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  • referencing desired objects in namespaced functions

    - by RyOnLife
    I'm having trouble referencing the desired object when I've namespaced functions. No problems here: obj.test = function() { // this == obj } But I'm getting tripped up when I namespace: obj.namespace.test = function() { // this == namespace } In the latter example, I know this references namespace, but I want to reference obj. How can I do it?

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  • sed: group capturing

    - by Michael
    Is there any way to tell sed to output only captured groups? for example given by input: This is a sample 123 text and some 987 numbers and pattern /([\d]+)/ I could get only 123 and 987 output in the way formatted by back references perhaps?

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  • Why cant i use the field user in SQL Server 8?

    - by acidzombie24
    Maybe not literally but the query below gets an error near user. If i change it to userZ it works. WHY can i not use that name? Is there a way to specific its a field instead of a keyword? (or whatever it is) create table Post2 ( id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL, title nvarchar(max) NOT NULL, body nvarchar(max) NOT NULL, user integer REFERENCES Post1(id));

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  • Java: If I overwrite the .equals method, can I still test for reference equality with ==?

    - by shots fired
    I have the following situation: I need to sort trees based by height, so I made the Tree's comparable using the height attribute. However, I was also told to overwrite the equals and hashCode methods to avoid unpredictable behaviour. Still, sometimes I may want to compare the references of the roots or something along those lines using ==. Is that still possible or does the == comparison call the equals method?

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  • Metamorphic generator

    - by user222094
    I am trying to find references about different designs of metamorphic generators can someone point me to the right direction. I have gone through some papers in ACM but couldn't find what I am looking for.

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  • Can not open port 3306 on Ubuntu using iptables

    - by user94626
    I am trying to open port 3306 (for remote mysql connections) on my ubuntu 12.04 server machine but for the life of me can't get the damned thing to work! Here is what I did: 1) list current firewall rules: $> sudo iptables -nL -v output: Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 225 16984 fail2ban-ssh tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 multiport dports 22 220 69605 ACCEPT all -- lo * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 0 0 REJECT all -- lo * 0.0.0.0/0 127.0.0.0/8 reject-with icmp-port-unreachable 486 54824 ACCEPT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state RELATED,ESTABLISHED 1 60 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:80 19 988 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:443 1 52 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state NEW tcp dpt:22 0 0 ACCEPT icmp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 icmptype 8 4 208 LOG all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 limit: avg 5/min burst 5 LOG flags 0 level 7 prefix "iptables denied: " 4 208 REJECT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 reject-with icmp-port-unreachable Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 0 0 REJECT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 reject-with icmp-port-unreachable Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 735 182K ACCEPT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 Chain fail2ban-ssh (1 references) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 225 16984 RETURN all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 2) try to connect from remote machine: $> mysql -u root -p -h x.x.x.x output: timeout.... failed to connect 3) try to add a new rule to iptables: iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 3306 -j ACCEPT 4) make sure the new rule is added: $> sudo iptables -nL -v output: Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 359 25972 fail2ban-ssh tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 multiport dports 22 251 78665 ACCEPT all -- lo * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 0 0 REJECT all -- lo * 0.0.0.0/0 127.0.0.0/8 reject-with icmp-port-unreachable 628 64420 ACCEPT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state RELATED,ESTABLISHED 1 60 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:80 19 988 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:443 1 52 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state NEW tcp dpt:22 0 0 ACCEPT icmp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 icmptype 8 5 260 LOG all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 limit: avg 5/min burst 5 LOG flags 0 level 7 prefix "iptables denied: " 5 260 REJECT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 reject-with icmp-port-unreachable 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:3306 Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 0 0 REJECT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 reject-with icmp-port-unreachable Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 919 213K ACCEPT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 Chain fail2ban-ssh (1 references) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 359 25972 RETURN all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 which appears to be the case (last line in "Chain INPUT" section). 5) try to connect again from remote machine: $> mysql -u root -p -h x.x.x.x output: timeout.... failed to connect which is failing again. 6) try to flush all rules: $> sudo iptables -F 7) this time I CAN CONNECT. 8) reboot server and try to connect, FAILURE. I suspect since the new rule is being appended at the end it will have no effect as there appears to be a "reject all" sort of rule before it. If this is the case, how to make sure the new rule is added in the right order? Otherwise, what am I missing? Please help.

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  • Metro: Introduction to the WinJS ListView Control

    - by Stephen.Walther
    The goal of this blog entry is to provide a quick introduction to the ListView control – just the bare minimum that you need to know to start using the control. When building Metro style applications using JavaScript, the ListView control is the primary control that you use for displaying lists of items. For example, if you are building a product catalog app, then you can use the ListView control to display the list of products. The ListView control supports several advanced features that I plan to discuss in future blog entries. For example, you can group the items in a ListView, you can create master/details views with a ListView, and you can efficiently work with large sets of items with a ListView. In this blog entry, we’ll keep things simple and focus on displaying a list of products. There are three things that you need to do in order to display a list of items with a ListView: Create a data source Create an Item Template Declare the ListView Creating the ListView Data Source The first step is to create (or retrieve) the data that you want to display with the ListView. In most scenarios, you will want to bind a ListView to a WinJS.Binding.List object. The nice thing about the WinJS.Binding.List object is that it enables you to take a standard JavaScript array and convert the array into something that can be bound to the ListView. It doesn’t matter where the JavaScript array comes from. It could be a static array that you declare or you could retrieve the array as the result of an Ajax call to a remote server. The following JavaScript file – named products.js – contains a list of products which can be bound to a ListView. (function () { "use strict"; var products = new WinJS.Binding.List([ { name: "Milk", price: 2.44 }, { name: "Oranges", price: 1.99 }, { name: "Wine", price: 8.55 }, { name: "Apples", price: 2.44 }, { name: "Steak", price: 1.99 }, { name: "Eggs", price: 2.44 }, { name: "Mushrooms", price: 1.99 }, { name: "Yogurt", price: 2.44 }, { name: "Soup", price: 1.99 }, { name: "Cereal", price: 2.44 }, { name: "Pepsi", price: 1.99 } ]); WinJS.Namespace.define("ListViewDemos", { products: products }); })(); The products variable represents a WinJS.Binding.List object. This object is initialized with a plain-old JavaScript array which represents an array of products. To avoid polluting the global namespace, the code above uses the module pattern and exposes the products using a namespace. The list of products is exposed to the world as ListViewDemos.products. To learn more about the module pattern and namespaces in WinJS, see my earlier blog entry: http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2012/02/22/metro-namespaces-and-modules.aspx Creating the ListView Item Template The ListView control does not know how to render anything. It doesn’t know how you want each list item to appear. To get the ListView control to render something useful, you must create an Item Template. Here’s what our template for rendering an individual product looks like: <div id="productTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="product"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> </div> This template displays the product name and price from the data source. Normally, you will declare your template in the same file as you declare the ListView control. In our case, both the template and ListView are declared in the default.html file. To learn more about templates, see my earlier blog entry: http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2012/02/27/metro-using-templates.aspx Declaring the ListView The final step is to declare the ListView control in a page. Here’s the markup for declaring a ListView: <div data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.dataSource, itemTemplate:select('#productTemplate') }"> </div> You declare a ListView by adding the data-win-control to an HTML DIV tag. The data-win-options attribute is used to set two properties of the ListView. The ListView is associated with its data source with the itemDataSource property. Notice that the data source is ListViewDemos.products.dataSource and not just ListViewDemos.products. You need to associate the ListView with the dataSoure property. The ListView is associated with its item template with the help of the itemTemplate property. The ID of the item template — #productTemplate – is used to select the template from the page. Here’s what the complete version of the default.html page looks like: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>ListViewDemos</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- ListViewDemos references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> <script src="/js/products.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <style type="text/css"> .product { width: 200px; height: 100px; border: white solid 1px; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="productTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="product"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> </div> <div data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.dataSource, itemTemplate:select('#productTemplate') }"> </div> </body> </html> Notice that the page above includes a reference to the products.js file: <script src=”/js/products.js” type=”text/javascript”></script> The page above also contains a Template control which contains the ListView item template. Finally, the page includes the declaration of the ListView control. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to describe the minimal set of steps which you must complete to use the WinJS ListView control to display a simple list of items. You learned how to create a data source, declare an item template, and declare a ListView control.

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  • Converting a Visual Studio 2003 Web Project to a Visual Studio 2008 Web Application Project

    - by navaneeth
    This walkthrough describes how to convert a Visual Studio .NET 2002 or Visual Studio .NET 2003 Web project to a Visual Studio 2008 Web application project. The Visual Studio 2008 Web application project model is like the Visual Studio 2005 Web application project model. Therefore, the conversion processes are similar. For more information about Web application projects, see ASP.NET Web Application Projects. You can also convert from a Visual Studio .NET Web project to a Visual Studio 2008 Web site project. However, conversion to a Web application project is the approach that is supported, and gives you the convenience of tools to help with the conversion. For example, when you convert to a Visual Studio 2008 Web application project, you can use the Visual Studio Conversion Wizard to automate part of the process. For information about how to convert a Visual Studio .NET Web project to a Visual Studio 2008 Web site, see Common Web Project Conversion Issues and Solutions. There are two parts involved in converting a Visual Studio 2002 or 2003 Web project to a Visual Studio 2008 Web application project. The parts are as follows: Converting the project. You can use the Visual Studio Conversion Wizard for the initial conversion of the project and Web.config files. You can later use the Convert To Web Application command to update the project's files and structure. Upgrading the .NET Framework version of the project. You must upgrade the project's .NET Framework version to either .NET Framework 2.0 SP1 or to .NET Framework 3.5. This .NET Framework version upgrade is required because Visual Studio 2008 cannot target earlier versions of the .NET Framework. You can perform this upgrade during the project conversion, by using the Conversion Wizard. Alternatively, you can upgrade the .NET Framework version after you convert the project.   NoteYou can change a project's .NET Framework version manually. To do so, in Visual Studio open the property pages for the project, click the Application tab, and then select a new version from the Target Framework list. This walkthrough illustrates the following tasks: Opening the Visual Studio .NET project in Visual Studio 2008 and creating a backup of the project files. Upgrading the .NET Framework version that the project targets. Converting the project file and the Web.config file. Converting ASP.NET code files. Testing the converted project. Prerequisites    To complete this walkthrough, you will need: Visual Studio 2008. A Web site project that was created in Visual Studio .NET version 2002 or 2003 that compiles and runs without errors. Converting the Project and Upgrading the .NET Framework Version    To begin, you open the project in Visual Studio 2008, which starts the conversion. It offers you an opportunity to back up the project before converting it. NoteIt is strongly recommended that you back up the project. The conversion works on the original project files, which cannot be recovered if the conversion is not successful.To convert the project and back up the files In Visual Studio 2008, in the File menu, click Open and then click Project. The Open Project dialog box is displayed. Browse to the folder that contains the project or solution file for the Visual Studio .NET project, select the file, and then click Open. NoteMake sure that you open the project by using the Open Project command. If you use the Open Web Site command, the project will be converted to the Web site project format.The Conversion Wizard opens and prompts you to create a backup before converting the project. To create the backup, click Yes. Click Browse, select the folder in which the backup should be created, and then click Next. Click Finish. The backup starts. NoteThere might be significant delays as the Conversion Wizard copies files, with no updates or progress indicated. Wait until the process finishes before you continue.When the conversion finishes, the wizard prompts you to upgrade the targeted version of the .NET Framework for the project. To upgrade to the .NET Framework 3.5, click Yes. To upgrade the project to target the .NET Framework 2.0 SP1, click No. It is recommended that you leave the check box selected that asks whether you want to upgrade all Webs in the solution. If you upgrade to .NET Framework 3.5, the project's Web.config file is modified at the same time as the project file. When the upgrade and conversion have finished, a message is displayed that indicates that you have completed the first step in converting your project. Click OK. The wizard displays status information about the conversion. Click Close. Testing the Converted Project    After the conversion has finished, you can test the project to make sure that it runs. This will also help you identify code in the project that must be updated. To verify that the project runs If you know about changes that are required for the code to run with the new version of the .NET Framework, make those changes. In the Build menu, click Build. Any missing references or other compilation issues in the project are displayed in the Error List window. The most likely issues are missing assembly references or issues with dynamically generated types. In Solution Explorer, right-click the Web page that will be used to launch the application, and then click Set as Start Page. On the Debug menu, click Start Debugging. If debugging is not enabled, the Debugging Not Enabled dialog box is displayed. Select the option to add a Web.config file that has debugging enabled, and then click OK. Verify that the converted project runs as expected. Do not continue with the conversion process until all build and run-time errors are resolved. Converting ASP.NET Code Files    ASP.NET Web page files and user-control files in Visual Studio 2008 that use the code-behind model have an associated designer file. The files that you just converted will have an associated code-behind file, but no designer file. Therefore, the next step is to generate designer files. NoteOnly ASP.NET Web pages and user controls that have their code in a separate code file require a separate designer file. For pages that have inline code and no associated code file, no designer file will be generated.To convert ASP.NET code files In Solution Explorer, right-click the project node, and then click Convert To Web Application. The files are converted. Verify that the converted code files have a code file and a designer file. Build and run the project to verify the results of the conversion.

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  • HttpContext.Items and Server.Transfer/Execute

    - by Rick Strahl
    A few days ago my buddy Ben Jones pointed out that he ran into a bug in the ScriptContainer control in the West Wind Web and Ajax Toolkit. The problem was basically that when a Server.Transfer call was applied the script container (and also various ClientScriptProxy script embedding routines) would potentially fail to load up the specified scripts. It turns out the problem is due to the fact that the various components in the toolkit use request specific singletons via a Current property. I use a static Current property tied to a Context.Items[] entry to handle this type of operation which looks something like this: /// <summary> /// Current instance of this class which should always be used to /// access this object. There are no public constructors to /// ensure the reference is used as a Singleton to further /// ensure that all scripts are written to the same clientscript /// manager. /// </summary> public static ClientScriptProxy Current { get { if (HttpContext.Current == null) return new ClientScriptProxy(); ClientScriptProxy proxy = null; if (HttpContext.Current.Items.Contains(STR_CONTEXTID)) proxy = HttpContext.Current.Items[STR_CONTEXTID] as ClientScriptProxy; else { proxy = new ClientScriptProxy(); HttpContext.Current.Items[STR_CONTEXTID] = proxy; } return proxy; } } The proxy is attached to a Context.Items[] item which makes the instance Request specific. This works perfectly fine in most situations EXCEPT when you’re dealing with Server.Transfer/Execute requests. Server.Transfer doesn’t cause Context.Items to be cleared so both the current transferred request and the original request’s Context.Items collection apply. For the ClientScriptProxy this causes a problem because script references are tracked on a per request basis in Context.Items to check for script duplication. Once a script is rendered an ID is written into the Context collection and so considered ‘rendered’: // No dupes - ref script include only once if (HttpContext.Current.Items.Contains( STR_SCRIPTITEM_IDENTITIFIER + fileId ) ) return; HttpContext.Current.Items.Add(STR_SCRIPTITEM_IDENTITIFIER + fileId, string.Empty); where the fileId is the script name or unique identifier. The problem is on the Transferred page the item will already exist in Context and so fail to render because it thinks the script has already rendered based on the Context item. Bummer. The workaround for this is simple once you know what’s going on, but in this case it was a bitch to track down because the context items are used in many places throughout this class. The trick is to determine when a request is transferred and then removing the specific keys. The first issue is to determine if a script is in a Trransfer or Execute call: if (HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler != HttpContext.Current.Handler) Context.Handler is the original handler and CurrentHandler is the actual currently executing handler that is running when a Transfer/Execute is active. You can also use Context.PreviousHandler to get the last handler and chain through the whole list of handlers applied if Transfer calls are nested (dog help us all for the person debugging that). For the ClientScriptProxy the full logic to check for a transfer and remove the code looks like this: /// <summary> /// Clears all the request specific context items which are script references /// and the script placement index. /// </summary> public void ClearContextItemsOnTransfer() { if (HttpContext.Current != null) { // Check for Server.Transfer/Execute calls - we need to clear out Context.Items if (HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler != HttpContext.Current.Handler) { List<string> Keys = HttpContext.Current.Items.Keys.Cast<string>().Where(s => s.StartsWith(STR_SCRIPTITEM_IDENTITIFIER) || s == STR_ScriptResourceIndex).ToList(); foreach (string key in Keys) { HttpContext.Current.Items.Remove(key); } } } } along with a small update to the Current property getter that sets a global flag to indicate whether the request was transferred: if (!proxy.IsTransferred && HttpContext.Current.Handler != HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler) { proxy.ClearContextItemsOnTransfer(); proxy.IsTransferred = true; } return proxy; I know this is pretty ugly, but it works and it’s actually minimal fuss without affecting the behavior of the rest of the class. Ben had a different solution that involved explicitly clearing out the Context items and replacing the collection with a manually maintained list of items which also works, but required changes through the code to make this work. In hindsight, it would have been better to use a single object that encapsulates all the ‘persisted’ values and store that object in Context instead of all these individual small morsels. Hindsight is always 20/20 though :-}. If possible use Page.Items ClientScriptProxy is a generic component that can be used from anywhere in ASP.NET, so there are various methods that are not Page specific on this component which is why I used Context.Items, rather than the Page.Items collection.Page.Items would be a better choice since it will sidestep the above Server.Transfer nightmares as the Page is reloaded completely and so any new Page gets a new Items collection. No fuss there. So for the ScriptContainer control, which has to live on the page the behavior is a little different. It is attached to Page.Items (since it’s a control): /// <summary> /// Returns a current instance of this control if an instance /// is already loaded on the page. Otherwise a new instance is /// created, added to the Form and returned. /// /// It's important this function is not called too early in the /// page cycle - it should not be called before Page.OnInit(). /// /// This property is the preferred way to get a reference to a /// ScriptContainer control that is either already on a page /// or needs to be created. Controls in particular should always /// use this property. /// </summary> public static ScriptContainer Current { get { // We need a context for this to work! if (HttpContext.Current == null) return null; Page page = HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler as Page; if (page == null) throw new InvalidOperationException(Resources.ERROR_ScriptContainer_OnlyWorks_With_PageBasedHandlers); ScriptContainer ctl = null; // Retrieve the current instance ctl = page.Items[STR_CONTEXTID] as ScriptContainer; if (ctl != null) return ctl; ctl = new ScriptContainer(); page.Form.Controls.Add(ctl); return ctl; } } The biggest issue with this approach is that you have to explicitly retrieve the page in the static Current property. Notice again the use of CurrentHandler (rather than Handler which was my original implementation) to ensure you get the latest page including the one that Server.Transfer fired. Server.Transfer and Server.Execute are Evil All that said – this fix is probably for the 2 people who are crazy enough to rely on Server.Transfer/Execute. :-} There are so many weird behavior problems with these commands that I avoid them at all costs. I don’t think I have a single application that uses either of these commands… Related Resources Full source of ClientScriptProxy.cs (repository) Part of the West Wind Web Toolkit Static Singletons for ASP.NET Controls Post © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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  • T4 Template error - Assembly Directive cannot locate referenced assembly in Visual Studio 2010 proje

    - by CodeSniper
    I ran into the following error recently in Visual Studio 2010 while trying to port Phil Haack’s excellent T4CSS template which was originally built for Visual Studio 2008.   The Problem Error Compiling transformation: Metadata file 'dotless.Core' could not be found In “T4 speak”, this simply means that you have an Assembly directive in your T4 template but the T4 engine was not able to locate or load the referenced assembly. In the case of the T4CSS Template, this was a showstopper for making it work in Visual Studio 2010. On a side note: The T4CSS template is a sweet little wrapper to allow you to use DotLessCss to generate static .css files from .less files rather than using their default HttpHandler or command-line tool.    If you haven't tried DotLessCSS yet, go check it out now!  In short, it is a tool that allows you to templatize and program your CSS files so that you can use variables, expressions, and mixins within your CSS which enables rapid changes and a lot of developer-flexibility as you evolve your CSS and UI. Back to our regularly scheduled program… Anyhow, this post isn't about DotLessCss, its about the T4 Templates and the errors I ran into when converting them from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2010. In VS2010, there were quite a few changes to the T4 Template Engine; most were excellent changes, but this one bit me with T4CSS: “Project assemblies are no longer used to resolve template assembly directives.” In VS2008, if you wanted to reference a custom assembly in your T4 Template (.tt file) you would simply right click on your project, choose Add Reference and select that assembly.  Afterwards you were allowed to use the following syntax in your T4 template to tell it to look at the local references: <#@ assembly name="dotless.Core.dll" #> This told the engine to look in the “usual place” for the assembly, which is your project references. However, this is exactly what they changed in VS2010.  They now basically sandbox the T4 Engine to keep your T4 assemblies separate from your project assemblies.  This can come in handy if you want to support different versions of an assembly referenced both by your T4 templates and your project. Who broke the build?  Oh, Microsoft Did! In our case, this change causes a problem since the templates are no longer compatible when upgrading to VS 2010 – thus its a breaking change.  So, how do we make this work in VS 2010? Luckily, Microsoft now offers several options for referencing assemblies from T4 Templates: GAC your assemblies and use Namespace Reference or Fully Qualified Type Name Use a hard-coded Fully Qualified UNC path Copy assembly to Visual Studio "Public Assemblies Folder" and use Namespace Reference or Fully Qualified Type Name.  Use or Define a Windows Environment Variable to build a Fully Qualified UNC path. Use a Visual Studio Macro to build a Fully Qualified UNC path. Option #1 & 2 were already supported in Visual Studio 2008, so if you want to keep your templates compatible with both Visual Studio versions, then you would have to adopt one of these approaches. Yakkety Yak, use the GAC! Option #1 requires an additional pre-build step to GAC the referenced assembly, which could be a pain.  But, if you go that route, then after you GAC, all you need is a simple type name or namespace reference such as: <#@ assembly name="dotless.Core" #> Hard Coding aint that hard! The other option of using hard-coded paths in Option #2 is pretty impractical in most situations since each developer would have to use the same local project folder paths, or modify this setting each time for their local machines as well as for production deployment.  However, if you want to go that route, simply use the following assembly directive style: <#@ assembly name="C:\Code\Lib\dotless.Core.dll" #> Lets go Public! Option #3, the Visual Studio Public Assemblies Folder, is the recommended place to put commonly used tools and libraries that are only needed for Visual Studio.  Think of it like a VS-only GAC.  This is likely the best place for something like dotLessCSS and is my preferred solution.  However, you will need to either use an installer or a pre-build action to copy the assembly to the right folder location.   Normally this is located at:  C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies Once you have copied your assembly there, you use the type name or namespace syntax again: <#@ assembly name="dotless.Core" #> Save the Environment! Option #4, using a Windows Environment Variable, is interesting for enterprise use where you may have standard locations for files, but less useful for demo-code, frameworks, and products where you don't have control over the local system.  The syntax for including a environment variable in your assembly directive looks like the following, just as you would expect: <#@ assembly name="%mypath%\dotless.Core.dll" #> “mypath” is a Windows environment variable you setup that points to some fully qualified UNC path on your system.  In the right situation this can be a great solution such as one where you use a msi installer for deployment, or where you have a pre-existing environment variable you can re-use. OMG Macros! Finally, Option #5 is a very nice option if you want to keep your T4 template’s assembly reference local and relative to the project or solution without muddying-up your dev environment or GAC with extra deployments.  An example looks like this: <#@ assembly name="$(SolutionDir)lib\dotless.Core.dll" #> In this example, I’m using the “SolutionDir” VS macro so I can reference an assembly in a “/lib” folder at the root of the solution.   This is just one of the many macros you can use.  If you are familiar with creating Pre/Post-build Event scripts, you can use its dialog to look at all of the different VS macros available. This option gives the best solution for local assemblies without the hassle of extra installers or other setup before the build.   However, its still not compatible with Visual Studio 2008, so if you have a T4 Template you want to use with both, then you may have to create multiple .tt files, one for each IDE version, or require the developer to set a value in the .tt file manually.   I’m not sure if T4 Templates support any form of compiler switches like “#if (VS2010)”  statements, but it would definitely be nice in this case to switch between this option and one of the ones more compatible with VS 2008. Conclusion As you can see, we went from 3 options with Visual Studio 2008, to 5 options (plus one problem) with Visual Studio 2010.  As a whole, I think the changes are great, but the short-term growing pains during the migration may be annoying until we get used to our new found power. Hopefully this all made sense and was helpful to you.  If nothing else, I’ll just use it as a reference the next time I need to port a T4 template to Visual Studio 2010.  Happy T4 templating, and “May the fourth be with you!”

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  • Overwriting TFS Web Services

    - by javarg
    In this blog I will share a technique I used to intercept TFS Web Services calls. This technique is a very invasive one and requires you to overwrite default TFS Web Services behavior. I only recommend taking such an approach when other means of TFS extensibility fail to provide the same functionality (this is not a supported TFS extensibility point). For instance, intercepting and aborting a Work Item change operation could be implemented using this approach (consider TFS Subscribers functionality before taking this approach, check Martin’s post about subscribers). So let’s get started. The technique consists in versioning TFS Web Services .asmx service classes. If you look into TFS’s ASMX services you will notice that versioning is supported by creating a class hierarchy between different product versions. For instance, let’s take the Work Item management service .asmx. Check the following .asmx file located at: %Program Files%\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\Web Services\_tfs_resources\WorkItemTracking\v3.0\ClientService.asmx The .asmx references the class Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Server.ClientService3: <%-- Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. --%> <%@ webservice language="C#" Class="Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Server.ClientService3" %> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The inheritance hierarchy for this service class follows: Note the naming convention used for service versioning (ClientService3, ClientService2, ClientService). We will need to overwrite the latest service version provided by the product (in this case ClientService3 for TFS 2010). The following example intercepts and analyzes WorkItem fields. Suppose we need to validate state changes with more advanced logic other than the provided validations/constraints of the process template. Important: Backup the original .asmx file and create one of your own. Create a Visual Studio Web App Project and include a new ASMX Web Service in the project Add the following references to the project (check the folder %Program Files%\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\Web Services\bin\): Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Framework.Server.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Server.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Server.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client.QueryLanguage.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Server.DataAccessLayer.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Server.DataServices.dll Replace the default service implementation with the something similar to the following code: Code Snippet /// <summary> /// Inherit from ClientService3 to overwrite default Implementation /// </summary> [WebService(Namespace = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/TeamFoundation/2005/06/WorkItemTracking/ClientServices/03", Description = "Custom Team Foundation WorkItemTracking ClientService Web Service")] public class CustomTfsClientService : ClientService3 {     [WebMethod, SoapHeader("requestHeader", Direction = SoapHeaderDirection.In)]     public override bool BulkUpdate(         XmlElement package,         out XmlElement result,         MetadataTableHaveEntry[] metadataHave,         out string dbStamp,         out Payload metadata)     {         var xe = XElement.Parse(package.OuterXml);         // We only intercept WorkItems Updates (we can easily extend this sample to capture any operation).         var wit = xe.Element("UpdateWorkItem");         if (wit != null)         {             if (wit.Attribute("WorkItemID") != null)             {                 int witId = (int)wit.Attribute("WorkItemID");                 // With this Id. I can query TFS for more detailed information, using TFS Client API (assuming the WIT already exists).                 var stateChanged =                     wit.Element("Columns").Elements("Column").FirstOrDefault(c => (string)c.Attribute("Column") == "System.State");                 if (stateChanged != null)                 {                     var newStateName = stateChanged.Element("Value").Value;                     if (newStateName == "Resolved")                     {                         throw new Exception("Cannot change state to Resolved!");                     }                 }             }         }         // Finally, we call base method implementation         return base.BulkUpdate(package, out result, metadataHave, out dbStamp, out metadata);     } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } 4. Build your solution and overwrite the original .asmx with the new implementation referencing our new service version (don’t forget to backup it up first). 5. Copy your project’s .dll into the following path: %Program Files%\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\Web Services\bin 6. Try saving a WorkItem into the Resolved state. Enjoy!

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  • Building extensions for Expression Blend 4 using MEF

    - by Timmy Kokke
    Introduction Although it was possible to write extensions for Expression Blend and Expression Design, it wasn’t very easy and out of the box only one addin could be used. With Expression Blend 4 it is possible to write extensions using MEF, the Managed Extensibility Framework. Until today there’s no documentation on how to build these extensions, so look thru the code with Reflector is something you’ll have to do very often. Because Blend and Design are build using WPF searching the visual tree with Snoop and Mole belong to the tools you’ll be using a lot exploring the possibilities.  Configuring the extension project Extensions are regular .NET class libraries. To create one, load up Visual Studio 2010 and start a new project. Because Blend is build using WPF, choose a WPF User Control Library from the Windows section and give it a name and location. I named mine DemoExtension1. Because Blend looks for addins named *.extension.dll  you’ll have to tell Visual Studio to use that in the Assembly Name. To change the Assembly Name right click your project and go to Properties. On the Application tab, add .Extension to name already in the Assembly name text field. To be able to debug this extension, I prefer to set the output path on the Build tab to the extensions folder of Expression Blend. This means that everything that used to go into the Debug folder is placed in the extensions folder. Including all referenced assemblies that have the copy local property set to false. One last setting. To be able to debug your extension you could start Blend and attach the debugger by hand. I like it to be able to just hit F5. Go to the Debug tab and add the the full path to Blend.exe in the Start external program text field. Extension Class Add a new class to the project.  This class needs to be inherited from the IPackage interface. The IPackage interface can be found in the Microsoft.Expression.Extensibility namespace. To get access to this namespace add Microsoft.Expression.Extensibility.dll to your references. This file can be found in the same folder as the (Expression Blend 4 Beta) Blend.exe file. Make sure the Copy Local property is set to false in this reference. After implementing the interface the class would look something like: using Microsoft.Expression.Extensibility; namespace DemoExtension1 { public class DemoExtension1:IPackage { public void Load(IServices services) { } public void Unload() { } } } These two methods are called when your addin is loaded and unloaded. The parameter passed to the Load method, IServices services, is your main entry point into Blend. The IServices interface exposes the GetService<T> method. You will be using this method a lot. Almost every part of Blend can be accessed thru a service. For example, you can use to get to the commanding services of Blend by calling GetService<ICommandService>() or to get to the Windowing services by calling GetService<IWindowService>(). To get Blend to load the extension we have to implement MEF. (You can get up to speed on MEF on the community site or read the blog of Mr. MEF, Glenn Block.)  In the case of Blend extensions, all that needs to be done is mark the class with an Export attribute and pass it the type of IPackage. The Export attribute can be found in the System.ComponentModel.Composition namespace which is part of the .NET 4 framework. You need to add this to your references. using System.ComponentModel.Composition; using Microsoft.Expression.Extensibility;   namespace DemoExtension1 { [Export(typeof(IPackage))] public class DemoExtension1:IPackage { Blend is able to find your addin now. Adding UI The addin doesn’t do very much at this point. The WPF User Control Library came with a UserControl so lets use that in this example. I just drop a Button and a TextBlock onto the surface of the control to have something to show in the demo. To get the UserControl to work in Blend it has to be registered with the WindowService.  Call GetService<IWindowService>() on the IServices interface to get access to the windowing services. The UserControl will be used in Blend on a Palette and has to be registered to enable it. This is done by calling the RegisterPalette on the IWindowService interface and passing it an identifier, an instance of the UserControl and a caption for the palette. public void Load(IServices services) { IWindowService windowService = services.GetService<IWindowService>(); UserControl1 uc = new UserControl1(); windowService.RegisterPalette("DemoExtension", uc, "Demo Extension"); } After hitting F5 to start debugging Expression Blend will start. You should be able to find the addin in the Window menu now. Activating this window will show the “Demo Extension” palette with the UserControl, style according to the settings of Blend. Now what? Because little is publicly known about how to access different parts of Blend adding breakpoints in Debug mode and browsing thru objects using the Quick Watch feature of Visual Studio is something you have to do very often. This demo extension can be used for that purpose very easily. Add the click event handler to the button on the UserControl. Change the contructor to take the IServices interface and store this in a field. Set a breakpoint in the Button_Click method. public partial class UserControl1 : UserControl { private readonly IServices _services;   public UserControl1(IServices services) { _services = services; InitializeComponent(); }   private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { } } Change the call to the constructor in the load method and pass it the services property. public void Load(IServices services) { IWindowService service = services.GetService<IWindowService>(); UserControl1 uc = new UserControl1(services); service.RegisterPalette("DemoExtension", uc, "Demo Extension"); } Hit F5 to compile and start Blend. Got to the window menu and start show the addin. Click on  the button to hit the breakpoint. Now place the carrot text _services text in the code window and hit Shift+F9 to show the Quick Watch window. Now start exploring and discovering where to find everything you need.  More Information The are no official resources available yet. Microsoft has released one extension for expression Blend that is very useful as a reference, the Microsoft Expression Blend® Add-in Preview for Windows® Phone. This will install a .extension.dll file in the extension folder of Blend. You can load this file with Reflector and have a peek at how Microsoft is building his addins. Conclusion I hope this gives you something to get started building extensions for Expression Blend. Until Microsoft releases the final version, which hopefully includes more information about building extensions, we’ll have to work on documenting it in the community.

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  • Metro: Introduction to the WinJS ListView Control

    - by Stephen.Walther
    The goal of this blog entry is to provide a quick introduction to the ListView control – just the bare minimum that you need to know to start using the control. When building Metro style applications using JavaScript, the ListView control is the primary control that you use for displaying lists of items. For example, if you are building a product catalog app, then you can use the ListView control to display the list of products. The ListView control supports several advanced features that I plan to discuss in future blog entries. For example, you can group the items in a ListView, you can create master/details views with a ListView, and you can efficiently work with large sets of items with a ListView. In this blog entry, we’ll keep things simple and focus on displaying a list of products. There are three things that you need to do in order to display a list of items with a ListView: Create a data source Create an Item Template Declare the ListView Creating the ListView Data Source The first step is to create (or retrieve) the data that you want to display with the ListView. In most scenarios, you will want to bind a ListView to a WinJS.Binding.List object. The nice thing about the WinJS.Binding.List object is that it enables you to take a standard JavaScript array and convert the array into something that can be bound to the ListView. It doesn’t matter where the JavaScript array comes from. It could be a static array that you declare or you could retrieve the array as the result of an Ajax call to a remote server. The following JavaScript file – named products.js – contains a list of products which can be bound to a ListView. (function () { "use strict"; var products = new WinJS.Binding.List([ { name: "Milk", price: 2.44 }, { name: "Oranges", price: 1.99 }, { name: "Wine", price: 8.55 }, { name: "Apples", price: 2.44 }, { name: "Steak", price: 1.99 }, { name: "Eggs", price: 2.44 }, { name: "Mushrooms", price: 1.99 }, { name: "Yogurt", price: 2.44 }, { name: "Soup", price: 1.99 }, { name: "Cereal", price: 2.44 }, { name: "Pepsi", price: 1.99 } ]); WinJS.Namespace.define("ListViewDemos", { products: products }); })(); The products variable represents a WinJS.Binding.List object. This object is initialized with a plain-old JavaScript array which represents an array of products. To avoid polluting the global namespace, the code above uses the module pattern and exposes the products using a namespace. The list of products is exposed to the world as ListViewDemos.products. To learn more about the module pattern and namespaces in WinJS, see my earlier blog entry: http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2012/02/22/metro-namespaces-and-modules.aspx Creating the ListView Item Template The ListView control does not know how to render anything. It doesn’t know how you want each list item to appear. To get the ListView control to render something useful, you must create an Item Template. Here’s what our template for rendering an individual product looks like: <div id="productTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="product"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> </div> This template displays the product name and price from the data source. Normally, you will declare your template in the same file as you declare the ListView control. In our case, both the template and ListView are declared in the default.html file. To learn more about templates, see my earlier blog entry: http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2012/02/27/metro-using-templates.aspx Declaring the ListView The final step is to declare the ListView control in a page. Here’s the markup for declaring a ListView: <div data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.dataSource, itemTemplate:select('#productTemplate') }"> </div> You declare a ListView by adding the data-win-control to an HTML DIV tag. The data-win-options attribute is used to set two properties of the ListView. The ListView is associated with its data source with the itemDataSource property. Notice that the data source is ListViewDemos.products.dataSource and not just ListViewDemos.products. You need to associate the ListView with the dataSoure property. The ListView is associated with its item template with the help of the itemTemplate property. The ID of the item template — #productTemplate – is used to select the template from the page. Here’s what the complete version of the default.html page looks like: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>ListViewDemos</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- ListViewDemos references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> <script src="/js/products.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <style type="text/css"> .product { width: 200px; height: 100px; border: white solid 1px; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="productTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="product"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> </div> <div data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.dataSource, itemTemplate:select('#productTemplate') }"> </div> </body> </html> Notice that the page above includes a reference to the products.js file: <script src=”/js/products.js” type=”text/javascript”></script> The page above also contains a Template control which contains the ListView item template. Finally, the page includes the declaration of the ListView control. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to describe the minimal set of steps which you must complete to use the WinJS ListView control to display a simple list of items. You learned how to create a data source, declare an item template, and declare a ListView control.

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  • .NET to iOS: From WinForms to the iPad

    - by RobertChipperfield
    One of the great things about working at Red Gate is getting to play with new technology - and right now, that means mobile. A few weeks ago, we decided that a little research into the tablet computing arena was due, and purely from a numbers point of view, that suggested the iPad as a good target device. A quick trip to iPhoneDevCon in San Diego later, and Marine and I came back full of ideas, and with some concept of how iOS development was meant to work. Here's how we went from there to the release of Stacks & Heaps, our geeky take on the classic "Snakes & Ladders" game. Step 1: Buy a Mac I've played with many operating systems in my time: from the original BBC Model B, through DOS, Windows, Linux, and others, but I'd so far managed to avoid buying fruit-flavoured computer hardware! If you want to develop for the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, that's the first thing that needs to change. If you've not used OS X before, the first thing you'll realise is that everything is different! In the interests of avoiding a flame war in the comments section, I'll only go so far as to say that a lot of my Windows-flavoured muscle memory no longer worked. If you're in the UK, you'll also realise your keyboard is lacking a # key, and that " and @ are the other way around from normal. The wonderful Ukelele keyboard layout editor restores some sanity here, as long as you don't look at the keyboard when you're typing. I couldn't give up the PC entirely, but a handy application called Synergy comes to the rescue - it lets you share a single keyboard and mouse between multiple machines. There's a few limitations: Alt-Tab always seems to go to the Mac, and Windows 7's UAC dialogs require the local mouse for security reasons, but it gets you a long way at least. Step 2: Register as an Apple Developer You can register as an Apple Developer free of charge, and that lets you download XCode and the iOS SDK. You also get the iPhone / iPad emulator, which is handy, since you'll need to be a paid member before you can deploy your apps to a real device. You can either enroll as an individual, or as a company. They both cost the same ($99/year), but there's a few differences between them. If you register as a company, you can add multiple developers to your team (all for the same $99 - not $99 per developer), and you get to use your company name in the App Store. However, you'll need to send off significantly more documentation to Apple, and I suspect the process takes rather longer than for an individual, where they just need to verify some credit card details. Here's a tip: if you're registering as a company, do so as early as possible. The approval process can take a while to complete, so get the application in in plenty of time. Step 3: Learn to love the square brackets! Objective-C is the language of the iPad. C and C++ are also supported, and if you're doing some serious game development, you'll probably spend most of your time in C++ talking OpenGL, but for forms-based apps, you'll be interacting with a lot of the Objective-C SDK. Like shifting from Ctrl-C to Cmd-C, it feels a little odd at first, with the familiar string.format(.) turning into: NSString *myString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Hello world, it's %@", [NSDate date]]; Thankfully XCode's auto-complete is normally passable, if not up to Visual Studio's standards, which coupled with a huge amount of content on Stack Overflow means you'll soon get to grips with the API. You'll need to get used to some terminology changes, though; here's an incomplete approximation: Coming from a .NET background, there's some luxuries you no longer have developing Objective C in XCode: Generics! Remember back in .NET 1.1, when all collections were just objects? Yup, we're back there now. ReSharper. Or, more generally, very much refactoring support. The not-many-keystrokes to rename a class, its file, and al references to it in Visual Studio turns into a much more painful experience in XCode. Garbage collection. This is actually rather less of an issue than you might expect: if you follow the rules, the reference counting provided by Objective C gets you a long way without too much pain. Circular references are their usual problematic self, though. Decent exception handling. You do have exceptions, but they're nowhere near as widely used. Generally, if something goes wrong, you get nil (see translation table above) back. Which brings me on to. Calling a method on a nil object isn't a failure - it just returns nil itself! There's many arguments for and against this, but personally I fall into the "stuff should fail as quickly and explicitly as possible" camp. Less specifically, I found that there's more chance of code failing at runtime rather than getting caught at compile-time: using the @selector(.) syntax to pass a method signature isn't (can't be) checked at compile-time, so the first you know about a typo is a crash when you try and call it. The solution to this is of course lots of great testing, both automated and manual, but I still find comfort in provably correct type safety being enforced in addition to testing. Step 4: Submit to the App Store Assuming you want to distribute to more than a handful of devices, you're going to need to submit your app to the Apple App Store. There's a few gotchas in terms of getting builds signed with the right certificates, and you'll be bouncing around between XCode and iTunes Connect a fair bit, but eventually you get everything checked off the to-do list, and are ready to upload your first binary! With some amount of anticipation, I pressed the Upload button in XCode, ready to release our creation into the world, but was instead greeted by an error informing me my XML file was malformed. Uh. A little Googling later, and it turned out that a simple rename from "Stacks&Heaps.app" to "StacksAndHeaps.app" worked around an XML escaping bug, and we were good to go. The next step is to wait for approval (or otherwise). After a couple of weeks of intensive development, this part is agonising. Did we make it? The Apple jury is still out at the moment, but our fingers are firmly crossed! In the meantime, you can see some screenshots and leave us your email address if you'd like us to get in touch when it does go live at the MobileFoo website. Step 5: Profit! Actually, that wasn't the idea here: Stacks & Heaps is free; there's no adverts, and we're not going to sell all your data either. So why did we do it? We wanted to get an idea of what it's like to move from coding for a desktop environment, to something completely different. We don't know whether in a year's time, the iPad will still be the dominant force, or whether Android will have smoothed out some bugs, tweaked the performance, and polished the UI, but I think it's a fairly sure bet that the tablet form factor is here to stay. We want to meet people who are using it, start chatting to them, and find out about some of the pain they're feeling. What better way to do that than do it ourselves, and get to write a cool game in the process?

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  • Metro: Grouping Items in a ListView Control

    - by Stephen.Walther
    The purpose of this blog entry is to explain how you can group list items when displaying the items in a WinJS ListView control. In particular, you learn how to group a list of products by product category. Displaying a grouped list of items in a ListView control requires completing the following steps: Create a Grouped data source from a List data source Create a Grouped Header Template Declare the ListView control so it groups the list items Creating the Grouped Data Source Normally, you bind a ListView control to a WinJS.Binding.List object. If you want to render list items in groups, then you need to bind the ListView to a grouped data source instead. The following code – contained in a file named products.js — illustrates how you can create a standard WinJS.Binding.List object from a JavaScript array and then return a grouped data source from the WinJS.Binding.List object by calling its createGrouped() method: (function () { "use strict"; // Create List data source var products = new WinJS.Binding.List([ { name: "Milk", price: 2.44, category: "Beverages" }, { name: "Oranges", price: 1.99, category: "Fruit" }, { name: "Wine", price: 8.55, category: "Beverages" }, { name: "Apples", price: 2.44, category: "Fruit" }, { name: "Steak", price: 1.99, category: "Other" }, { name: "Eggs", price: 2.44, category: "Other" }, { name: "Mushrooms", price: 1.99, category: "Other" }, { name: "Yogurt", price: 2.44, category: "Other" }, { name: "Soup", price: 1.99, category: "Other" }, { name: "Cereal", price: 2.44, category: "Other" }, { name: "Pepsi", price: 1.99, category: "Beverages" } ]); // Create grouped data source var groupedProducts = products.createGrouped( function (dataItem) { return dataItem.category; }, function (dataItem) { return { title: dataItem.category }; }, function (group1, group2) { return group1.charCodeAt(0) - group2.charCodeAt(0); } ); // Expose the grouped data source WinJS.Namespace.define("ListViewDemos", { products: groupedProducts }); })(); Notice that the createGrouped() method requires three functions as arguments: groupKey – This function associates each list item with a group. The function accepts a data item and returns a key which represents a group. In the code above, we return the value of the category property for each product. groupData – This function returns the data item displayed by the group header template. For example, in the code above, the function returns a title for the group which is displayed in the group header template. groupSorter – This function determines the order in which the groups are displayed. The code above displays the groups in alphabetical order: Beverages, Fruit, Other. Creating the Group Header Template Whenever you create a ListView control, you need to create an item template which you use to control how each list item is rendered. When grouping items in a ListView control, you also need to create a group header template. The group header template is used to render the header for each group of list items. Here’s the markup for both the item template and the group header template: <div id="productTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="product"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> </div> <div id="productGroupHeaderTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="productGroupHeader"> <h1 data-win-bind="innerText: title"></h1> </div> </div> You should declare the two templates in the same file as you declare the ListView control – for example, the default.html file. Declaring the ListView Control The final step is to declare the ListView control. Here’s the required markup: <div data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.dataSource, itemTemplate:select('#productTemplate'), groupDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.groups.dataSource, groupHeaderTemplate:select('#productGroupHeaderTemplate'), layout: {type: WinJS.UI.GridLayout} }"> </div> In the markup above, six properties of the ListView control are set when the control is declared. First the itemDataSource and itemTemplate are specified. Nothing new here. Next, the group data source and group header template are specified. Notice that the group data source is represented by the ListViewDemos.products.groups.dataSource property of the grouped data source. Finally, notice that the layout of the ListView is changed to Grid Layout. You are required to use Grid Layout (instead of the default List Layout) when displaying grouped items in a ListView. Here’s the entire contents of the default.html page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>ListViewDemos</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- ListViewDemos references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> <script src="/js/products.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <style type="text/css"> .product { width: 200px; height: 100px; border: white solid 1px; font-size: x-large; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="productTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="product"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> </div> <div id="productGroupHeaderTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="productGroupHeader"> <h1 data-win-bind="innerText: title"></h1> </div> </div> <div data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.dataSource, itemTemplate:select('#productTemplate'), groupDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.groups.dataSource, groupHeaderTemplate:select('#productGroupHeaderTemplate'), layout: {type: WinJS.UI.GridLayout} }"> </div> </body> </html> Notice that the default.html page includes a reference to the products.js file: <script src=”/js/products.js” type=”text/javascript”></script> The default.html page also contains the declarations of the item template, group header template, and ListView control. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to explain how you can group items in a ListView control. You learned how to create a grouped data source, a group header template, and declare a ListView so that it groups its list items.

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  • Metro: Grouping Items in a ListView Control

    - by Stephen.Walther
    The purpose of this blog entry is to explain how you can group list items when displaying the items in a WinJS ListView control. In particular, you learn how to group a list of products by product category. Displaying a grouped list of items in a ListView control requires completing the following steps: Create a Grouped data source from a List data source Create a Grouped Header Template Declare the ListView control so it groups the list items Creating the Grouped Data Source Normally, you bind a ListView control to a WinJS.Binding.List object. If you want to render list items in groups, then you need to bind the ListView to a grouped data source instead. The following code – contained in a file named products.js — illustrates how you can create a standard WinJS.Binding.List object from a JavaScript array and then return a grouped data source from the WinJS.Binding.List object by calling its createGrouped() method: (function () { "use strict"; // Create List data source var products = new WinJS.Binding.List([ { name: "Milk", price: 2.44, category: "Beverages" }, { name: "Oranges", price: 1.99, category: "Fruit" }, { name: "Wine", price: 8.55, category: "Beverages" }, { name: "Apples", price: 2.44, category: "Fruit" }, { name: "Steak", price: 1.99, category: "Other" }, { name: "Eggs", price: 2.44, category: "Other" }, { name: "Mushrooms", price: 1.99, category: "Other" }, { name: "Yogurt", price: 2.44, category: "Other" }, { name: "Soup", price: 1.99, category: "Other" }, { name: "Cereal", price: 2.44, category: "Other" }, { name: "Pepsi", price: 1.99, category: "Beverages" } ]); // Create grouped data source var groupedProducts = products.createGrouped( function (dataItem) { return dataItem.category; }, function (dataItem) { return { title: dataItem.category }; }, function (group1, group2) { return group1.charCodeAt(0) - group2.charCodeAt(0); } ); // Expose the grouped data source WinJS.Namespace.define("ListViewDemos", { products: groupedProducts }); })(); Notice that the createGrouped() method requires three functions as arguments: groupKey – This function associates each list item with a group. The function accepts a data item and returns a key which represents a group. In the code above, we return the value of the category property for each product. groupData – This function returns the data item displayed by the group header template. For example, in the code above, the function returns a title for the group which is displayed in the group header template. groupSorter – This function determines the order in which the groups are displayed. The code above displays the groups in alphabetical order: Beverages, Fruit, Other. Creating the Group Header Template Whenever you create a ListView control, you need to create an item template which you use to control how each list item is rendered. When grouping items in a ListView control, you also need to create a group header template. The group header template is used to render the header for each group of list items. Here’s the markup for both the item template and the group header template: <div id="productTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="product"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> </div> <div id="productGroupHeaderTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="productGroupHeader"> <h1 data-win-bind="innerText: title"></h1> </div> </div> You should declare the two templates in the same file as you declare the ListView control – for example, the default.html file. Declaring the ListView Control The final step is to declare the ListView control. Here’s the required markup: <div data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.dataSource, itemTemplate:select('#productTemplate'), groupDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.groups.dataSource, groupHeaderTemplate:select('#productGroupHeaderTemplate'), layout: {type: WinJS.UI.GridLayout} }"> </div> In the markup above, six properties of the ListView control are set when the control is declared. First the itemDataSource and itemTemplate are specified. Nothing new here. Next, the group data source and group header template are specified. Notice that the group data source is represented by the ListViewDemos.products.groups.dataSource property of the grouped data source. Finally, notice that the layout of the ListView is changed to Grid Layout. You are required to use Grid Layout (instead of the default List Layout) when displaying grouped items in a ListView. Here’s the entire contents of the default.html page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>ListViewDemos</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- ListViewDemos references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> <script src="/js/products.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <style type="text/css"> .product { width: 200px; height: 100px; border: white solid 1px; font-size: x-large; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="productTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="product"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> </div> <div id="productGroupHeaderTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="productGroupHeader"> <h1 data-win-bind="innerText: title"></h1> </div> </div> <div data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.dataSource, itemTemplate:select('#productTemplate'), groupDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.groups.dataSource, groupHeaderTemplate:select('#productGroupHeaderTemplate'), layout: {type: WinJS.UI.GridLayout} }"> </div> </body> </html> Notice that the default.html page includes a reference to the products.js file: <script src=”/js/products.js” type=”text/javascript”></script> The default.html page also contains the declarations of the item template, group header template, and ListView control. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to explain how you can group items in a ListView control. You learned how to create a grouped data source, a group header template, and declare a ListView so that it groups its list items.

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  • SSIS: Deploying OLAP cubes using C# script tasks and AMO

    - by DrJohn
    As part of the continuing series on Building dynamic OLAP data marts on-the-fly, this blog entry will focus on how to automate the deployment of OLAP cubes using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) and Analysis Services Management Objects (AMO). OLAP cube deployment is usually done using the Analysis Services Deployment Wizard. However, this option was dismissed for a variety of reasons. Firstly, invoking external processes from SSIS is fraught with problems as (a) it is not always possible to ensure SSIS waits for the external program to terminate; (b) we cannot log the outcome properly and (c) it is not always possible to control the server's configuration to ensure the executable works correctly. Another reason for rejecting the Deployment Wizard is that it requires the 'answers' to be written into four XML files. These XML files record the three things we need to change: the name of the server, the name of the OLAP database and the connection string to the data mart. Although it would be reasonably straight forward to change the content of the XML files programmatically, this adds another set of complication and level of obscurity to the overall process. When I first investigated the possibility of using C# to deploy a cube, I was surprised to find that there are no other blog entries about the topic. I can only assume everyone else is happy with the Deployment Wizard! SSIS "forgets" assembly references If you build your script task from scratch, you will have to remember how to overcome one of the major annoyances of working with SSIS script tasks: the forgetful nature of SSIS when it comes to assembly references. Basically, you can go through the process of adding an assembly reference using the Add Reference dialog, but when you close the script window, SSIS "forgets" the assembly reference so the script will not compile. After repeating the operation several times, you will find that SSIS only remembers the assembly reference when you specifically press the Save All icon in the script window. This problem is not unique to the AMO assembly and has certainly been a "feature" since SQL Server 2005, so I am not amazed it is still present in SQL Server 2008 R2! Sample Package So let's take a look at the sample SSIS package I have provided which can be downloaded from here: DeployOlapCubeExample.zip  Below is a screenshot after a successful run. Connection Managers The package has three connection managers: AsDatabaseDefinitionFile is a file connection manager pointing to the .asdatabase file you wish to deploy. Note that this can be found in the bin directory of you OLAP database project once you have clicked the "Build" button in Visual Studio TargetOlapServerCS is an Analysis Services connection manager which identifies both the deployment server and the target database name. SourceDataMart is an OLEDB connection manager pointing to the data mart which is to act as the source of data for your cube. This will be used to replace the connection string found in your .asdatabase file Once you have configured the connection managers, the sample should run and deploy your OLAP database in a few seconds. Of course, in a production environment, these connection managers would be associated with package configurations or set at runtime. When you run the sample, you should see that the script logs its activity to the output screen (see screenshot above). If you configure logging for the package, then these messages will also appear in your SSIS logging. Sample Code Walkthrough Next let's walk through the code. The first step is to parse the connection string provided by the TargetOlapServerCS connection manager and obtain the name of both the target OLAP server and also the name of the OLAP database. Note that the target database does not have to exist to be referenced in an AS connection manager, so I am using this as a convenient way to define both properties. We now connect to the server and check for the existence of the OLAP database. If it exists, we drop the database so we can re-deploy. svr.Connect(olapServerName); if (svr.Connected) { // Drop the OLAP database if it already exists Database db = svr.Databases.FindByName(olapDatabaseName); if (db != null) { db.Drop(); } // rest of script } Next we start building the XMLA command that will actually perform the deployment. Basically this is a small chuck of XML which we need to wrap around the large .asdatabase file generated by the Visual Studio build process. // Start generating the main part of the XMLA command XmlDocument xmlaCommand = new XmlDocument(); xmlaCommand.LoadXml(string.Format("<Batch Transaction='false' xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine'><Alter AllowCreate='true' ObjectExpansion='ExpandFull'><Object><DatabaseID>{0}</DatabaseID></Object><ObjectDefinition/></Alter></Batch>", olapDatabaseName));  Next we need to merge two XML files which we can do by simply using setting the InnerXml property of the ObjectDefinition node as follows: // load OLAP Database definition from .asdatabase file identified by connection manager XmlDocument olapCubeDef = new XmlDocument(); olapCubeDef.Load(Dts.Connections["AsDatabaseDefinitionFile"].ConnectionString); // merge the two XML files by obtain a reference to the ObjectDefinition node oaRootNode.InnerXml = olapCubeDef.InnerXml;   One hurdle I had to overcome was removing detritus from the .asdabase file left by the Visual Studio build. Through an iterative process, I found I needed to remove several nodes as they caused the deployment to fail. The XMLA error message read "Cannot set read-only node: CreatedTimestamp" or similar. In comparing the XMLA generated with by the Deployment Wizard with that generated by my code, these read-only nodes were missing, so clearly I just needed to strip them out. This was easily achieved using XPath to find the relevant XML nodes, of which I show one example below: foreach (XmlNode node in rootNode.SelectNodes("//ns1:CreatedTimestamp", nsManager)) { node.ParentNode.RemoveChild(node); } Now we need to change the database name in both the ID and Name nodes using code such as: XmlNode databaseID = xmlaCommand.SelectSingleNode("//ns1:Database/ns1:ID", nsManager); if (databaseID != null) databaseID.InnerText = olapDatabaseName; Finally we need to change the connection string to point at the relevant data mart. Again this is easily achieved using XPath to search for the relevant nodes and then replace the content of the node with the new name or connection string. XmlNode connectionStringNode = xmlaCommand.SelectSingleNode("//ns1:DataSources/ns1:DataSource/ns1:ConnectionString", nsManager); if (connectionStringNode != null) { connectionStringNode.InnerText = Dts.Connections["SourceDataMart"].ConnectionString; } Finally we need to perform the deployment using the Execute XMLA command and check the returned XmlaResultCollection for errors before setting the Dts.TaskResult. XmlaResultCollection oResults = svr.Execute(xmlaCommand.InnerXml);  // check for errors during deployment foreach (Microsoft.AnalysisServices.XmlaResult oResult in oResults) { foreach (Microsoft.AnalysisServices.XmlaMessage oMessage in oResult.Messages) { if ((oMessage.GetType().Name == "XmlaError")) { FireError(oMessage.Description); HadError = true; } } } If you are not familiar with XML programming, all this may all seem a bit daunting, but perceiver as the sample code is pretty short. If you would like the script to process the OLAP database, simply uncomment the lines in the vicinity of Process method. Of course, you can extend the script to perform your own custom processing and to even synchronize the database to a front-end server. Personally, I like to keep the deployment and processing separate as the code can become overly complex for support staff.If you want to know more, come see my session at the forthcoming SQLBits conference.

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  • SortedDictionary and SortedList

    - by Simon Cooper
    Apart from Dictionary<TKey, TValue>, there's two other dictionaries in the BCL - SortedDictionary<TKey, TValue> and SortedList<TKey, TValue>. On the face of it, these two classes do the same thing - provide an IDictionary<TKey, TValue> interface where the iterator returns the items sorted by the key. So what's the difference between them, and when should you use one rather than the other? (as in my previous post, I'll assume you have some basic algorithm & datastructure knowledge) SortedDictionary We'll first cover SortedDictionary. This is implemented as a special sort of binary tree called a red-black tree. Essentially, it's a binary tree that uses various constraints on how the nodes of the tree can be arranged to ensure the tree is always roughly balanced (for more gory algorithmical details, see the wikipedia link above). What I'm concerned about in this post is how the .NET SortedDictionary is actually implemented. In .NET 4, behind the scenes, the actual implementation of the tree is delegated to a SortedSet<KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>>. One example tree might look like this: Each node in the above tree is stored as a separate SortedSet<T>.Node object (remember, in a SortedDictionary, T is instantiated to KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>): class Node { public bool IsRed; public T Item; public SortedSet<T>.Node Left; public SortedSet<T>.Node Right; } The SortedSet only stores a reference to the root node; all the data in the tree is accessed by traversing the Left and Right node references until you reach the node you're looking for. Each individual node can be physically stored anywhere in memory; what's important is the relationship between the nodes. This is also why there is no constructor to SortedDictionary or SortedSet that takes an integer representing the capacity; there are no internal arrays that need to be created and resized. This may seen trivial, but it's an important distinction between SortedDictionary and SortedList that I'll cover later on. And that's pretty much it; it's a standard red-black tree. Plenty of webpages and datastructure books cover the algorithms behind the tree itself far better than I could. What's interesting is the comparions between SortedDictionary and SortedList, which I'll cover at the end. As a side point, SortedDictionary has existed in the BCL ever since .NET 2. That means that, all through .NET 2, 3, and 3.5, there has been a bona-fide sorted set class in the BCL (called TreeSet). However, it was internal, so it couldn't be used outside System.dll. Only in .NET 4 was this class exposed as SortedSet. SortedList Whereas SortedDictionary didn't use any backing arrays, SortedList does. It is implemented just as the name suggests; two arrays, one containing the keys, and one the values (I've just used random letters for the values): The items in the keys array are always guarenteed to be stored in sorted order, and the value corresponding to each key is stored in the same index as the key in the values array. In this example, the value for key item 5 is 'z', and for key item 8 is 'm'. Whenever an item is inserted or removed from the SortedList, a binary search is run on the keys array to find the correct index, then all the items in the arrays are shifted to accomodate the new or removed item. For example, if the key 3 was removed, a binary search would be run to find the array index the item was at, then everything above that index would be moved down by one: and then if the key/value pair {7, 'f'} was added, a binary search would be run on the keys to find the index to insert the new item, and everything above that index would be moved up to accomodate the new item: If another item was then added, both arrays would be resized (to a length of 10) before the new item was added to the arrays. As you can see, any insertions or removals in the middle of the list require a proportion of the array contents to be moved; an O(n) operation. However, if the insertion or removal is at the end of the array (ie the largest key), then it's only O(log n); the cost of the binary search to determine it does actually need to be added to the end (excluding the occasional O(n) cost of resizing the arrays to fit more items). As a side effect of using backing arrays, SortedList offers IList Keys and Values views that simply use the backing keys or values arrays, as well as various methods utilising the array index of stored items, which SortedDictionary does not (and cannot) offer. The Comparison So, when should you use one and not the other? Well, here's the important differences: Memory usage SortedDictionary and SortedList have got very different memory profiles. SortedDictionary... has a memory overhead of one object instance, a bool, and two references per item. On 64-bit systems, this adds up to ~40 bytes, not including the stored item and the reference to it from the Node object. stores the items in separate objects that can be spread all over the heap. This helps to keep memory fragmentation low, as the individual node objects can be allocated wherever there's a spare 60 bytes. In contrast, SortedList... has no additional overhead per item (only the reference to it in the array entries), however the backing arrays can be significantly larger than you need; every time the arrays are resized they double in size. That means that if you add 513 items to a SortedList, the backing arrays will each have a length of 1024. To conteract this, the TrimExcess method resizes the arrays back down to the actual size needed, or you can simply assign list.Capacity = list.Count. stores its items in a continuous block in memory. If the list stores thousands of items, this can cause significant problems with Large Object Heap memory fragmentation as the array resizes, which SortedDictionary doesn't have. Performance Operations on a SortedDictionary always have O(log n) performance, regardless of where in the collection you're adding or removing items. In contrast, SortedList has O(n) performance when you're altering the middle of the collection. If you're adding or removing from the end (ie the largest item), then performance is O(log n), same as SortedDictionary (in practice, it will likely be slightly faster, due to the array items all being in the same area in memory, also called locality of reference). So, when should you use one and not the other? As always with these sort of things, there are no hard-and-fast rules. But generally, if you: need to access items using their index within the collection are populating the dictionary all at once from sorted data aren't adding or removing keys once it's populated then use a SortedList. But if you: don't know how many items are going to be in the dictionary are populating the dictionary from random, unsorted data are adding & removing items randomly then use a SortedDictionary. The default (again, there's no definite rules on these sort of things!) should be to use SortedDictionary, unless there's a good reason to use SortedList, due to the bad performance of SortedList when altering the middle of the collection.

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  • J2EE Applications, SPARC T4, Solaris Containers, and Resource Pools

    - by user12620111
    I've obtained a substantial performance improvement on a SPARC T4-2 Server running a J2EE Application Server Cluster by deploying the cluster members into Oracle Solaris Containers and binding those containers to cores of the SPARC T4 Processor. This is not a surprising result, in fact, it is consistent with other results that are available on the Internet. See the "references", below, for some examples. Nonetheless, here is a summary of my configuration and results. (1.0) Before deploying a J2EE Application Server Cluster into a virtualized environment, many decisions need to be made. I'm not claiming that all of the decisions that I have a made will work well for every environment. In fact, I'm not even claiming that all of the decisions are the best possible for my environment. I'm only claiming that of the small sample of configurations that I've tested, this is the one that is working best for me. Here are some of the decisions that needed to be made: (1.1) Which virtualization option? There are several virtualization options and isolation levels that are available. Options include: Hard partitions:  Dynamic Domains on Sun SPARC Enterprise M-Series Servers Hypervisor based virtualization such as Oracle VM Server for SPARC (LDOMs) on SPARC T-Series Servers OS Virtualization using Oracle Solaris Containers Resource management tools in the Oracle Solaris OS to control the amount of resources an application receives, such as CPU cycles, physical memory, and network bandwidth. Oracle Solaris Containers provide the right level of isolation and flexibility for my environment. To borrow some words from my friends in marketing, "The SPARC T4 processor leverages the unique, no-cost virtualization capabilities of Oracle Solaris Zones"  (1.2) How to associate Oracle Solaris Containers with resources? There are several options available to associate containers with resources, including (a) resource pool association (b) dedicated-cpu resources and (c) capped-cpu resources. I chose to create resource pools and associate them with the containers because I wanted explicit control over the cores and virtual processors.  (1.3) Cluster Topology? Is it best to deploy (a) multiple application servers on one node, (b) one application server on multiple nodes, or (c) multiple application servers on multiple nodes? After a few quick tests, it appears that one application server per Oracle Solaris Container is a good solution. (1.4) Number of cluster members to deploy? I chose to deploy four big 64-bit application servers. I would like go back a test many 32-bit application servers, but that is left for another day. (2.0) Configuration tested. (2.1) I was using a SPARC T4-2 Server which has 2 CPU and 128 virtual processors. To understand the physical layout of the hardware on Solaris 10, I used the OpenSolaris psrinfo perl script available at http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/download/Community+Group+performance/files/psrinfo.pl: test# ./psrinfo.pl -pv The physical processor has 8 cores and 64 virtual processors (0-63) The core has 8 virtual processors (0-7)   The core has 8 virtual processors (8-15)   The core has 8 virtual processors (16-23)   The core has 8 virtual processors (24-31)   The core has 8 virtual processors (32-39)   The core has 8 virtual processors (40-47)   The core has 8 virtual processors (48-55)   The core has 8 virtual processors (56-63)     SPARC-T4 (chipid 0, clock 2848 MHz) The physical processor has 8 cores and 64 virtual processors (64-127)   The core has 8 virtual processors (64-71)   The core has 8 virtual processors (72-79)   The core has 8 virtual processors (80-87)   The core has 8 virtual processors (88-95)   The core has 8 virtual processors (96-103)   The core has 8 virtual processors (104-111)   The core has 8 virtual processors (112-119)   The core has 8 virtual processors (120-127)     SPARC-T4 (chipid 1, clock 2848 MHz) (2.2) The "before" test: without processor binding. I started with a 4-member cluster deployed into 4 Oracle Solaris Containers. Each container used a unique gigabit Ethernet port for HTTP traffic. The containers shared a 10 gigabit Ethernet port for JDBC traffic. (2.3) The "after" test: with processor binding. I ran one application server in the Global Zone and another application server in each of the three non-global zones (NGZ):  (3.0) Configuration steps. The following steps need to be repeated for all three Oracle Solaris Containers. (3.1) Stop AppServers from the BUI. (3.2) Stop the NGZ. test# ssh test-z2 init 5 (3.3) Enable resource pools: test# svcadm enable pools (3.4) Create the resource pool: test# poolcfg -dc 'create pool pool-test-z2' (3.5) Create the processor set: test# poolcfg -dc 'create pset pset-test-z2' (3.6) Specify the maximum number of CPU's that may be addd to the processor set: test# poolcfg -dc 'modify pset pset-test-z2 (uint pset.max=32)' (3.7) bash syntax to add Virtual CPUs to the processor set: test# (( i = 64 )); while (( i < 96 )); do poolcfg -dc "transfer to pset pset-test-z2 (cpu $i)"; (( i = i + 1 )) ; done (3.8) Associate the resource pool with the processor set: test# poolcfg -dc 'associate pool pool-test-z2 (pset pset-test-z2)' (3.9) Tell the zone to use the resource pool that has been created: test# zonecfg -z test-z1 set pool=pool-test-z2 (3.10) Boot the Oracle Solaris Container test# zoneadm -z test-z2 boot (3.11) Save the configuration to /etc/pooladm.conf test# pooladm -s (4.0) Results. Using the resource pools improves both throughput and response time: (5.0) References: System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris Zones Capitalizing on large numbers of processors with WebSphere Portal on Solaris WebSphere Application Server and T5440 (Dileep Kumar's Weblog)  http://www.brendangregg.com/zones.html Reuters Market Data System, RMDS 6 Multiple Instances (Consolidated), Performance Test Results in Solaris, Containers/Zones Environment on Sun Blade X6270 by Amjad Khan, 2009.

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  • ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0

    - by James Michael Hare
    I had always been a fan of ANTS products (Reflector is absolutely invaluable, and their performance profiler is great as well – very easy to use!), so I was curious to see what the ANTS Memory Profiler could show me. Background While a performance profiler will track how much time is typically spent in each unit of code, a memory profiler gives you much more detail on how and where your memory is being consumed and released in a program. As an example, I’d been working on a data access layer at work to call a market data web service.  This web service would take a list of symbols to quote and would return back the quote data.  To help consolidate the thousands of web requests per second we get and reduce load on the web services, we implemented a 5-second cache of quote data.  Not quite long enough to where customers will typically notice a quote go “stale”, but just long enough to be able to collapse multiple quote requests for the same symbol in a short period of time. A 5-second cache may not sound like much, but it actually pays off by saving us roughly 42% of our web service calls, while still providing relatively up-to-date information.  The question is whether or not the extra memory involved in maintaining the cache was worth it, so I decided to fire up the ANTS Memory Profiler and take a look at memory usage. First Impressions The main thing I’ve always loved about the ANTS tools is their ease of use.  Pretty much everything is right there in front of you in a way that makes it easy for you to find what you need with little digging required.  I’ve worked with other, older profilers before (that shall remain nameless other than to hint it was created by a very large chip maker) where it was a mind boggling experience to figure out how to do simple tasks. Not so with AMP.  The opening dialog is very straightforward.  You can choose from here whether to debug an executable, a web application (either in IIS or from VS’s web development server), windows services, etc. So I chose a .NET Executable and navigated to the build location of my test harness.  Then began profiling. At this point while the application is running, you can see a chart of the memory as it ebbs and wanes with allocations and collections.  At any given point in time, you can take snapshots (to compare states) zoom in, or choose to stop at any time.  Snapshots Taking a snapshot also gives you a breakdown of the managed memory heaps for each generation so you get an idea how many objects are staying around for extended periods of time (as an object lives and survives collections, it gets promoted into higher generations where collection becomes less frequent). Generating a snapshot brings up an analysis view with very handy graphs that show your generation sizes.  Almost all my memory is in Generation 1 in the managed memory component of the first graph, which is good news to me, because Gen 2 collections are much rarer.  I once3 made the mistake once of caching data for 30 minutes and found it didn’t get collected very quick after I released my reference because it had been promoted to Gen 2 – doh! Analysis It looks like (from the second pie chart) that the majority of the allocations were in the string class.  This also is expected for me because the majority of the memory allocated is in the web service responses, so it doesn’t seem the entities I’m adapting to (to prevent being too tightly coupled to the web service proxy classes, which can change easily out from under me) aren’t taking a significant portion of memory. I also appreciate that they have clear summary text in key places such as “No issues with large object heap fragmentation were detected”.  For novice users, this type of summary information can be critical to getting them to use a tool and develop a good working knowledge of it. There is also a handy link at the bottom for “What to look for on the summary” which loads a web page of help on key points to look for. Clicking over to the session overview, it’s easy to compare the samples at each snapshot to see how your memory is growing, shrinking, or staying relatively the same.  Looking at my snapshots, I’m pretty happy with the fact that memory allocation and heap size seems to be fairly stable and in control: Once again, you can check on the large object heap, generation one heap, and generation two heap across each snapshot to spot trends. Back on the analysis tab, we can go to the [Class List] button to get an idea what classes are making up the majority of our memory usage.  As was little surprise to me, System.String was the clear majority of my allocations, though I found it surprising that the System.Reflection.RuntimeMehtodInfo came in second.  I was curious about this, so I selected it and went into the [Instance Categorizer].  This view let me see where these instances to RuntimeMehtodInfo were coming from. So I scrolled back through the graph, and discovered that these were being held by the System.ServiceModel.ChannelFactoryRefCache and I was satisfied this was just an artifact of my WCF proxy. I also like that down at the bottom of the Instance Categorizer it gives you a series of filters and offers to guide you on which filter to use based on the problem you are trying to find.  For example, if I suspected a memory leak, I might try to filter for survivors in growing classes.  This means that for instances of a class that are growing in memory (more are being created than cleaned up), which ones are survivors (not collected) from garbage collection.  This might allow me to drill down and find places where I’m holding onto references by mistake and not freeing them! Finally, if you want to really see all your instances and who is holding onto them (preventing collection), you can go to the “Instance Retention Graph” which creates a graph showing what references are being held in memory and who is holding onto them. Visual Studio Integration Of course, VS has its own profiler built in – and for a free bundled profiler it is quite capable – but AMP gives a much cleaner and easier-to-use experience, and when you install it you also get the option of letting it integrate directly into VS. So once you go back into VS after installation, you’ll notice an ANTS menu which lets you launch the ANTS profiler directly from Visual Studio.   Clicking on one of these options fires up the project in the profiler immediately, allowing you to get right in.  It doesn’t integrate with the Visual Studio windows themselves (like the VS profiler does), but still the plethora of information it provides and the clear and concise manner in which it presents it makes it well worth it. Summary If you like the ANTS series of tools, you shouldn’t be disappointed with the ANTS Memory Profiler.  It was so easy to use that I was able to jump in with very little product knowledge and get the information I was looking it for. I’ve used other profilers before that came with 3-inch thick tomes that you had to read in order to get anywhere with the tool, and this one is not like that at all.  It’s built for your everyday developer to get in and find their problems quickly, and I like that! Tweet Technorati Tags: Influencers,ANTS,Memory,Profiler

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