made available in Visual Studio 2010 (and beyond).  True, there have been other editors in the past with this capability, but now that it’s fully part of Visual Studio we can enjoy it’s goodness from within our own IDE. So, for those of you who don’t know what box selection is and what it allows you to do, read on! Sometimes, we want to select beyond the horizontal… The problem with traditional text selection in many editors is that it is horizontally oriented.  Sure, you can select multiple rows, but if you do you will pull in the entire row (at least for the middle rows).  Under the old selection scheme, if you wanted to select a portion of text from each row (a “box” of text) you were out of luck.  Box selection rectifies this by allowing you to select a box of text that bounded by a selection rectangle that you can grow horizontally or vertically.  So let’s think a situation that could occur where this comes in handy. Let’s say, for instance, that we are defining an enum in our code that we want to be able to translate into some string values (possibly to be stored in a database, output to screen, etc.). Perhaps such an enum would look like this: 1: public enum OrderType 2: { 3: Buy, // buy shares of a commodity 4: Sell, // sell shares of a commodity 5: Exchange, // exchange one commodity for another 6: Cancel, // cancel an order for a commodity 7: } 8:  Now, let’s say we are in the process of creating a Dictionary<K,V> to translate our OrderType: 1: var translator = new Dictionary<OrderType, string> 2: { 3: // do I really want to retype all this??? 4: }; Yes the example above is contrived so that we will pull some garbage if we do a multi-line select. I could select the lines above using the traditional multi-line selection: And then paste them into the translator code, which would result in this: 1: var translator = new Dictionary<OrderType, string> 2: { 3: Buy, // buy shares of a commodity 4: Sell, // sell shares of a commodity 5: Exchange, // exchange one commodity for another 6: Cancel, // cancel an order for a commodity 7: }; But I have a lot of junk there, sure I can manually clear it out, or use some search and replace magic, but if this were hundreds of lines instead of just a few that would quickly become cumbersome. The Box Selection Now that we have the ability to create box selections, we can select the box of text to delete!  Most of us are familiar with the fact we can drag the mouse (or hold [Shift] and use the arrow keys) to create a selection that can span multiple rows: Box selection, however, actually allows us to select a box instead of the typical horizontal lines: Then we can press the [delete] key and the pesky comments are all gone! You can do this either by holding down [Alt] while you select with your mouse, or by holding down [Alt+Shift] and using the arrow keys on the keyboard to grow the box horizontally or vertically. So now we have: 1: var translator = new Dictionary<OrderType, string> 2: { 3: Buy, 4: Sell, 5: Exchange, 6: Cancel, 7: }; Which is closer, but we still need an opening curly, the string to translate to, and the closing curly and comma. Fortunately, again, this is easy with box selections due to the fact box selection can even work for a zero-width selection! That is, hold down [Alt] and either drag down with no width, or hold down [Alt+Shift] and arrow down and you will define a selection range with no width, essentially, a vertical line selection: Notice the faint selection line on the right? So why is this useful? Well, just like with any selected range, we can type and it will replace the selection. What does this mean for box selections? It means that we can insert the same text all the way down on each line! If we have the same selection above, and type a curly and a space, we’d get: Imagine doing this over hundreds of lines and think of what a time saver it could be! Now make a zero-width selection on the other side: And type a curly and a comma, and we’d get: So close! Now finally, imagine we’ve already defined these strings somewhere and want to paste them in: 1: const private string BuyText = "Buy Shares"; 2: const private string SellText = "Sell Shares"; 3: const private string ExchangeText = "Exchange"; 4: const private string CancelText = "Cancel"; We can, again, use our box selection to pull out the constant names: And clicking copy (or [CTRL+C]) and then selecting a range to paste into: And finally clicking paste (or [CTRL+V]) to get the final result: 1: var translator = new Dictionary<OrderType, string> 2: { 3: { Buy, BuyText }, 4: { Sell, SellText }, 5: { Exchange, ExchangeText }, 6: { Cancel, CancelText }, 7: };   Sure, this was a contrived example, but I’m sure you’ll agree that it adds myriad possibilities of new ways to copy and paste vertical selections, as well as inserting text across a vertical slice. Summary: While box selection has been around in other editors, we finally get to experience it in VS2010 and beyond. It is extremely handy for selecting columns of information for cutting, copying, and pasting. In addition, it allows you to create a zero-width vertical insertion point that can be used to enter the same text across multiple rows. Imagine the time you can save adding repetitive code across multiple lines!  Try it, the more you use it, the more you’ll love it! Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Visual Studio,Little Wonders,Box Selection

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• New Replication, Optimizer and High Availability features in MySQL 5.6.5!

  - by Rob Young

  As the Product Manager for the MySQL database it is always great to announce when the MySQL Engineering team delivers another great product release.  As a field DBA and developer it is even better when that release contains improvements and innovation that I know will help those currently using MySQL for apps that range from modest intranet sites to the most highly trafficked web sites on the web.  That said, it is my pleasure to take my hat off to MySQL Engineering for today's release of the MySQL 5.6.5 Development Milestone Release ("DMR"). The new highlighted features in MySQL 5.6.5 are discussed here: New Self-Healing Replication ClustersThe 5.6.5 DMR improves MySQL Replication by adding Global Transaction Ids and automated utilities for self-healing Replication clusters.  Prior to 5.6.5 this has been somewhat of a pain point for MySQL users with most developing custom solutions or looking to costly, complex third-party solutions for these capabilities.  With 5.6.5 these shackles are all but removed by a solution that is included with the GPL version of the database and supporting GPL tools.  You can learn all about the details of the great, problem solving Replication features in MySQL 5.6 in Mat Keep's Developer Zone article.  New Replication Administration and Failover UtilitiesAs mentioned above, the new Replication features, Global Transaction Ids specifically, are now supported by a set of automated GPL utilities that leverage the new GTIDs to provide administration and manual or auto failover to the most up to date slave (that is the default, but user configurable if needed) in the event of a master failure. The new utilities, along with links to Engineering related blogs, are discussed in detail in the DevZone Article noted above. Better Query Optimization and ThroughputThe MySQL Optimizer team continues to amaze with the latest round of improvements in 5.6.5. Along with much refactoring of the legacy code base, the Optimizer team has improved complex query optimization and throughput by adding these functional improvements: Subquery Optimizations - Subqueries are now included in the Optimizer path for runtime optimization.  Better throughput of nested queries enables application developers to simplify and consolidate multiple queries and result sets into a single unit or work. Optimizer now uses CURRENT_TIMESTAMP as default for DATETIME columns - For simplification, this eliminates the need for application developers to assign this value when a column of this type is blank by default. Optimizations for Range based queries - Optimizer now uses ready statistics vs Index based scans for queries with multiple range values. Optimizations for queries using filesort and ORDER BY.  Optimization criteria/decision on execution method is done now at optimization vs parsing stage. Print EXPLAIN in JSON format for hierarchical readability and Enterprise tool consumption. You can learn the details about these new features as well all of the Optimizer based improvements in MySQL 5.6 by following the Optimizer team blog. You can download and try the MySQL 5.6.5 DMR here. (look under "Development Releases")  Please let us know what you think!  The new HA utilities for Replication Administration and Failover are available as part of the MySQL Workbench Community Edition, which you can download here .Also New in MySQL LabsAs has become our tradition when announcing DMRs we also like to provide "Early Access" development features to the MySQL Community via the MySQL Labs.  Today is no exception as we are also releasing the following to Labs for you to download, try and let us know your thoughts on where we need to improve:InnoDB Online OperationsMySQL 5.6 now provides Online ADD Index, FK Drop and Online Column RENAME.  These operations are non-blocking and will continue to evolve in future DMRs.  You can learn the grainy details by following John Russell's blog.InnoDB data access via Memcached API ("NotOnlySQL") - Improved refresh of an earlier feature releaseSimilar to Cluster 7.2, MySQL 5.6 provides direct NotOnlySQL access to InnoDB data via the familiar Memcached API. This provides the ultimate in flexibility for developers who need fast, simple key/value access and complex query support commingled within their applications.Improved Transactional Performance, ScaleThe InnoDB Engineering team has once again under promised and over delivered in the area of improved performance and scale.  These improvements are also included in the aggregated Spring 2012 labs release:InnoDB CPU cache performance improvements for modern, multi-core/CPU systems show great promise with internal tests showing:    2x throughput improvement for read only activity 6x throughput improvement for SELECT range Read/Write benchmarks are in progress More details on the above are available here. You can download all of the above in an aggregated "InnoDB 2012 Spring Labs Release" binary from the MySQL Labs. You can also learn more about these improvements and about related fixes to mysys mutex and hash sort by checking out the InnoDB team blog.MySQL 5.6.5 is another installment in what we believe will be the best release of the MySQL database ever.  It also serves as a shining example of how the MySQL Engineering team at Oracle leads in MySQL innovation.You can get the overall Oracle message on the MySQL 5.6.5 DMR and Early Access labs features here. As always, thanks for your continued support of MySQL, the #1 open source database on the planet!

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• Trace File Source Adapter

  The Trace File Source adapter is a useful addition to your SSIS toolbox.  It allows you to read 2005 and 2008 profiler traces stored as .trc files and read them into the Data Flow.  From there you can perform filtering and analysis using the power of SSIS. There is no need for a SQL Server connection this just uses the trace file. Example Usages Cache warming for SQL Server Analysis Services Reading the flight recorder Find out the longest running queries on a server Analyze statements for CPU, memory by user or some other criteria you choose Properties The Trace File Source adapter has two properties, both of which combine to control the source trace file that is read at runtime. SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 trace files are supported for both the Database Engine (SQL Server) and Analysis Services. The properties are managed by the Editor form or can be set directly from the Properties Grid in Visual Studio. Property Type Description AccessMode Enumeration This property determines how the Filename property is interpreted. The values available are: DirectInput Variable Filename String This property holds the path for trace file to load (*.trc). The value is either a full path, or the name of a variable which contains the full path to the trace file, depending on the AccessMode property. Trace Column Definition Hopefully the majority of you can skip this section entirely, but if you encounter some problems processing a trace file this may explain it and allow you to fix the problem. The component is built upon the trace management API provided by Microsoft. Unfortunately API methods that expose the schema of a trace file have known issues and are unreliable, put simply the data often differs from what was specified. To overcome these limitations the component uses  some simple XML files. These files enable the trace column data types and sizing attributes to be overridden. For example SQL Server Profiler or TMO generated structures define EventClass as an integer, but the real value is a string. TraceDataColumnsSQL.xml  - SQL Server Database Engine Trace Columns TraceDataColumnsAS.xml    - SQL Server Analysis Services Trace Columns The files can be found in the %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents folder, e.g. "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents\TraceDataColumnsSQL.xml" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents\TraceDataColumnsAS.xml" If at runtime the component encounters a type conversion or sizing error it is most likely due to a discrepancy between the column definition as reported by the API and the actual value encountered. Whilst most common issues have already been fixed through these files we have implemented specific exception traps to direct you to the files to enable you to fix any further issues due to different usage or data scenarios that we have not tested. An example error that you can fix through these files is shown below. Buffer exception writing value to column 'Column Name'. The string value is 999 characters in length, the column is only 111. Columns can be overridden by the TraceDataColumns XML files in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents\TraceDataColumnsAS.xml". Installation The component is provided as an MSI file which you can download and run to install it. This simply places the files on disk in the correct locations and also installs the assemblies in the Global Assembly Cache as per Microsoft’s recommendations. You may need to restart the SQL Server Integration Services service, as this caches information about what components are installed, as well as restarting any open instances of Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) / Visual Studio that you may be using to build your SSIS packages. Finally you will have to add the transformation to the Visual Studio toolbox manually. Right-click the toolbox, and select Choose Items.... Select the SSIS Data Flow Items tab, and then check the Trace File Source transformation in the Choose Toolbox Items window. This process has been described in detail in the related FAQ entry for How do I install a task or transform component? We recommend you follow best practice and apply the current Microsoft SQL Server Service pack to your SQL Server servers and workstations. Please note that the Microsoft Trace classes used in the component are not supported on 64-bit platforms. To use the Trace File Source on a 64-bit host you need to ensure you have the 32-bit (x86) tools available, and the way you execute your package is setup to use them, please see the help topic 64-bit Considerations for Integration Services for more details. Downloads Trace Sources for SQL Server 2005 -- Trace Sources for SQL Server 2008 Version History SQL Server 2008 Version 2.0.0.382 - SQL Sever 2008 public release. (9 Apr 2009) SQL Server 2005 Version 1.0.0.321 - SQL Server 2005 public release. (18 Nov 2008) -- Screenshots

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• What Counts For a DBA: Simplicity

  - by Louis Davidson

  Too many computer processes do an apparently simple task in a bizarrely complex way. They remind me of this strip by one of my favorite artists: Rube Goldberg. In order to keep the boss from knowing one was late, a process is devised whereby the cuckoo clock kisses a live cuckoo bird, who then pulls a string, which triggers a hat flinging, which in turn lands on a rod that removes a typewriter cover…and so on. We rely on creating automated processes to keep on top of tasks. DBAs have a lot of tasks to perform: backups, performance tuning, data movement, system monitoring, and of course, avoiding being noticed.  Every day, there are many steps to perform to maintain the database infrastructure, including: checking physical structures, re-indexing tables where needed, backing up the databases, checking those backups, running the ETL, and preparing the daily reports and yes, all of these processes have to complete before you can call it a day, and probably before many others have started that same day. Some of these tasks are just naturally complicated on their own. Other tasks become complicated because the database architecture is excessively rigid, and we often discover during “production testing” that certain processes need to be changed because the written requirements barely resembled the actual customer requirements.   Then, with no time to change that rigid structure, we are forced to heap layer upon layer of code onto the problematic processes. Instead of a slight table change and a new index, we end up with 4 new ETL processes, 20 temp tables, 30 extra queries, and 1000 lines of SQL code.  Report writers then need to build reports and make magical numbers appear from those toxic data structures that are overly complex and probably filled with inconsistent data. What starts out as a collection of fairly simple tasks turns into a Goldbergian nightmare of daily processes that are likely to cause your dinner to be interrupted by the smartphone doing the vibration dance that signifies trouble at the mill. So what to do? Well, if it is at all possible, simplify the problem by either going into the code and refactoring the complex code to simple, or taking all of the processes and simplifying them into small, independent, easily-tested steps.  The former approach usually requires an agreement on changing underlying structures that requires countless mind-numbing meetings; while the latter can generally be done to any complex process without the same frustration or anger, though it will still leave you with lots of steps to complete, the ability to test each step independently will definitely increase the quality of the overall process (and with each step reporting status back, finding an actual problem within the process will be definitely less unpleasant.) We all know the principle behind simplifying a sequence of processes because we learned it in math classes in our early years of attending school, starting with elementary school. In my 4 years (ok, 9 years) of undergraduate work, I remember pretty much one thing from my many math classes that I apply daily to my career as a data architect, data programmer, and as an occasional indentured DBA: “show your work”. This process of showing your work was my first lesson in simplification. Each step in the process was in fact, far simpler than the entire process.  When you were working an equation that took both sides of 4 sheets of paper, showing your work was important because the teacher could see every step, judge it, and mark it accordingly.  So often I would make an error in the first few lines of a problem which meant that the rest of the work was actually moving me closer to a very wrong answer, no matter how correct the math was in the subsequent steps. Yet, when I got my grade back, I would sometimes be pleasantly surprised. I passed, yet missed every problem on the test. But why? While I got the fact that 1+1=2 wrong in every problem, the teacher could see that I was using the right process. In a computer process, the process is very similar. We take complex processes, show our work by storing intermediate values, and test each step independently. When a process has 100 steps, each step becomes a simple step that is tested and verified, such that there will be 100 places where data is stored, validated, and can be checked off as complete. If you get step 1 of 100 wrong, you can fix it and be confident (that if you did your job of testing the other steps better than the one you had to repair,) that the rest of the process works. If you have 100 steps, and store the state of the process exactly once, the resulting testable chunk of code will be far more complex and finding the error will require checking all 100 steps as one, and usually it would be easier to find a specific needle in a stack of similarly shaped needles.  The goal is to strive for simplicity either in the solution, or at least by simplifying every process down to as many, independent, testable, simple tasks as possible.  For the tasks that really can’t be done completely independently, minimally take those tasks and break them down into simpler steps that can be tested independently.  Like working out division problems longhand, have each step of the larger problem verified and tested.

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• Basic shadow mapping fails on NVIDIA card?

  - by James

  Recently I switched from an AMD Radeon HD 6870 card to an (MSI) NVIDIA GTX 670 for performance reasons. I found however that my implementation of shadow mapping in all my applications failed. In a very simple shadow POC project the problem appears to be that the scene being drawn never results in a draw to the depth map and as a result the entire depth map is just infinity, 1.0 (Reading directly from the depth component after draw (glReadPixels) shows every pixel is infinity (1.0), replacing the depth comparison in the shader with a comparison of the depth from the shadow map with 1.0 shadows the entire scene, and writing random values to the depth map and then not calling glClear(GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT) results in a random noisy pattern on the scene elements - from which we can infer that the uploading of the depth texture and comparison within the shader are functioning perfectly.) Since the problem appears almost certainly to be in the depth render, this is the code for that: const int s_res = 1024; GLuint shadowMap_tex; GLuint shadowMap_prog; GLint sm_attr_coord3d; GLint sm_uniform_mvp; GLuint fbo_handle; GLuint renderBuffer; bool isMappingShad = false; //The scene consists of a plane with box above it GLfloat scene[] = { -10.0, 0.0, -10.0, 0.5, 0.0, 10.0, 0.0, -10.0, 1.0, 0.0, 10.0, 0.0, 10.0, 1.0, 0.5, -10.0, 0.0, -10.0, 0.5, 0.0, -10.0, 0.0, 10.0, 0.5, 0.5, 10.0, 0.0, 10.0, 1.0, 0.5, ... }; //Initialize the stuff used by the shadow map generator int initShadowMap() { //Initialize the shadowMap shader program if (create_program("shadow.v.glsl", "shadow.f.glsl", shadowMap_prog) != 1) return -1; const char* attribute_name = "coord3d"; sm_attr_coord3d = glGetAttribLocation(shadowMap_prog, attribute_name); if (sm_attr_coord3d == -1) { fprintf(stderr, "Could not bind attribute %s\n", attribute_name); return 0; } const char* uniform_name = "mvp"; sm_uniform_mvp = glGetUniformLocation(shadowMap_prog, uniform_name); if (sm_uniform_mvp == -1) { fprintf(stderr, "Could not bind uniform %s\n", uniform_name); return 0; } //Create a framebuffer glGenFramebuffers(1, &fbo_handle); glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, fbo_handle); //Create render buffer glGenRenderbuffers(1, &renderBuffer); glBindRenderbuffer(GL_RENDERBUFFER, renderBuffer); //Setup the shadow texture glGenTextures(1, &shadowMap_tex); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, shadowMap_tex); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT, s_res, s_res, 0, GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT, GL_FLOAT, NULL); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); return 0; } //Delete stuff void dnitShadowMap() { //Delete everything glDeleteFramebuffers(1, &fbo_handle); glDeleteRenderbuffers(1, &renderBuffer); glDeleteTextures(1, &shadowMap_tex); glDeleteProgram(shadowMap_prog); } int loadSMap() { //Bind MVP stuff glm::mat4 view = glm::lookAt(glm::vec3(10.0, 10.0, 5.0), glm::vec3(0.0, 0.0, 0.0), glm::vec3(0.0, 1.0, 0.0)); glm::mat4 projection = glm::ortho<float>(-10,10,-8,8,-10,40); glm::mat4 mvp = projection * view; glm::mat4 biasMatrix( 0.5, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.5, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.5, 0.0, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0 ); glm::mat4 lsMVP = biasMatrix * mvp; //Upload light source matrix to the main shader programs glUniformMatrix4fv(uniform_ls_mvp, 1, GL_FALSE, glm::value_ptr(lsMVP)); glUseProgram(shadowMap_prog); glUniformMatrix4fv(sm_uniform_mvp, 1, GL_FALSE, glm::value_ptr(mvp)); //Draw to the framebuffer (with depth buffer only draw) glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, fbo_handle); glBindRenderbuffer(GL_RENDERBUFFER, renderBuffer); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, shadowMap_tex); glFramebufferTexture2D(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_DEPTH_ATTACHMENT, GL_TEXTURE_2D, shadowMap_tex, 0); glDrawBuffer(GL_NONE); glReadBuffer(GL_NONE); GLenum result = glCheckFramebufferStatus(GL_FRAMEBUFFER); if (GL_FRAMEBUFFER_COMPLETE != result) { printf("ERROR: Framebuffer is not complete.\n"); return -1; } //Draw shadow scene printf("Creating shadow buffers..\n"); int ticks = SDL_GetTicks(); glClear(GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); //Wipe the depth buffer glViewport(0, 0, s_res, s_res); isMappingShad = true; //DRAW glEnableVertexAttribArray(sm_attr_coord3d); glVertexAttribPointer(sm_attr_coord3d, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 5*4, scene); glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, 0, 14*3); glDisableVertexAttribArray(sm_attr_coord3d); isMappingShad = false; glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, 0); printf("Render Sbuf in %dms (GLerr: %d)\n", SDL_GetTicks() - ticks, glGetError()); return 0; } This is the full code for the POC shadow mapping project (C++) (Requires SDL 1.2, SDL-image 1.2, GLEW (1.5) and GLM development headers.) initShadowMap is called, followed by loadSMap, the scene is drawn from the camera POV and then dnitShadowMap is called. I followed this tutorial originally (Along with another more comprehensive tutorial which has disappeared as this guy re-configured his site but used to be here (404).) I've ensured that the scene is visible (as can be seen within the full project) to the light source (which uses an orthogonal projection matrix.) Shader utilities function fine in non-shadow-mapped projects. I should also note that at no point is the GL error state set. What am I doing wrong here and why did this not cause problems on my AMD card? (System: Ubuntu 12.04, Linux 3.2.0-49-generic, 64 bit, with the nvidia-experimental-310 driver package. All other games are functioning fine so it's most likely not a card/driver issue.)

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• Better documentation for tasks waiting on resources

  - by SQLOS Team

  The sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks DMV contains a wealth of useful information about tasks waiting on a resource, but until now detailed information about the resource being consumed - sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks.resource_description - hasn't been documented, apart from a rather self-evident "Description of the resource that is being consumed."   Thanks to a recent Connect suggestion this column will get more information added. Here is a summary of the possible values that can appear in this column - Note this information is current for SQL Server 2008 R2 and Denali:   Thread-pool resource owner:•       threadpool id=scheduler<hex-address> Parallel query resource owner:•       exchangeEvent id={Port|Pipe}<hex-address> WaitType=<exchange-wait-type> nodeId=<exchange-node-id> Exchange-wait-type can be one of the following.•       e_waitNone•       e_waitPipeNewRow•       e_waitPipeGetRow•       e_waitSynchronizeConsumerOpen•       e_waitPortOpen•       e_waitPortClose•       e_waitRange Lock resource owner:<type-specific-description> id=lock<lock-hex-address> mode=<mode> associatedObjectId=<associated-obj-id>               <type-specific-description> can be:• For DATABASE: databaselock subresource=<databaselock-subresource> dbid=<db-id>• For FILE: filelock fileid=<file-id> subresource=<filelock-subresource> dbid=<db-id>• For OBJECT: objectlock lockPartition=<lock-partition-id> objid=<obj-id> subresource=<objectlock-subresource> dbid=<db-id>• For PAGE: pagelock fileid=<file-id> pageid=<page-id> dbid=<db-id> subresource=<pagelock-subresource>• For Key: keylock  hobtid=<hobt-id> dbid=<db-id>• For EXTENT: extentlock fileid=<file-id> pageid=<page-id> dbid=<db-id>• For RID: ridlock fileid=<file-id> pageid=<page-id> dbid=<db-id>• For APPLICATION: applicationlock hash=<hash> databasePrincipalId=<role-id> dbid=<db-id>• For METADATA: metadatalock subresource=<metadata-subresource> classid=<metadatalock-description> dbid=<db-id>• For HOBT: hobtlock hobtid=<hobt-id> subresource=<hobt-subresource> dbid=<db-id>• For ALLOCATION_UNIT: allocunitlock hobtid=<hobt-id> subresource=<alloc-unit-subresource> dbid=<db-id> <mode> can be:• Sch-S• Sch-M• S• U• X• IS• IU• IX• SIU• SIX• UIX• BU• RangeS-S• RangeS-U• RangeI-N• RangeI-S• RangeI-U• RangeI-X• RangeX-S• RangeX-U• RangeX-X External resource owner:•       External ExternalResource=<wait-type> Generic resource owner:•       TransactionMutex TransactionInfo Workspace=<workspace-id>•       Mutex•       CLRTaskJoin•       CLRMonitorEvent•       CLRRWLockEvent•       resourceWait Latch resource owner:•       <db-id>:<file-id>:<page-in-file>•       <GUID>•       <latch-class> (<latch-address>)   Further Information Slava Oks's weblog: sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks.Informit.com: Identifying Blocking Using sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks - Ken Henderson   - Guy

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• Nesting Linq-to-Objects query within Linq-to-Entities query –what is happening under the covers?

  - by carewithl

  var numbers = new int[] { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 }; var contacts = from c in context.Contacts where c.ContactID == numbers.Max() | c.ContactID == numbers.FirstOrDefault() select c; foreach (var item in contacts) Console.WriteLine(item.ContactID); Linq-to-Entities query is first translated into Linq expression tree, which is then converted by Object Services into command tree. And if Linq-to-Entities query nests Linq-to-Objects query, then this nested query also gets translated into an expression tree. a) I assume none of the operators of the nested Linq-to-Objects query actually get executed, but instead data provider for particular DB (or perhaps Object Services) knows how to transform the logic of Linq-to-Objects operators into appropriate SQL statements? b) Data provider knows how to create equivalent SQL statements only for some of the Linq-to-Objects operators? c) Similarly, data provider knows how to create equivalent SQL statements only for some of the non-Linq methods in the Net Framework class library? EDIT: I know only some Sql so I can't be completely sure, but reading Sql query generated for the above code it seems data provider didn't actually execute numbers.Max method, but instead just somehow figured out that numbers.Max should return the maximum value and then proceed to include in generated Sql query a call to TSQL's build-in MAX function. It also put all the values held by numbers array into a Sql query. SELECT CASE WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1) AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN '0X0X' ELSE '0X1X' END AS [C1], [Extent1].[ContactID] AS [ContactID], [Extent1].[FirstName] AS [FirstName], [Extent1].[LastName] AS [LastName], [Extent1].[Title] AS [Title], [Extent1].[AddDate] AS [AddDate], [Extent1].[ModifiedDate] AS [ModifiedDate], [Extent1].[RowVersion] AS [RowVersion], CASE WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1) AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[CustomerTypeID] END AS [C2], CASE WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1) AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[InitialDate] END AS [C3], CASE WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1) AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[PrimaryDesintation] END AS [C4], CASE WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1) AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[SecondaryDestination] END AS [C5], CASE WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1) AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[PrimaryActivity] END AS [C6], CASE WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1) AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[SecondaryActivity] END AS [C7], CASE WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1) AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[Notes] END AS [C8], CASE WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1) AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[RowVersion] END AS [C9], CASE WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1) AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[BirthDate] END AS [C10], CASE WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1) AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[HeightInches] END AS [C11], CASE WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1) AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[WeightPounds] END AS [C12], CASE WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1) AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[DietaryRestrictions] END AS [C13] FROM [dbo].[Contact] AS [Extent1] LEFT OUTER JOIN (SELECT [Extent2].[ContactID] AS [ContactID], [Extent2].[BirthDate] AS [BirthDate], [Extent2].[HeightInches] AS [HeightInches], [Extent2].[WeightPounds] AS [WeightPounds], [Extent2].[DietaryRestrictions] AS [DietaryRestrictions], [Extent3].[CustomerTypeID] AS [CustomerTypeID], [Extent3].[InitialDate] AS [InitialDate], [Extent3].[PrimaryDesintation] AS [PrimaryDesintation], [Extent3].[SecondaryDestination] AS [SecondaryDestination], [Extent3].[PrimaryActivity] AS [PrimaryActivity], [Extent3].[SecondaryActivity] AS [SecondaryActivity], [Extent3].[Notes] AS [Notes], [Extent3].[RowVersion] AS [RowVersion], cast(1 as bit) AS [C1] FROM [dbo].[ContactPersonalInfo] AS [Extent2] INNER JOIN [dbo].[Customers] AS [Extent3] ON [Extent2].[ContactID] = [Extent3].[ContactID]) AS [Project1] ON [Extent1].[ContactID] = [Project1].[ContactID] LEFT OUTER JOIN (SELECT TOP (1) [c].[C1] AS [C1] FROM (SELECT [UnionAll3].[C1] AS [C1] FROM (SELECT [UnionAll2].[C1] AS [C1] FROM (SELECT [UnionAll1].[C1] AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable1] UNION ALL SELECT 2 AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable2]) AS [UnionAll1] UNION ALL SELECT 3 AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable3]) AS [UnionAll2] UNION ALL SELECT 4 AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable4]) AS [UnionAll3] UNION ALL SELECT 5 AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable5]) AS [c]) AS [Limit1] ON 1 = 1 LEFT OUTER JOIN (SELECT TOP (1) [c].[C1] AS [C1] FROM (SELECT [UnionAll7].[C1] AS [C1] FROM (SELECT [UnionAll6].[C1] AS [C1] FROM (SELECT [UnionAll5].[C1] AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable6] UNION ALL SELECT 2 AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable7]) AS [UnionAll5] UNION ALL SELECT 3 AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable8]) AS [UnionAll6] UNION ALL SELECT 4 AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable9]) AS [UnionAll7] UNION ALL SELECT 5 AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable10]) AS [c]) AS [Limit2] ON 1 = 1 CROSS JOIN (SELECT MAX([UnionAll12].[C1]) AS [A1] FROM (SELECT [UnionAll11].[C1] AS [C1] FROM (SELECT [UnionAll10].[C1] AS [C1] FROM (SELECT [UnionAll9].[C1] AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable11] UNION ALL SELECT 2 AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable12]) AS [UnionAll9] UNION ALL SELECT 3 AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable13]) AS [UnionAll10] UNION ALL SELECT 4 AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable14]) AS [UnionAll11] UNION ALL SELECT 5 AS [C1] FROM (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable15]) AS [UnionAll12]) AS [GroupBy1] WHERE [Extent1].[ContactID] IN ([GroupBy1].[A1], (CASE WHEN ([Limit1].[C1] IS NULL) THEN 0 ELSE [Limit2].[C1] END)) Based on this, is it possible that Linq2Entities provider indeed doesn't execute non-Linq and Linq-to-Object methods, but instead creates equivalent SQL statements for some of them ( and for others it throws an exception )? Thank you in advance

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• IBM "per core" comparisons for SPECjEnterprise2010

  - by jhenning

  I recently stumbled upon a blog entry from Roman Kharkovski (an IBM employee) comparing some SPECjEnterprise2010 results for IBM vs. Oracle. Mr. Kharkovski's blog claims that SPARC delivers half the transactions per core vs. POWER7. Prior to any argument, I should say that my predisposition is to like Mr. Kharkovski, because he says that his blog is intended to be factual; that the intent is to try to avoid marketing hype and FUD tactic; and mostly because he features a picture of himself wearing a bike helmet (me too). Therefore, in a spirit of technical argument, rather than FUD fight, there are a few areas in his comparison that should be discussed. Scaling is not free For any benchmark, if a small system scores 13k using quantity R1 of some resource, and a big system scores 57k using quantity R2 of that resource, then, sure, it's tempting to divide: is  13k/R1 > 57k/R2 ? It is tempting, but not necessarily educational. The problem is that scaling is not free. Building big systems is harder than building small systems. Scoring  13k/R1  on a little system provides no guarantee whatsoever that one can sustain that ratio when attempting to handle more than 4 times as many users. Choosing the denominator radically changes the picture When ratios are used, one can vastly manipulate appearances by the choice of denominator. In this case, lots of choices are available for the resource to be compared (R1 and R2 above). IBM chooses to put cores in the denominator. Mr. Kharkovski provides some reasons for that choice in his blog entry. And yet, it should be noted that the very concept of a core is: arbitrary: not necessarily comparable across vendors; fluid: modern chips shift chip resources in response to load; and invisible: unless you have a microscope, you can't see it. By contrast, one can actually see processor chips with the naked eye, and they are a bit easier to count. If we put chips in the denominator instead of cores, we get: 13161.07 EjOPS / 4 chips = 3290 EjOPS per chip for IBM vs 57422.17 EjOPS / 16 chips = 3588 EjOPS per chip for Oracle The choice of denominator makes all the difference in the appearance. Speaking for myself, dividing by chips just seems to make more sense, because: I can see chips and count them; and I can accurately compare the number of chips in my system to the count in some other vendor's system; and Tthe probability of being able to continue to accurately count them over the next 10 years of microprocessor development seems higher than the probability of being able to accurately and comparably count "cores". SPEC Fair use requirements Speaking as an individual, not speaking for SPEC and not speaking for my employer, I wonder whether Mr. Kharkovski's blog article, taken as a whole, meets the requirements of the SPEC Fair Use rule www.spec.org/fairuse.html section I.D.2. For example, Mr. Kharkovski's footnote (1) begins Results from http://www.spec.org as of 04/04/2013 Oracle SUN SPARC T5-8 449 EjOPS/core SPECjEnterprise2010 (Oracle's WLS best SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS/core result on SPARC). IBM Power730 823 EjOPS/core (World Record SPECjEnterprise2010 EJOPS/core result) The questionable tactic, from a Fair Use point of view, is that there is no such metric at the designated location. At www.spec.org, You can find the SPEC metric 57422.17 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS for Oracle and You can also find the SPEC metric 13161.07 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS for IBM. Despite the implication of the footnote, you will not find any mention of 449 nor anything that says 823. SPEC says that you can, under its fair use rule, derive your own values; but it emphasizes: "The context must not give the appearance that SPEC has created or endorsed the derived value." Substantiation and transparency Although SPEC disclaims responsibility for non-SPEC information (section I.E), it says that non-SPEC data and methods should be accurate, should be explained, should be substantiated. Unfortunately, it is difficult or impossible for the reader to independently verify the pricing: Were like units compared to like (e.g. list price to list price)? Were all components (hw, sw, support) included? Were all fees included? Note that when tpc.org shows IBM pricing, there are often items such as "PROCESSOR ACTIVATION" and "MEMORY ACTIVATION". Without the transparency of a detailed breakdown, the pricing claims are questionable. T5 claim for "Fastest Processor" Mr. Kharkovski several times questions Oracle's claim for fastest processor, writing You see, when you publish industry benchmarks, people may actually compare your results to other vendor's results. Well, as we performance people always say, "it depends". If you believe in performance-per-core as the primary way of looking at the world, then yes, the POWER7+ is impressive, spending its chip resources to support up to 32 threads (8 cores x 4 threads). Or, it just might be useful to consider performance-per-chip. Each SPARC T5 chip allows 128 hardware threads to be simultaneously executing (16 cores x 8 threads). The Industry Standard Benchmark that focuses specifically on processor chip performance is SPEC CPU2006. For this very well known and popular benchmark, SPARC T5: provides better performance than both POWER7 and POWER7+, for 1 chip vs. 1 chip, for 8 chip vs. 8 chip, for integer (SPECint_rate2006) and floating point (SPECfp_rate2006), for Peak tuning and for Base tuning. For example, at the 8-chip level, integer throughput (SPECint_rate2006) is: 3750 for SPARC 2170 for POWER7+. You can find the details at the March 2013 BestPerf CPU2006 page SPEC is a trademark of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation, www.spec.org. The two specific results quoted for SPECjEnterprise2010 are posted at the URLs linked from the discussion. Results for SPEC CPU2006 were verified at spec.org 1 July 2013, and can be rechecked here.

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• Part 1 - 12c Database and WLS - Overview

  - by Steve Felts

  The download of Oracle 12c database became available on June 25, 2013.  There are some big new features in 12c database and WebLogic Server will take advantage of them. Immediately, we will support using 12c database and drivers with WLS 10.3.6 and 12.1.1.  When the next version of WLS ships, additional functionality will be supported (those rows in the table below with all "No" values will get a "Yes).  The following table maps the Oracle 12c Database features supported with various combinations of currently available WLS releases, 11g and 12c Drivers, and 11g and 12c Databases. Feature WebLogic Server 10.3.6/12.1.1 with 11g drivers and 11gR2 DB WebLogic Server 10.3.6/12.1.1 with 11g drivers and 12c DB WebLogic Server 10.3.6/12.1.1 with 12c drivers and 11gR2 DB WebLogic Server 10.3.6/12.1.1 with 12c drivers and 12c DB JDBC replay No No No Yes (Active GridLink only in 10.3.6, add generic in 12.1.1) Multi Tenant Database No Yes (except set container) No Yes (except set container) Dynamic switching between Tenants No No No No Database Resident Connection pooling (DRCP) No No No No Oracle Notification Service (ONS) auto configuration No No No No Global Database Services (GDS) No Yes (Active GridLink only) No Yes (Active GridLink only) JDBC 4.1 (using ojdbc7.jar files & JDK 7) No No Yes Yes  The My Oracle Support (MOS) document covering this is "WebLogic Server 12.1.1 and 10.3.6 Support for Oracle 12c Database [ID 1564509.1]" at the link https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=1564509.1. The following documents are also key references:12c Oracle Database Developer Guide http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E16655_01/appdev.121/e17620/toc.htm 12c Oracle Database Administrator's Guide http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E16655_01/server.121/e17636/toc.htm . I plan to write some related blog articles not to duplicate existing product documentation but to introduce the features, provide some examples, and tie together some information to make it easier to understand. How do you get started with 12c?  The easiest way is to point your data source at a 12c database.  The only change on the WLS side is to update the URL in your data source (assuming that you are not just upgrading your database).  You can continue to use the 11.2.0.3 driver jar files that shipped with WLS 10.3.6 or 12.1.1.  You shouldn't see any changes in your application.  You can take advantage of enhancements on the database side that don't affect the mid-tier.  On the WLS side, you can take advantage of using Global Data Service or connecting to a tenant in a multi-tenant database transparently. If you want to use the 12c client jar files, it's a bit of work because they aren't shipped with WLS and you can't just drop in ojdbc6.jar as in the old days.  You need to use a matched set of jar files and they need to come before existing jar files in the CLASSPATH.  The MOS article is written from the standpoint that you need to get the jar files directly - download almost 1G and install over 600M footprint to get 15 jar files.  Assuming that you have the database installed and you can get access to the installation (or ask the DBA), you need to copy the 15 jar files to each machine with a WLS installation and get them in your CLASSPATH.  You can play with setting the PRE_CLASSPATH but the more practical approach may be to just update WL_HOME/common/bin/commEnv.sh directly.  There's a change in the transaction completion behavior (read the MOS) so if you think you might run into that, you will want to set -Doracle.jdbc.autoCommitSpecCompliant=false.  Also if you are running with Active GridLink, you must set -Doracle.ucp.PreWLS1212Compatible=true (how's that for telling you that this is fixed in WLS 12.1.2).  Once you get the configuration out of the way, you can start using the new ojdbc7.jar in place of the ojdbc6.jar to get the new JDBC 4.1 API's.  You can also start using Application Continuity.  This feature is also known as JDBC Replay because when a connection fails you get a new one with all JDBC operations up to the failure point automatically replayed.  As you might expect, there are some limitations but it's an interesting feature.  Obviously I'm going to focus on the 12c database features that we can leverage in WLS data source.  You will need to read other sources or the product documentation to get all of the new features.

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• MD5 vertex skinning problem extending to multi-jointed skeleton (GPU Skinning)

  - by Soapy

  Currently I'm trying to implement GPU skinning in my project. So far I have achieved single joint translation and rotation, and multi-jointed translation. The problem arises when I try to rotate a multi-jointed skeleton. The image above shows the current progress. The left image shows how the model should deform. The middle image shows how it deforms in my project. The right shows a better deform (still not right) inverting a certain value, which I will explain below. The way I get my animation data is by exporting it to the MD5 format (MD5mesh for mesh data and MD5anim for animation data). When I come to parse the animation data, for each frame, I check if the bone has a parent, if not, the data is passed in as is from the MD5anim file. If it does have a parent, I transform the bones position by the parents orientation, and the add this with the parents translation. Then the parent and child orientations get concatenated. This is covered at this website. if (Parent < 0){ ... // Save this data without editing it } else { Math3::vec3 rpos; Math3::quat pq = Parent.Quaternion; Math3::quat pqi(pq); pqi.InvertUnitQuat(); pqi.Normalise(); Math3::quat::RotateVector3(rpos, pq, jv); Math3::vec3 npos(rpos + Parent.Pos); this->Translation = npos; Math3::quat nq = pq * jq; nq.Normalise(); this->Quaternion = nq; } And to achieve the image to the right, all I need to do is to change Math3::quat::RotateVector3(rpos, pq, jv); to Math3::quat::RotateVector3(rpos, pqi, jv);, why is that? And this is my skinning shader. SkinningShader.vert #version 330 core smooth out vec2 vVaryingTexCoords; smooth out vec3 vVaryingNormals; smooth out vec4 vWeightColor; uniform mat4 MV; uniform mat4 MVP; uniform mat4 Pallete[55]; uniform mat4 invBindPose[55]; layout(location = 0) in vec3 vPos; layout(location = 1) in vec2 vTexCoords; layout(location = 2) in vec3 vNormals; layout(location = 3) in int vSkeleton[4]; layout(location = 4) in vec3 vWeight; void main() { vec4 wpos = vec4(vPos, 1.0); vec4 norm = vec4(vNormals, 0.0); vec4 weight = vec4(vWeight, (1.0f-(vWeight[0] + vWeight[1] + vWeight[2]))); normalize(weight); mat4 BoneTransform; for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++) { if(vSkeleton[i] != -1) { if(i == 0) { // These are interchangable for some reason // BoneTransform = ((invBindPose[vSkeleton[i]] * Pallete[vSkeleton[i]]) * weight[i]); BoneTransform = ((Pallete[vSkeleton[i]] * invBindPose[vSkeleton[i]]) * weight[i]); } else { // These are interchangable for some reason // BoneTransform += ((invBindPose[vSkeleton[i]] * Pallete[vSkeleton[i]]) * weight[i]); BoneTransform += ((Pallete[vSkeleton[i]] * invBindPose[vSkeleton[i]]) * weight[i]); } } } wpos = BoneTransform * wpos; vWeightColor = weight; vVaryingTexCoords = vTexCoords; vVaryingNormals = normalize(vec3(vec4(vNormals, 0.0) * MV)); gl_Position = wpos * MVP; } The Pallete matrices are the matrices calculated using the above code (a rotation and translation matrix get created from the translation and quaternion). The invBindPose matrices are simply the inverted matrices created from the joints in the MD5mesh file. Update 1 I looked at GLM to compare the values I get with my own implementation. They turn out to be exactly the same. So now i'm checking if there's a problem with matrix creation... Update 2 Looked at GLM again to compare matrix creation using quaternions. Turns out that's not the problem either.

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• Employee Engagement Q&A with John Brunswick

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  As we are focusing this week on Employee Engagement, I recently sat down with industry expert and thought leader John Brunswick on the topic. Here is the Q&A dialogue we shared.  Q: How do you effectively engage employees to drive business value?A: Motivation, both extrinsic and intrinsic, combined with the relevancy of various channels to support it.  Beyond chaining business strategies like compensation models within an organization, engagement ultimately is most successful when driven by employee's motivations.  Business value derived from engagement through technical capabilities can be objectively measured through metrics like the rate and accuracy of problem solving for a given business function or frequency of innovation created.  Providing employees performing "knowledge work" with capabilities that allow them to perform work with a higher degree of accuracy in the same or ideally less time, adds value for that individual and in turn, drives their level of engagement to drive business value. Q: Organizations with high levels of employee engagement outperform the total stock market index by 22%. Can you comment on why you think this might be? A: Alignment through shared purpose.  Zappos is an excellent example of a culture that arguably has higher than average levels of employee engagement and it permeates every aspect of their organization – embodied externally through their customer experience.  I recently made my first purchase with them and it was obvious through their web experience, visual design, communication style, customer service and attention to detail down to green packaging, that they have an amazingly strong shared purpose.  The Zappos.com ‘About page’ outlines their "Family Core Values", the first three being "Deliver WOW Through Service, Embrace and Drive Change & Create Fun and A Little Weirdness" – all reflected externally in my interaction with them.  Strong shared purpose enables higher product and service experience, equating to a dedicated customer base, repeat purchases and expanded marketshare. Q: Have you seen any trends in the market regarding employee engagement? A: Some companies now see offering a form of social engagement similar to Facebook and LinkedIn as standard communication infrastructure like email or instant messaging.  Originally offered as standalone tools, the value is now seen when these capabilities are offered in an integrated fashion in the context of business entities.  An emerging area of focus is around employee activities related to their organization on external social platforms, implicitly creating external communities with employees acting on behalf of the brand and interacting with each other (e.g. Twitter).  Companies have reached a formal understand that this now established communication medium requires strategies allowing employees to engage.  I have personally met colleagues from Oracle, like Oracle User Experience Director Ultan O'Broin (@ultan), via Twitter before meeting first through internal channels. Q: Employee engagement is important, but what about engaging customers and partners? A: The last few years we have witnessed an interesting evolution from the novelty of self-service to expectations of "intelligent" self-service.  From a consumer standpoint, engagement can end up being a key differentiator, especially in mature markets.  Customers that perform some level of interaction with a brand develop greater affinity for the brand and have a greater probability of acting as an advocate.  As organizations move toward a model of deeper engagement, they must ensure that their business is positioned to support deeper relationships, offering potentially greater transparency. From a partner standpoint greater engagement can lead to new types of business opportunities, much in the way that Amazon.com offers a unified shopping experience that can potentially span various vendors.  This same model can be extended to blending services and product delivery models, based on a closeness not easily possible before increased capability of engagement mechanisms. Q: What types of solutions are available to successfully deliver employee engagement? A: Solutions enabling higher levels of engagement do so on the basis of relevancy.  This relevancy is generally supported by aspects of content management, social collaboration, business intelligence, portal and process management technologies.  These technologies can help deliver an experience tailored to a given role or process within an organization that applies equally to work that is structured or unstructured, appearing in the form of functionality as simple as an online employee directory search, knowledge communities supported by social collaboration, as well as more feature rich business intelligence dashboards and portals. Looking to learn more about how to effectively engage your employees? Check out this webcast, or read more from John Brunswick. 

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• why installing lame it is getting failed

  - by Rahul Mehta

  I want to install ffmpeg with mp3lame enabled for this m following this tutorial , http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=9868359&postcount=1289 and in step 2 error is libfaac is not found ? and in step 5 installing lame is giving this error , why it is getting failed , please advised what to do ? reach121@youngib:~/lame-3.98.4$ sudo checkinstall --pkgname=lame-ffmpeg --pkgversion="3.98.4" --backup=no --default --deldoc=yes checkinstall 1.6.2, Copyright 2009 Felipe Eduardo Sanchez Diaz Duran This software is released under the GNU GPL. ***************************************** **** Debian package creation selected *** ***************************************** This package will be built according to these values: 0 - Maintainer: [ root@youngib ] 1 - Summary: [ Package created with checkinstall 1.6.2 ] 2 - Name: [ lame-ffmpeg ] 3 - Version: [ 3.98.4 ] 4 - Release: [ 1 ] 5 - License: [ GPL ] 6 - Group: [ checkinstall ] 7 - Architecture: [ amd64 ] 8 - Source location: [ lame-3.98.4 ] 9 - Alternate source location: [ ] 10 - Requires: [ ] 11 - Provides: [ lame-ffmpeg ] 12 - Conflicts: [ ] 13 - Replaces: [ ] Enter a number to change any of them or press ENTER to continue: Installing with make install... ========================= Installation results =========================== Making install in mpglib make[1]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/mpglib' make[2]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/mpglib' make[2]: Nothing to be done for `install-exec-am'. make[2]: Nothing to be done for `install-data-am'. make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/mpglib' make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/mpglib' Making install in libmp3lame make[1]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/libmp3lame' Making install in i386 make[2]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/libmp3lame/i386' make[3]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/libmp3lame/i386' make[3]: Nothing to be done for `install-exec-am'. make[3]: Nothing to be done for `install-data-am'. make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/libmp3lame/i386' make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/libmp3lame/i386' Making install in vector make[2]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/libmp3lame/vector' make[3]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/libmp3lame/vector' make[3]: Nothing to be done for `install-exec-am'. make[3]: Nothing to be done for `install-data-am'. make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/libmp3lame/vector' make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/libmp3lame/vector' make[2]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/libmp3lame' make[3]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/libmp3lame' test -z "/usr/local/lib" || /bin/mkdir -p "/usr/local/lib" /bin/bash ../libtool --mode=install /usr/bin/install -c 'libmp3lame.la' '/usr/local/lib/libmp3lame.la' /usr/bin/install -c .libs/libmp3lame.lai /usr/local/lib/libmp3lame.la /usr/bin/install -c .libs/libmp3lame.a /usr/local/lib/libmp3lame.a chmod 644 /usr/local/lib/libmp3lame.a ranlib /usr/local/lib/libmp3lame.a PATH="$PATH:/sbin" ldconfig -n /usr/local/lib ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Libraries have been installed in: /usr/local/lib If you ever happen to want to link against installed libraries in a given directory, LIBDIR, you must either use libtool, and specify the full pathname of the library, or use the `-LLIBDIR' flag during linking and do at least one of the following: - add LIBDIR to the `LD_LIBRARY_PATH' environment variable during execution - add LIBDIR to the `LD_RUN_PATH' environment variable during linking - use the `-Wl,--rpath -Wl,LIBDIR' linker flag - have your system administrator add LIBDIR to `/etc/ld.so.conf' See any operating system documentation about shared libraries for more information, such as the ld(1) and ld.so(8) manual pages. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- make[3]: Nothing to be done for `install-data-am'. make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/libmp3lame' make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/libmp3lame' make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/libmp3lame' Making install in frontend make[1]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/frontend' make[2]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/frontend' test -z "/usr/local/bin" || /bin/mkdir -p "/usr/local/bin" /bin/bash ../libtool --mode=install /usr/bin/install -c 'lame' '/usr/local/bin/lame' /usr/bin/install -c lame /usr/local/bin/lame make[2]: Nothing to be done for `install-data-am'. make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/frontend' make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/frontend' Making install in Dll make[1]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/Dll' make[2]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/Dll' make[2]: Nothing to be done for `install-exec-am'. make[2]: Nothing to be done for `install-data-am'. make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/Dll' make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/Dll' Making install in debian make[1]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/debian' make[2]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/debian' make[2]: Nothing to be done for `install-exec-am'. make[2]: Nothing to be done for `install-data-am'. make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/debian' make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/debian' Making install in doc make[1]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/doc' Making install in html make[2]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/doc/html' make[3]: Entering directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/doc/html' make[3]: Nothing to be done for `install-exec-am'. test -z "/usr/local/share/doc/lame/html" || /bin/mkdir -p "/usr/local/share/doc/lame/html" /bin/mkdir: cannot create directory `/usr/local/share/doc': No such file or directory make[3]: *** [install-pkghtmlDATA] Error 1 make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/doc/html' make[2]: *** [install-am] Error 2 make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/doc/html' make[1]: *** [install-recursive] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/reach121/lame-3.98.4/doc' make: *** [install-recursive] Error 1 **** Installation failed. Aborting package creation. Cleaning up...OK Bye. reach121@youngib:~/lame-3.98.4$

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