Search Results

Search found 19649 results on 786 pages for 'visual studio integration'.

Page 684/786 | < Previous Page | 680 681 682 683 684 685 686 687 688 689 690 691  | Next Page >

  • Reverse-engineer SharePoint fields, content types and list instance—Part3

    - by ybbest
    Reverse-engineer SharePoint fields, content types and list instance—Part1 Reverse-engineer SharePoint fields, content types and list instance—Part2 Reverse-engineer SharePoint fields, content types and list instance—Part3 In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I demonstrate how to reverse engineer SharePoint fields, content types. In this post I will cover how to include lookup fields in the content type and create list instance using these content types. Firstly, I will cover how to create list instance and bind the custom content type to the custom list. 1. Create a custom list using list Instance item in visual studio and select custom list. 2. In the feature receiver add the Department content type to Department list and remove the item content type. C# AddContentTypeToList(web, “Department”, ” Department”); private void AddContentTypeToList(SPWeb web,string listName, string contentTypeName) { SPList list = web.Lists.TryGetList(listName); list.OnQuickLaunch = true; list.ContentTypesEnabled = true; list.Update(); SPContentType employeeContentType = web.ContentTypes[contentTypeName]; list.ContentTypes.Add(employeeContentType); list.ContentTypes["Item"].Delete(); list.Update(); } Next, I will cover how to create the lookup fields. The difference between creating a normal field and lookup fields is that you need to create the lookup fields after the lists are created. This is because the lookup fields references fields from the foreign list. 1. In your solution, you need to create a feature that deploys the list before deploying the lookup fields. 2. You need to write the following code in the feature receiver to add the lookup columns in the ContentType. C# //add the lookup fields SPFieldLookup departmentField = EnsureLookupField(currentWeb, “YBBESTDepartment”, currentWeb.Lists["DepartmentList"].ID, “Title”); //add to the content types SPContentType employeeContentType = currentWeb.ContentTypes["Employee"]; //Add the lookup fields as SPFieldLink employeeContentType.FieldLinks.Add(new SPFieldLink(departmentField)); employeeContentType.Update(true); private static SPFieldLookup EnsureLookupField(SPWeb currentWeb, String sFieldName, Guid LookupListID, String sLookupField) { //add the lookup fields SPFieldLookup lookupField = null; try { lookupField = currentWeb.Fields[sFieldName] as SPFieldLookup; } catch (Exception e) { } if (lookupField == null) { currentWeb.Fields.AddLookup(sFieldName, LookupListID, true); currentWeb.Update(); lookupField = currentWeb.Fields[sFieldName] as SPFieldLookup; lookupField.LookupField = sLookupField; lookupField.Group = “YBBEST”; lookupField.Required = true; lookupField.Update(); } return lookupField; }

    Read the article

  • Getting a Database into Source Control

    - by Grant Fritchey
    For any number of reasons, from simple auditing, to change tracking, to automated deployment, to integration with application development processes, you’re going to want to place your database into source control. Using Red Gate SQL Source Control this process is extremely simple. SQL Source Control works within your SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) interface.  This means you can work with your databases in any way that you’re used to working with them. If you prefer scripts to using the GUI, not a problem. If you prefer using the GUI to having to learn T-SQL, again, that’s fine. After installing SQL Source Control, this is what you’ll see when you open SSMS:   SQL Source Control is now a direct piece of the SSMS environment. The key point initially is that I currently don’t have a database selected. You can even see that in the SQL Source Control window where it shows, in red, “No database selected – select a database in Object Explorer.” If I expand my Databases list in the Object Explorer, you’ll be able to immediately see which databases have been integrated with source control and which have not. There are visible differences between the databases as you can see here:   To add a database to source control, I first have to select it. For this example, I’m going to add the AdventureWorks2012 database to an instance of the SVN source control software (I’m using uberSVN). When I click on the AdventureWorks2012 database, the SQL Source Control screen changes:   I’m going to need to click on the “Link database to source control” text which will open up a window for connecting this database to the source control system of my choice.  You can pick from the default source control systems on the left, or define one of your own. I also have to provide the connection string for the location within the source control system where I’ll be storing my database code. I set these up in advance. You’ll need two. One for the main set of scripts and one for special scripts called Migrations that deal with different kinds of changes between versions of the code. Migrations help you solve problems like having to create or modify data in columns as part of a structural change. I’ll talk more about them another day. Finally, I have to determine if this is an isolated environment that I’m going to be the only one use, a dedicated database. Or, if I’m sharing the database in a shared environment with other developers, a shared database.  The main difference is, under a dedicated database, I will need to regularly get any changes that other developers have made from source control and integrate it into my database. While, under a shared database, all changes for all developers are made at the same time, which means you could commit other peoples work without proper testing. It all depends on the type of environment you work within. But, when it’s all set, it will look like this: SQL Source Control will compare the results between the empty folders in source control and the database, AdventureWorks2012. You’ll get a report showing exactly the list of differences and you can choose which ones will get checked into source control. Each of the database objects is scripted individually. You’ll be able to modify them later in the same way. Here’s the list of differences for my new database:   You can select/deselect all the objects or each object individually. You also get a report showing the differences between what’s in the database and what’s in source control. If there was already a database in source control, you’d only see changes to database objects rather than every single object. You can see that the database objects can be sorted by name, by type, or other choices. I’m going to add a comment such as “Initial creation of database in source control.” And then click on the Commit button which will put all the objects in my database into the source control system. That’s all it takes to get the objects into source control initially. Now is when things can get fun with breaking changes to code, automated deployments, unit testing and all the rest.

    Read the article

  • Silverlight Cream for May 02, 2010 -- #854

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Michael Washington, Jason Young(-2-, -3-), Phil Middlemiss, Jeremy Likness, Victor Gaudioso, Kunal Chowdhury, Antoni Dol, and Jacek Ciereszko(-2-). Shoutout: Victor Gaudioso has aggregated All of My Silverlight Video Tutorials in One Place (revised again 05.02.10) From SilverlightCream.com: Unit Testing A Silverlight 'Simplified MVVM' Modal Popup Michael Washington's latest 'Simplified MVVM' post is published at The Code Project and is on Unit Testing with MVVM. Input Localization in Silverlight without IValueConverter Jason Young sent me some links to posts I've not seen... this first one is on localization by using the Language property of the Root Visual. MVVM – The Model - Part 1 – INotifyPropertyChanged Jason Young's next archive post is the first of a series on MVVM and Silverlight 4 ... implementing a simple ViewModel base class. Silverlight, WCF, and ASP.Net Configuration Gotchas Jason Young worked at tracking down the answers to some forum questions and in the process has produced a post of 'gotchas' with using WCF in Silverlight. A Chrome and Glass Theme - Part 5 Phil Middlemiss has part 5 of his Chrome and Glass Theme tutorial up ... in this one, he's looking at the Progress Bar and Slider. Download the files and play along. Silverlight Out of Browser (OOB) Versions, Images, and Isolated Storage Jeremy Likness has a post up responding to his 3 major questions about OOB apps, and he has to code up for the sample too. New Silverlight Video Tutorial: How to Make a Slide In/Out Navigation Bar – All in Blend Victor Gaudioso's latest video tutorial is on building a Behavior for a Slide in/out Navigation bar... kinda like the menu sliders on my GlyphMap Utility... only easier! Command Binding in Silverlight 4 (Step-by-Step) Kunal Chowdhury has another post up at DotNetFunda, and this time he's talking about Command Binding in Silverlight 4 with an eye toward MVVM usage. The Silverlight PageCurl implementation Antoni Dol has a post up about doing a Page Curl effect in Silverlight. He has a manual up on the effect and full application code. How to center and scale Silverlight applications using ViewBox control Jacek Ciereszko has a couple posts up about centering and scaling your app with the ViewBox control. This first one is a code solution. Source is available, as is a Polish version. Silverlight Center And Scale Behavior Jacek Ciereszko's 2nd post, he provides a Behavior that handles the scaling and centering of the previous post. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

    Read the article

  • Things to install on a new machine – revisited

    - by RoyOsherove
    as I prepare to get a new dev machine at work, I write the things I am going to install on it, before writing the first line of code on that machine: Control Freak Tools: Everything Search Engine – a free and amazingly fast search engine for files all over your machine. (just file names, not inside files). This is so fast I use it almost as a replacement for my start menu, but it’s also great for finding those files that get hidden and tucked away in dark places on my system. Ever had a situation where you needed to see exactly how many copies of X.dll were hiding on your machine and where? this tool is perfect for that. Google Chrome. It’s just fast. very fast. and Firefox has become the IE of alternative browsers in terms of speed and memory. Don’t even get me started on IE. TweetDeck – get a complete view of what’s up on twitter Total Commander – my still favorite file manager, over five years now. KatMouse – will scroll any window your hovering on, even if it’s not an active window, when you use scroll the wheel on it. PowerIso or Daemon Tools – for loading up ISO images of discs LogMeIn Ignition – quick access to your LogMeIn computers for online Backup: JungleDisk or BackBlaze KeePass – save important passwords MS Security Essentials – free anti virus that’s quoest and doesn’t make a mess of your system. for home: uTorrent – a torrent client that can read rss feeds (like the ones from ezrss.it ) Camtasia Studio and SnagIt – for recording and capturing the screen, and then adding cool effects on top. Foxit PDF Reader – much faster that adove reader. Toddler Keys (for home) – for when your baby wants to play with your keyboard. Live Writer – for writing blog posts for Lenovo ThinkPads – Lenovo System Update – if you have a “custom” system instead of the one that came built in, this will keep all your lenovo drivers up to date. FileZilla – for FTP stuff All the utils from sysinternals, (or try the live-links) especially: AutoRuns for deciding what’s really going to load at startup, procmon to see what’s really going on with processes in your system   Developer stuff: Reflector. Pure magic. Time saver. See source code of any compiled assembly. Resharper. Great for productivity and navigation across your source code FinalBuilder – a commercial build automation tool. Love it. much better than any xml based time hog out there. TeamCity – a great visual and friendly server to manage continuous integration. powerful features. Test Lint – a free addin for vs 2010 I helped create, that checks your unit tests for possible problems and hints you about it. TestDriven.NET – a great test runner for vs 2008 and 2010 with some powerful features. VisualSVN – a commercial tool if you use subversion. very reliable addin for vs 2008 and 2010 Beyond Compare – a powerful file and directory comparison tool. I love the fact that you can right click in windows exporer on any file and select “select left side to compare”, then right click on another file and select “compare with left side”. Great usability thought! PostSharp 2.0 – for addind system wide concepts into your code (tracing, exception management). Goes great hand in hand with.. SmartInspect – a powerful framework and viewer for tracing for your application. lots of hidden features. Crypto Obfuscator – a relatively new obfuscation tool for .NET that seems to do the job very well. Crypto Licensing – from the same company –finally a licensing solution that seems to really fit what I needed. And it works. Fiddler 2 – great for debugging and tracing http traffic to and from your app. Debugging Tools for Windows and DebugDiag  - great for debugging scenarios. still wanting more? I think this should keep you busy for a while.   Regulator and Regulazy – for testing and generating regular expressions Notepad 2 – for quick editing and viewing with syntax highlighting

    Read the article

  • Predicting Likelihood of Click with Multiple Presentations

    - by Michel Adar
    When using predictive models to predict the likelihood of an ad or a banner to be clicked on it is common to ignore the fact that the same content may have been presented in the past to the same visitor. While the error may be small if the visitors do not often see repeated content, it may be very significant for sites where visitors come repeatedly. This is a well recognized problem that usually gets handled with presentation thresholds – do not present the same content more than 6 times. Observations and measurements of visitor behavior provide evidence that something better is needed. Observations For a specific visitor, during a single session, for a banner in a not too prominent space, the second presentation of the same content is more likely to be clicked on than the first presentation. The difference can be 30% to 100% higher likelihood for the second presentation when compared to the first. That is, for example, if the first presentation has an average click rate of 1%, the second presentation may have an average CTR of between 1.3% and 2%. After the second presentation the CTR stays more or less the same for a few more presentations. The number of presentations in this plateau seems to vary by the location of the content in the page and by the visual attraction of the content. After these few presentations the CTR starts decaying with a curve that is very well approximated by an exponential decay. For example, the 13th presentation may have 90% the likelihood of the 12th, and the 14th has 90% the likelihood of the 13th. The decay constant seems also to depend on the visibility of the content. Modeling Options Now that we know the empirical data, we can propose modeling techniques that will correctly predict the likelihood of a click. Use presentation number as an input to the predictive model Probably the most straight forward approach is to add the presentation number as an input to the predictive model. While this is certainly a simple solution, it carries with it several problems, among them: If the model learns on each case, repeated non-clicks for the same content will reinforce the belief of the model on the non-clicker disproportionately. That is, the weight of a person that does not click for 200 presentations of an offer may be the same as 100 other people that on average click on the second presentation. The effect of the presentation number is not a customer characteristic or a piece of contextual data about the interaction with the customer, but it is contextual data about the content presented. Models tend to underestimate the effect of the presentation number. For these reasons it is not advisable to use this approach when the average number of presentations of the same content to the same person is above 3, or when there are cases of having the presentation number be very large, in the tens or hundreds. Use presentation number as a partitioning attribute to the predictive model In this approach we essentially build a separate predictive model for each presentation number. This approach overcomes all of the problems in the previous approach, nevertheless, it can be applied only when the volume of data is large enough to have these very specific sub-models converge.

    Read the article

  • jQuery Context Menu Plugin and Capturing Right-Click

    - by Ben Griswold
    I was thrilled to find Cory LaViska’s jQuery Context Menu Plugin a few months ago. In very little time, I was able to integrate the context menu with the jQuery Treeview.  I quickly had a really pretty user interface which took full advantage of limited real estate.  And guess what.  As promised, the plugin worked in Chrome, Safari 3, IE 6/7/8, Firefox 2/3 and Opera 9.5.  Everything was perfect and I shipped to the Integration Environment. One thing kept bugging though – right clicks aren’t the standard in a web environment. Sure, when one hovers over the treeview node, the mouse changed from an arrow to a pointer, but without help text most users will certainly left-click rather than right. As I was already doubting the design decision, we did some Mac testing.  The context menu worked in Firefox but not Safari.  Damn.  That’s when I started digging into the Madness of Javascript Mouse Events.  Don’t tell, but it’s complicated.  About as close as one can get to capture the right-click mouse event on all major browsers on Windows and Mac is this: if (event.which == null) /* IE case */ button= (event.button < 2) ? "LEFT" : ((event.button == 4) ? "MIDDLE" : "RIGHT"); else /* All others */ button= (event.which < 2) ? "LEFT" : ((event.which == 2) ? "MIDDLE" : "RIGHT"); Yikes.  The content menu code was simply checking if event.button == 2.  No problem.  Cory offers a jQuery Right Click Plugin which I’m sure works for windows but probably not the Mac either.  (Please note I haven’t verified this.) Anyway, I decided to address my UI design concern and the Safari Mac issue in one swoop.  I decided to make the context menu respond to any mouse click event.  This didn’t take much – especially after seeing how Bill Beckelman updated the library to recognize the left click. First, I added an AnyClick option to the library defaults: // Any click may trigger the dropdown and that's okay // See Javascript Madness: Mouse Events – http: //unixpapa.com/js/mouse.html if (o.anyClick == undefined) o.anyClick = false; And then I trigger the context menu dropdown based on the following conditional: if (evt.button == 2 || o.anyClick) { Nothing tricky about that, right?  Finally, I updated my menu setup to include the AnyClick value, if true: $('.member').contextMenu({ menu: 'memberContextMenu', anyClick: true },             function (action, el, pos) {                 … Now the context menu works in “all” environments if you left, right or even middle click.  Download jQuery Context Menu Plugin for Any Click *Opera 9.5 has an option to allow scripts to detect right-clicks, but it is disabled by default. Furthermore, Opera still doesn’t allow JavaScript to disable the browser’s default context menu which causes a usability conflict.

    Read the article

  • How to remove window applet from Gnome3?

    - by Filip Nowak
    I installed today window applet for Gnome3 from this webupd8 post. The effect of the installation shown in the picture. I tried apt-get remove --purge and nothing happens. How do I remove this window applet? http://i.stack.imgur.com/D1s9b.jpg When i try metacity --replace &unity [1] 3171 Checking if settings need to be migrated ...no Checking if internal files need to be migrated ...no Backend : gconf Integration : true Profile : default Adding plugins Skipping upgrade com.canonical.unity.unity.01.upgrade Skipping upgrade com.canonical.unity.unity.02.upgrade Initializing core options...done Initializing bailer options...done Initializing detection options...done Initializing composite options...done Initializing opengl options...done Initializing decor options...done Initializing move options...done Initializing vpswitch options...done Initializing gnomecompat options...done Initializing grid options...done Initializing mousepoll options...done Initializing place options...done Initializing resize options...done Initializing animation options...done Initializing wall options...done Initializing session options...done Initializing workarounds options...done Initializing wobbly options...done compiz (expo) - Warn: failed to bind image to texture Initializing expo options...done Initializing ezoom options...done Initializing staticswitcher options...done Initializing fade options...done Initializing scale options...done Screen geometry changed: 0x0x1920x1080 Initializing unityshell options...done DEBUG 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib <unknown>:0 Setting to primary screen rect: x=0 y=0 w=1920 h=1080 WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 unity.favorites FavoriteStoreGSettings.cpp:138 Unable to load GDesktopAppInfo for 'bluefish.desktop' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 unity.favorites FavoriteStoreGSettings.cpp:138 Unable to load GDesktopAppInfo for 'filezilla.desktop' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 unity.favorites FavoriteStoreGSettings.cpp:138 Unable to load GDesktopAppInfo for 'gimp.desktop' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' WARN 2012-02-19 21:22:40 glib.glib-gobject <unknown>:0 invalid cast from `BamfWindow' to `BamfApplication' Setting Update "texture_filter" Setting Update "sync_to_vblank" Setting Update "fullscreen_visual_bell" Setting Update "panel_opacity" Setting Update "launcher_opacity" Setting Update "icon_size" WARN 2012-02-19 21:23:32 unity.glib.dbusproxy GLibDBusProxy.cpp:255 Cannot call method InfoRequest proxy /com/canonical/unity/lens/applications does not exist WARN 2012-02-19 21:23:32 unity.glib.dbusproxy GLibDBusProxy.cpp:255 Cannot call method SetActive proxy /com/canonical/unity/lens/applications does not exist WARN 2012-02-19 21:23:32 unity.glib.dbusproxy GLibDBusProxy.cpp:255 Cannot call method InfoRequest proxy /com/canonical/unity/lens/commands does not exist WARN 2012-02-19 21:23:32 unity.glib.dbusproxy GLibDBusProxy.cpp:255 Cannot call method SetActive proxy /com/canonical/unity/lens/commands does not exist WARN 2012-02-19 21:23:32 unity.glib.dbusproxy GLibDBusProxy.cpp:255 Cannot call method InfoRequest proxy /com/canonical/unity/lens/files does not exist WARN 2012-02-19 21:23:32 unity.glib.dbusproxy GLibDBusProxy.cpp:255 Cannot call method SetActive proxy /com/canonical/unity/lens/files does not exist WARN 2012-02-19 21:23:32 unity.glib.dbusproxy GLibDBusProxy.cpp:255 Cannot call method InfoRequest proxy /com/canonical/unity/lens/music does not exist WARN 2012-02-19 21:23:32 unity.glib.dbusproxy GLibDBusProxy.cpp:255 Cannot call method SetActive proxy /com/canonical/unity/lens/music does not exist WARN 2012-02-19 21:23:33 unity.iconloader IconLoader.cpp:509 Unable to load contents of file:///usr/share/icons/unity-icon-theme/places/svg/category-available.svg: Blad podczas otwierania pliku: Nie ma takiego pliku ani katalogu WARN 2012-02-19 21:23:33 unity.iconloader IconLoader.cpp:509 Unable to load contents of file:///usr/share/icons/unity-icon-theme/places/svg/category-installed.svg: Blad podczas otwierania pliku: Nie ma takiego pliku ani katalogu

    Read the article

  • BUILD 2013 - Microsoft Set to Unveil It&rsquo;s Reinvention

    - by D'Arcy Lussier
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/dlussier/archive/2013/06/24/153211.aspxSome thoughts as we head into BUILD this week… This week in San Francisco Microsoft will be hosting the BUILD conference. They’ll be talking up Windows 8.1 (Windows Blue), more Azure, some Windows Phone, XBox, Office 365… actually, they told us on the original BUILD announcement site what we’d be seeing:           While looking at this, consider a recent article from The Verge that talks about the speculation of a huge shake up at Microsoft . From the article: All Things D quotes one insider as saying they're "titanic" changes, noting they might be attached to Ballmer's legacy at the company. "It’s the first time in a long time that it feels like that there will be some major shifts, including some departures," says the alleged insider. Considering Ballmer let Sinofsky go right after the Windows 8 launch, the idea of Microsoft cutting loose some executives doesn’t seem to be big news. But the next piece of the article frames things more interestingly: Ballmer is reportedly considering a new structure that would create four separate divisions: enterprise business, hardware, applications and services, and an operating systems group. This statement got me thinking…what would this new structure look like? Below is one possibility: At a recent (this year or last year, I can’t recall which) Microsoft shareholder’s meeting, Ballmer made the statement that Microsoft is now a products and services company. At the time I don’t think I really let that statement sink in. Partially because I really liked the Microsoft of my professional youth – the one that was a software and platform company. In Canada, Microsoft has been pushing three platform areas: Lync, Azure, and SQL Server. I would expect those to change moving forward as Microsoft continues to look for Partners that will help them increase their Services revenue through solutions that incorporate/are based on Azure, Office 365, Lync, and Dynamics. I also wonder if we’re not seeing a culling of partners through changes to the Microsoft Partner Program. In addition to the changing certification requirements that align more to Microsoft’s goals (i.e. There is no desktop development based MCSD, only Windows 8 Store Apps), competencies that partners can qualify for are being merged, requirements changed, and licenses provided reduced. Ballmer warned as much at the last WPC though that they were looking for partners who were “all in” with Microsoft, and these programs seem to support that sentiment. Heading into BUILD this week, I’ll be looking to answer one question – what does it mean to be a Microsoft developer here in the 2010’s? What is the future of the Microsoft development platform? Sure, Visual Studio is still alive and well and Microsoft realizes that there’s a huge install base of .NET developers actively working on solutions. But they’ve ratcheted down the messaging around their development stack and instead focussed on promoting development for their platforms and services. Last year at BUILD with the release of Windows 8, Microsoft just breached the walls of its cocoon. After this BUILD and the organizational change announcements in July, we’ll see what Microsoft looks like fully emerged from its metamorphosis.

    Read the article

  • Silverlight Cream for April 02, 2010 -- #828

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Phil Middlemiss, Robert Kozak, Kathleen Dollard, Avi Pilosof, Nokola, Jeff Wilcox, David Anson, Timmy Kokke, Tim Greenfield, and Josh Smith. Shoutout: SmartyP has additional info up on his WP7 Pivot app: Preview of My Current Windows Phone 7 Pivot Work From SilverlightCream.com: A Chrome and Glass Theme - Part I Phil Middlemiss is starting a tutorial series on building a new theme for Silverlight, in this first one we define some gradients and color resources... good stuff Phil Intercepting INotifyPropertyChanged This is Robert Kozak's first post on this blog, but it's a good one about INotifyPropertyChanged and MVVM and has a solution in the post with lots of code and discussion. How do I Display Data of Complex Bound Criteria in Horizontal Lists in Silverlight? Kathleen Dollard's latest article in Visual Studio magazine is in answer to a question about displaying a list of complex bound criteria including data, child data, and photos, and displaying them horizontally one at a time. Very nice-looking result, and all the code. Windows Phone: Frame/Page navigation and transitions using the TransitioningContentControl Avi Pilosof discusses the built-in (boring) navigation on WP7, and then shows using the TransitionContentControl from the Toolkit to apply transitions to the navigation. EasyPainter: Cloud Turbulence and Particle Buzz Nokola returns with a couple more effects for EasyPainter: Cloud Turbulence and Particle Buzz ... check out the example screenshots, then go grab the code. Property change notifications for multithreaded Silverlight applications Jeff Wilcox is discussing the need for getting change notifications to always happen on the UI thread in multi-threaded apps... great diagrams to see what's going on. Tip: The default value of a DependencyProperty is shared by all instances of the class that registers it David Anson has a tip up about setting the default value of a DependencyProperty, and the consequence that may have depending upon the type. Building a “real” extension for Expression Blend Timmy Kokke's code is WPF, but the subject is near and dear to us all, Timmy has a real-world Expression Blend extension up... a search for controls in the Objects and Timelines pane ... and even if that doesn't interest you... it's the source to a Blend extension! XPath support in Silverlight 4 + XPathPad Tim Greenfield not only talks about XPath in SL4RC, but he has produced a tool, XPathPad, and provided the source... if you've used XPath, you either are a higher thinker than me(not a big stretch), or you need this :) Using a Service Locator to Work with MessageBoxes in an MVVM Application Josh Smith posted about a question that comes up a lot: showing a messagebox from a ViewModel object. This might not work for custom message boxes or unit testing. This post covers the Unit Testing aspect. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

    Read the article

  • Stackify Aims to Put More ‘Dev’ in ‘DevOps’

    - by Matt Watson
    Originally published on VisualStudioMagazine.com on 8/22/2012 by Keith Ward.The Kansas City-based startup wants to make it easier for developers to examine the network stack and find problems in code.The first part of “DevOps” is “Dev”. But according to Matt Watson, Devs aren’t connected enough with Ops, and it’s time that changed.He founded the startup company Stackify earlier this year to do something about it. Stackify gives developers unprecedented access to the IT side of the equation, Watson says, without putting additional burden on the system and network administrators who ultimately ensure the health of the environment.“We need a product designed for developers, with the goal of getting them more involved in operations and app support. Now, there’s next to nothing designed for developers,” Watson says. Stackify allows developers to search the network stack to troubleshoot problems in their software that might otherwise take days of coordination between development and IT teams to solve.Stackify allows developers to search log files, configuration files, databases and other infrastructure to locate errors. A key to this is that the developers are normally granted read-only access, soothing admin fears that developers will upload bad code to their servers.Implementation starts with data collection on the servers. Among the information gleaned is application discovery, server monitoring, file access, and other data collection, according to Stackify’s Web site. Watson confirmed that Stackify works seamlessly with virtualized environments as well.Although the data collection software must be installed on Windows servers, it can monitor both Windows and Linux servers. Once collection’s finished, developers have the kind of information they need, without causing heartburn for the IT staff.Stackify is a 100 percent cloud-based service. The company uses Windows Azure for hosting, a decision Watson’s happy with. With Azure, he says, “It’s nice to have all the dev tools like cache and table storage.” Although there have been a few glitches here and there with the service, it’s run very smoothly for the most part, he adds.Stackify is currently in a closed beta, with a public release scheduled for October. Watson says that pricing is expected to be $25 per month, per server, with volume discounts available. He adds that the target audience is companies with at least five developers.Watson founded Stackify after selling his last company, VinSolutions, to AutoTrader.com for “close to $150 million”, according to press accounts. Watson has since  founded the Watson Technology Group, which focuses on angel investing.About the Author: Keith Ward is the editor in chief of Visual Studio Magazine.

    Read the article

  • cocos2dx - Custom Fragment Shader and CCRenderTexture

    - by saiy2k
    I have a CCRenderTexture that is filled with a sprite when the scene is loaded, as follows, canvas = CCRenderTexture::create(this->getContentSize().width, this->getContentSize().height); canvas->setPosition(data->position); canvas->beginWithClear(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0); this->visit(); canvas->end(); The above code is written within a class, which derives from CCSprite (Hence this). Then, in another function applyShader(), I create a sprite named splat, from the texture of CCRenderTexture *canvas. Thus splat will contain the whole texture of canvas. Now I apply a custom fragment shader to the splat by calling the function splat->renderShader(), which will modify some small portion of the whole texture. Then I draw the modified texture back to the CCRenderTexture *canvas. Hence, applyShader() will * take a texture from CCRenderTexture, * create a sprite based on it, * apply a fragment shader to it * and draw the modified texture back to CCRenderTexture. This applyShader() will be called repetitively and its code is as follows: splat = Splat::createWithTexture(art->canvas->getSprite()->getTexture()); splat->renderShader(); art->canvas->begin(); splat->visit(); art->canvas->end(); My shader code is (nothing fancy) precision mediump float; varying vec2 v_texCoord; uniform sampler2D u_texture; uniform sampler2D u_colorRampTexture; uniform float params[5]; void main() { gl_FragColor = texture2D(u_texture, v_texCoord); return; } So, with the above code I expect the original sprite this to get rendered over and over again without any visual changes. But on each call to applyShader(), the texture is getting stretched a little and the stretched image is getting rendered. After some 10 calls, the image gets so distorted. Can someone please tell me where I am going wrong? Thanks :-) PS: All code shown here is partial, not complete code. Edit: Adding Screens Update: The problem has nothing to do with shaders it seems. It happens even when I dont call renderShader(). The actual lines of code is: splat = Splat::createWithTexture(art->canvas->getSprite()->getTexture()); splat->setPosition( ccp( art->getContentSize().width * 0.5, art->getContentSize().height * 0.5 ) ); splat->setFlipY(true); art->canvas->begin(); splat->visit(); art->canvas->end();

    Read the article

  • What’s new in Silverlight 4 RC?

    - by pluginbaby
    I am here in Las Vegas for MIX10 where Scott Guthrie announced today the release of Silverlight 4 RC and the Visual Studio 2010 tools. You can now install VS2010 RC!!! As always, downloads links are here: www.silverlight.net He also said that the final version of Silverlight 4 will come next month (so april)! 4 months ago, I wrote a blog post on the new features of Silverlight 4 beta, so… what’s new in the RC ?   Rich Text · RichTextArea renamed to RichTextBox · Text position and selection APIs · “Xaml” property for serializing text content · XAML clipboard format · FlowDirection support on Runs tag · “Format then type” support when dragging controls to the designer · Thai/Vietnamese/Indic support · UI Automation Text pattern   Networking · UploadProgress support (Client stack) · Caching support (Client stack) · Sockets security restrictions removal (Elevated Trust) · Sockets policy file retrieval via HTTP · Accept-Language header   Out of Browser (Elevated Trust) · XAP signing · Silent install and emulation mode · Custom window chrome · Better support for COM Automation · Cancellable shutdown event · Updated security dialogs   Media · Pinned full-screen mode on secondary display · Webcam/Mic configuration preview · More descriptive MediaSourceStream errors · Content & Output protection updates · Updates to H.264 content protection (ClearNAL) · Digital Constraint Token · CGMS-A · Multicast · Graphics card driver validation & revocation   Graphics and Printing · HW accelerated Perspective Transforms · Ability to query page size and printable area · Memory usage and perf improvements   Data · Entity-level validation support of INotifyDataErrorInfo for DataGrid · XPath support for XML   Parser · New architecture enables future innovation · Performance and stability improvements · XmlnsPrefix & XmlnsDefinition attributes · Support setting order-dependent properties   Globalization & Localization · Support for 31 new languages · Arabic, Hebrew and Thai input on Mac · Indic support   More … · Update to DeepZoom code base with HW acceleration · Support for Private mode browsing · Google Chrome support (Windows) · FrameworkElement.Unloaded event · HTML Hosting accessibility · IsoStore perf improvements · Native hosting perf improvements (e.g., Bing Toolbar) · Consistency with Silverlight for Mobile APIs and Tooling · SDK   - System.Numerics.dll   - Dynamic XAP support (MEF)   - Frame/Navigation refresh support   That’s a lot!   You will find more details on the following links: http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2010/03/15/whats-new-in-silverlight-4-rc-mix10.aspx http://www.davidpoll.com/2010/03/15/new-in-the-silverlight-4-rc-xaml-features/   Technorati Tags: Silverlight

    Read the article

  • Markus Zirn, "Big Data with CEP and SOA" @ SOA, Cloud &amp; Service Technology Symposium 2012

    - by JuergenKress
    ORACLE PROMOTIONAL DISCOUNT FOR EXCLUSIVE ORACLE DISCOUNT, ENTER PROMO CODE: DJMXZ370 Early-Bird Registration is Now Open with Special Pricing! Register before July 1, 2012 to qualify for discounts. Visit the Registration page for details. The International SOA, Cloud + Service Technology Symposium is a yearly event that features the top experts and authors from around the world, providing a series of keynotes, talks, demonstrations, and panels, as well as training and certification workshops - all dedicated to empowering IT professionals to realize modern service technologies and practices in the real world. Click here for a two-page printable conference overview (PDF). Big Data with CEP and SOA - September 25, 2012 - 14:15 Speaker: Markus Zirn, Oracle and Baz Kuthi, Avocent The "Big Data" trend is driving new kinds of IT projects that process machine-generated data. Such projects store and mine using Hadoop/ Map Reduce, but they also analyze streaming data via event-driven patterns, which can be called "Fast Data" complementary to "Big Data". This session highlights how "Big Data" and "Fast Data" design patterns can be combined with SOA design principles into modern, event-driven architectures. We will describe specific architectures that combines CEP, Distributed Caching, Event-driven Network, SOA Composites, Application Development Framework, as well as Hadoop. Architecture patterns include pre-processing and filtering event streams as close as possible to the event source, in memory master data for event pattern matching, event-driven user interfaces as well as distributed event processing. Focus is on how "Fast Data" requirements are elegantly integrated into a traditional SOA architecture. Markus Zirn is Vice President of Product Management covering Oracle SOA Suite, SOA Governance, Application Integration Architecture, BPM, BPM Solutions, Complex Event Processing and UPK, an end user learning solution. He is the author of “The BPEL Cookbook” (rated best book on Services Oriented Architecture in 2007) as well as “Fusion Middleware Patterns”. Previously, he was a management consultant with Booz Allen & Hamilton’s High Tech practice in Duesseldorf as well as San Francisco and Vice President of Product Marketing at QUIQ. Mr. Zirn holds a Masters of Electrical Engineering from the University of Karlsruhe and is an alumnus of the Tripartite program, a joint European degree from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, the University of Southampton, UK, and ESIEE, France. KEYNOTES & SPEAKERS More than 80 international subject matter experts will be speaking at the Symposium. Below are confirmed keynotes and speakers so far. Over 50% of the agenda has not yet been finalized. Many more speakers to come. View the partial program calendars on the Conference Agenda page. CONFERENCE THEMES & TRACKS Cloud Computing Architecture & Patterns New SOA & Service-Orientation Practices & Models Emerging Service Technology Innovation Service Modeling & Analysis Techniques Service Infrastructure & Virtualization Cloud-based Enterprise Architecture Business Planning for Cloud Computing Projects Real World Case Studies Semantic Web Technologies (with & without the Cloud) Governance Frameworks for SOA and/or Cloud Computing Projects Service Engineering & Service Programming Techniques Interactive Services & the Human Factor New REST & Web Services Tools & Techniques Oracle Specialized SOA & BPM Partners Oracle Specialized partners have proven their skills by certifications and customer references. To find a local Specialized partner please visit http://solutions.oracle.com SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: Markus Zirn,SOA Symposium,Thomas Erl,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,BPM Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

    Read the article

  • Best of "The Moth" 2010

    - by Daniel Moth
    It is the time again (like in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) to look back at my blog for the past year and identify areas of interest that seem to be more prominent than others. After doing so, representative posts follow in my top 5 list (in random order). 1. This was the year where I had to move for the first time since 2004 my blog engine (blogger.com –> dasBlog), host provider (zen –> godaddy), web server technology and OS (apache on Linux –> IIS on Windows Server). My goal was not to break any permalinks or the look and feel of this website. A series of posts covered how I achieved that goal, culminating in a tool for others to use if they wanted to do the same: Tool to convert blogger.com content to dasBlog. Going forward I aim to be sharing more small code utilities like that one… 2. At work I am known for being fairly responsive on email, and more importantly never dropping email balls on the floor. This is due to my email processing system, which I shared here: Processing Email in Outlook. I will be sharing more tips with regards to making the best of the Office products. 3. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the year people will remember as the one where Microsoft finally fights back in the mobile space. Even though the new platform means my Windows Mobile book sales will dwindle :-), I am ecstatic about Windows Phone 7 both as a consumer and as a developer. On the release day, to get you started I shared the top 10 Windows Phone 7 developer resources. I will be sharing my tips from my experience in writing code for and consuming this new platform… 4. For my HPC developer friends using Visual Studio, I shared Slides and code for MPI Cluster Debugger and also gave you all the links you need for getting started with Dryad and DryadLINQ from MSR. Expect more from me on cluster development in the coming year… 5. Still in the HPC space, but actually also in the game and even mainstream development, the big disruption and opportunity comes in the form of GPGPU and, on the Microsoft platform, (currently) DirectCompute. Expect more from me on gpgpu development in the coming year… Subscribe via the link on the left to stay tuned for 2011… I wish you a very Happy New Year (with whatever definition of happiness works for you)! Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

    Read the article

  • Databases in Source Control

    - by Grant Fritchey
    I’ve been working as a database professional for quite a long time. But originally, I was a developer. And I loved being a developer. There was this constant feedback loop of a job well done, your code compiled and it ran. Every time this happened successfully, you’d check it into source control. These days you have to add another step; the code passed all the tests, unit, line, regression, qa, whatever, then into source control it goes. As a matter of fact, when I first made the jump from developer to DBA/database developer/database professional, source control was the one thing I couldn’t believe was missing from the DBA toolbox. Come to find out, source control was only the beginning of what was missing from your standard DBAs set of skills. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not disrespecting the DBA. They’re focused where they should be, on your production data. But there has to be a method for developing applications that include databases and the database side of that development and deployment process has long been lacking. This lack of development and deployment methodologies is a part of what has given rise to some of the wackier implementations of Object Relational Mapping tools, the NoSQL movement, and some of the other foul cursing that is directed towards databases, DBAs, and database development by application developers. Some of that is well earned. A lot isn’t. But it is a fact that database professionals, in general, do not have as sophisticated a model for managing development and deployment as application developers do. We could charge out and start trying to come up with our own standards and methods. I’m sure people have done exactly that. However, I’m lazy, and not terribly bright. Rather than try to invent a whole new process, I’m going to look to my developer roots and choose instead to emulate the developers. They’re sitting over there across the hall from me working with SCRUM/Agile/Waterfall/Object Driven/Feature Driven/Test Driven development processes that they’ve been polishing for years. What if I just started working on database development the same way they work on code development? Win! Ah, but now I have to have a mechanism for treating my database like application code. First, I need a method for getting it into source control. That’s where Red Gate’s SQL Source Control comes into the picture. SQL Source Control works within SQL Server Management Studio to connect your database objects up to the source control system of your choice. Right out of the box SQL Source Control can link to TFS, SVN or Vault. With a little work you can connect it to Git or just about any other source control system. With the ability to get my database into source control, a lot of possibilities for more direct integration with the application development teams open up.

    Read the article

  • “I could use a little help here” or “I can do it myself, thank you” for Cloud Projects

    - by BuckWoody
    Windows Azure allows you to write code in languages within the .NET stack, you can use Java, C++, PHP, NodeJS and others. Code is code - other than keeping things stateless, using a Web or Worker Role in Azure is not all that different from working with an on-premises system. However…. Working in a scalable, component-based stateless architecture that can use federated security is not all that common for many developers. Some are used to owning the server, scaling up, and state-full paradigms that have a single security domain. Making the transition whilst trying to create a new software application or even port a previous one can be daunting. Sure, we have absolutely tons of free training, kits, videos, online books and more to learn on your own, but some things like architecture can be pivotal as you move along. So the question is, should you just strike out on your own for a Cloud project, or get Microsoft Consulting Services or another partner to work with you on your first one? I use a few decision points to help guide the projects I assist in. Note: I’m a huge fan of having help that ends up giving you training and leaves you in charge. If you do engage with someone to help you, make sure you keep this clear and take more and more ownership yourself as the project progresses. How much time do you have? Usually the first thing I ask is about the timeline for the project. It doesn’t matter how skilled you are, if you have a short window to get things done it’s better to get help - especially if this is your first cloud project. Having someone that knows the platform well can save you amazing amounts of time. If you have longer, then start with the training in the link above and once you feel confident, jump in. How complex is the project? If there are a lot of moving parts, it’s best to engage a partner. The reason is that certain interactions - particularly things like Service Bus or Data Integration  - can be quite different than what you may have encountered before. How many people do you have? I have a “pizza rule” about projects I’ve used in my career - if it takes over two pizzas to feed everyone on the project, it’s too big and will fail. That being said, one developer and a one-week deadline does not a good project make, usually. It’s best to have at least one architect (or someone in that role) guiding the project along, and at least two developers to work on a cloud project. That’s a generalization of course, since I’ve seen great software on Azure with one developer writing code all by herself, but for more complex projects, more (to a point) is better. The nice thing about bringing on a partner is that you don’t have to hire them full time - they help you and then they go away. How critical is the project? There’s no shame in using some help. If the platform is new, if the project is large and complex, and if it is critical to the business, you should engage a partner. That’s regardless of Cloud or anything else - get some help. You don’t want to hit your company’s bottom line in a negative way, but you have to innovate and get them a competitive advantage. Do your research, make sure the partner is qualified to help you, and get it done. Don’t let these questions scare you off. There are lots of projects you can implement on Windows and SQL Azure with nothing other than the Software Development Kit (SDK) that you get for free with Windows Azure. And assistance comes in many forms - sometimes just phone support, a friend you can ask. Microsoft Consulting Services or any of our great partners. You can get help on just the architecture piece or have them show you how to write the code. They’ll get involved as little or as much as you like.

    Read the article

  • Oracle BI and XS Energy Drinks – Don’t Miss the Amway Presentation!

    - by Michelle Kimihira
    By Maria Forney Amway is a global leader in the direct sales industry with $10.9B in annual sales in more than 100 countries and territories. The company has implemented a global BI framework that provides accurate, consistent, and timely insights to support global, regional and local analytical research, business planning, performance measurement and assessment. Oracle BI EE is used by 1500 employees across Amway sales, marketing, finance, and supply chain business units as well as Amway affiliates in Europe, Russia, South Africa, Japan, Australia, Latin America, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Last week, I spoke with Lead Data Analyst with Amway Global Sales, Dan Arganbright, and IT Manager with Amway BI Competency Center, Mike Olson, about their upcoming presentation at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco. Scheduled during a prime speaking slot on Monday, October 1 at 12:15pm in Moscone West, 2007, Dan and Mike will discuss their experience building Amway’s Distributor Consulting solution, powered by Oracle BI EE. You can find more information here. As background, Amway offers people an opportunity to own their own businesses and consumers exclusive products in health and wellness, beauty and home care.  The Amway internal Sales organization is charged with consulting leadership-level Distributors to help them with data insights and ultimately grow their business. Until recently, this was a resource-intense process of gathering and formatting data. In some markets, it took over 40 hours to collect the data and produce the analysis needed for one consultation session. Amway began its global BI journey in 2006 and since then the company has migrated from having multiple technology providers and integration points to an integrated strategic vendor approach. Today, the company has standardized on Oracle technology for BI.  Amway has achieved cost savings through the retirement of redundant technology platforms. In addition, Mike’s organization has led the charge to align disparate BI organizations into a BI Competency Center.  The following diagram highlights the simplicity of the standardized architecture of Amway today. Dubbed Distributor Consulting, Amway has developed a BI solution using the Oracle technology stack to help Distributor leaders grow their businesses. The Distributor Consulting solution provides over 40 metrics for Sales staff to provide data-driven insights on the Distributors and organizations they support.  Using Oracle BI EE, Exadata, and Oracle Data Integrator, Amway provides customized and personalized business intelligence, and the Oracle BI EE dashboards were developed by the Amway Sales organization, which demonstrates business empowerment of the technology. Amway is also leveraging the power of BI to drive business growth in all of its markets.  A new set of Distributor Segmentation metrics are enabling a better understanding of distributor behaviors. A Global Scorecard that Amway developed provides key metrics at a market and global level for executive-level discussions. Product Analysis teams can now highlight repeat purchase rates, product penetration and the success of CRM campaigns. In the words of Dan and Mike, the addition of Exadata 11 months ago has been “a game changer.”  Amway has been able to dramatically reduce complexity, improve performance and increase business productivity and cost savings. For example, the number of indexes on the global data warehouse was reduced from more than 1,000 to less than 20.  Pulling data for the highest level distributors or the largest markets in the company now can be done in minutes instead of hours.  As a result, IT has shifted from performance tuning and keeping the system operational to higher-value business-focused activities. •       “The distributors that have been introduced to the BI reports have found them extremely helpful. Because they have never had this kind of information before, when they were presented with the reports, they wanted to take action immediately!”  -     Sales Development Manager in Latin America Without giving away more, the Amway case study presentation will be one of the unique customer sessions at OpenWorld this year. Speakers Dan Arganbright and Mike Olson have planned an interactive and entertaining session on Monday October 1 at 12:15pm in Moscone West, 2007. I’ll see you there!

    Read the article

  • Oracle BI and XS Energy Drinks – Don’t Miss the Amway Presentation!

    - by Maria Forney
    Amway is a global leader in the direct sales industry with $10.9B in annual sales in more than 100 countries and territories. The company has implemented a global BI framework that provides accurate, consistent, and timely insights to support global, regional and local analytical research, business planning, performance measurement and assessment. Oracle BI EE is used by 1500 employees across Amway sales, marketing, finance, and supply chain business units as well as Amway affiliates in Europe, Russia, South Africa, Japan, Australia, Latin America, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Last week, I spoke with Lead Data Analyst with Amway Global Sales, Dan Arganbright, and IT Manager with Amway BI Competency Center, Mike Olson, about their upcoming presentation at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco. Scheduled during a prime speaking slot on Monday, October 1 at 12:15pm in Moscone West, 2007, Dan and Mike will discuss their experience building Amway’s Distributor Consulting solution, powered by Oracle BI EE. You can find more information here. As background, Amway offers people an opportunity to own their own businesses and consumers exclusive products in health and wellness, beauty and home care.  The Amway internal Sales organization is charged with consulting leadership-level Distributors to help them with data insights and ultimately grow their business. Until recently, this was a resource-intense process of gathering and formatting data. In some markets, it took over 40 hours to collect the data and produce the analysis needed for one consultation session. Amway began its global BI journey in 2006 and since then the company has migrated from having multiple technology providers and integration points to an integrated strategic vendor approach. Today, the company has standardized on Oracle technology for BI.  Amway has achieved cost savings through the retirement of redundant technology platforms. In addition, Mike’s organization has led the charge to align disparate BI organizations into a BI Competency Center.  The following diagram highlights the simplicity of the standardized architecture of Amway today. Dubbed Distributor Consulting, Amway has developed a BI solution using the Oracle technology stack to help Distributor leaders grow their businesses. The Distributor Consulting solution provides over 40 metrics for Sales staff to provide data-driven insights on the Distributors and organizations they support.  Using Oracle BI EE, Exadata, and Oracle Data Integrator, Amway provides customized and personalized business intelligence, and the Oracle BI EE dashboards were developed by the Amway Sales organization, which demonstrates business empowerment of the technology. Amway is also leveraging the power of BI to drive business growth in all of its markets.  A new set of Distributor Segmentation metrics are enabling a better understanding of distributor behaviors. A Global Scorecard that Amway developed provides key metrics at a market and global level for executive-level discussions. Product Analysis teams can now highlight repeat purchase rates, product penetration and the success of CRM campaigns. In the words of Dan and Mike, the addition of Exadata 11 months ago has been “a game changer.”  Amway has been able to dramatically reduce complexity, improve performance and increase business productivity and cost savings. For example, the number of indexes on the global data warehouse was reduced from more than 1,000 to less than 20.  Pulling data for the highest level distributors or the largest markets in the company now can be done in minutes instead of hours.  As a result, IT has shifted from performance tuning and keeping the system operational to higher-value business-focused activities. •       “The distributors that have been introduced to the BI reports have found them extremely helpful. Because they have never had this kind of information before, when they were presented with the reports, they wanted to take action immediately!”  -     Sales Development Manager in Latin America Without giving away more, the Amway case study presentation will be one of the unique customer sessions at OpenWorld this year. Speakers Dan Arganbright and Mike Olson have planned an interactive and entertaining session on Monday October 1 at 12:15pm in Moscone West, 2007. I’ll see you there!

    Read the article

  • A few things I learned regarding Azure billing policies

    - by Vincent Grondin
    An hour of small computing time: 0,12$ per hour A Gig of storage in the cloud: 0,15$ per hour 1 Gig of relational database using Azure SQL: 9,99$  per month A Visual Studio Professional with MSDN Premium account: 2500$ per year Winning an MSDN Professional account that comes preloaded with 750 free hours of Azure per month:  PRICELESS !!!      But was it really free???? Hmmm… Let’s see.....   Here's a few things I learned regarding Azure billing policies when I attended a promotional training at Microsoft last week...   1)  An instance deployed in the cloud really means whatever you upload in there... it doesn't matter if it's in STAGING OR PRODUCTION!!!!   Your MSDN account comes with 750 free hours of small computing time per month which should be enough hours per month for one instance of one application deployed in the cloud...  So we're cool, the application you run in the cloud doesn't cost you a penny....  BUT the one that's in staging is still consuming time!!!   So if you don’t want to end up having to pay 42$ at the end of the month on your credit card like this happened to a friend of mine, DELETE them staging applications once you’ve put them in production! This also applies to the instance count you can modify in the configuration file… So stop and think before you decide you want to spawn 50 of those hello world apps  .     2) If you have an MSDN account, then you have the promotional 750 hours of Azure credits per month and can use the Azure credits to explore the Cloud! But be aware, this promotion ends in 8 months (maybe more like 7 now) and then you will most likely go back to the standard 250 hours of Azure credits. If you do not delete your applications by then, you’ll get billed for the extra hours, believe me…   There is a switch that you can toggle and which will STOP your automatic enrollment after the promotion and prevent you from renewing the Azure Account automatically. Yes the default setting is to automatically renew your account and remember, you entered your credit card information in the registration process so, yes, you WILL be billed…  Go disable that ASAP    Log into your account, go to “Windows Azure Platform” then click the “Subscriptions” tab and on the right side, you’ll see a drop down with different “Actions” into it… Choose “Opt out of auto renew” and, NOW you’re safe…   Still, this is a great offer by Microsoft and I think everyone that has a chance should play a bit with Azure to get to know this technology a bit more...     Happy Cloud Computing All

    Read the article

  • OWB 11gR2 &ndash; OLAP and Simba

    - by David Allan
    Oracle Warehouse Builder was the first ETL product to provide a single integrated and complete environment for managing enterprise data warehouse solutions that also incorporate multi-dimensional schemas. The OWB 11gR2 release provides Oracle OLAP 11g deployment for multi-dimensional models (in addition to support for prior releases of OLAP). This means users can easily utilize Simba's MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP (see here for details and cost) which allows you to use the powerful and popular ad hoc query and analysis capabilities of Microsoft Excel PivotTables® and PivotCharts® with your Oracle OLAP business intelligence data. The extensions to the dimensional modeling capabilities have been built on established relational concepts, with the option to seamlessly move from a relational deployment model to a multi-dimensional model at the click of a button. This now means that ETL designers can logically model a complete data warehouse solution using one single tool and control the physical implementation of a logical model at deployment time. As a result data warehouse projects that need to provide a multi-dimensional model as part of the overall solution can be designed and implemented faster and more efficiently. Wizards for dimensions and cubes let you quickly build dimensional models and realize either relationally or as an Oracle database OLAP implementation, both 10g and 11g formats are supported based on a configuration option. The wizard provides a good first cut definition and the objects can be further refined in the editor. Both wizards let you choose the implementation, to deploy to OLAP in the database select MOLAP: multidimensional storage. You will then be asked what levels and attributes are to be defined, by default the wizard creates a level bases hierarchy, parent child hierarchies can be defined in the editor. Once the dimension or cube has been designed there are special mapping operators that make it easy to load data into the objects, below we load a constant value for the total level and the other levels from a source table.   Again when the cube is defined using the wizard we can edit the cube and define a number of analytic calculations by using the 'generate calculated measures' option on the measures panel. This lets you very easily add a lot of rich analytic measures to your cube. For example one of the measures is the percentage difference from a year ago which we can see in detail below. You can also add your own custom calculations to leverage the capabilities of the Oracle OLAP option, either by selecting existing template types such as moving averages to defining true custom expressions. The 11g OLAP option now supports percentage based summarization (the amount of data to precompute and store), this is available from the option 'cost based aggregation' in the cube's configuration. Ensure all measure-dimensions level based aggregation is switched off (on the cube-dimension panel) - previously level based aggregation was the only option. The 11g generated code now uses the new unified API as you see below, to generate the code, OWB needs a valid connection to a real schema, this was not needed before 11gR2 and is a new requirement since the OLAP API which OWB uses is not an offline one. Once all of the objects are deployed and the maps executed then we get to the fun stuff! How can we analyze the data? One option which is powerful and at many users' fingertips is using Microsoft Excel PivotTables® and PivotCharts®, which can be used with your Oracle OLAP business intelligence data by utilizing Simba's MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP (see Simba site for details of cost). I'll leave the exotic reporting illustrations to the experts (see Bud's demonstration here), but with Simba's MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP its very simple to easily access the analytics stored in the database (all built and loaded via the OWB 11gR2 release) and get the regular features of Excel at your fingertips such as using the conditional formatting features for example. That's a very quick run through of the OWB 11gR2 with respect to Oracle 11g OLAP integration and the reporting using Simba's MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP. Not a deep-dive in any way but a quick overview to illustrate the design capabilities and integrations possible.

    Read the article

  • Ask the Readers: Do You Prefer Computers, Game Consoles, or Other Devices for Your Gaming Needs?

    - by Asian Angel
    Nearly everyone who has access to a computer will play games on it at some point, but many people also use a separate game platform as well. What we would like to know this week is if you prefer using a computer, game consoles, or other devices for your gaming needs. Photo of Faith and Kate Connors from Mirror’s Edge by Tamahikari Tammas. Video games are a perfect way to relax and have fun at home (or at work if you can sneak in some game time!). The increasing variety of devices available with each passing year are making it easier to have access to a gaming platform to suit your needs or “darkest gaming desires”. For many people their computers are the perfect platform…they can play Flash-based games in their browsers, use the default set of games that come with their system, and install any extras that catch their eyes. The added benefit is that when game time is over they can drop right into their browsing, e-mail, personal projects, or work without having to switch hardware. The convenience of the “all-in-one” platform is certainly appealing! Perhaps you prefer to use your computer for other activities outside of gaming and own one or more separate game consoles. You might have chosen an Xbox, Playstation, or Nintendo for example. Maybe a hand-held is preferable for its’ size and portability. Then there are mobile phones and the iPad… With so many options it may feel hard to choose the right platform(s) without a good bit of research regarding display, availability of games for a particular platform, how long before the platform starts to become “obsolete”, etc. What we would like to know this week is which gaming platform you prefer. Is there only one that you choose to use or do you use multiple platforms for gaming? Is there a particular reason such as convenience for your choices? You may even be keeping an older platform around just for a certain game (or games) made for it. Are there any recommendations or advice that you would like to share with your fellow readers? Let us know in the comments! How-To Geek Polls require Javascript. Please Click Here to View the Poll. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 Apture Highlights Turns Your Cursor into a Search Tool Add Classic Sci-Fi Goodness to Your Desktop with the Matrix Theme for Windows 7 You Can’t Walk Straight without Visual Markers [Video] Lord of the Rings Movie Parody Double Feature [Video] Turn a Webpage into an Asteroids-Styled Shooting Game in Opera Dolphin Browser Mini Leaves Beta; Sports New GUI, Easy Bookmarking, and More

    Read the article

  • NServiceBus Generic Host and mqsvc.exe high CPU

    - by Michael Stephenson
    We have been doing some work with NServiceBus recently and observed some unusual behaviour which was caused by our mistake and seemed worthy of a small post.   The Scenario In our solution we were doing some standard NServiceBus stuff by pushing a message to a queue using NServiceBus.  We had a direct send/receive scenario rather than a publish/subscribe one.   The background process which was meant to collect the message and then process it was a normal NServiceBus message handler.  We would run the NServiceBus.Host.exe which would find the handler and then do the usual NServiceBus magic.   The Problem In this solution we were creating some automated tests around this module of the integration process to ensure that it would work well.  We had two tests.   Test 1 This test would start NServiceBus.Host.exe using the Process object, then seed a message to the queue via our web service façade sitting above the queue which wrapped NServiceBus.  The background process would then process the message and the test would check the message had been processed fine.   If all was well then the NServiceBus.Host.exe process was stopped.   Test 2 In test 2 we would do a very similar thing except that instead of starting the process the test would install NServiceBus.Host.exe as a windows service and then start the service before the test and once the test was executed it would stop the test.   The Results of the Tests Test 1 worked really well, however in test 2 we found that it didn’t really work at all, instead of doing the background process we were finding that between mqsvc.exe and NServiceBus.Host.exe the CPU on the machine was maxed and nothing was really happening.   The Solution After trying a few things we found it was the permissions on the queue were not set correctly.  Once this was resolved it all worked fine and CPU was not excessive and ran just like the console application.   I think the couple of take aways from this are:   Make sure you set the windows service for NserviceBus Generic Host to the right credentials When you install the generic host as a windows service then by default it will use the default windows credentials.  For any production like scenario you should be using a domain account to run the process as via the windows service. Make sure you have the queue set with the right permissions For the credentials you have used to configure the generic host as a windows service you should ensure that this user has the appropriate permissions for any queues it will interact with. Make sure you turn on the right logging configuration in NServiceBus When this wasnt working correctly we didnt know there was an issue, we were just experiencing the high CPU condition.  I am a little surprised that there wasnt something logged and that the process didnt crash.  I guess this could be by design bearing in mind that the process could be monitoring many queues.  In this point Im just saying that originally we didnt have all of the log4net logging which is available from NServiceBus turned on.  Its probably a good idea to have this turned on and configured until you are happy your solution is working fine.   Thanks to Ahmed Hashmi on my team who got this working in the end.

    Read the article

  • Today's Links (6/29/2011)

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Event-Driven SOA: Events meet Services | Guido Schmutz Oracle ACE Director Guido Schmutz shows you how to achieve extreme loose coupling within a Service-Oriented Architecture by using event-driven interactions. Misconceptions About Software Architecture | Sanjeev Kumar A concise, to-the-point, and informative article by Sanjeev Kumar. Good Leaders Acknowledge What Can't Be Done - Jeffrey Pfeffer - Harvard Business Review "None of us likes to admit to bad decisions," says Jeffrey Pfeffer. "But imagine how much harder that is for someone who has been chosen to lead a large organization precisely because he or she is thought to have the power to see the future more clearly and chart a wise course." Suboptimal Thinking within Enterprise Architecture | James McGovern McGovern says: "We need to remember that enterprises live and thrive beyond just the current person at the helm." Boundaryless Information Flow | Richard Veryard "If all the boundaries are removed or porous, then the (extended) enterprise or ecosystem becomes like a giant sponge, in which all information permeates the whole," Veryard says. "Some people may think that's a good idea, but it's not what I'd call loose coupling." Coming to a City Near You: Oracle Business Analytics Summits | Rob Reynolds This series of events includes a Technology and Architecture track. New Date for Implementation of Sun Hands-On Course Requirement (Oracle Certification) As announced on the Oracle Certification website, Java Architect, Java Developer, Solaris System Administrator and Solaris Security Administrator certification tracks will include a new mandatory course attendance requirement. VirtualBox 4.0.10 is now available for download | Bob Netherton Netherton shares information on the new release. Updated Technical Best Practices whitepaper | Anthony Shorten The Technical Best Practices whitepaper has been updated with the latest advice. "New advice includes new installation advice, advanced settings, new security settings and advice for both Oracle WebLogic and IBM WebSphere installations," says Shorten. Kscope 11 ADF, AIA and Business Rules | Peter Paul van de Beek Whitehorses Solution Architect Peter Paul van de Beek shares his impressions of KScope11 presentations by Markus Eisele, Sten Vesterli, and Edwin Biemond. Amazon AWS for the learning experience | Andrej Koelewijn "Using AWS changes your expectations how your internal data center should operate," says Koelewijn. BPMN is dead, long live BPEL! (SOA Partner Community Blog) Jürgen Kress shares information -- including a long list of speakers -- for the SOA & BPM Integration Days 2011 conference, October 12th & 13th 2011 in Düsseldorf. InfoQ: HTML5 and the Dawn of Rich Mobile Web Applications James Pearce introduces cross-platform web apps development using HTML5 and web frameworks, such as jQTouch, jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, PhoneGap, outlining what makes a good framework. InfoQ: Interview and Book Excerpt: CMMI for Development "Frameworks like TOGAF are used to define an architecture that aligns IT assets and resources to support key business needs and processes of key stakeholders," says SEI's Mike Konrad. "But the individual application systems, capabilities, services, networks, and other IT assets and infrastructure still need to be acquired, developed, or sustained." InfoQ: Architecting a Cloud-Scale Identity Fabric | Eric Olden "The most cited reason for not moving to the cloud is concern about security," says Olden. "In particular, managing user identity and access in the cloud is a tough problem to solve and a big security concern for organizations."

    Read the article

  • Silverlight Cream for March 05, 2010 -- #807

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Phil Middlemiss(-2-, -3-), Pencho Popadiyn, John Papa(-2-, -3-), Jim Lynn, and SilverLaw(-2-). Shoutouts: Walt Ritscher has added more shaders and features: Shazzam 1.2 – Feature Overview I hope you're getting as excited as I am about MIX10. You should be reading MIX10 News and checking out the sessions and the directory of attendees. From SilverlightCream.com: Watermarked TextBox Part I Phil Middlemiss's Orb Radio Button hit number two in the Silverlight Cream Skim page, in 2 days... now Phil has a very nice 3-part tutorial up on creating a Watermarked TextBox with lots of cool features. This is part 1 and starts the series off. Watermarked TextBox Part II In Phil Middlemiss's Part II of the Watermarked TextBox tutorial, he's concentrating on visual elements of the control began in the last episode... you're paying attention, right? ... this is a cool control :) Watermarked Textbox Part III In the final part of Phil Middlemiss's tutorial series, he's wiring all the pieces together in the UserControl. Go grab the control, then leave Phil some love on his blog! Using Reactive Extensions in Silverlight Pencho Popadiyn has a great tutorial up on SilverlightShow about Rx ... if you want to get your arms around this... this tutorial is a good place to begin. Silverlight TV 10: Silverlight Hyper Video Platform with Jesse Liberty Running a little behind here, but check out John Papa and THE Silverlight GeekTM Jesse Liberty discussing Jesse's Hyper Video Platform on Silverlight TV Silverlight TV 11: Dynamically Loading XAPs with MEF In Silverlight TV episode 11, John Papa talks to Glenn Block about MEF and partitioning and dynamically loading XAPs ... good stuff. Silverlight TV 12: The Best Blend 3 Video Ever! And the latest Silverlight TV episode, number 12, has John Papa and Adam Kinney giving "The Best Blend 3 Video ever (or at least on Silverlight TV)"... check out the list of topics and you'll want to watch :) InvalidOperation_EnumFailedVersion when binding data to a Silverlight Chart Read Jim Lynn's post about a problem found while deploying his app, the very confusing (long) error, and the workaround. Leather Stamped Style Series For Silverlight Controls - Part 1 SilverLaw contued after his 'leather stamped' textbox and has added TextBlock, Button and some template bindings... check it out then get it at the Expression Gallery Circular Accordion Style Silverlight 3 SilverLaw also built a Circualar Accordian style... interesting idea and once again it, in the Expression Gallery. He's also looking for feedback. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    MIX10

    Read the article

  • Using NServiceBus behind a custom web service

    - by Michael Stephenson
    In this post I'd like to talk about an architecture scenario we had recently and how we were able to utilise NServiceBus to help us address this problem. Scenario Cognos is a reporting system used by one of my clients. A while back we developed a web service façade to allow line of business applications to be able to access reports from Cognos to support their various functions. The service was intended to provide access to reports which were quick running reports or pre-generated reports which could be accessed real-time on demand. One of the key aims of the web service was to provide a simple generic interface to allow applications to get any report without needing to worry about the complex .net SDK for Cognos. The web service also supported multi-hop kerberos delegation so that report data could be accesses under the context of the end user. This service was working well for a period of time. The Problem The problem we encountered was that reports were now also required to be available to batch processes. The original design was optimised for low latency so users would enjoy a positive experience, however when the batch processes started to request 250+ concurrent reports over an extended period of time you can begin to imagine the sorts of problems that come into play. The key problems this new scenario caused are: Users may be affected and the latency of on demand reports was significantly slower The Cognos infrastructure was not scaled sufficiently to be able to cope with these long peaks of load From a cost perspective it just isn't feasible to scale the Cognos infrastructure to be able to handle the load when it is only for a couple of hour window each night. We really needed to introduce a second pattern for accessing this service which would support high through-put scenarios. We also had little control over the batch process in terms of being able to throttle its load. We could however make some changes to the way it accessed the reports. The Approach My idea was to introduce a throttling mechanism between the Web Service Façade and Cognos. This would allow the batch processes to push reports requests hard at the web service which we were confident the web service can handle. The web service would then queue these requests and process them behind the scenes and make a call back to the batch application to provide the report once it had been accessed. In terms of technology we had some limitations because we were not able to use WCF or IIS7 where the MSMQ-Activated WCF services could have helped, but we did have MSMQ as an option and I thought NServiceBus could do just the job to help us here. The flow of how this would work was as follows: The batch applications would send a request for a report to the web service The web service uses NServiceBus to send the message to a Queue The NServiceBus Generic Host is running as a windows service with a message handler which subscribes to these messages The message handler gets the message, accesses the report from Cognos The message handler calls back to the original batch application, this is decoupled because the calling application provides a call back url The report gets into the batch application and is processed as normal This approach looks something like the below diagram: The key points are an application wanting to take advantage of the batch driven reports needs to do the following: Implement our call back contract Make a call to the service providing a call back url Provide a correlation ID so it knows how to tie each response back to its request What does NServiceBus offer in this solution So this scenario is not the typical messaging service bus type of solution people implement with NServiceBus, but it did offer the following: Simplified interaction with MSMQ Offered the ability to configure the number of processes working through the queue so we could find a balance between load on Cognos versus the applications end to end processing time NServiceBus offers retries and a way to manage failed messages NServiceBus offers a high availability setup The simple thing is that NServiceBus gave us the platform to build the solution on. We just implemented a message handler which functionally processed a message and we could rely on NServiceBus to do all of the hard work around managing the queues and all of the lower level things that would have took ages to write to any kind of robust level. Conclusion With this approach we were able to deal with a fairly significant performance issue with out too much rework. Hopefully this write up gives people some insight into ideas on how to leverage the excellent NServiceBus framework to help solve integration and high through-put scenarios.

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 680 681 682 683 684 685 686 687 688 689 690 691  | Next Page >