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  • Perfect Your MySQL Database Administrators Skills

    - by Antoinette O'Sullivan
    With its proven ease-of-use, performance, and scalability, MySQL has become the leading database choice for web-based applications, used by high profile web properties including Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and thousands of mid-sized companies. Many organizations deploy both Oracle Database and MySQL side by side to serve different needs, and as a database professional you can find training courses on both topics at Oracle University! Check out the upcoming Oracle Database training courses and MySQL training courses. Even if you're only managing Oracle Databases at this point of time, getting familiar with MySQL Database will broaden your career path with growing job demand. Hone your skills as a MySQL Database Administrator by taking the MySQL for Database Administrators course which teaches you how to secure privileges, set resource limitations, access controls and describe backup and recovery basics. You also learn how to create and use stored procedures, triggers and views. You can take this 5 day course through three delivery methods: Training-on-Demand: Take this course at your own pace and at a time that suits you through this high-quality streaming video delivery. You also get to schedule time on a classroom environment to perform the hands-on exercises. Live-Virtual: Attend a live instructor led event from your own desk. 100s of events already of the calendar in many timezones. In-Class: Travel to an education center to attend this class. A sample of events is shown below:  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Budapest, Hungary  26 November 2012  Hungarian  Prague, Czech Republic  19 November 2012  Czech  Warsaw, Poland  10 December 2012  Polish  Belfast, Northern Ireland  26 November, 2012  English  London, England  26 November, 2012  English  Rome, Italy  19 November, 2012  Italian  Lisbon, Portugal  12 November, 2012  European Portugese  Porto, Portugal  21 January, 2013  European Portugese  Amsterdam, Netherlands  19 November, 2012  Dutch  Nieuwegein, Netherlands  8 April, 2013  Dutch  Barcelona, Spain  4 February, 2013  Spanish  Madrid, Spain  19 November, 2012  Spanish  Mechelen, Belgium  25 February, 2013  English  Windhof, Luxembourg  19 November, 2012  English  Johannesburg, South Africa  9 December, 2012  English  Cairo, Egypt  20 October, 2012  English  Nairobi, Kenya  26 November, 2012  English  Petaling Jaya, Malaysia  29 October, 2012  English  Auckland, New Zealand  5 November, 2012  English  Wellington, New Zealand  23 October, 2012  English  Brisbane, Australia  19 November, 2012  English  Edmonton, Canada  7 January, 2013  English  Vancouver, Canada  7 January, 2013  English  Ottawa, Canada  22 October, 2012  English  Toronto, Canada  22 October, 2012  English  Montreal, Canada  22 October, 2012  English  Mexico City, Mexico  10 December, 2012  Spanish  Sao Paulo, Brazil  10 December, 2012  Brazilian Portugese For more information on this course or any aspect of the MySQL curriculum, visit http://oracle.com/education/mysql.

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  • XNA Screen Manager problem with transitions

    - by NexAddo
    I'm having issues using the game statemanagement example in the game I am developing. I have no issues with my first three screens transitioning between one another. I have a main menu screen, a splash screen and a high score screen that cycle: mainMenuScreen->splashScreen->highScoreScreen->mainMenuScreen The screens change every 15 seconds. Transition times public MainMenuScreen() { TransitionOnTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); TransitionOffTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.0); currentCreditAmount = Global.CurrentCredits; } public SplashScreen() { TransitionOnTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); TransitionOffTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); } public HighScoreScreen() { TransitionOnTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); TransitionOffTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); } public GamePlayScreen() { TransitionOnTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); TransitionOffTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); } When a user inserts credits they can play the game after pressing start mainMenuScreen->splashScreen->highScoreScreen->(loops forever) || || || ===========Credits In============= || Start || \/ LoadingScreen || Start || \/ GamePlayScreen During each of these transitions, between screens, the same code is used, which exits(removes) all current active screens and respects transitions, then adds the new screen to the screen manager: foreach (GameScreen screen in ScreenManager.GetScreens()) screen.ExitScreen(); //AddScreen takes a new screen to manage and the controlling player ScreenManager.AddScreen(new NameOfScreenHere(), null); Each screen is removed from the ScreenManager with ExitScreen() and using this function, each screen transition is respected. The problem I am having is with my gamePlayScreen. When the current game is finished and the transition is complete for the gamePlayScreen, it should be removed and the next screens should be added to the ScreenManager. GamePlayScreen Code Snippet private void FinishCurrentGame() { AudioManager.StopSounds(); this.UnloadContent(); if (Global.SaveDevice.IsReady) Stats.Save(); if (HighScoreScreen.IsInHighscores(timeLimit)) { foreach (GameScreen screen in ScreenManager.GetScreens()) screen.ExitScreen(); Global.TimeRemaining = timeLimit; ScreenManager.AddScreen(new BackgroundScreen(), null); ScreenManager.AddScreen(new MessageBoxScreen("Enter your Initials", true), null); } else { foreach (GameScreen screen in ScreenManager.GetScreens()) screen.ExitScreen(); ScreenManager.AddScreen(new BackgroundScreen(), null); ScreenManager.AddScreen(new MainMenuScreen(), null); } } The problem is that when isExiting is set to true by screen.ExitScreen() for the gamePlayScreen, the transition never completes the transition and removes the screen from the ScreenManager. Every other screen that I use the same technique to add and remove each screen fully transitions On/Off and is removed at the appropriate time from the ScreenManager, but noy my GamePlayScreen. Has anyone that has used the GameStateManagement example experienced this issue or can someone see the mistake I am making? EDIT This is what I tracked down. When the game is done, I call foreach (GameScreen screen in ScreenManager.GetScreens()) screen.ExitScreen(); to start the transition off process for the gameplay screen. At this point there is only 1 screen on the ScreenManager stack. The gamePlay screen gets isExiting set to true and starts to transition off. Right after the above call to ExitScreen() I add a background screen and menu screen to the screenManager: ScreenManager.AddScreen(new background(), null); ScreenManager.AddScreen(new Menu(), null); The count of the ScreenManager is now 3. What I noticed while stepping through the updates for GameScreen and ScreenManager, the gameplay screen never gets to the point where the transistion process finishes so the ScreenManager can remove it from the stack. This anomaly does not happen to any of my other screens when I switch between them. Screen Manager Code #region File Description //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- // ScreenManager.cs // // Microsoft XNA Community Game Platform // Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- #endregion #define DEMO #region Using Statements using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Collections.Generic; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using PerformanceUtility.GameDebugTools; #endregion namespace GameStateManagement { /// <summary> /// The screen manager is a component which manages one or more GameScreen /// instances. It maintains a stack of screens, calls their Update and Draw /// methods at the appropriate times, and automatically routes input to the /// topmost active screen. /// </summary> public class ScreenManager : DrawableGameComponent { #region Fields List<GameScreen> screens = new List<GameScreen>(); List<GameScreen> screensToUpdate = new List<GameScreen>(); InputState input = new InputState(); SpriteBatch spriteBatch; SpriteFont font; Texture2D blankTexture; bool isInitialized; bool getOut; bool traceEnabled; #if DEBUG DebugSystem debugSystem; Stopwatch stopwatch = new Stopwatch(); bool debugTextEnabled; #endif #endregion #region Properties /// <summary> /// A default SpriteBatch shared by all the screens. This saves /// each screen having to bother creating their own local instance. /// </summary> public SpriteBatch SpriteBatch { get { return spriteBatch; } } /// <summary> /// A default font shared by all the screens. This saves /// each screen having to bother loading their own local copy. /// </summary> public SpriteFont Font { get { return font; } } public Rectangle ScreenRectangle { get { return new Rectangle(0, 0, GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width, GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height); } } /// <summary> /// If true, the manager prints out a list of all the screens /// each time it is updated. This can be useful for making sure /// everything is being added and removed at the right times. /// </summary> public bool TraceEnabled { get { return traceEnabled; } set { traceEnabled = value; } } #if DEBUG public bool DebugTextEnabled { get { return debugTextEnabled; } set { debugTextEnabled = value; } } public DebugSystem DebugSystem { get { return debugSystem; } } #endif #endregion #region Initialization /// <summary> /// Constructs a new screen manager component. /// </summary> public ScreenManager(Game game) : base(game) { // we must set EnabledGestures before we can query for them, but // we don't assume the game wants to read them. //TouchPanel.EnabledGestures = GestureType.None; } /// <summary> /// Initializes the screen manager component. /// </summary> public override void Initialize() { base.Initialize(); #if DEBUG debugSystem = DebugSystem.Initialize(Game, "Fonts/MenuFont"); #endif isInitialized = true; } /// <summary> /// Load your graphics content. /// </summary> protected override void LoadContent() { // Load content belonging to the screen manager. ContentManager content = Game.Content; spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); font = content.Load<SpriteFont>(@"Fonts\menufont"); blankTexture = content.Load<Texture2D>(@"Textures\Backgrounds\blank"); // Tell each of the screens to load their content. foreach (GameScreen screen in screens) { screen.LoadContent(); } } /// <summary> /// Unload your graphics content. /// </summary> protected override void UnloadContent() { // Tell each of the screens to unload their content. foreach (GameScreen screen in screens) { screen.UnloadContent(); } } #endregion #region Update and Draw /// <summary> /// Allows each screen to run logic. /// </summary> public override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { #if DEBUG debugSystem.TimeRuler.StartFrame(); debugSystem.TimeRuler.BeginMark("Update", Color.Blue); if (debugTextEnabled && getOut == false) { debugSystem.FpsCounter.Visible = true; debugSystem.TimeRuler.Visible = true; debugSystem.TimeRuler.ShowLog = true; getOut = true; } else if (debugTextEnabled == false) { getOut = false; debugSystem.FpsCounter.Visible = false; debugSystem.TimeRuler.Visible = false; debugSystem.TimeRuler.ShowLog = false; } #endif // Read the keyboard and gamepad. input.Update(); // Make a copy of the master screen list, to avoid confusion if // the process of updating one screen adds or removes others. screensToUpdate.Clear(); foreach (GameScreen screen in screens) screensToUpdate.Add(screen); bool otherScreenHasFocus = !Game.IsActive; bool coveredByOtherScreen = false; // Loop as long as there are screens waiting to be updated. while (screensToUpdate.Count > 0) { // Pop the topmost screen off the waiting list. GameScreen screen = screensToUpdate[screensToUpdate.Count - 1]; screensToUpdate.RemoveAt(screensToUpdate.Count - 1); // Update the screen. screen.Update(gameTime, otherScreenHasFocus, coveredByOtherScreen); if (screen.ScreenState == ScreenState.TransitionOn || screen.ScreenState == ScreenState.Active) { // If this is the first active screen we came across, // give it a chance to handle input. if (!otherScreenHasFocus) { screen.HandleInput(input); otherScreenHasFocus = true; } // If this is an active non-popup, inform any subsequent // screens that they are covered by it. if (!screen.IsPopup) coveredByOtherScreen = true; } } // Print debug trace? if (traceEnabled) TraceScreens(); #if DEBUG debugSystem.TimeRuler.EndMark("Update"); #endif } /// <summary> /// Prints a list of all the screens, for debugging. /// </summary> void TraceScreens() { List<string> screenNames = new List<string>(); foreach (GameScreen screen in screens) screenNames.Add(screen.GetType().Name); Debug.WriteLine(string.Join(", ", screenNames.ToArray())); } /// <summary> /// Tells each screen to draw itself. /// </summary> public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { #if DEBUG debugSystem.TimeRuler.StartFrame(); debugSystem.TimeRuler.BeginMark("Draw", Color.Yellow); #endif foreach (GameScreen screen in screens) { if (screen.ScreenState == ScreenState.Hidden) continue; screen.Draw(gameTime); } #if DEBUG debugSystem.TimeRuler.EndMark("Draw"); #endif #if DEMO SpriteBatch.Begin(); SpriteBatch.DrawString(font, "DEMO - NOT FOR RESALE", new Vector2(20, 80), Color.White); SpriteBatch.End(); #endif } #endregion #region Public Methods /// <summary> /// Adds a new screen to the screen manager. /// </summary> public void AddScreen(GameScreen screen, PlayerIndex? controllingPlayer) { screen.ControllingPlayer = controllingPlayer; screen.ScreenManager = this; screen.IsExiting = false; // If we have a graphics device, tell the screen to load content. if (isInitialized) { screen.LoadContent(); } screens.Add(screen); } /// <summary> /// Removes a screen from the screen manager. You should normally /// use GameScreen.ExitScreen instead of calling this directly, so /// the screen can gradually transition off rather than just being /// instantly removed. /// </summary> public void RemoveScreen(GameScreen screen) { // If we have a graphics device, tell the screen to unload content. if (isInitialized) { screen.UnloadContent(); } screens.Remove(screen); screensToUpdate.Remove(screen); } /// <summary> /// Expose an array holding all the screens. We return a copy rather /// than the real master list, because screens should only ever be added /// or removed using the AddScreen and RemoveScreen methods. /// </summary> public GameScreen[] GetScreens() { return screens.ToArray(); } /// <summary> /// Helper draws a translucent black fullscreen sprite, used for fading /// screens in and out, and for darkening the background behind popups. /// </summary> public void FadeBackBufferToBlack(float alpha) { Viewport viewport = GraphicsDevice.Viewport; spriteBatch.Begin(); spriteBatch.Draw(blankTexture, new Rectangle(0, 0, viewport.Width, viewport.Height), Color.Black * alpha); spriteBatch.End(); } #endregion } } Game Screen Parent of GamePlayScreen #region File Description //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- // GameScreen.cs // // Microsoft XNA Community Game Platform // Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- #endregion #region Using Statements using System; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; //using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input.Touch; using System.IO; #endregion namespace GameStateManagement { /// <summary> /// Enum describes the screen transition state. /// </summary> public enum ScreenState { TransitionOn, Active, TransitionOff, Hidden, } /// <summary> /// A screen is a single layer that has update and draw logic, and which /// can be combined with other layers to build up a complex menu system. /// For instance the main menu, the options menu, the "are you sure you /// want to quit" message box, and the main game itself are all implemented /// as screens. /// </summary> public abstract class GameScreen { #region Properties /// <summary> /// Normally when one screen is brought up over the top of another, /// the first screen will transition off to make room for the new /// one. This property indicates whether the screen is only a small /// popup, in which case screens underneath it do not need to bother /// transitioning off. /// </summary> public bool IsPopup { get { return isPopup; } protected set { isPopup = value; } } bool isPopup = false; /// <summary> /// Indicates how long the screen takes to /// transition on when it is activated. /// </summary> public TimeSpan TransitionOnTime { get { return transitionOnTime; } protected set { transitionOnTime = value; } } TimeSpan transitionOnTime = TimeSpan.Zero; /// <summary> /// Indicates how long the screen takes to /// transition off when it is deactivated. /// </summary> public TimeSpan TransitionOffTime { get { return transitionOffTime; } protected set { transitionOffTime = value; } } TimeSpan transitionOffTime = TimeSpan.Zero; /// <summary> /// Gets the current position of the screen transition, ranging /// from zero (fully active, no transition) to one (transitioned /// fully off to nothing). /// </summary> public float TransitionPosition { get { return transitionPosition; } protected set { transitionPosition = value; } } float transitionPosition = 1; /// <summary> /// Gets the current alpha of the screen transition, ranging /// from 1 (fully active, no transition) to 0 (transitioned /// fully off to nothing). /// </summary> public float TransitionAlpha { get { return 1f - TransitionPosition; } } /// <summary> /// Gets the current screen transition state. /// </summary> public ScreenState ScreenState { get { return screenState; } protected set { screenState = value; } } ScreenState screenState = ScreenState.TransitionOn; /// <summary> /// There are two possible reasons why a screen might be transitioning /// off. It could be temporarily going away to make room for another /// screen that is on top of it, or it could be going away for good. /// This property indicates whether the screen is exiting for real: /// if set, the screen will automatically remove itself as soon as the /// transition finishes. /// </summary> public bool IsExiting { get { return isExiting; } protected internal set { isExiting = value; } } bool isExiting = false; /// <summary> /// Checks whether this screen is active and can respond to user input. /// </summary> public bool IsActive { get { return !otherScreenHasFocus && (screenState == ScreenState.TransitionOn || screenState == ScreenState.Active); } } bool otherScreenHasFocus; /// <summary> /// Gets the manager that this screen belongs to. /// </summary> public ScreenManager ScreenManager { get { return screenManager; } internal set { screenManager = value; } } ScreenManager screenManager; public KeyboardState KeyboardState { get {return Keyboard.GetState();} } /// <summary> /// Gets the index of the player who is currently controlling this screen, /// or null if it is accepting input from any player. This is used to lock /// the game to a specific player profile. The main menu responds to input /// from any connected gamepad, but whichever player makes a selection from /// this menu is given control over all subsequent screens, so other gamepads /// are inactive until the controlling player returns to the main menu. /// </summary> public PlayerIndex? ControllingPlayer { get { return controllingPlayer; } internal set { controllingPlayer = value; } } PlayerIndex? controllingPlayer; /// <summary> /// Gets whether or not this screen is serializable. If this is true, /// the screen will be recorded into the screen manager's state and /// its Serialize and Deserialize methods will be called as appropriate. /// If this is false, the screen will be ignored during serialization. /// By default, all screens are assumed to be serializable. /// </summary> public bool IsSerializable { get { return isSerializable; } protected set { isSerializable = value; } } bool isSerializable = true; #endregion #region Initialization /// <summary> /// Load graphics content for the screen. /// </summary> public virtual void LoadContent() { } /// <summary> /// Unload content for the screen. /// </summary> public virtual void UnloadContent() { } #endregion #region Update and Draw /// <summary> /// Allows the screen to run logic, such as updating the transition position. /// Unlike HandleInput, this method is called regardless of whether the screen /// is active, hidden, or in the middle of a transition. /// </summary> public virtual void Update(GameTime gameTime, bool otherScreenHasFocus, bool coveredByOtherScreen) { this.otherScreenHasFocus = otherScreenHasFocus; if (isExiting) { // If the screen is going away to die, it should transition off. screenState = ScreenState.TransitionOff; if (!UpdateTransition(gameTime, transitionOffTime, 1)) { // When the transition finishes, remove the screen. ScreenManager.RemoveScreen(this); } } else if (coveredByOtherScreen) { // If the screen is covered by another, it should transition off. if (UpdateTransition(gameTime, transitionOffTime, 1)) { // Still busy transitioning. screenState = ScreenState.TransitionOff; } else { // Transition finished! screenState = ScreenState.Hidden; } } else { // Otherwise the screen should transition on and become active. if (UpdateTransition(gameTime, transitionOnTime, -1)) { // Still busy transitioning. screenState = ScreenState.TransitionOn; } else { // Transition finished! screenState = ScreenState.Active; } } } /// <summary> /// Helper for updating the screen transition position. /// </summary> bool UpdateTransition(GameTime gameTime, TimeSpan time, int direction) { // How much should we move by? float transitionDelta; if (time == TimeSpan.Zero) transitionDelta = 1; else transitionDelta = (float)(gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds / time.TotalMilliseconds); // Update the transition position. transitionPosition += transitionDelta * direction; // Did we reach the end of the transition? if (((direction < 0) && (transitionPosition <= 0)) || ((direction > 0) && (transitionPosition >= 1))) { transitionPosition = MathHelper.Clamp(transitionPosition, 0, 1); return false; } // Otherwise we are still busy transitioning. return true; } /// <summary> /// Allows the screen to handle user input. Unlike Update, this method /// is only called when the screen is active, and not when some other /// screen has taken the focus. /// </summary> public virtual void HandleInput(InputState input) { } public KeyboardState currentKeyState; public KeyboardState lastKeyState; public bool IsKeyHit(Keys key) { if (currentKeyState.IsKeyDown(key) && lastKeyState.IsKeyUp(key)) return true; return false; } /// <summary> /// This is called when the screen should draw itself. /// </summary> public virtual void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { } #endregion #region Public Methods /// <summary> /// Tells the screen to serialize its state into the given stream. /// </summary> public virtual void Serialize(Stream stream) { } /// <summary> /// Tells the screen to deserialize its state from the given stream. /// </summary> public virtual void Deserialize(Stream stream) { } /// <summary> /// Tells the screen to go away. Unlike ScreenManager.RemoveScreen, which /// instantly kills the screen, this method respects the transition timings /// and will give the screen a chance to gradually transition off. /// </summary> public void ExitScreen() { if (TransitionOffTime == TimeSpan.Zero) { // If the screen has a zero transition time, remove it immediately. ScreenManager.RemoveScreen(this); } else { // Otherwise flag that it should transition off and then exit. isExiting = true; } } #endregion #region Helper Methods /// <summary> /// A helper method which loads assets using the screen manager's /// associated game content loader. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="T">Type of asset.</typeparam> /// <param name="assetName">Asset name, relative to the loader root /// directory, and not including the .xnb extension.</param> /// <returns></returns> public T Load<T>(string assetName) { return ScreenManager.Game.Content.Load<T>(assetName); } #endregion } }

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  • Silverlight Cream for March 06, 2010 -- #808

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: András Velvárt, felix corke, Colin Eberhardt, Christopher Bennage, Gergely Orosz, Entity Spaces Team Blog, Mike Taulty(-2-), Jit Ghosh, and Jesse Liberty. Shoutouts: Jeremy Likness expands on the Silverlight Team's post Vancouver Olympics - How'd We Do That? Gavin Wignall has a post up Creating a 360 photograph of an object with Silverlight Photosynth From SilverlightCream.com: Transforming an Ugly Duckling into a Graceful Swan With Expression Blend and Silverlight - Part 2 Intro Animation András Velvárt has part 2 of his Transformation series up at SilverlightShow... he's taking the initro animation to a new length, allowing playback even... cool video tutorial! Free Silverlight 4 beta skin! felix corke has a Silerlight 4 theme up for us all to use. If you like a dark theme like Blend, you'll like this... I like it! Linq to Visual Tree Colin Eberhardt has a great tutorial up for using LINQ to query the WPF or Silverlight Visual Tree while retaining the tree structure. He also has links out to other techniques. XAML Attributes on Separate Lines Christopher Bennage has a post up showing how to easily get all your XAML attributes on separate lines using a VS menu option... I didn't know that! Using built-in, embedded and streamed fonts in Silverlight Gergely Orosz has a post up at ScottLogic going over Fonts in Silverlight -- built-in, embedded, or streamed, and examples with code. EntitySpaces 2010 Two Part Series on Silverlight and WCF Entity Spaces Team Blog has a pair of videos up on Entity Spaces 2010, WCF, and Silverlight. Part 1 is the intro and explanation, part 2 is a full-up app demonstrating it. MEF, Silverlight and the DeploymentCatalog In an attempt to respond fully to a query, Mike Taulty literally pushed the record button and took off on what became a tutorial video on building a real Silverlight app utilizing MEF. Silverlight 4, Experiment with Pluggable Navigation and a WCF Data Service Mike Taulty has an experiment detailed on his blog about pluggable navigation and Silverlight 4. He walks through the history of how we got to this point then takes on in an example... good external links too Enhancing Silverlight Video Experiences with Contextual Data This is a post on the MSDN Magazine site where Jit Ghosh has a great long post about not only Smooth Streaming with Silverlight, but also adding context data to your video. When Is It OK To Hack? Read what all Jesse Liberty gets involved in when he's trying to get something out the door and has to work around a problem. Just about as interesting are the comments ... check it out and leave your own! 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

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  • Do unit tests sometimes break encapsulation?

    - by user1288851
    I very often hear the following: "If you want to test private methods, you'd better put that in another class and expose it." While sometimes that's the case and we have a hiding concept inside our class, other times you end up with classes that have the same attributes (or, worst, every attribute of one class become a argument on a method in the other class) and exposes functionality that is, in fact, implementation detail. Specially on TDD, when you refactor a class with public methods out of a previous tested class, that class is now part of your interface, but has no tests to it (since you refactored it, and is a implementation detail). Now, I may be not finding an obvious better answer, but if my answer is the "correct", that means that sometimes writting unit tests can break encapsulation, and divide the same responsibility into different classes. A simple example would be testing a setter method when a getter is not actually needed for anything in the real code. Please when aswering don't provide simple answers to specific cases I may have written. Rather, try to explain more of the generic case and theoretical approach. And this is neither language specific. Thanks in advance. EDIT: The answer given by Matthew Flynn was really insightful, but didn't quite answer the question. Altough he made the fair point that you either don't test private methods or extract them because they really are other concern and responsibility (or at least that was what I could understand from his answer), I think there are situations where unit testing private methods is useful. My primary example is when you have a class that has one responsibility but the output (or input) that it gives (takes) is just to complex. For example, a hashing function. There's no good way to break a hashing function apart and mantain cohesion and encapsulation. However, testing a hashing function can be really tough, since you would need to calculate by hand (you can't use code calculation to test code calculation!) the hashing, and test multiple cases where the hash changes. In that way (and this may be a question worth of its own topic) I think private method testing is the best way to handle it. Now, I'm not sure if I should ask another question, or ask it here, but are there any better way to test such complex output (input)? OBS: Please, if you think I should ask another question on that topic, leave a comment. :)

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  • SQL SERVER – DMV – sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks and sys.dm_exec_requests – Wait Type – Day 4 of 28

    - by pinaldave
    Previously, we covered the DMV sys.dm_os_wait_stats, and also saw how it can be useful to identify the major resource bottleneck. However, at the same time, we discussed that this is only useful when we are looking at an instance-level picture. Quite often we want to know about the processes going in our server at the given instant. Here is the query for the same. This DMV is written taking the following into consideration: we want to analyze the queries that are currently running or which have recently ran and their plan is still in the cache. SELECT dm_ws.wait_duration_ms, dm_ws.wait_type, dm_es.status, dm_t.TEXT, dm_qp.query_plan, dm_ws.session_ID, dm_es.cpu_time, dm_es.memory_usage, dm_es.logical_reads, dm_es.total_elapsed_time, dm_es.program_name, DB_NAME(dm_r.database_id) DatabaseName, -- Optional columns dm_ws.blocking_session_id, dm_r.wait_resource, dm_es.login_name, dm_r.command, dm_r.last_wait_type FROM sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks dm_ws INNER JOIN sys.dm_exec_requests dm_r ON dm_ws.session_id = dm_r.session_id INNER JOIN sys.dm_exec_sessions dm_es ON dm_es.session_id = dm_r.session_id CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text (dm_r.sql_handle) dm_t CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan (dm_r.plan_handle) dm_qp WHERE dm_es.is_user_process = 1 GO You can change CROSS APPLY to OUTER APPLY if you want to see all the details which are omitted because of the plan cache. Let us analyze the result of the above query and see how it can be helpful to identify the query and the kind of wait type it creates. Click to Enlarage The above query will return various columns. There are various columns that provide very important details. e.g. wait_duration_ms – it indicates current wait for the query that executes at that point of time. wait_type – it indicates the current wait type for the query text – indicates the query text query_plan – when clicked on the same, it will display the query plans There are many other important information like CPU_time, memory_usage, and logical_reads, which can be read from the query as well. In future posts on this series, we will see how once identified wait type we can attempt to reduce the same. Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: DMV, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL DMV, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • Back home :-)

    - by Mike Dietrich
    Wrote this entry last night in the ICE from Stuttgart to Munich but the conncetion broke: 28.5 hour journey - and close by now. Actually I would have been even closer if our TGV wouldn't have had break problems as soon as we had entered German territory. And you don't want a train which goes up to a speed of 200 mph having issues with its breaks, right? So we missed the connection in Stuttgart but I've catched the last train this night towards Munich. Distance approx 1900 km all together. Usually it takes 2.5 hours with a direct flight with Air Lingus from Munich or a bit more when you'll go through Zurich or Frankfurt. But at least you meet more people and see a bit more from the landscapes passing by :-) Except for the break problem everything worked out well so far (I'm no there finally!). I had 4 hours to change in Paris from Gare de Nord to Gare de l'Est and one thing I really have to point out: the people working for SNCF, the French National Railways, were so organized and helpful, purely amazing. I asked the man at the counter where I had to pick up my prepaid tickets for directions to Gare de l'Est - and after we had a chat about Marlene Dietrich he just grabbed his iPhone, started Google Earth and showed me the way to walk. I pretty sure it's a stupid stereotype that people in Paris or France are so unfriendly to foreigners if they don't speak French. In my past 3 stays or travels to Paris in the past 2 years I had only great experiences. And another thing I really enjoy when being in France: the food!!! The sandwich I had at the train station was packed with yummy goat cheese. And there's always Paul. You might ask yourself: Who the heck is Paul? That's Paul - or actually their website. And at Paul's they serve usually excellent fruit tartes - and this time a nice Gateau Au Chocolate. And very good Cafe Cremé as well :-) That's actually the positive part traveling this way: the food you'll get is much better than the airline food - if your airline still serves something called food ...

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  • How to Customize Your How-To Geek RSS Feeds (We’re Changing Things)

    - by The Geek
    If you’re an RSS subscriber, you’ll soon notice that we’re making a few changes. Why? It’s time to simplify our system, while providing you a little more control over which articles you want to see. The point, of course, is that people like different things, and that’s OK. What’s not so great is getting complaints—Linux users are always whining about Windows posts, and Windows users are whining when we write Linux posts. It’s also worth pointing out that if you aren’t interested in a post—you don’t have to click on it to read it. This is probably fairly obvious to reasonable people. The New Feeds Here’s the new set of feeds you can subscribe to. We’ll probably add more fine-grained feeds in the future, as we get some more things straightened out. Everything we publish (news, how-tos, features) Just the Feature Articles (the absolute best stuff) Just News (ETC) Posts Just Windows Articles Just Linux Articles Just Apple Articles Just Desktop Fun Articles You can obviously subscribe to one or many of them if you feel like it. The Once Daily Summary Feed! If you’d rather get all your How-To Geek in a single dose each day, you can subscribe to the summary feed, which is pretty much the same as our daily email newsletter. You can subscribe to this summary feed by clicking here. Note: we’re working on a lot of backend changes to hopefully make things a little better for you, the reader. One of the things we’ve consistently had feedback on is the comment system, which we’ll tackle a little later. Also, if you suddenly saw a barrage of posts earlier… oops! Our mistake. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide CyanogenMod Updates; Rolls out Android 2.3 to the Less Fortunate MyPaint is an Open-Source Graphics App for Digital Painters Can the Birds and Pigs Really Be Friends in the End? [Angry Birds Video] Add the 2D Version of the New Unity Interface to Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 MightyMintyBoost Is a 3-in-1 Gadget Charger Watson Ties Against Human Jeopardy Opponents

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  • The Missing Post

    - by Joe Mayo
    It’s somewhat of a mystery how the writing process can conjure up results that weren’t initially intended. Case in point is the fact that another post was planned to be in place of this one, but it never made the light of day.  This particular post started off as an introduction to a technology I had just learned, used, and wanted to share the experience with others.  The beginning was fun and demonstrated how easy it was to get started.  One of the things I’ve been pondering over time is that the Web is filled with introductions to new technologies and quick first looks, so I set out to add more depth, share lessons learned, and generally help you avoid the problems I encountered along the way; problems being a key theme of why you aren’t reading that post at this very minute.  Problems that curiously came from nowhere to thwart my good intentions. Success was sweet when using the tool for the prototypical demo scenario. The thing is, I intended the tool to accomplish a real task.  Having embarked on the path toward getting the job done, glitches began creeping into the process.  Realizing that this was all a bit new, I had patience and found a suitable work-around, but this was to be short lived. As in marching ants to a freshly laid out picnic, the problems kept coming until I had to get up and walk away.  Not to be outdone, sheer will and brute force manual intervention led to mission accomplishment.  Though I kept a positive outlook and was pleased at the final result, the process of using the tool had somewhat soured. Regardless of a less than stellar experience with the tool, I have a great deal of respect for the company that produced it and the people who built it. Perhaps I empathize for what they might feel after reading a post that details such deficiencies in their product.  Sure, if you’re in this business, you’ve got to have a thick skin; brush it off, fix the problem, and move on to greatness. But, today I feel like they’re people and are probably already aware of any issues I would seemingly reveal.  Anyone who builds a product or provides a service takes a lot of pride in what they do.  Sometimes they screw up and if their worth a dime, they make it up. I think that will happen in this case and there’s no reason why I should post information that has the potential to sound more negative than helpful.  While no one would ever notice or care either way, I’m posting something that won’t harm. Joe

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  • How to install Windows 8 to dual boot with Windows 7/XP?

    - by Gopinath
    Microsoft released Windows 8 beta(customer preview) few days ago and yesterday I had a chance to install it on one of my home computers. My home PC is running on Windows 7 and I would like to install Windows 8 side by side so that I can dual boot. The installation process was pretty simple and with in 40 minutes my PC was up and running with beautiful Windows 8 OS along with Windows 7. In this post I want to share my experience and provide information for you to install Windows 8. 1. Identify a drive  with at least 20 GB of space – Identify one of the drives on your hard disk that can be used to install Windows 8. Delete all the files or preferably quick format it and make sure that it has at least 20 GB of free space. Rename the drive name to Windows 8 so that it will be helpful to identify the destination drive during installation process. 2. Download Windows 8 installer ISO– Go to Microsoft’s website and download Windows 8 ISO file which is approximately 2.5 GB file(32 bit English version). 3. Create Windows 8 bootable USB/DVD – Its advised to launch Windows 8 installer using a bootable USB or DVD for enabling dual boot instead of unzipping the ISO file and launching the setup from Windows 7 OS. Also consider creating bootable USB instead of bootable DVD to save a disc. To create bootable USB/DVD follow these steps Download and install the Windows 7 DVD / USB tool available at microsoftstore.com Launch the utility and follow the onscreen instructions where you would be asked to choose the ISO file(point to file downloaded in step 2) and choose a USB drive or DVD as destination. The onscreen instructions are very simple and you would be able to complete it in 20 minutes time. So now you have Windows 8 installation setup on your USB drive or DVD. 4. Change BIOS settings to boot from USB/DVD – Restart your PC and open BIOS configuration settings key by pressing F2 or  F12 or DELETE key (the key depends on your computer manufacturer). Go to boot sequence options and make sure that USB/DVD is ahead of hard disk in the boot sequence. Save the settings and restart the PC. 5. Install Windows 8 – After the restart you should be straight into Windows 8 installation screen. Follow the onscreen instructions and install Windows 8 on the drive that is identified during step 1. When prompted for product serial key enter NF32V-Q9P3W-7DR7Y-JGWRW-JFCK8. The installer would restart couple of times during the installation process. On the first restart, make sure that you remove USB/DVD. Windows 8 installation process is pretty simple and very quick. The complete process of creating bootable USB and installation should complete in 30 – 40 minutes time.

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  • AutoVue at the Oracle Asset Lifecycle Management Summit

    - by celine.beck
    I recently had the opportunity to attend and present the integration between AutoVue and Primavera P6 during the Oracle ALM Summit, which was held in March at Redwood Shores, on Oracle Headquarters grounds. The ALM Summit brought together over 300 Oracle maintenance practitioners who endured the foggy and rainy San Francisco weather to attend the 4th edition of this Oracle-driven conference. Attendees have roles in maintenance management and IT. Following a general session, Ralph Rio from ARC Advisory Group provided a very interesting keynote session discussing Asset Management directions, both in the short and long run. An interesting point that Ralph raised is that most organizations have done a good job at improving performance at the design / build, operate and maintain and portfolio management phases by leveraging solutions like Asset Lifecycle Management and Project & Portfolio management solutions; however, there seem to be room for improvement in between those phases, when information flows from one group to the other, during the data handover phase or when time comes to update / modify drawings to reflect the reality of physical assets. This is where AutoVue comes into play. By integrating with enterprise applications like content management systems, asset lifecycle management applications and project management solutions, AutoVue can be a real-process enabler, streamlining information flows from concept/design to decommissioning and ensuring that all project stakeholders have access to asset information and engineering data throughout the asset lifecycle. AutoVue's built-in digital annotation capabilities allows maintenance workers and technicians to report changes in configuration and visually capture the delta between as-built and as-maintained versions of asset documents. This information can then be easily handed over to engineers who can identify changes and incorporate these modifications into the drawings during the next round of document revisions. PPL Power Generation, an electric utilities headquarted in Allentown, Pennsylvania discussed this usage of AutoVue during an interesting Webcast around AutoVue's role in the Utilities space. After the keynote sessions, participants broke off into product-centric tracks around Oracle's Asset Lifecycle Management solutions (E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards). The second day of the conference was the occasion for us to present the integration between AutoVue and Primavera P6 to the Maintenance Summit audience. The presentation was a great success and generated much discussion with partners and customers during breaks. People seemed highly interested in learning more about our plans for integrating AutoVue and Primavera P6 with Oracle's ALM solutions...stay tune for further information on the subject!

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  • Oracle WebCenter: The Best of the Best

    - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com
    You may remember that the key goals of the new release of WebCenter are providing a Modern User Experience, unparalleled Application Integration, converging all the best of the existing portal platforms into WebCenter and delivering a Common User Experience Architecture.  Last week, we provided an overview of Oracle WebCenter, and this week, we'll focus on Convergence and how the new release of Oracle WebCenter is the Best of the Best..Our development team has been working very hard to bring all the best capabilities from each of the existing portal products into one modern user experience platform that provides a robust foundation for moving customers into the future.  Each of the development teams still maintain their existing products to support the current customers,  but they've been tasked with converging their unique best of breed features into the new WebCenter release so that it will meet the broadest set of use cases possible. For example, we've taken the fastest and most scalable portlet engine in the industry with Oracle WebLogic Portal, integrated it within WebCenter, and improved performance further, to deliver even more performance for our customers.  In addition, we've focused on extending the reach of all the different user experience resources so that customers can deliver robust capabilities into their existing portals, applications, composite applications, dashboards, mobile applications, really any channel that requires information.  And finally, we've combined a whole set of community and multi-site capabilities leveraging the pioneering capabilities of Plumtree portal directly into the new WebCenter release.  While at the same time we've built and delivered the new WebCenter release, we've also provided new feature releases of all the existing products.  In this way, customers can continue to gain value out of their existing investments while at the same time have the smoothest path to upgrading to the new WebCenter release. With the new WebCenter release, we are delivering a converged platform to address all portal requirements that have been delivered by different point products in our portal portfolio in the past. Additionally, this release delivers the most modern user experience that goes well beyond the experience the other portal products provided. This is because the new WebCenter release has been built from the ground up with modern technologies around rich clients, SOA, and customizations compared with other portal products whose architecture has been adapted to add capabilities like AJAX, personalization, and social computing.The new WebCenter release addresses the broadest set of use cases using single product set and single architecture spanning extranet sites to social communities. It helps customers manage, maintain and develop one technology set, but leverage it throughout their organization whether it's embedded in an application or a new destination for improved customer and employee productivity. Additionally, the new release of WebCenter leverages the best and most performant features of all the existing portfolio products to deliver the fastest and most scalable portal platform.  Most importantly, it supports the broadest development models spanning from J2EE/Java to HTML/REST to .NET.Keep checking back this week as we provide additional resources and information on how the new release of Oracle WebCenter is the Best of the Best - converging all the best capabilities from each of the existing portal products into one modern user experience platform.

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  • Chunking a List - .NET vs Python

    - by Abhijeet Patel
    Chunking a List As I mentioned last time, I'm knee deep in python these days. I come from a statically typed background so it's definitely a mental adjustment. List comprehensions is BIG in Python and having worked with a few of them I can see why. Let's say we need to chunk a list into sublists of a specified size. Here is how we'd do it in C#  static class Extensions   {       public static IEnumerable<List<T>> Chunk<T>(this List<T> l, int chunkSize)       {           if (chunkSize <0)           {               throw new ArgumentException("chunkSize cannot be negative", "chunkSize");           }           for (int i = 0; i < l.Count; i += chunkSize)           {               yield return new List<T>(l.Skip(i).Take(chunkSize));           }       }    }    static void Main(string[] args)  {           var l = new List<string> { "a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f","g" };             foreach (var list in l.Chunk(7))           {               string str = list.Aggregate((s1, s2) => s1 + "," + s2);               Console.WriteLine(str);           }   }   A little wordy but still pretty concise thanks to LINQ.We skip the iteration number plus chunkSize elements and yield out a new List of chunkSize elements on each iteration. The python implementation is a bit more terse. def chunkIterable(iter, chunkSize):      '''Chunks an iterable         object into a list of the specified chunkSize     '''        assert hasattr(iter, "__iter__"), "iter is not an iterable"      for i in xrange(0, len(iter), chunkSize):          yield iter[i:i + chunkSize]    if __name__ == '__main__':      l = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f']      generator = chunkIterable(l,2)      try:          while(1):              print generator.next()      except StopIteration:          pass   xrange generates elements in the specified range taking in a seed and returning a generator. which can be used in a for loop(much like using a C# iterator in a foreach loop) Since chunkIterable has a yield statement, it turns this method into a generator as well. iter[i:i + chunkSize] essentially slices the list based on the current iteration index and chunksize and creates a new list that we yield out to the caller one at a time. A generator much like an iterator is a state machine and each subsequent call to it remembers the state at which the last call left off and resumes execution from that point. The caveat to keep in mind is that since variables are not explicitly typed we need to ensure that the object passed in is iterable using hasattr(iter, "__iter__").This way we can perform chunking on any object which is an "iterable", very similar to accepting an IEnumerable in the .NET land

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  • Fix: SqlDeploy Task Fails with NullReferenceException at ExtractPassword

    Still working on getting a TeamCity build working (see my last post).  Latest exception is: C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v9.0\TeamData\Microsoft.Data.Schema.SqlTasks.targets(120, 5): error MSB4018: The "SqlDeployTask" task failed unexpectedly. System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Common.ConnectionStringPersistence.ExtractPassword(String partialConnection, String dbProvider) at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Common.ConnectionStringPersistence.RetrieveFullConnection(String partialConnection, String provider, Boolean presentUI, String password) at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Sql.Build.SqlDeployment.ConfigureConnectionString(String connectionString, String databaseName) at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Sql.Build.SqlDeployment.OnBuildConnectionString(String partialConnectionString, String databaseName) at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Build.Deployment.FinishInitialize(String targetConnectionString) at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Build.Deployment.Initialize(FileInfo sourceDbSchemaFile, ErrorManager errors, String targetConnectionString) at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Build.DeploymentConstructor.ConstructServiceImplementation() at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Extensibility.ServiceConstructor'1.ConstructService() at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Tasks.DBDeployTask.Execute() at Microsoft.Build.BuildEngine.TaskEngine.ExecuteInstantiatedTask(EngineProxy engineProxy, ItemBucket bucket, TaskExecutionMode howToExecuteTask, ITask task, Boolean& taskResult)   This time searching yielded some good stuff, including this thread that talks about how to resolve this via permissions.  The short answer is that the account that your build server runs under needs to have the necessary permissions in SQL Server.  Youll need to create a Login and then ensure at least the minimum rights are configured as described here: Required Permissions in Database Edition Alternately, you can just make your buildserver account an admin on the database (which is probably running on the same machine anyway) and at that point it should be able to do whatever it needs to. If youre certain the account has the necessary permissions, but youre still getting the error, the problem may be that the account has never logged into the build server.  In this case, there wont be any entry in the HKCU hive in the registry, which the system is checking for permissions (see this thread).  The solution in this case is quite simple: log into the machine (once is enough) with the build server account.  Then, open Visual Studio (thanks Brendan for the answer in this thread). Summary Make sure the build service account has the necessary database permissions Make sure the account has logged into the server so it has the necessary registry hive info Make sure the account has run Visual Studio at least once so its settings are established In my case I went through all 3 of these steps before I resolved the problem. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • SQL SERVER – 2011 – Introduction to SEQUENCE – Simple Example of SEQUENCE

    - by pinaldave
    SQL Server 2011 will contain one of the very interesting feature called SEQUENCE. I have waited for this feature for really long time. I am glad it is here finally. SEQUENCE allows you to define a single point of repository where SQL Server will maintain in memory counter. USE AdventureWorks2008R2 GO CREATE SEQUENCE [Seq] AS [int] START WITH 1 INCREMENT BY 1 MAXVALUE 20000 GO SEQUENCE is very interesting concept and I will write few blog post on this subject in future. Today we will see only working example of the same. Let us create a sequence. We can specify various values like start value, increment value as well maxvalue. -- First Run SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR Seq, c.CustomerID FROM Sales.Customer c GO -- Second Run SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR Seq, c.AccountNumber FROM Sales.Customer c GO Once the sequence is defined, it can be fetched using following method. Every single time new incremental value is provided, irrespective of sessions. Sequence will generate values till the max value specified. Once the max value is reached, query will stop and will return error message. Msg 11728, Level 16, State 1, Line 2 The sequence object ‘Seq’ has reached its minimum or maximum value. Restart the sequence object to allow new values to be generated. We can restart the sequence from any particular value and it will work fine. -- Restart the Sequence ALTER SEQUENCE [Seq] RESTART WITH 1 GO -- Sequence Restarted SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR Seq, c.CustomerID FROM Sales.Customer c GO Let us do final clean up. -- Clean Up DROP SEQUENCE [Seq] GO There are lots of things one can find useful about this feature. We will see that in future posts. Here is the complete code for easy reference. USE AdventureWorks2008R2 GO CREATE SEQUENCE [Seq] AS [int] START WITH 1 INCREMENT BY 1 MAXVALUE 20000 GO -- First Run SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR Seq, c.CustomerID FROM Sales.Customer c GO -- Second Run SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR Seq, c.AccountNumber FROM Sales.Customer c GO -- Restart the Sequence ALTER SEQUENCE [Seq] RESTART WITH 1 GO -- Sequence Restarted SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR Seq, c.CustomerID FROM Sales.Customer c GO -- Clean Up DROP SEQUENCE [Seq] GO Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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  • Silverlight Cream for June 03, 2010 -- #875

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Ben Hodson, Fons Sonnemans, SilverLaw, Mike Snow, John Papa, René Schulte, Walt Ritscher, and David Anson. Shoutouts: René Schulte announced a whole batch of new features for WriteableBitmap that are now available: Filled To The Bursting Point - WriteableBitmapEx 0.9.5.0 Check out John Papa's Sticky Seesmic Desktop Plugin ... download it, play with it... he's going to blog about building plugins later Tim Heuer reported a Silverlight 4 minor update–June 2010 Erik Mork and Crew have a new Podcast up: This Week in Silverlight: Redmond Exodus? From SilverlightCream.com: Tutorial for Configuring Silverlight 4, Entity Framework and WCF RIA Services in Separate Component Assemblies (DLL’s) Ben Hodson is a new author(to me) that submitted his post at SilverlightCream.com... this is a good-looking tutorial on configuring separate component assemblies for all your project pieces. SpiralText in Silverlight 4 Fons Sonnemans had a good time playing with the PathListBox in Blend and produced a demo of text on a Spiral... you can run it right on the post, then grab the code. How To: Starting A Storyboard Not Before The Application Has Completed Loading - Silverlight 4 SilverLaw takes a look at the problem of having a Storyboard start too early, and demonstrates code to avoid the problem. Silverlight Tip of the Day#27 – Displaying Special Characters in XAML Mike Snow's latest Tip of the day is on encoding 'special' characters for use in XAML... simple looking at it, frustrating to debug if you don't do it right. Diving into the RichTextBox (Silverlight TV #31) John Papa talks about the RichTextBox with Mark Rideout in this edition of Silverlight TV. Mark provides a great video tutorial for the control. Push and Pull - Silverlight Webcam Capturing Details Boy, René Schulte doesn't slow down does he?... his latest is (in his words from a section heading) "Silverlight Webcam 101" ... and he means it... this is one to save to OneNote or as a PDF! Looking for Silverlight BiDi or RTL? Use the FlowDirection property If you need RTL or BiDi in Silverlight and you haven't checked it out yet, Walt Ritscher has a nice intro up on using the FlowDirection property, with demos and code. How to: Show text labels on a numeric axis with Silverlight/WPF Toolkit Charting David Anson has another charting puzzle resolved on his site... putting text labels on the dependent axis. 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

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  • Is Python Interpreted or Compiled?

    - by crodjer
    This is just a wondering I had while reading about interpreted and compiled languages. Ruby is no doubt an interpreted language, since source code is compiled by an interpreter at the point of execution. On the contrary C is a compiled language, as one have to compile the source code first according to the machine and then execute. This results is much faster execution. Now coming to Python: A python code (somefile.py) when imported creates a file (somefile.pyc) in the same directory. Let us say the import is done in a python shell or django module. After the import I change the code a bit and execute the imported functions again to find that it is still running the old code. This suggests that *.pyc files are compiled python files similar to executable created after compilation of a C file, though I can't execute *.pyc file directly. When the python file (somefile.py) is executed directly ( ./somefile.py or python somefile.py ) no .pyc file is created and the code is executed as is indicating interpreted behavior. These suggest that a python code is compiled every time it is imported in a new process to crate a .pyc while it is interpreted when directly executed. So which type of language should I consider it as? Interpreted or Compiled? And how does its efficiency compare to interpreted and compiled languages? According to wiki's Interpreted Languages page it is listed as a language compiled to Virtual Machine Code, what is meant by that? Update Looking at the answers it seems that there cannot be a perfect answer to my questions. Languages are not only interpreted or only compiled, but there is a spectrum of possibilities between interpreting and compiling. From the answers by aufather, mipadi, Lenny222, ykombinator, comments and wiki I found out that in python's major implementations it is compiled to bytecode, which is a highly compressed and optimized representation and is machine code for a virtual machine, which is implemented not in hardware, but in the bytecode interpreter. Also the the languages are not interpreted or compiled, but rather language implementations either interpret or compile code. I also found out about Just in time compilation As far as execution speed is concerned the various benchmarks cannot be perfect and depend on context and the task which is being performed. Please tell if I am wrong in my interpretations.

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  • Add "My Dropbox" to Your Windows 7 Start Menu

    - by The Geek
    Over here at How-To Geek, we’re huge fans of Dropbox, the amazingly fast online file sync utility, but we’d be even happier if we could natively add it to the Windows 7 Start Menu, where it belongs. And today, that’s what we’ll do. Yep, that’s right. You can add it to the Start Menu… using a silly hack to the Libraries feature and renaming the Recorded TV library to a different name. It’s not a perfect solution, but you can access your Dropbox folder this way and it just seems to belong there. First things first, head into the Customize Start Menu panel by right-clicking on the start menu and using Properties, then make sure that Recorded TV is set to “Display as a link”. Next, right-click on Recorded TV, choose Rename, and then change it to something else like My Dropbox.   Now you’ll want to right-click on that button again, and choose Properties, where you’ll see the Library locations in the list… the general idea is that you want to remove Recorded TV, and then add your Dropbox folder. Oh, and you’ll probably want to make sure to set “Optimize this library for” to “General Items”. At this point, you can just click on My Dropbox, and you’ll see, well, Your Dropbox! (no surprise there). Yeah, I know, it’s totally a hack. But it’s a very useful one! Also, if you aren’t already using Dropbox, you should really check it out—2 GB for free, accessible via the web from anywhere, and you can sync to multiple desktops. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Use the Windows Key for the "Start" Menu in Ubuntu LinuxAccess Your Dropbox Files in Google ChromeSpeed up Windows Vista Start Menu Search By Limiting ResultsPin Any Folder to the Vista Start Menu the Easy WayEnable "Pin to Start Menu" for Folders in Windows Vista / XP TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver Optimize your computer the Microsoft way Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data

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  • A Plea for Plain English

    - by Tony Davis
    The English language has, within a lifetime, emerged as the ubiquitous 'international language' of scientific, political and technical communication. On the one hand, learning a single, common language, International English, has made it much easier to participate in and adopt new technologies; on the other hand it must be exasperating to have to use English at international conferences, or on community sites, when your own language has a long tradition of scientific and technical usage. It is also hard to master the subtleties of using a foreign language to explain advanced ideas. This requires English speakers to be more considerate in their writing. Even if you’re used to speaking English, you may be brought up short by this sort of verbiage… "Business Intelligence delivering actionable insights is becoming more critical in the enterprise, and these insights require large data volumes for trending and forecasting" It takes some imagination to appreciate the added hassle in working out what it means, when English is a language you only use at work. Try, just to get a vague feel for it, using Google Translate to translate it from English to Chinese and back again. "Providing actionable business intelligence point of view is becoming more and more and more business critical, and requires that these insights and projected trends in large amounts of data" Not easy eh? If you normally use a different language, you will need to pause for thought before finally working out that it really means … "Every Business Intelligence solution must be able to help companies to make decisions. In order to detect current trends, and accurately predict future ones, we need to analyze large volumes of data" Surely, it is simple politeness for English speakers to stop peppering their writing with a twisted vocabulary that renders it inaccessible to everyone else. It isn’t just the problem of writers who use long words to give added dignity to their prose. It is the use of Colloquial English. This changes and evolves at a dizzying rate, adding new terms and idioms almost daily; it is almost a new and separate language. By contrast, ‘International English', is gradually evolving separately, at its own, more sedate, pace. As such, all native English speakers need to make an effort to learn, and use it, switching from casual colloquial patter into a simpler form of communication that can be widely understood by different cultures, even if it gives you less credibility on the street. Simple-Talk is based, at least in part, on the idea that technical articles can be written simply and clearly in a form of English that can be easily understood internationally, and that they can be written, with a little editorial help, by anyone, and read by anyone, regardless of their native language. Cheers, Tony.

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  • Oracle Coherence 3.5 : Create Internet-scale applications using Oracle's high-performance data grid

    - by frederic.michiara
    Oracle Coherence Coherence provides replicated and distributed (partitioned) data management and caching services on top of a reliable, highly scalable peer-to-peer clustering protocol. Coherence has no single points of failure; it automatically and transparently fails over and redistributes its clustered data management services when a server becomes inoperative or is disconnected from the network. When a new server is added, or when a failed server is restarted, it automatically joins the cluster and Coherence fails back services to it, transparently redistributing the cluster load. Coherence includes network-level fault tolerance features and transparent soft re-start capability to enable servers to self-heal. For the ones looking at an easy reading and first good approach to Oracle Coherence, I would recommend reading the following book : Overview of Oracle Coherence 3.5 Build scalable web sites and Enterprise applications using a market-leading data grid product Design and implement your domain objects to work most effectively with Coherence and apply Domain Driven Designs (DDD) to Coherence applications Leverage Coherence events and continuous queries to provide real-time updates to client applications Successfully integrate various persistence technologies, such as JDBC, Hibernate, or TopLink, with Coherence Filled with numerous examples that provide best practice guidance, and a number of classes you can readily reuse within your own applications This book is targeted to Architects and developers, and as in our team we're more about Solutions Architects than developers I found interest in this book as it help to understand better Oracle Coherence and its value. The only point I may not agree with the authors is that Oracle Coherence is not an alternative to Oracle RAC in providing High Availability, but combining both Oracle RAC and Oracle Coherence will help Architects and Customers to reach higher level of service and high-availability. This book is available on https://www.packtpub.com/oracle-coherence-3-5/book Need to find out about Table of contents : https://www.packtpub.com/toc/oracle-coherence-35-table-contents Discover a sample chapter : https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/6125_Oracle%20Coherence_SampleChapter.pdf Read also articles from the Authors on http://www.packtpub.com/ : Working with Aggregators in Oracle Coherence 3.5 Working with Value Extractors and Simplifying Queries in Oracle Coherence 3.5 Querying the Data Grid in Coherence 3.5: Obtaining Query Results and Using Indexes Installing Coherence 3.5 and Accessing the Data Grid: Part 1 Installing Coherence 3.5 and Accessing the Data Grid: Part 2 For more information on Oracle Coherence : What Oracle Coherence Can Do for You... : http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/coherence/coherencedatagrid/coherence_solutions.html Oracle Coherence on OTN : http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/coherence/index.html Oracle Coherence Knowledge Base : http://coherence.oracle.com/display/COH/Oracle+Coherence+Knowledge+Base+Home

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  • 2D Barcode Addendum

    - by Tim Dexter
    Having finally got my external drive back(long story) today from Oklahoma (thank you so much Sammy) Im back with a full compliment of Oracle and blogging tools at my disposal. I have missed JDeveloper this past week, which I have found, I immensely prefer over Eclipse (let the flaming commence :0) I use Zoundry Raven for writing articles and its not installed locally but on my external drove, so I have been soldiering on with the blog server's pain in the backside UI for writing. Now I have my favority editor back and things are calming down workwise, I will start to get the Excel template posts out. Today thou, a note about 2D barcode support or more specifically any barcode that needs some data manipulation before the barcode font is applied. I wrote about these fonts a long time back and laid out the java class you would need to write if you had an algorithm from the font manufacturer to use. I missed out a valuable point and James at Luminex fell into the trap. He was wanting to use the datamatrix font from IDAutomation but and had built the java class to be called from the RTF template but it was not encoding or at least did not appear to be. New debugging feature to the rescue. Kan over at the bipconsultng blog documented the feature a while back. Just adding <?xdo-debug-level:'STATEMENT'?> to my test template generated all the debug files in my c:\temp directory. No messing with files, just a simple command ... at last! Kan has documented the feature here. With the log in hand I spotted a java error stack referencing a missing code128a method, huh? Looking at James' class he had the following snippet: ENCODERS.put("code128a",mUtility.getClass().getMethod("code128a",clazz)); ENCODERS.put("code128b",mUtility.getClass().getMethod("code128b", clazz)); ENCODERS.put("code128c",mUtility.getClass().getMethod("code128c", clazz)); ENCODERS.put("pdf417",mUtility.getClass().getMethod("pdf417", clazz)); ENCODERS.put("datamatrix",mUtility.getClass().getMethod("datamatrix", clazz)); His class did not include the other code128 and pdf147 methods and BIP was expecting them. An easy fix, just comment them out, rebuild and deploy and the encoding started working. If you are hitting similar problems, check that class and ensure all of the referenced methods are available, if not, delete or get commenting. James now has purdy labels popping out that his hard ware can read, sweet!

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  • Using Dependency Walker

    - by Valter Minute
    Dependency Walker is a very useful tool that can be used to find dependencies of a Portable Executable module. The PE format is used also on Windows CE and this means that Dependency Walker can be used to analyze also Windows CE/Windows Embedded Compact module. On Win32 it can be used also to monitor modules loaded by an application during runtime, this feature is not supported on CE. You can download dependency walker for free here: http://dependencywalker.com/. To analyze the dependencies of a Windows CE/Windows Embedded Compact 7 module you can just open it using Dependency Walker. If you want to check if a specific module can run on a Windows CE/Windows Compact 7 OS Image you can copy the executable in the same directory that contains your OS binaries (FLATRELEASEDIR). In this way Dependency Walker will highlight missing dlls or missing entry points inside existing dlls. Let’s do a quick sample. You need to check if myapp.exe (an application from a third party) can run on an image generated with your Test01 OSDesign. Copy Myapp.exe to the flat release directory of your OS Design. Launch depends.exe and use the File\Open option of its main menu to open the application executable file you just copied. You may receive an error if some of the modules required by your applications are missing. Before you analyze the module dependencies is important to configure Dependency Walker to check DLL in the same folder where your application file is stored. This is needed because some Windows CE DLLs have the same name of Win32 system DLLs but different entry points. To configure the DLL search path select “Options\Configure Module Search Order…” from Depenency Walker main menu. Select “The application directory” from the “Current Search Order” list, select it, and move it to the top of the list using the “Move Up” button. The system will ask to refresh the window contents to reflect your configuration change, click on “Yes” to proceed. Now you can inspect myapp.exe dependencies. Some DLLs are missing (XAMLRUNTIME.DLL and TILEENGINE.DLL) and OLE32.DLL exists but does not export the “CoInitialize” entry point that is required by myapp.exe. The bad news is that MyApp.exe will not run on your OS Image, the good news is that now you know what’s missing and you can add the required modules to your OS Design and fix the problem!

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  • What I like about WIF&rsquo;s Claims-based Authorization

    - by Your DisplayName here!
    In “traditional” .NET with its IPrincipal interface and IsInRole method, developers were encouraged to write code like this: public void AddCustomer(Customer customer) {     if (Thread.CurrentPrincipal.IsInRole("Sales"))     {         // add customer     } } In code reviews I’ve seen tons of code like this. What I don’t like about this is, that two concerns in your application get tightly coupled: business and security logic. But what happens when the security requirements change – and they will (e.g. members of the sales role and some other people from different roles need to create customers)? Well – since your security logic is sprinkled across your project you need to change the security checks in all relevant places (and make sure you don’t forget one) and you need to re-test, re-stage and re-deploy the complete app. This is clearly not what we want. WIF’s claims-based authorization encourages developers to separate business code and authorization policy evaluation. This is a good thing. So the same security check with WIF’s out-of-the box APIs would look like this: public void AddCustomer(Customer customer) {     try     {         ClaimsPrincipalPermission.CheckAccess("Customer", "Add");           // add customer     }     catch (SecurityException ex)     {         // access denied     } } You notice the fundamental difference? The security check only describes what the code is doing (represented by a resource/action pair) – and does not state who is allowed to invoke the code. As I mentioned earlier – the who is most probably changing over time – the what most probably not. The call to ClaimsPrincipalPermission hands off to another class called the ClaimsAuthorizationManager. This class handles the evaluation of your security policy and is ideally in a separate assembly to allow updating the security logic independently from the application logic (and vice versa). The claims authorization manager features a method called CheckAccess that retrieves three values (wrapped inside an AuthorizationContext instance) – action (“add”), resource (“customer”) and the principal (including its claims) in question. CheckAccess then evaluates those three values and returns true/false. I really like the separation of concerns part here. Unfortunately there is not much support from Microsoft beyond that point. And without further tooling and abstractions the CheckAccess method quickly becomes *very* complex. But still I think that is the way to go. In the next post I will tell you what I don’t like about it (and how to fix it).

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  • NoSQL is not about object databases

    - by Bertrand Le Roy
    NoSQL as a movement is an interesting beast. I kinda like that it’s negatively defined (I happen to belong myself to at least one other such a-community). It’s not in its roots about proposing one specific new silver bullet to kill an old problem. it’s about challenging the consensus. Actually, blindly and systematically replacing relational databases with object databases would just replace one set of issues with another. No, the point is to recognize that relational databases are not a universal answer -although they have been used as one for so long- and recognize instead that there’s a whole spectrum of data storage solutions out there. Why is it so hard to recognize, by the way? You are already using some of those other data storage solutions every day. Let me cite a few: The file system Active Directory XML / JSON documents The Web e-mail Logs Excel files EXIF blobs in your photos Relational databases And yes, object databases It’s just a fact of modern life. Notice by the way that most of the data that you use every day is unstructured and thus mostly unsuitable for relational storage. It really is more a matter of recognizing it: you are already doing NoSQL. So what happens when for any reason you need to simultaneously query two or more of these heterogeneous data stores? Well, you build an index of sorts combining them, and that’s what you query instead. Of course, there’s not much distance to travel from that to realizing that querying is better done when completely separated from storage. So why am I writing about this today? Well, that’s something I’ve been giving lots of thought, on and off, over the last ten years. When I built my first CMS all that time ago, one of the main problems my customers were facing was to manage and make sense of the mountain of unstructured data that was constituting most of their business. The central entity of that system was the file system because we were dealing with lots of Word documents, PDFs, OCR’d articles, photos and static web pages. We could have stored all that in SQL Server. It would have worked. Ew. I’m so glad we didn’t. Today, I’m working on Orchard (another CMS ;). It’s a pretty young project but already one of the questions we get the most is how to integrate existing data. One of the ideas I’ll be trying hard to sell to the rest of the team in the next few months is to completely split the querying from the storage. Not only does this provide great opportunities for performance optimizations, it gives you homogeneous access to heterogeneous and existing data sources. For free.

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  • User Group Meeting Summary - April 2010

    - by Michael Stephenson
    Thanks to everyone who could make it to what turned out to be an excellent SBUG event.  First some thanks to:  Speakers: Anthony Ross and Elton Stoneman Host: The various people at Hitachi who helped to organise and arrange the venue.   Session 1 - Getting up and running with Windows Mobile and the Windows Azure Service Bus In this session Anthony discussed some considerations for using Windows Mobile and the Windows Azure Service Bus from a real-world project which Hitachi have been working on with EasyJet.  Anthony also walked through a simplified demo of the concepts which applied on the project.   In addition to the slides and demo it was also very interesting to discuss with the guys involved on this project to hear about their real experiences developing with the Azure Service Bus and some of the limitations they have had to work around in Windows Mobiles ability to interact with the service bus.   On the back of this session we will look to do some further activities around this topic and the guys offered to share their wish list of features for both Windows Mobile and Windows Azure which we will look to share for user group discussion.   Another interesting point was the cost aspects of using the ISB which were very low.   Session 2 - The Enterprise Cache In the second session Elton used a few slides which are based around one of his customer scenario's where they are looking into the concept of an Enterprise Cache within the organisation.  Elton discusses this concept and also a codeplex project he is putting together which allows you to take advantage of a cache with various providers such as Memcached, AppFabric Caching and Ncache.   Following the presentation it was interesting to hear peoples thoughts on various aspects such as the enterprise cache versus an out of process application cache.  Also there was interesting discussion around how people would like to search the cache in the future.   We will again look to put together some follow-up activity on this   Meeting Summary Following the meeting all slide decks are saved in the skydrive location where we keep content from all meetings: http://cid-40015ea59a1307c8.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/SBUG/SBUG%20Meetings/2010%20April   Remember that the details of all previous events are on the following page. http://uksoabpm.org/Events.aspx   Competition We had three copies of the Windows Identity Foundation Patterns and Practices book that were raffles on the night, it would be great to hear any feedback on the book from those who won it.   Recording The user group meeting was recorded and we will look to make this available online sometime soon.   UG Business The following things were discussed as general UG topics:   We will change the name of the user group to the UK Connected Systems User Group to we are more inline with other user groups who cover similar topics and we believe this will help us to attract more members.  The content or focus of the user group is not expected to change.   The next meeting is 26th May and can be registered at the following link: http://sbugmay2010.eventbrite.com/

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  • SQL SERVER – Various Leap Year Logics

    - by pinaldave
    Earlier I wrote one article on Leap Year and created one video about Leap Year. My point of view was to demonstrate how we can use SQL Server 2012 features to identify Leap year. How ever during the conversation I had some really good conversation. Here are updates for those who have missed reading the excellent comments on the blog. Incorrect Logic There are so many people still think Leap Year is the event which is consistently happening at every four year and the way to find it is divide the year with 4 and if the remainder is 0. That year is leap year. Well, it is not correct. Comment by David Bridge Check out this excerpt from wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_year “most years that are evenly divisible by 4 are leap years…” “…Some exceptions to this rule are required since the duration of a solar year is slightly less than 365.25 days. Years that are evenly divisible by 100 are not leap years, unless they are also evenly divisible by 400, in which case they are leap years. For example, 1600 and 2000 were leap years, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not. Similarly, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2500, 2600, 2700, 2900 and 3000 will not be leap years, but 2400 and 2800 will be.” If you use logic of divide by 4 and remainder is 0 to find leap year, you will may end up with inaccurate result. The correct way to identify the year is to figure out the days of February and if the count is 29, the year is for sure leap year. Valid Alternate Solutions Comment by sainswor99insworth IIF((@Year%4=0 AND @Year%100 != 0) OR @Year%400=0, 1,0) Comment by Madhivanan Madhivanan has written a blog post about an year ago where he listed multiple ways to find leap year. Comment by Jayan DECLARE @year INT SET @year = 2012 IF (((@year % 4 = 0) AND (@year % 100 != 0)) OR (@year % 400 = 0)) PRINT ’1' ELSE print ’0' Comment by David DECLARE @Year INT = 2012 SELECT ISDATE('2/29/' + CAST(@Year AS CHAR(4))) Comment by David Bridge Incidentally – Another approach would be to take one day off March 1st and see if it is 29. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL DateTime, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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