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  • DESIGNING FOR WIN PHONE 7

    Designing applications for the Win Phone 7 is very similar to designing for print. In my opinion, it feels like a cross between a tri-fold brochure and a poster. I based my prototype designs on Microsofts Metro style guide, with typography as the main focus and stunning imagery for support. Its nice to have fixed factors regulating the design, making it a fun and fresh design experience. Microsoft provides a UI Design Guidelines document that outlines layout sizes, background image size, recommended typefaces and spacing. You know what you are designing for and you know how it will look and act on the win phone 7 platform. Although applications are not required to strictly adhere to the Metro style guide I feel it makes the best use of the panorama view  and navigation. With strong examples of this UI concept in place like their Zune-like music + videos hub, I found it fairly easy to put together a few quick app mockups (see below). In addition to design guidelines, using a ready built design templates, or a win phone 7 specific panorama control like the one by Clarity Consulting will make the process of bringing your designs to life much more efficient. Likes, Dislikes, and Challenges I think the idea of the hub is completely intuitive. This concept clearly breaks down info into more manageable pieces, and greatly helps with organization when designing for the phone. I like the chromeless appearance, allowing the core functionality of the application to take precedence over gradients, textures, bevels, drop shadows, and the complicated animations you see on the web. Although I understand the Win Phone 7 guidelines are a work in progress, I found a few contradictions. I also noticed that certain design specifications did not translate well to the phone emulator . If you use their guidelines as suggested best practices and not as fixed definitions you will have more success. Multi-directional vs Linear The main challenge I had was stepping away from familiar navigational examples seen in other mobile phones. I had to keep reminding myself that the content to the right and to the left of what I was working on didnt necessarily have to have a direct link to one another. I started thinking multi-directional as opposed to linear. Win phone 7 vs IPhone The Metro styling of the Win Phone 7 is similar to the Zune HD and the Windows Media Center UI and offers a different interface paradigm than the IPhone. When navigating an application it feels like you are panning a long seamless page of information in contrast to the multiple panels of an IPhone. I think there is less of an opportunity to overdesign your application, which happens often with IPhone applications. While both interfaces are simple and sleek, win phone 7 really gets down to the basics. IPhone sets a high standard for designing for touch, designing for win phone 7 could improve on that user experience with a consistent and strategic use of white space and staying away from a menu and icon heavy UI. Design Examples for Win Phone 7 Applications Here are some concepts for both generic and brand specific applications for Win Phone 7: View Full Album Resources to get you going with your own Win Phone 7 design: Helpful design templates for Win Phone 7  http://www.shazaml.com/archives/windows-phone-7-ui-templates Here is the interaction design guide for Win Phone 7 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 Windows has a project template for Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 RC1 http://developer.windowsphone.com/ Clarity Consulting developed a panorama control for Win Phone 7 http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/design/archive/2010/03/30/building-the-elusive-windows-phone-panorama-control.aspxDid 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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  • DESIGNING FOR WIN PHONE 7

    Designing applications for the Win Phone 7 is very similar to designing for print. In my opinion, it feels like a cross between a tri-fold brochure and a poster. I based my prototype designs on Microsofts Metro style guide, with typography as the main focus and stunning imagery for support. Its nice to have fixed factors regulating the design, making it a fun and fresh design experience. Microsoft provides a UI Design Guidelines document that outlines layout sizes, background image size, recommended typefaces and spacing. You know what you are designing for and you know how it will look and act on the win phone 7 platform. Although applications are not required to strictly adhere to the Metro style guide I feel it makes the best use of the panorama view  and navigation. With strong examples of this UI concept in place like their Zune-like music + videos hub, I found it fairly easy to put together a few quick app mockups (see below). In addition to design guidelines, using a ready built design templates, or a win phone 7 specific panorama control like the one by Clarity Consulting will make the process of bringing your designs to life much more efficient. Likes, Dislikes, and Challenges I think the idea of the hub is completely intuitive. This concept clearly breaks down info into more manageable pieces, and greatly helps with organization when designing for the phone. I like the chromeless appearance, allowing the core functionality of the application to take precedence over gradients, textures, bevels, drop shadows, and the complicated animations you see on the web. Although I understand the Win Phone 7 guidelines are a work in progress, I found a few contradictions. I also noticed that certain design specifications did not translate well to the phone emulator . If you use their guidelines as suggested best practices and not as fixed definitions you will have more success. Multi-directional vs Linear The main challenge I had was stepping away from familiar navigational examples seen in other mobile phones. I had to keep reminding myself that the content to the right and to the left of what I was working on didnt necessarily have to have a direct link to one another. I started thinking multi-directional as opposed to linear. Win phone 7 vs IPhone The Metro styling of the Win Phone 7 is similar to the Zune HD and the Windows Media Center UI and offers a different interface paradigm than the IPhone. When navigating an application it feels like you are panning a long seamless page of information in contrast to the multiple panels of an IPhone. I think there is less of an opportunity to overdesign your application, which happens often with IPhone applications. While both interfaces are simple and sleek, win phone 7 really gets down to the basics. IPhone sets a high standard for designing for touch, designing for win phone 7 could improve on that user experience with a consistent and strategic use of white space and staying away from a menu and icon heavy UI. Design Examples for Win Phone 7 Applications Here are some concepts for both generic and brand specific applications for Win Phone 7: View Full Album Resources to get you going with your own Win Phone 7 design: Helpful design templates for Win Phone 7  http://www.shazaml.com/archives/windows-phone-7-ui-templates Here is the interaction design guide for Win Phone 7 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 Windows has a project template for Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 RC1 http://developer.windowsphone.com/ Clarity Consulting developed a panorama control for Win Phone 7 http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/design/archive/2010/03/30/building-the-elusive-windows-phone-panorama-control.aspxDid 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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  • Silverlight Cream for December 11, 2010 -- #1007

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Mike Wolf, Colin Eberhardt, Mike Snow(-2-, -3-), David Kelley(-2-, -3-), Jesse Liberty(-2-), Erik Mork, Jeff Blankenburg, Laurent Duveau, and Jeremy Likness(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "The definitive guide to Notification Window in Silverlight 4" Laurent Duveau WP7: "Making the MS Adcontrol REALLY work on phone 7" David Kelley Silverlight 5: "Silverlight 5: In the Trenches" Mike Wolf From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 5: In the Trenches How many people can discuss Silverlight 5 'In the Trenches' ... apparently Mike Wolf can, and that's just what he's done in the post to whet your whistle (do people say that any more?) for when we can all get our hands on the bits. Visiblox, Visifire, DynamicDataDisplay – Charting Performance Comparison Colin Eberhardt responds to reader requests, and revisits his Charting Performance after also some discussion with David Anson about the Silverlight Toolkit. This time including Dynamic Data Display which is quite impressive in the ratings... check out the post and the code. Win7 Mobile Back Arrow Key Interception The simple fact is heavy bloggers rise, like Cream, to the top of my list, and I've been missing some goodness from Mike Snow... he's blogging WP7 stuff now... first up of the 'missed' ones is this one on intercepting the Back Arrow Key. Animating the Color of an Object Switching back to Silverlight in general, Mike Snow's next post is on Animating color of an object, such as text foreground. Tombstoning on the Win7 Mobile Platform And now back to WP7, Mike Snow is discussing Tombstoning... discussing the various aspects of it, and some code to use, if you haven't gotten your head around this one yet. What I tell Designers to give me... Integrating and Digital Zen David Kelley has a post up describing what he needs from designers to get his job done... I heard him discussing this at the Firestarter, and didn't realize he had written it up... these 8 items are things learned by doing, and should be discussed with your designers. Making the MS Adcontrol REALLY work on phone 7 David Kelley also has a post up discussing how to really get the Ad control working on WP7 apps... since I've seen lots of posts about this, having a definitive explanation from someone that's doing it is a good thing. Performance Optimization on Phone 7 In a break from his norm of discussing UX, David Kelley is talking about performance on WP7 devices in this post. Windows Phone From Scratch #10 – Visual State Part 2 When I saw Jesse Liberty's latest post, I realized I had missed his Part 2 of VSM for WP7 ... don't you miss it... this completes the good stuff from number 9 :) Windows Phone From Scratch #11 – Behaviors Jesse Liberty's latest Windows Phone from Scratch is up... and he's talking about Behaviors this time out... more of an overview or introduction to behaviors, but all good Show 112: Scott Guthrie on Silverlight 5 Erik Mork's latest Sparkling Client podcast is up and he was able to get some time with Scott Guthrie at the Firestarter. What I Learned in WP7 – Issue #1 Jeff Blankenburg decided to do another series, only this one isn't promised as every day... it's "What I Learned in WP7" ... and the first is up... good interesting bits found surrounding the WP7 device. The definitive guide to Notification Window in Silverlight 4 Laurent Duveau has a great post up that will have you doing Silverlight 'toast' notifications in no time... good descriptions and source. Lessons Learned in Personal Web Page Part 1: Dynamic XAML Jeremy Likness has rebuilt his personal website in Silverlight and is sharing some of that experience on his blog. This first post discusses the dynamic content. He used Jounce, of course, and included the Silverlight Navigation Framework, and... you can download all the source Lessons Learned in Personal Web Page Part 2: Enter the Matrix Jeremy Likness's second post about building his website is all about the 'Matrix' page ... pretty cool stuff... check it out... I think it looks great 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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  • Windows Phone–A beautiful phone which I admire but I don’t recommend to friends and family

    - by Gopinath
    Microsoft’s Windows Phones are the most beautiful phones I’ve seen. Look at the photo which Microsoft shared on their Facebook page today. It’s gorgeous. Windows Phones come in vibrant colors and the user interface is very lively. When you keep an iPhone, Android Phone & a Windows Phone on a table, Windows Phone definitely stands out. Android and iOS interfaces are routine – a bunch of apps icons arranged in rows and multiple screens. Windows Phone is very different, the live tiles concept mesmerizes us. I love Windows Phone, but neither I buy one nor I recommend to family/friends! Why? Because it does not have all the Apps I need. Microsoft advertises that Windows Phone has 100K apps on its Windows Market Place. It’s true, there are 100K+ apps available for Windows Phone but not many of them are really useful and most of the popular Apps I use on Android are not available. When I say this to my friends at Microsoft, they don’t agree and one of them asked me list the apps that are not available. For him today I spent an hour quickly scanning through the apps installed on my Google Nexus and searched for same apps on Windows Market Place. As expected many of them are not available. Here is the list of my favorite Android apps that are not available for Windows Phone Mint – I use this app more than any of the Banking Apps I’ve installed on my mobile. It’s one app to keep a tab on all the expenses and income, the best money management and tracking app. Google Chrome – Web without Google Chrome is too boring, either on Desktop or on mobile. IE is too heavy and Firefox is loosing its grip. Chrome is the new darling of web. Pulse, Flipboard – Flipboard and Pulse are one of the best apps for reading news and following content of favorite blogs. Dropbox – Sync content across devices and provides access to your content on any device.It really does not matter what is your gadget – mobile, tablet or computer; Dropbox lets you access your content. GMail, Google Maps – Should I say how important are these two apps in our day to day life!! Vonage Extension – For around 30 bucks a month, Vonage provide landline service in USA + unlimited calls to India and many other countries + Vonage Extension App that lets Android/iOS mobile to make unlimited international calls for free. Without Vonage Extension app, I’m almost cutoff from my family and friends back home in India. Instagram – The most popular camera app used from a common man to celebrities. Raaga, Dhingana  – Music is part and parcel of life and these two apps are the most like popular apps to listen to Indian music. Quora – Quora is the place where most of the sensible discussions happen on web. Google Analytics, Google Adsense – I’m a blogger and these two apps mean a lot to me The list goes on and on! There are many useful apps that are not available on Windows Phone – TuneIn, MyTWC, Chrome To Phone, Google Voice, etc. Without all these apps, Windows Phone is just another old Nokia phone. Even though Windows Phone is the most beautiful phone, it needs Apps to attract customers. Without apps a smartphone is more or less a dumb feature phone which we loved to use before release of iPhone. Wish in an year or two the beautiful Windows Phone may have all the missing Apps. When it happens I’ll buy a phone for myself and recommend it to my family & friends. But till then I prefer to stay away.

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  • Oracle’s New Memory-Optimized x86 Servers: Getting the Most Out of Oracle Database In-Memory

    - by Josh Rosen, x86 Product Manager-Oracle
    With the launch of Oracle Database In-Memory, it is now possible to perform real-time analytics operations on your business data as it exists at that moment – in the DRAM of the server – and immediately return completely current and consistent data. The Oracle Database In-Memory option dramatically accelerates the performance of analytics queries by storing data in a highly optimized columnar in-memory format.  This is a truly exciting advance in database technology.As Larry Ellison mentioned in his recent webcast about Oracle Database In-Memory, queries run 100 times faster simply by throwing a switch.  But in order to get the most from the Oracle Database In-Memory option, the underlying server must also be memory-optimized. This week Oracle announced new 4-socket and 8-socket x86 servers, the Sun Server X4-4 and Sun Server X4-8, both of which have been designed specifically for Oracle Database In-Memory.  These new servers use the fastest Intel® Xeon® E7 v2 processors and each subsystem has been designed to be the best for Oracle Database, from the memory, I/O and flash technologies right down to the system firmware.Amongst these subsystems, one of the most important aspects we have optimized with the Sun Server X4-4 and Sun Server X4-8 are their memory subsystems.  The new In-Memory option makes it possible to select which parts of the database should be memory optimized.  You can choose to put a single column or table in memory or, if you can, put the whole database in memory.  The more, the better.  With 3 TB and 6 TB total memory capacity on the Sun Server X4-4 and Sun Server X4-8, respectively, you can memory-optimize more, if not your entire database.   Sun Server X4-8 CMOD with 24 DIMM slots per socket (up to 192 DIMM slots per server) But memory capacity is not the only important factor in selecting the best server platform for Oracle Database In-Memory.  As you put more of your database in memory, a critical performance metric known as memory bandwidth comes into play.  The total memory bandwidth for the server will dictate the rate in which data can be stored and retrieved from memory.  In order to achieve real-time analysis of your data using Oracle Database In-Memory, even under heavy load, the server must be able to handle extreme memory workloads.  With that in mind, the Sun Server X4-8 was designed with the maximum possible memory bandwidth, providing over a terabyte per second of total memory bandwidth.  Likewise, the Sun Server X4-4 also provides extreme memory bandwidth in an even more compact form factor with over half a terabyte per second, providing customers with scalability and choice depending on the size of the database.Beyond the memory subsystem, Oracle’s Sun Server X4-4 and Sun Server X4-8 systems provide other key technologies that enable Oracle Database to run at its best.  The Sun Server X4-4 allows for up 4.8 TB of internal, write-optimized PCIe flash while the Sun Server X4-8 allows for up to 6.4 TB of PCIe flash.  This enables dramatic acceleration of data inserts and updates to Oracle Database.  And with the new elastic computing capability of Oracle’s new x86 servers, server performance can be adapted to your specific Oracle Database workload to ensure that every last bit of processing power is utilized.Because Oracle designs and tests its x86 servers specifically for Oracle workloads, we provide the highest possible performance and reliability when running Oracle Database.  To learn more about Sun Server X4-4 and Sun Server X4-8, you can find more details including data sheets and white papers here. Josh Rosen is a Principal Product Manager for Oracle’s x86 servers, focusing on Oracle’s operating systems and software.  He previously spent more than a decade as a developer and architect of system management software. Josh has worked on system management for many of Oracle's hardware products ranging from the earliest blade systems to the latest Oracle x86 servers. 

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  • The Next Wave of PeopleSoft Capabilities for the Staffing Industry Is Here

    - by Mark Rosenberg
    With the release of PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 in January this year, we introduced substantial new capabilities for our Staffing Industry customers. Through a co-development project with Infosys Limited, we have enriched Oracle's PeopleSoft Staffing Solution with new tools aimed at accelerating and improving the quality of job order fulfillment, increasing branch recruiter productivity, and driving profitable growth. Staffing industry firms succeed based on their ability to rapidly, cost-effectively, and continually fill their pipelines with new clients and job orders, recruit the best talent, and match orders with talent. Pressure to execute in each of these functional areas is even more acute on staffing firms as contingent labor becomes a more substantial and permanent part of the workforce mix. In an industry that creates value through speedy execution, there is little room for manual, inefficient processes and brittle, custom integrations, which throttle profitability and growth. The latest wave of investment in the PeopleSoft Staffing Solution focuses on generating efficiency and flexibility for our customers. Simplicity To operate profitably and continue growing, a Staffing enterprise needs its client management, recruiting, order fulfillment, and other processes to function in harmony. Most importantly, they need to be simple for recruiters, branch managers, and applicants to access and understand. The latest PeopleSoft Staffing Solution set of enhancements includes numerous automated defaulting mechanisms and information-rich dashboard pagelets that even a new employee can learn quickly. Pending Applicant, Agenda management, Search, and other pagelets are just a few of the newest, easy-to-use tools that not only aggregate and summarize information, but also provide instant access to applicants, tasks, and key reports for branch staff. Productivity The leading firms in the Staffing industry are those that can more efficiently orchestrate large numbers of candidates, clients, and orders than their competitors can. PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 delivers productivity boosters that Staffing firms can leverage to streamline tasks and processes for competitive advantage. For example, we enhanced the Recruiting Funnel, which manages the candidate on-boarding process, with a highly interactive user interface. It integrates disparate Staffing business processes and exploits new PeopleTools technologies to offer a superior on-boarding user experience. Automated creation of agenda items and assignment tasks for each candidate minimizes setup and organizes assignment steps for the on-boarding process. Mass updates of tasks and instant access to the candidate overview page (which we also expanded), candidate event status, event counts, and other key data enable recruiters to better serve clients and candidates. Lower TCO Constructing and maintaining an efficient yet flexible labor supply chain can be complicated, let alone expensive. Traditionally, Staffing firms have been challenged in controlling their technology cost of ownership because connecting candidate and client-facing tools involved building and integrating custom applications and technologies and managing staff turnover, placing heavy demands on IT and support staff. With PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2, there are two major enhancements that aggressively tackle these challenges. First, we added another integration framework to enable cost-effective linking of the Staffing firm’s PeopleSoft applications and its job board distributors. (The first PeopleSoft 9.1 Feature Pack released in March 2011 delivered an integration framework to connect to resume parsing providers.) Second, we introduced the teaming concept to enable work to be partitioned to groups, as well as individuals. These two capabilities, combined with a host of others, position Staffing firms to configure and grow their businesses without growing their IT and overhead expenditures. For our Staffing Industry customers, PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 is loaded with high-value tools aimed at enabling and sustaining a flexible labor supply chain. For more information, contact [email protected] or [email protected].

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  • Dude, what’s up with POP Forums vNext?

    - by Jeff
    Yeah, it has been awhile. I posted v9.2 back in January, about five months ago. That’s a real change from the release pace I had there for awhile. Let me explain what’s going on. First off, in the interim, I re-launched CoasterBuzz, which required a lot of my attention for about two of those months. That’s a good thing though, because that site is just about the best test bed I could ask for. The other thing is that I committed to make the next version use ASP.NET MVC 4, which is now at the RC stage. I didn’t think much about when they’d hit their RTW point, but RC is good enough for me. To that end, there is enough change in the next version that I recently decided to make it a major version upgrade, and finish up the loose ends and science projects to make it whole. Here’s what’s in store… Mobile views: I sat on this or a long time. Originally, I was going to use jQuery Mobile, and waited and waited for a new release, but in the end, decided against using it. Sometimes buttons would unexplainably not work, I felt like I was fighting it at times, and the CSS just felt too heavy. I rolled my own mobile sugar at a fraction of the size, and I think you’ll find it easy to modify. And it’s Metro-y, of course! Re-do of background services: A number of things run in the background, and I did quite a bit of “reimagining” of that code. It’s the weirdness of running services in a Web site context, because so many folks can’t run a bona fide service on their host’s box. The biggest change here is that these service no longer start up by default. You’ll need to call a new method from global.asax called PopForumsActivation.StartServices(). This is also a precursor to running the app in a Web farm (new data layer and caching is the second part of that). I learned about this the hard way when I had three apps using the forum library code but only one was actually the forum. The services were all running three times as often with race conditions and hits on the same data. That was particularly bad for e-mail. CSS clean up: It’s still not ideal, but it’s getting better. That’s one of those things that comes with integrating to a real site… you discover all of the dumb things you did. The mobile CSS is particularly easier to live with. Bug fixes: There are a whole lot of them. Most were minor, but it’s feeling pretty solid now. So that’s where I am. I’m going to call it v10.0, and I’m going to really put forth some effort toward finishing the mobile experience and getting through the remaining bugs. The roadmap beyond that will likely not be feature oriented, but rather work on some other things, like making it run in Azure, perhaps using SQL CE, a better install experience, etc. As usual, I’ll post the latest here. Stay tuned!

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  • iPad Impressions

    - by Aaron Lazenby
    So, I spent some quality time with my new iPad on Saturday. Here are things I like/don't like: -- Don't like that it has to sync with iTunes before you use it: I was traveling and left my laptop at home thinking I'd use this iPad thing instead. But the first thing it asked me to do is connect it to a laptop. Ugh. Had to borrow my mother-in-law's MacBook Pro just to get the iPad rolling. -- Like that magazines and newspapers are forever changed: And I think for the better...it's why I bought this thing in the first place. I spent significant time with The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and Popular Science on the iPad. Sliding stories around, jumping from section to section, enlarging images = all excellent experiences. Actually prefer iPad magazine to print, which will require a major shift in editorial strategy, summed up by Popular Science's Mark Jannot in his editor's note "What defines a magazine? Curated expertise--not paper." -- Don't like the screwy human factors: I actually enjoy the virtual keyboard (although I think I'm in the minority), but you have to hunch over to look down at what you're typing. Bad technology ergonomics have already jacked my body in various ways. The iPad just introduced a new one.-- Like the multitouch: In fact, it's awesome. Hands down. Probably will have the most lasting impact on the personal computing industry as a whole.   -- Don't like that it's heavy: If you plan to read in bed, you'd better double up on the creatine and curls. Holding this thing up on your own gets pretty uncomfortable. -- Like the Netfilx app: I wanted to watch "The Big Lebowski," so I did. That is all. -- Don't like that people feel 3G is necessary: For $30 a month? Please. I'm already accustomed to limiting my laptop internet use to readily available free wi-fi. Why do I expect anything different with the iPad? Most anyplace I have time to sit and read/use a computer (cafe, airport, you house, library, etc.) has free wi-fi. I can live without web surfing in your car. That's what the iPhone is for. -- Don't like that not everyone was ready in day one: I'm looking at you Facebook. No iPad app for launch? Lame. iPhone apps scaled-up to work on the iPad look grainy and cheap. Not a quality befitting this beautiful $700 piece of glass.Verdict: I'm bringing it to COLLABORATE 08 and seeing if I can go the whole week using only the iPad. If I can trade this thing for my laptop, I know it's a winner. For now, I'm enjoying Popular Science.

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  • I spy a Live Framework portal

    - by jamiet
    Those that have followed my blogs for a while may know that I have a slightly banal interest in Windows Live and, more specifically, the Live Services developer platform'; if that doesn’t sound interesting to you then stop reading now. My interest mainly stems from the Live Mesh technology that was announced a couple of years ago and the data synchronisation platform API that underpins it; that platform is called the Live Framework or LiveFX for short. At the Professional Developer’s Conference (PDC) 2008 Microsoft made LiveFX available to the public as a Tech Preview and I spent some time learning to use it and also built a few test apps on it too. In August 2009 an announcement came that that tech preview was getting shut down: "At the Professional Developer Conference 2008, we gave the developer community access to the technical preview of the Live Framework. The Live Framework is core to our vision of providing you with a consistent programming interface. Now we are working to integrate existing services, controls and the Live Framework into the next release of Windows Live. Your feedback continues to help us build the best possible offerings for Windows Live users, for you and for your customers. " Since then news on LiveFX has disappeared save for a throwaway session at PDC09 and I was hoping that news was going to appear at this week’s MIX conference but nothing was forthcoming. Instead though today I stumbled upon an unannounced portal for future LiveFX applications on Microsoft’s Azure portal at http://live.azure.com. Check it out: I consider this to be very good news. This Azure portal was built after the LiveFX tech preview was decommissioned so seeing Live Services existing so prominently alongside Microsoft’s other cloud efforts like Windows Azure and SQL Azure vindicates my early investment in the platform and gives me hope that we’re going to see something get released very very soon. I believe that the potential uses for this platform are extremely compelling and I’m looking forward to trying some out in the near future. I am also expecting LiveFX to have a heavy dependency on the OData protocol that I talked about yesterday in my post OData.org updated - gives clues about future sql azure enhancements so you can tell where my interest in that stems from. In case you’re wondering the projects that you see listed above (Basic List Sample, JT-proj etc…) are projects that I built on the old Tech Preview platform so clearly that stuff has not gone for good which is also good news; not just because it means I’ll have access to the code I wrote before but I also assume it means that LiveFX won’t have changed much since its tech preview incarnation. I know there are other LiveFX buffs out there and hopefully this news reaches some of them. If you are one of them the please put a comment below and let me know your thoughts! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Book Review: Programming Windows Identity Foundation

    - by DigiMortal
    Programming Windows Identity Foundation by Vittorio Bertocci is right now the only serious book about Windows Identity Foundation available. I started using Windows Identity Foundation when I made my first experiments on Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control Service. I wanted to generalize the way how people authenticate theirselves to my systems and AppFabric ACS seemed to me like good point where to start. My first steps trying to get things work opened the door to whole new authentication world for me. As I went through different blog postings and articles to get more information I discovered that the thing I am trying to use is the one I am looking for. As best security API for .NET was found I wanted to know more about it and this is how I found Programming Windows Identity Foundation. What’s inside? Programming WIF focuses on architecture, design and implementation of WIF. I think Vittorio is very good at teaching people because you find no too complex topics from the book. You learn more and more as you read and as a good thing you will find that you can also try out your new knowledge on WIF immediately. After giving good overview about WIF author moves on and introduces how to use WIF in ASP.NET applications. You will get complete picture how WIF integrates to ASP.NET request processing pipeline and how you can control the process by yourself. There are two chapters about ASP.NET. First one is more like introduction and the second one goes deeper and deeper until you have very good idea about how to use ASP.NET and WIF together, what issues you may face and how you can configure and extend WIF. Other two chapters cover using WIF with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) band   Windows Azure. WCF chapter expects that you know WCF very well. This is not introductory chapter for beginners, this is heavy reading if you are not familiar with WCF. The chapter about Windows Azure describes how to use WIF in cloud applications. Last chapter talks about some future developments of WIF and describer some problems and their solutions. Most interesting part of this chapter is section about Silverlight. Who should read this book? Programming WIF is targeted to developers. It does not matter if you are beginner or old bullet-proof professional – every developer should be able to be read this book with no difficulties. I don’t recommend this book to administrators and project managers because they find almost nothing that is related to their work. I strongly recommend this book to all developers who are interested in modern authentication methods on Microsoft platform. The book is written so well that I almost forgot all things around me when I was reading the book. All additional tools you need are free. There is also Azure AppFabric ACS test version available and you can try it out for free. Table of contents Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction Part I Windows Identity Foundation for Everybody 1 Claims-Based Identity 2 Core ASP.NET Programming Part II Windows Identity Foundation for Identity Developers 3 WIF Processing Pipeline in ASP.NET 4 Advanced ASP.NET Programming 5 WIF and WCF 6 WIF and Windows Azure 7 The Road Ahead Index

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  • SQL SERVER – CXPACKET – Parallelism – Advanced Solution – Wait Type – Day 7 of 28

    - by pinaldave
    Earlier we discussed about the what is the common solution to solve the issue with CXPACKET wait time. Today I am going to talk about few of the other suggestions which can help to reduce the CXPACKET wait. If you are going to suggest that I should focus on MAXDOP and COST THRESHOLD – I totally agree. I have covered them in details in yesterday’s blog post. Today we are going to discuss few other way CXPACKET can be reduced. Potential Reasons: If data is heavily skewed, there are chances that query optimizer may estimate the correct amount of the data leading to assign fewer thread to query. This can easily lead to uneven workload on threads and may create CXPAKCET wait. While retrieving the data one of the thread face IO, Memory or CPU bottleneck and have to wait to get those resources to execute its tasks, may create CXPACKET wait as well. Data which is retrieved is on different speed IO Subsystem. (This is not common and hardly possible but there are chances). Higher fragmentations in some area of the table can lead less data per page. This may lead to CXPACKET wait. As I said the reasons here mentioned are not the major cause of the CXPACKET wait but any kind of scenario can create the probable wait time. Best Practices to Reduce CXPACKET wait: Refer earlier article regarding MAXDOP and Cost Threshold. De-fragmentation of Index can help as more data can be obtained per page. (Assuming close to 100 fill-factor) If data is on multiple files which are on multiple similar speed physical drive, the CXPACKET wait may reduce. Keep the statistics updated, as this will give better estimate to query optimizer when assigning threads and dividing the data among available threads. Updating statistics can significantly improve the strength of the query optimizer to render proper execution plan. This may overall affect the parallelism process in positive way. Bad Practice: In one of the recent consultancy project, when I was called in I noticed that one of the ‘experienced’ DBA noticed higher CXPACKET wait and to reduce them, he has increased the worker threads. The reality was increasing worker thread has lead to many other issues. With more number of the threads, more amount of memory was used leading memory pressure. As there were more threads CPU scheduler faced higher ‘Context Switching’ leading further degrading performance. When I explained all these to ‘experienced’ DBA he suggested that now we should reduce the number of threads. Not really! Lower number of the threads may create heavy stalling for parallel queries. I suggest NOT to touch the setting of number of the threads when dealing with CXPACKET wait. Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Note: The information presented here is from my experience and I no way claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading book on-line for further clarification. All the discussion of Wait Stats over here is generic and it varies by system to system. You are recommended to test this on development server before implementing to production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: DMV, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • Avoiding new operator in JavaScript -- the better way

    - by greengit
    Warning: This is a long post. Let's keep it simple. I want to avoid having to prefix the new operator every time I call a constructor in JavaScript. This is because I tend to forget it, and my code screws up badly. The simple way around this is this... function Make(x) { if ( !(this instanceof arguments.callee) ) return new arguments.callee(x); // do your stuff... } But, I need this to accept variable no. of arguments, like this... m1 = Make(); m2 = Make(1,2,3); m3 = Make('apple', 'banana'); The first immediate solution seems to be the 'apply' method like this... function Make() { if ( !(this instanceof arguments.callee) ) return new arguments.callee.apply(null, arguments); // do your stuff } This is WRONG however -- the new object is passed to the apply method and NOT to our constructor arguments.callee. Now, I've come up with three solutions. My simple question is: which one seems best. Or, if you have a better method, tell it. First – use eval() to dynamically create JavaScript code that calls the constructor. function Make(/* ... */) { if ( !(this instanceof arguments.callee) ) { // collect all the arguments var arr = []; for ( var i = 0; arguments[i]; i++ ) arr.push( 'arguments[' + i + ']' ); // create code var code = 'new arguments.callee(' + arr.join(',') + ');'; // call it return eval( code ); } // do your stuff with variable arguments... } Second – Every object has __proto__ property which is a 'secret' link to its prototype object. Fortunately this property is writable. function Make(/* ... */) { var obj = {}; // do your stuff on 'obj' just like you'd do on 'this' // use the variable arguments here // now do the __proto__ magic // by 'mutating' obj to make it a different object obj.__proto__ = arguments.callee.prototype; // must return obj return obj; } Third – This is something similar to second solution. function Make(/* ... */) { // we'll set '_construct' outside var obj = new arguments.callee._construct(); // now do your stuff on 'obj' just like you'd do on 'this' // use the variable arguments here // you have to return obj return obj; } // now first set the _construct property to an empty function Make._construct = function() {}; // and then mutate the prototype of _construct Make._construct.prototype = Make.prototype; eval solution seems clumsy and comes with all the problems of "evil eval". __proto__ solution is non-standard and the "Great Browser of mIsERY" doesn't honor it. The third solution seems overly complicated. But with all the above three solutions, we can do something like this, that we can't otherwise... m1 = Make(); m2 = Make(1,2,3); m3 = Make('apple', 'banana'); m1 instanceof Make; // true m2 instanceof Make; // true m3 instanceof Make; // true Make.prototype.fire = function() { // ... }; m1.fire(); m2.fire(); m3.fire(); So effectively the above solutions give us "true" constructors that accept variable no. of arguments and don't require new. What's your take on this. -- UPDATE -- Some have said "just throw an error". My response is: we are doing a heavy app with 10+ constructors and I think it'd be far more wieldy if every constructor could "smartly" handle that mistake without throwing error messages on the console.

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  • Reconciling the Boy Scout Rule and Opportunistic Refactoring with code reviews

    - by t0x1n
    I am a great believer in the Boy Scout Rule: Always check a module in cleaner than when you checked it out." No matter who the original author was, what if we always made some effort, no matter how small, to improve the module. What would be the result? I think if we all followed that simple rule, we'd see the end of the relentless deterioration of our software systems. Instead, our systems would gradually get better and better as they evolved. We'd also see teams caring for the system as a whole, rather than just individuals caring for their own small little part. I am also a great believer in the related idea of Opportunistic Refactoring: Although there are places for some scheduled refactoring efforts, I prefer to encourage refactoring as an opportunistic activity, done whenever and wherever code needs to cleaned up - by whoever. What this means is that at any time someone sees some code that isn't as clear as it should be, they should take the opportunity to fix it right there and then - or at least within a few minutes Particularly note the following excerpt from the refactoring article: I'm wary of any development practices that cause friction for opportunistic refactoring ... My sense is that most teams don't do enough refactoring, so it's important to pay attention to anything that is discouraging people from doing it. To help flush this out be aware of any time you feel discouraged from doing a small refactoring, one that you're sure will only take a minute or two. Any such barrier is a smell that should prompt a conversation. So make a note of the discouragement and bring it up with the team. At the very least it should be discussed during your next retrospective. Where I work, there is one development practice that causes heavy friction - Code Review (CR). Whenever I change anything that's not in the scope of my "assignment" I'm being rebuked by my reviewers that I'm making the change harder to review. This is especially true when refactoring is involved, since it makes "line by line" diff comparison difficult. This approach is the standard here, which means opportunistic refactoring is seldom done, and only "planned" refactoring (which is usually too little, too late) takes place, if at all. I claim that the benefits are worth it, and that 3 reviewers will work a little harder (to actually understand the code before and after, rather than look at the narrow scope of which lines changed - the review itself would be better due to that alone) so that the next 100 developers reading and maintaining the code will benefit. When I present this argument my reviewers, they say they have no problem with my refactoring, as long as it's not in the same CR. However I claim this is a myth: (1) Most of the times you only realize what and how you want to refactor when you're in the midst of your assignment. As Martin Fowler puts it: As you add the functionality, you realize that some code you're adding contains some duplication with some existing code, so you need to refactor the existing code to clean things up... You may get something working, but realize that it would be better if the interaction with existing classes was changed. Take that opportunity to do that before you consider yourself done. (2) Nobody is going to look favorably at you releasing "refactoring" CRs you were not supposed to do. A CR has a certain overhead and your manager doesn't want you to "waste your time" on refactoring. When it's bundled with the change you're supposed to do, this issue is minimized. The issue is exacerbated by Resharper, as each new file I add to the change (and I can't know in advance exactly which files would end up changed) is usually littered with errors and suggestions - most of which are spot on and totally deserve fixing. The end result is that I see horrible code, and I just leave it there. Ironically, I feel that fixing such code not only will not improve my standings, but actually lower them and paint me as the "unfocused" guy who wastes time fixing things nobody cares about instead of doing his job. I feel bad about it because I truly despise bad code and can't stand watching it, let alone call it from my methods! Any thoughts on how I can remedy this situation ?

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  • Scripting with the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 Appliance

    - by Geoff Ongley
    The Sun ZFS Storage 7000 appliance has a user friendly and easy to understand graphical web based interface we call the "BUI" or "Browser User Interface".This interface is very useful for many tasks, but in some cases a script (or workflow) may be more appropriate, such as:Repetitive tasksTasks which work on (or obtain information about) a large number of shares or usersTasks which are triggered by an alert threshold (workflows)Tasks where you want a only very basic input, but a consistent output (workflows)The appliance scripting language is based on ECMAscript 3 (close to javascript). I'm not going to cover ECMAscript 3 in great depth (I'm far from an expert here), but I would like to show you some neat things you can do with the appliance, to get you started based on what I have found from my own playing around.I'm making the assumption you have some sort of programming background, and understand variables, arrays, functions to some extent - but of course if something is not clear, please let me know so I can fix it up or clarify it.Variable Declarations and ArraysVariablesECMAScript is a dynamically and weakly typed language. If you don't know what that means, google is your friend - but at a high level it means we can just declare variables with no specific type and on the fly.For example, I can declare a variable and use it straight away in the middle of my code, for example:projects=list();Which makes projects an array of values that are returned from the list(); function (which is usable in most contexts). With this kind of variable, I can do things like:projects.length (this property on array tells you how many objects are in it, good for for loops etc). Alternatively, I could say:projects=3;and now projects is just a simple number.Should we declare variables like this so loosely? In my opinion, the answer is no - I feel it is a better practice to declare variables you are going to use, before you use them - and given them an initial value. You can do so as follows:var myVariable=0;To demonstrate the ability to just randomly assign and change the type of variables, you can create a simple script at the cli as follows (bold for input):fishy10:> script("." to run)> run("cd /");("." to run)> run ("shares");("." to run)> var projects;("." to run)> projects=list();("." to run)> printf("Number of projects is: %d\n",projects.length);("." to run)> projects=152;("." to run)> printf("Value of the projects variable as an integer is now: %d\n",projects);("." to run)> .Number of projects is: 7Value of the projects variable as an integer is now: 152You can also confirm this behaviour by checking the typeof variable we are dealing with:fishy10:> script("." to run)> run("cd /");("." to run)> run ("shares");("." to run)> var projects;("." to run)> projects=list();("." to run)> printf("var projects is of type %s\n",typeof(projects));("." to run)> projects=152;("." to run)> printf("var projects is of type %s\n",typeof(projects));("." to run)> .var projects is of type objectvar projects is of type numberArraysSo you likely noticed that we have already touched on arrays, as the list(); (in the shares context) stored an array into the 'projects' variable.But what if you want to declare your own array? Easy! This is very similar to Java and other languages, we just instantiate a brand new "Array" object using the keyword new:var myArray = new Array();will create an array called "myArray".A quick example:fishy10:> script("." to run)> testArray = new Array();("." to run)> testArray[0]="This";("." to run)> testArray[1]="is";("." to run)> testArray[2]="just";("." to run)> testArray[3]="a";("." to run)> testArray[4]="test";("." to run)> for (i=0; i < testArray.length; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)>    printf("Array element %d is %s\n",i,testArray[i]);("." to run)> }("." to run)> .Array element 0 is ThisArray element 1 is isArray element 2 is justArray element 3 is aArray element 4 is testWorking With LoopsFor LoopFor loops are very similar to those you will see in C, java and several other languages. One of the key differences here is, as you were made aware earlier, we can be a bit more sloppy with our variable declarations.The general way you would likely use a for loop is as follows:for (variable; test-case; modifier for variable){}For example, you may wish to declare a variable i as 0; and a MAX_ITERATIONS variable to determine how many times this loop should repeat:var i=0;var MAX_ITERATIONS=10;And then, use this variable to be tested against some case existing (has i reached MAX_ITERATIONS? - if not, increment i using i++);for (i=0; i < MAX_ITERATIONS; i++){ // some work to do}So lets run something like this on the appliance:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var i=0;("." to run)> var MAX_ITERATIONS=10;("." to run)> for (i=0; i < MAX_ITERATIONS; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)>    printf("The number is %d\n",i);("." to run)> }("." to run)> .The number is 0The number is 1The number is 2The number is 3The number is 4The number is 5The number is 6The number is 7The number is 8The number is 9While LoopWhile loops again are very similar to other languages, we loop "while" a condition is met. For example:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var isTen=false;("." to run)> var counter=0;("." to run)> while(isTen==false)("." to run)> {("." to run)>    if (counter==10) ("." to run)>    { ("." to run)>            isTen=true;   ("." to run)>    } ("." to run)>    printf("Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)>    counter++;    ("." to run)> }("." to run)> printf("Loop has ended and Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)> .Counter is 0Counter is 1Counter is 2Counter is 3Counter is 4Counter is 5Counter is 6Counter is 7Counter is 8Counter is 9Counter is 10Loop has ended and Counter is 11So what do we notice here? Something has actually gone wrong - counter will technically be 11 once the loop completes... Why is this?Well, if we have a loop like this, where the 'while' condition that will end the loop may be set based on some other condition(s) existing (such as the counter has reached 10) - we must ensure that we  terminate this iteration of the loop when the condition is met - otherwise the rest of the code will be followed which may not be desirable. In other words, like in other languages, we will only ever check the loop condition once we are ready to perform the next iteration, so any other code after we set "isTen" to be true, will still be executed as we can see it was above.We can avoid this by adding a break into our loop once we know we have set the condition - this will stop the rest of the logic being processed in this iteration (and as such, counter will not be incremented). So lets try that again:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var isTen=false;("." to run)> var counter=0;("." to run)> while(isTen==false)("." to run)> {("." to run)>    if (counter==10) ("." to run)>    { ("." to run)>            isTen=true;   ("." to run)>            break;("." to run)>    } ("." to run)>    printf("Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)>    counter++;    ("." to run)> }("." to run)> printf("Loop has ended and Counter is %d\n", counter);("." to run)> .Counter is 0Counter is 1Counter is 2Counter is 3Counter is 4Counter is 5Counter is 6Counter is 7Counter is 8Counter is 9Loop has ended and Counter is 10Much better!Methods to Obtain and Manipulate DataGet MethodThe get method allows you to get simple properties from an object, for example a quota from a user. The syntax is fairly simple:var myVariable=get('property');An example of where you may wish to use this, is when you are getting a bunch of information about a user (such as quota information when in a shares context):var users=list();for(k=0; k < users.length; k++){     user=users[k];     run('select ' + user);     var username=get('name');     var usage=get('usage');     var quota=get('quota');...Which you can then use to your advantage - to print or manipulate infomation (you could change a user's information with a set method, based on the information returned from the get method). The set method is explained next.Set MethodThe set method can be used in a simple manner, similar to get. The syntax for set is:set('property','value'); // where value is a string, if it was a number, you don't need quotesFor example, we could set the quota on a share as follows (first observing the initial value):fishy10:shares default/test-geoff> script("." to run)> var currentQuota=get('quota');("." to run)> printf("Current Quota is: %s\n",currentQuota);("." to run)> set('quota','30G');("." to run)> run('commit');("." to run)> currentQuota=get('quota');("." to run)> printf("Current Quota is: %s\n",currentQuota);("." to run)> .Current Quota is: 0Current Quota is: 32212254720This shows us using both the get and set methods as can be used in scripts, of course when only setting an individual share, the above is overkill - it would be much easier to set it manually at the cli using 'set quota=3G' and then 'commit'.List MethodThe list method can be very powerful, especially in more complex scripts which iterate over large amounts of data and manipulate it if so desired. The general way you will use list is as follows:var myVar=list();Which will make "myVar" an array, containing all the objects in the relevant context (this could be a list of users, shares, projects, etc). You can then gather or manipulate data very easily.We could list all the shares and mountpoints in a given project for example:fishy10:shares another-project> script("." to run)> var shares=list();("." to run)> for (i=0; i < shares.length; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)>    run('select ' + shares[i]);("." to run)>    var mountpoint=get('mountpoint');("." to run)>    printf("Share %s discovered, has mountpoint %s\n",shares[i],mountpoint);("." to run)>    run('done');("." to run)> }("." to run)> .Share and-another discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/and-anotherShare another-share discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/another-shareShare bob discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-projectShare more-shares-for-all discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/more-shares-for-allShare yep discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/yepWriting More Complex and Re-Usable CodeFunctionsThe best way to be able to write more complex code is to use functions to split up repeatable or reusable sections of your code. This also makes your more complex code easier to read and understand for other programmers.We write functions as follows:function functionName(variable1,variable2,...,variableN){}For example, we could have a function that takes a project name as input, and lists shares for that project (assuming we're already in the 'project' context - context is important!):function getShares(proj){        run('select ' + proj);        shares=list();        printf("Project: %s\n", proj);        for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++)        {                printf("Discovered share: %s\n",shares[i]);        }        run('done'); // exit selected project}Commenting your CodeLike any other language, a large part of making it readable and understandable is to comment it. You can use the same comment style as in C and Java amongst other languages.In other words, sngle line comments use://at the beginning of the comment.Multi line comments use:/*at the beginning, and:*/ at the end.For example, here we will use both:fishy10:> script("." to run)> // This is a test comment("." to run)> printf("doing some work...\n");("." to run)> /* This is a multi-line("." to run)> comment which I will span across("." to run)> three lines in total */("." to run)> printf("doing some more work...\n");("." to run)> .doing some work...doing some more work...Your comments do not have to be on their own, they can begin (particularly with single line comments this is handy) at the end of a statement, for examplevar projects=list(); // The variable projects is an array containing all projects on the system.Try and Catch StatementsYou may be used to using try and catch statements in other languages, and they can (and should) be utilised in your code to catch expected or unexpected error conditions, that you do NOT wish to stop your code from executing (if you do not catch these errors, your script will exit!):try{  // do some work}catch(err) // Catch any error that could occur{ // do something here under the error condition}For example, you may wish to only execute some code if a context can be reached. If you can't perform certain actions under certain circumstances, that may be perfectly acceptable.For example if you want to test a condition that only makes sense when looking at a SMB/NFS share, but does not make sense when you hit an iscsi or FC LUN, you don't want to stop all processing of other shares you may not have covered yet.For example we may wish to obtain quota information on all shares for all users on a share (but this makes no sense for a LUN):function getShareQuota(shar) // Get quota for each user of this share{        run('select ' + shar);        printf("  SHARE: %s\n", shar);        try        {                run('users');                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)");                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","----");                                users=list();                for(k=0; k < users.length; k++)                {                        user=users[k];                        getUserQuota(user);                }                run('done'); // exit user context        }        catch(err)        {                printf("    SKIPPING %s - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users\n", shar);        }        run('done'); // done with this share}Running Scripts Remotely over SSHAs you have likely noticed, writing and running scripts for all but the simplest jobs directly on the appliance is not going to be a lot of fun.There's a couple of choices on what you can do here:Create scripts on a remote system and run them over sshCreate scripts, wrapping them in workflow code, so they are stored on the appliance and can be triggered under certain circumstances (like a threshold being reached)We'll cover the first one here, and then cover workflows later on (as these are for the most part just scripts with some wrapper information around them).Creating a SSH Public/Private SSH Key PairLog on to your handy Solaris box (You wouldn't be using any other OS, right? :P) and use ssh-keygen to create a pair of ssh keys. I'm storing this separate to my normal key:[geoff@lightning ~] ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 1024Generating public/private rsa key pair.Enter file in which to save the key (/export/home/geoff/.ssh/id_rsa): /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsaEnter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): Enter same passphrase again: Your identification has been saved in /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsa.Your public key has been saved in /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsa.pub.The key fingerprint is:7f:3d:53:f0:2a:5e:8b:2d:94:2a:55:77:66:5c:9b:14 geoff@lightningInstalling the Public Key on the ApplianceOn your Solaris host, observe the public key:[geoff@lightning ~] cat .ssh/nas_key_rsa.pub ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc= geoff@lightningNow, copy and paste everything after "ssh-rsa" and before "user@hostname" - in this case, geoff@lightning. That is, this bit:AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc=Logon to your appliance and get into the preferences -> keys area for this user (root):[geoff@lightning ~] ssh [email protected]: Last login: Mon Dec  6 17:13:28 2010 from 192.168.0.2fishy10:> configuration usersfishy10:configuration users> select rootfishy10:configuration users root> preferences fishy10:configuration users root preferences> keysOR do it all in one hit:fishy10:> configuration users select root preferences keysNow, we create a new public key that will be accepted for this user and set the type to RSA:fishy10:configuration users root preferences keys> createfishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set type=RSASet the key itself using the string copied previously (between ssh-rsa and user@host), and set the key ensuring you put double quotes around it (eg. set key="<key>"):fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set key="AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc="Now set the comment for this key (do not use spaces):fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set comment="LightningRSAKey" Commit the new key:fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> commitVerify the key is there:fishy10:configuration users root preferences keys> lsKeys:NAME     MODIFIED              TYPE   COMMENT                                  key-000  2010-10-25 20:56:42   RSA    cycloneRSAKey                           key-001  2010-12-6 17:44:53    RSA    LightningRSAKey                         As you can see, we now have my new key, and a previous key I have created on this appliance.Running your Script over SSH from a Remote SystemHere I have created a basic test script, and saved it as test.ecma3:[geoff@lightning ~] cat test.ecma3 script// This is a test script, By Geoff Ongley 2010.printf("Testing script remotely over ssh\n");.Now, we can run this script remotely with our keyless login:[geoff@lightning ~] ssh -i .ssh/nas_key_rsa root@fishy10 < test.ecma3Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.Testing script remotely over sshPutting it Together - An Example Completed Quota Gathering ScriptSo now we have a lot of the basics to creating a script, let us do something useful, like, find out how much every user is using, on every share on the system (you will recognise some of the code from my previous examples): script/************************************** Quick and Dirty Quota Check script ** Written By Geoff Ongley            ** 25 October 2010                    **************************************/function getUserQuota(usr){        run('select ' + usr);        var username=get('name');        var usage=get('usage');        var quota=get('quota');        var usage_g=usage / 1073741824; // convert bytes to gigabytes        var quota_g=quota / 1073741824; // as above        var quota_percent=0        if (quota > 0)        {                quota_percent=(usage / quota)*(100/1);        }        printf("    %20s        %8.2f           %8.2f           %d%%\n",username,usage_g,quota_g,quota_percent);        run('done'); // done with this selected user}function getShareQuota(shar){        //printf("DEBUG: selecting share %s\n", shar);        run('select ' + shar);        printf("  SHARE: %s\n", shar);        try        {                run('users');                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)");                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","--------");                                users=list();                for(k=0; k < users.length; k++)                {                        user=users[k];                        getUserQuota(user);                }                run('done'); // exit user context        }        catch(err)        {                printf("    SKIPPING %s - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users\n", shar);        }        run('done'); // done with this share}function getShares(proj){        //printf("DEBUG: selecting project %s\n",proj);        run('select ' + proj);        shares=list();        printf("Project: %s\n", proj);        for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++)        {                share=shares[j];                getShareQuota(share);        }        run('done'); // exit selected project}function getProjects(){        run('cd /');        run('shares');        projects=list();                for (i=0; i < projects.length; i++)        {                var project=projects[i];                getShares(project);        }        run('done'); // exit context for all projects}getProjects();.Which can be run as follows, and will print information like this:[geoff@lightning ~/FISHWORKS_SCRIPTS] ssh -i ~/.ssh/nas_key_rsa root@fishy10 < get_quota_utilisation.ecma3Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.Project: another-project  SHARE: and-another                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                  nobody            0.00            0.00        0%                 geoffro            0.05            0.00        0%                   Billy            0.10            0.00        0%                    root            0.00            0.00        0%            testing-user            0.05            0.00        0%  SHARE: another-share                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                    root            0.00            0.00        0%                  nobody            0.00            0.00        0%                 geoffro            0.05            0.49        9%            testing-user            0.05            0.02        249%                   Billy            0.10            0.29        33%  SHARE: bob                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                  nobody            0.00            0.00        0%                    root            0.00            0.00        0%  SHARE: more-shares-for-all                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                   Billy            0.10            0.00        0%            testing-user            0.05            0.00        0%                  nobody            0.00            0.00        0%                    root            0.00            0.00        0%                 geoffro            0.05            0.00        0%  SHARE: yep                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                    root            0.00            0.00        0%                  nobody            0.00            0.00        0%                   Billy            0.10            0.01        999%            testing-user            0.05            0.49        9%                 geoffro            0.05            0.00        0%Project: default  SHARE: Test-LUN    SKIPPING Test-LUN - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users  SHARE: test-geoff                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                 geoffro            0.05            0.00        0%                    root            3.18           10.00        31%                    uucp            0.00            0.00        0%                  nobody            0.59            0.49        119%^CKilled by signal 2.Creating a WorkflowWorkflows are scripts that we store on the appliance, and can have the script execute either on request (even from the BUI), or on an event such as a threshold being met.Workflow BasicsA workflow allows you to create a simple process that can be executed either via the BUI interface interactively, or by an alert being raised (for some threshold being reached, for example).The basics parameters you will have to set for your "workflow object" (notice you're creating a variable, that embodies ECMAScript) are as follows (parameters is optional):name: A name for this workflowdescription: A Description for the workflowparameters: A set of input parameters (useful when you need user input to execute the workflow)execute: The code, the script itself to execute, which will be function (parameters)With parameters, you can specify things like this (slightly modified sample taken from the System Administration Guide):          ...parameters:        variableParam1:         {                             label: 'Name of Share',                             type: 'String'                  },                  variableParam2                  {                             label: 'Share Size',                             type: 'size'                  },execute: ....};  Note the commas separating the sections of name, parameters, execute, and so on. This is important!Also - there is plenty of properties you can set on the parameters for your workflow, these are described in the Sun ZFS Storage System Administration Guide.Creating a Basic Workflow from a Basic ScriptTo make a basic script into a basic workflow, you need to wrap the following around your script to create a 'workflow' object:var workflow = {name: 'Get User Quotas',description: 'Displays Quota Utilisation for each user on each share',execute: function() {// (basic script goes here, minus the "script" at the beginning, and "." at the end)}};However, it appears (at least in my experience to date) that the workflow object may only be happy with one function in the execute parameter - either that or I'm doing something wrong. As far as I can tell, after execute: you should only have a basic one function context like so:execute: function(){}To deal with this, and to give an example similar to our script earlier, I have created another simple quota check, to show the same basic functionality, but in a workflow format:var workflow = {name: 'Get User Quotas',description: 'Displays Quota Utilisation for each user on each share',execute: function () {        run('cd /');        run('shares');        projects=list();                for (i=0; i < projects.length; i++)        {                run('select ' + projects[i]);                shares=list('filesystem');                printf("Project: %s\n", projects[i]);                for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++)                {                        run('select ' +shares[j]);                        try                        {                                run('users');                                printf("  SHARE: %s\n", shares[j]);                                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)");                                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","-------");                                users=list();                                for(k=0; k < users.length; k++)                                {                                        run('select ' + users[k]);                                        username=get('name');                                        usage=get('usage');                                        quota=get('quota');                                        usage_g=usage / 1073741824; // convert bytes to gigabytes                                        quota_g=quota / 1073741824; // as above                                        quota_percent=0                                        if (quota > 0)                                        {                                                quota_percent=(usage / quota)*(100/1);                                        }                                        printf("    %20s        %8.2f   %8.2f   %d%%\n",username,usage_g,quota_g,quota_percent);                                        run('done');                                }                                run('done'); // exit user context                        }                        catch(err)                        {                        //      printf("    %s is a LUN, Not looking for users\n", shares[j]);                        }                        run('done'); // exit selected share context                }                run('done'); // exit project context        }        }};SummaryThe Sun ZFS Storage 7000 Appliance offers lots of different and interesting features to Sun/Oracle customers, including the world renowned Analytics. Hopefully the above will help you to think of new creative things you could be doing by taking advantage of one of the other neat features, the internal scripting engine!Some references are below to help you continue learning more, I'll update this post as I do the same! Enjoy...More information on ECMAScript 3A complete reference to ECMAScript 3 which will help you learn more of the details you may be interested in, can be found here:http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST-ARCH/ECMA-262,%203rd%20edition,%20December%201999.pdfMore Information on Administering the Sun ZFS Storage 7000The Sun ZFS Storage 7000 System Administration guide can be a useful reference point, and can be found here:http://wikis.sun.com/download/attachments/186238602/2010_Q3_2_ADMIN.pdf

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  • Gamify your Web

    - by Isabel F. Peñuelas
    Yesterday Valencia welcomed the Gamification World Congress that I follow virtually through #GWC2012. BBVA, Iberia, Ligeresa, Axe, Wayra, ESADE, GlaxoSmithKline, Macmillan, Gamisfaction, Nomaders, Blaffin were among the companies presenting success stories on gaming. It has been proved that people remember things easily when an emotion is created. The marketing expectations around Gamification techniques have a lot to do with Neuromarketing theories. There are a lot of expectations on internal enterprise Gamification. In the public Web some sectors are taking the lead on following the trend. The Gartner Analyst Brian Burke opened another Gamification recent event in Madrid remembering that “Gamification is mostly about Engagement”, and this can be applied both to customers or employees. Gamification and Banking The experience of the Spanish Financial Group BBVA that just launched BBVA Game was also presented a week ago at the BBVA Innovation Centre during the event “Gamification & Banking: a fad or a serious business?” . One of the objectives of the BBVA Game was to double the name of registered users. “People like the efficiency of the online channel want to keep a one-to-one contact with the brand”-explained Bernardo Crespo. Another interested data coming out the BBVA presentation was that “only 20% of Spanish users –out of the total holders of Bank Accounts in the country- is familiar with the use of a Web Site to consult their bank accounts”, the project aims also to reverse this situation helping people to learn making a heavy use of the Video in the gaming context. In general Banking presenters seem to agree that Gamification techniques are helping to increase the time spent on the Web. Gamification and Health Using Gamification techniques for chronic illness rehabilitation was another topic of the World Congress. Here you can find some ideas and experiences What can games do for the health (In Spanish) I have personally started my own mental-health gaming project at http://www.lumosity.com/ Gamification in the Enterprise I really recommend Reading this excellent post of Ultan ÓBroin my Introduction to Gamification and Applications. Employee´s motivation and learning are experiencing a 360º turn and it looks than some of us will become soon the Dragon of the year instead of the Employee of the Year. Using Web 2.0 Tools for Gamification Projects  What type of tools do we need for a quick-win Gamification project? To certain extend Gamification can be considered an evolution of the participative Web. Badging, avatars, points and awards, leader boards, progress charts, virtual currencies, gifting and giving challenges and quests are common components and elements. The Web is offering new development frameworks to that purpose as this Avatar Framework from Paypal or Badgeville to include in web applications. Besides, tools to create communities around a game are required to comment, share and vote players as well as for an efficient multimedia management. Due to its entirely open architecture, its community features, and its multimedia and imaging solutions is were I see WebCenter as a tool helping brands to success. Link to Sources & Recommended Readings YouTube Video of BBVAGame presentation Where To Apply Gamification In Your Incentive Jim Calhoun Cancer Challenge Ride and Walkh For my Spanish Readers El aburrimiento es el enemigo número uno del éxito

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  • Customize Entity Framework SSDL &amp; SQL Generation

    - by Dane Morgridge
    In almost every talk I have done on Entity Framework I get questions on how to do custom SSDL or SQL when using model first development.  Quite a few of these questions have required custom changes to the SSDL, which of course can be a problem if it is getting auto generated.  Luckily, there is a tool that can help.  In the Visual Studio Gallery on MSDN, there is the Entity Designer Database Generation Power Pack. You have the ability to select different generation strategies and it also allows you to inject custom T4 Templates into the generation workflow so that you can customize the SSDL and SQL generation.  When you select to generate a database from a model the dialog is replaced by one with more options:   You can clone the individual workflow for either the current project or current machine.  The templates are installed at “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Entity Framework Tools\DBGen” on my local machine and you can make a copy of any template there.  If you clone the strategy and open it up, you will get the following workflow: Each item in the sequence is defining the execution of a T4 template.  The XAML for the workflow is listed below so you can see where the T4 files are defined.  You can simply make a copy of an existing template and make what ever changes you need.   1: <Activity x:Class="GenerateDatabaseScriptWorkflow" ... > 2: <x:Members> 3: <x:Property Name="Csdl" Type="InArgument(sde:EdmItemCollection)" /> 4: <x:Property Name="ExistingSsdl" Type="InArgument(s:String)" /> 5: <x:Property Name="ExistingMsl" Type="InArgument(s:String)" /> 6: <x:Property Name="Ssdl" Type="OutArgument(s:String)" /> 7: <x:Property Name="Msl" Type="OutArgument(s:String)" /> 8: <x:Property Name="Ddl" Type="OutArgument(s:String)" /> 9: <x:Property Name="SmoSsdl" Type="OutArgument(ss:SsdlServer)" /> 10: </x:Members> 11: <Sequence> 12: <dbtk:ProgressBarStartActivity /> 13: <dbtk:CsdlToSsdlTemplateActivity SsdlOutput="[Ssdl]" TemplatePath="$(VSEFTools)\DBGen\CSDLToSSDL_TPT.tt" /> 14: <dbtk:CsdlToMslTemplateActivity MslOutput="[Msl]" TemplatePath="$(VSEFTools)\DBGen\CSDLToMSL_TPT.tt" /> 15: <ded:SsdlToDdlActivity ExistingSsdlInput="[ExistingSsdl]" SsdlInput="[Ssdl]" DdlOutput="[Ddl]" /> 16: <dbtk:GenerateAlterSqlActivity DdlInputOutput="[Ddl]" DeployToScript="True" DeployToDatabase="False" /> 17: <dbtk:ProgressBarEndActivity ClosePopup="true" /> 18: </Sequence> 19: </Activity>   So as you can see, this tool enables you to make some pretty heavy customizations to how the SSDL and SQL get generated.  You can get more info and the tool can be downloaded from: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/df3541c3-d833-4b65-b942-989e7ec74c87.  There is a comments section on the site so make sure you let the team know what you like and what you don’t like.  Enjoy!

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  • Silabs cp2102 driver problem

    - by Zxy
    I downloaded appropriate driver from its own site, unzipped it and then tried to install it. But: root@ghostrider:/home/zero/Downloads# tar xvf cp210x-3.1.0.tar.gz cp210x-3.1.0/ cp210x-3.1.0/COPYING cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/ cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x-3.1.0.spec cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/.rpmmacros cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/configure cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/cp210x.c cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/cp210x.h cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/cp210xuniversal.c cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/cp210xuniversal.h cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/installmod cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/Makefile24 cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/Makefile26 cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/rpmmacros24 cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/rpmmacros26 cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/Rules.make cp210x-3.1.0/INSTALL cp210x-3.1.0/makerpm cp210x-3.1.0/PACKAGE-LIST cp210x-3.1.0/README cp210x-3.1.0/RELEASE-NOTES cp210x-3.1.0/REPORTING-BUGS cp210x-3.1.0/rpm/ cp210x-3.1.0/rpm/brp-java-repack-jars cp210x-3.1.0/rpm/brp-python-bytecompile cp210x-3.1.0/rpm/check-rpaths cp210x-3.1.0/rpm/check-rpaths-worker root@ghostrider:/home/zero/Downloads# cd cp210x-3.1.0 root@ghostrider:/home/zero/Downloads/cp210x-3.1.0# ls COPYING cp210x-3.1.0.spec makerpm README REPORTING-BUGS cp210x INSTALL PACKAGE-LIST RELEASE-NOTES rpm root@ghostrider:/home/zero/Downloads/cp210x-3.1.0# run ./makerpm No command 'run' found, did you mean: Command 'zrun' from package 'moreutils' (universe) Command 'runq' from package 'exim4-daemon-heavy' (main) Command 'runq' from package 'exim4-daemon-light' (main) Command 'runq' from package 'sendmail-bin' (universe) Command 'grun' from package 'grun' (universe) Command 'qrun' from package 'torque-client' (universe) Command 'qrun' from package 'torque-client-x11' (universe) Command 'lrun' from package 'lustre-utils' (universe) Command 'rn' from package 'trn' (multiverse) Command 'rn' from package 'trn4' (multiverse) Command 'rup' from package 'rstat-client' (universe) Command 'srun' from package 'slurm-llnl' (universe) run: command not found root@ghostrider:/home/zero/Downloads/cp210x-3.1.0# sudo ./makerpm + uname -r + kernel_release=3.2.0-25-generic-pae + pwd + current_dir=/home/zero/Downloads/cp210x-3.1.0 + export current_dir + uname -r + KVER=3.2.0-25-generic-pae + echo 3.2.0-25-generic-pae + awk -F . -- { print $1 } + KVER1=3 + echo 3.2.0-25-generic-pae + awk -F . -- { print $2 } + KVER2=2 + sed -e s/3\.2\.//g + echo 3.2.0-25-generic-pae + KVER3=0-25-generic-pae + [ -f /root/.rpmmacros ] + echo 2 2 + [ 2 == 4 ] ./makerpm: 25: [: 2: unexpected operator + echo 0-25-generic-pae 0-25-generic-pae + [ 0-25-generic-pae -gt 15 ] ./makerpm: 29: [: Illegal number: 0-25-generic-pae + cp /home/zero/Downloads/cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/rpmmacros24 /root/.rpmmacros + d=/var/tmp/silabs + [ ! -d /var/tmp/silabs ] + mkdir /var/tmp/silabs + cd /var/tmp/silabs + r=/var/tmp/silabs/rpmbuild + o=cp210x-3.1.0 + s=/var/tmp/silabs/rpmbuild/SOURCES + spec=cp210x-3.1.0.spec + rm -rf /var/tmp/silabs/rpmbuild + mkdir rpmbuild + mkdir rpmbuild/SOURCES + mkdir rpmbuild/SRPMS + mkdir rpmbuild/SPECS + mkdir rpmbuild/BUILD + mkdir rpmbuild/RPMS + cd /var/tmp/silabs/rpmbuild/SOURCES + rm -rf cp210x-3.1.0 + mkdir cp210x-3.1.0 + cp -r /home/zero/Downloads/cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/Makefile24 /home/zero/Downloads/cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/Makefile26 /home/zero/Downloads/cp210x- 3.1.0/cp210x/Rules.make /home/zero/Downloads/cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/configure /home/zero/Downloads/cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/cp210x.c /home/zero/Downloads/cp210x- 3.1.0/cp210x/cp210x.h /home/zero/Downloads/cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/cp210xuniversal.c /home/zero/Downloads/cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/cp210xuniversal.h /home/zero/Downloads/cp210x- 3.1.0/cp210x/installmod /home/zero/Downloads/cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/rpmmacros24 /home/zero/Downloads/cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/rpmmacros26 cp210x-3.1.0 + echo 2 2 + [ 2 == 4 ] ./makerpm: 64: [: 2: unexpected operator + echo 0-25-generic-pae 0-25-generic-pae + [ 0-25-generic-pae -gt 15 ] ./makerpm: 68: [: Illegal number: 0-25-generic-pae + cp /home/zero/Downloads/cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/.rpmmacros24 cp210x-3.1.0/.rpmmacros cp: cannot stat `/home/zero/Downloads/cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x/.rpmmacros24': No such file or directory + MyCopy=0 + rm -f cp210x-3.1.0.tar + rm -f cp210x-3.1.0.tar.gz + tar -cf cp210x-3.1.0.tar cp210x-3.1.0 + gzip cp210x-3.1.0.tar + cp /home/zero/Downloads/cp210x-3.1.0/cp210x-3.1.0.spec /var/tmp/silabs/rpmbuild/SPECS + rpmbuild -ba /var/tmp/silabs/rpmbuild/SPECS/cp210x-3.1.0.spec ./makerpm: 121: ./makerpm: rpmbuild: not found + [ -f /root/.rpmmacros.cp210x ] How may I solve my problem? Thanks

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  • Welcome 2011

    - by WeigeltRo
    Things that happened in 2010 MIX10 was absolutely fantastic. Read my report of MIX10 to see why.   The dotnet Cologne 2010, the community conference organized by the .NET user group Köln and my own group Bonn-to-Code.Net became an even bigger success than I dared to dream of.   There was a huge discrepancy between the efforts by Microsoft to support .NET user groups to organize public live streaming events of the PDC keynote (the dotnet Cologne team joined forces with netug  Niederrhein to organize the PDCologne) and the actual content of the keynote. The reaction of the audience at our event was “meh” and even worse I seriously doubt we’ll ever get that number of people to such an event (which on top of that suffered from technical difficulties beyond our control).   What definitely would have deserved the public live streaming event treatment was the Silverlight Firestarter (aka “Silverlight Damage Control”) event. And maybe we would have thought about organizing something if it weren’t for the “burned earth” left by the PDC keynote. Anyway, the stuff shown at the firestarter keynote was the topic of conversations among colleagues days later (“did you see that? oh yeah, that was seriously cool”). Things that I have learned/observed/noticed in 2010 In the long run, there’s a huge difference between “It works pretty well” and “it just works and I never have to think about it”. I had to get rid of my USB graphics adapter powering the third monitor (read about it in this blog post). Various small issues (desktop icons sometimes moving their positions after a reboot for no apparent reasons, at least one game I couldn’t get run at all, all three monitors sometimes simply refusing to wake up after standby) finally made me buy a PCIe 1x graphics adapter. If you’re interested: The combination of a NVIDIA GTX 460 and a GT 220 is running in “don’t make me think” mode for a couple of months now.   PowerPoint 2010 is a seriously cool piece of software. Not only the new hardware-accelerated effects, but also features like built-in background removal and picture processing (which in many cases are simply “good enough” and save a lot of time) or the smart guides.   Outlook 2010 crashes on me a lot. I haven’t been successful in reproducing these crashes, they just happen when every couple of days on different occasions (only thing in common: I clicked something in the main window – yeah, very helpful observation)   Visual Studio 2010 reminds me of Visual Studio 2005 before SP1, which is actually not a good thing to say about a piece of software. I think it’s telling that Microsoft’s message regarding the beta of SP1 has been different from earlier service pack betas (promising an upgrade path for a beta to the RTM sounds to me like “please, please use it NOW!”).   I have a love/hate relationship with ReSharper. I don’t want to develop without it, but at the same time I can’t fail to notice that ReSharper is taking a heavy toll in terms of performance and sometimes stability. Things I’m looking forward to in 2011 Obviously, the dotnet Cologne 2011. We already have been able to score some big name sponsors (Microsoft, Intel), but we’re still looking for more sponsors. And be assured that we’ll make sure that our partners get the most out of their contribution, regardless of how big or small.   MIX11, period.    Silverlight 5 is going to be great. The only thing I’m a bit nervous about is that I still haven’t read anything official on whether C# next version’s async/await will be in it. Leaving that out would be really stupid considering the end-of-2011 release of SL5 (moving the next release way into the future).

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  • Silverlight Cream for January 08, 2011 -- #1023

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Heavy and yet incomplete Issue: Mike Wolf, Walter Ferrari, Colin Eberhardt, Mathew Charles, Don Burnett, Senthil Kumar, cherylws, Rob Miles, Derik Whittaker, Thomas Martinsen(-2-), Jason Ginchereau, Vishal Nayan, and WindowsPhoneGeek. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Automatically Showing ToolTips on a Trimmed TextBlock (Silverlight)" Colin Eberhardt WP7: "Windows Phone Blue Book Pdf" Rob Miles Sharepoint/Silverlight: "Discover Sharepoint with Silverlight - Part 1" Walter Ferrari Shoutouts: Dave Isbitski has announced a WP7 Firestarter, check for your local MS office: Announcing the “Light up your Silverlight Applications for Windows 7 Firestarter” From SilverlightCream.com: Leveraging Silverlight in the USA TODAY Windows 7-Based Slate App Mike Wolf has a post up about Cynergy's release of the new USA TODAY software for Windows 7 Slate devices, and gives a great rundown of all the resources, and how specific Silverlight features were used... tons of outstanding external links here! Discover Sharepoint with Silverlight - Part 1 Walter Ferrari has tutorial up at SilverlightShow... looks like the first in a series on Silverlight and Sharepoint... lots of low-level info about the internals and using them. Automatically Showing ToolTips on a Trimmed TextBlock (Silverlight) Colin Eberhardt has a really cool AutoTooltip attached behavior that gives a tooltip of the actual text if text is trimmed ... and has an active demo on the post... very cool. RIA Services Output Caching Mathew Charles digs into a RIA feature that hasn't gotten any blog love: output caching, describing all the ins and outs of improving the performance of your app using caching. Emailing your Files to Box.net Cloud Storage with WP7 Don Burnett details out everything you need to do to get Box.Net and your WP7 setup to talk to each other. Shortcuts keys for Developing on Windows Phone 7 Emulator Senthil Kumar has some good WP7 posts up ... this one is a cheatsheet list of Function-key assignements for the WP7 emulator... another sidebar listint Windows Phone 7 Design Guidelines – Cheat Sheet cherylws has a great Guideline list/Cheat Sheet up for reference while building a WP7 app... this is a great reference... I'm adding it to the Right-hand sidebar of WynApse.com Windows Phone Blue Book Pdf Rob Miles has added another book and color to his collection of both -- Windows Phone Programming in C#, also known as the Windows Phone Blue Book... get a copy from the links he gives, and check out his other free books as well. Navigating to an external URL using the HyperlinkButton Derik Whittaker has a post up discussing the woes (and error messages) of trying to navigate to an external URL with the Hyperlink button in WP7, plus his MVVM-friendly solution that you can download. Set Source on Image from code in Silverlight Thomas Martinsen has a couple posts up... first is this quick one on the code required to set an image source. Show UI element based on authentication Thomas Martinsen's latest is one on a BoolToVisibilityConverter allowing a boolean indicator of Authentication to be used to control the visibility of a button (in the sample) WP7 ReorderListBox improvements: rearrange animations and more Jason Ginchereau has updated his ReorderListBox from last week to add some animations (fading/sliding) during the rearrangement. Navigation in Silverlight Without Using Navigation Framework Vishal Nayan has a post that attracted my attention... Navigation by manipulating RootVisual content... I've been knee-deep in similar code in Prism this week (and why my blogging is off) ... Creating a WP7 Custom Control in 7 Steps WindowsPhoneGeek creates a simple custom control for WP7 before your very eyes in his latest post, focusing on the minimum requirements necessary for writing a Custom Control. 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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  • Implementing features in an Entity System

    - by Bane
    After asking two questions on Entity Systems (1, 2), and reading some articles on them, I think that I understand them much better than before. But, I still have some uncertainties, and mainly they are about building a Particle Emitter, an Input system, and a Camera. I obviously still have some problems understanding Entity Systems, and they might apply to a whole other range of objects, but I chose these three because they are very different concepts and should cover a pretty big ground, and help me understand Entity Systems and how to handle problems like these myself, as they come along. I am building an engine in Javascript, and I've implemented most of the core features, which include: input handling, flexible animation system, particle emitter, math classes and functions, scene handling, a camera and a render, and a whole bunch of other things that engines usually support. Then, I read Byte56's answer that got me interested into making the engine into an Entity System one. It would still remain an HTML5 game engine with the basic Scene philosophy, but it should support dynamic creation of entities from components. These are some of the definitions from the previous questions, updated: An Entity is an identifier. It doesn't have any data, it's not an object, it's a simple id that represents an index in the Scene's list of all entities (which I actually plan to implement as a component matrix). A Component is a data holder, but with methods that can operate on that data. The best example is a Vector2D, or a "Position" component. It has data: x and y, but also some methods that make operating on the data a bit easier: add(), normalize(), and so on. A System is something that can operate on a set of entities that meet the certain requirements, usually they (the entities) need to have a specified (by the system itself) set of components to be operated upon. The system is the "logic" part, the "algorithm" part, all the functionality supplied by components is purely for easier data management. The problem that I have now is fitting my old engine concept into this new programming paradigm. Lets start with the simplest one, a Camera. The camera has a position property (Vector2D), a rotation property and some methods for centering it around a point. Each frame, it is fed to a renderer, along with a scene, and all the objects are translated according to it's position. Then the scene is rendered. How could I represent this kind of an object in an Entity System? Would the camera be an entity or simply a component? A combination (see my answer)? Another issues that is bothering me is implementing a Particle Emitter. For what exactly I mean by that, you can check out my video of it: http://youtu.be/BObargIMQsE. The problem I have with this is, again, what should be what. I'm pretty sure that particles themselves shouldn't be entities, as I want to support 10k+ of them, and creating that much entities would be a heavy blow on my performance, I believe. Or maybe not? Depends on the implementation, but anyone with experience: please, do answer. The last bit I wan't to talk about, which is also bugging me the most, is how input should be handled. In my current version of the engine, there is a class called Input. It's a handler that subscribes to browser's events, such as keypresses, and mouse position changes, and also it maintains an internal state. Then, the player class has a react() method, which accepts an input object as an argument. The advantage of this is that the input object could be serialized into JSON and then shared over the network, allowing for smooth multiplayer simulations. But how does this translate into an Entity System?

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  • Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video Review by Diethard Steiner, Packt Publishing

    - by Compudicted
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2014/06/01/building-a-data-mart-with-pentaho-data-integration-video-review-again.aspx The Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video by Diethard Steiner from Packt Publishing is more than just a course on how to use Pentaho Data Integration, it also implements and uses the principals of the Data Warehousing (and I even heard the name of Ralph Kimball in the video). Indeed, a video watcher should be familiar with its concepts as the Star Schema, Slowly Changing Dimension types, etc. so I suggest prior to watching this course to consider skimming through the Data Warehouse concepts (if unfamiliar) or even better, read the excellent Ralph’s The Data Warehouse Tooolkit. By the way, the author expands beyond using Pentaho along to MySQL and MonetDB which is a real icing on the cake! Indeed, I even suggest the name of the course should be ‘Building a Data Warehouse with Pentaho’. To successfully complete the course one needs to know some Linux (Ubuntu used in the course), the VI editor and the Bash command shell, but it seems that similar requirements would also apply to the Windows OS. Additionally, knowing some basic SQL would not hurt. As I had said, MonetDB is used in this course several times which seems to be not anymore complex than say MySQL, but based on what I read is very well suited for fast querying big volumes of data thanks to having a columnstore (vertical data storage). I don’t see what else can be a barrier, the material is very digestible. On this note, I must add that the author does not cover how to acquire the software, so here is what I found may help: Pentaho: the free Community Edition must be more than anyone needs to learn it. Or even go into a POC. MonetDB can be downloaded (exists for both, Linux and Windows) from http://goo.gl/FYxMy0 (just see the appropriate link on the left). The author seems to be using Eclipse to run SQL code, one can get it from http://goo.gl/5CcuN. To create, or edit database entities and/or schema otherwise one can use a universal tool called SQuirreL, get it from http://squirrel-sql.sourceforge.net.   Next, I must confess Diethard is very knowledgeable in what he does and beyond. However, there will be some accent heard to the user of the course especially if one’s mother tongue language is English, but it I got over it in a few chapters. I liked the rate at which the material is being presented, it makes me feel I paid for every second Eventually, my impressions are: Pentaho is an awesome ETL offering, it is worth learning it very much (I am an ETL fan and a heavy user of SSIS) MonetDB is nice, it tickles my fancy to know it more Data Warehousing, despite all the BigData tool offerings (Hive, Scoop, Pig on Hadoop), using the traditional tools still rocks Chapters 2 to 6 were the most fun to me with chapter 8 being the most difficult.   In terms of closing, I highly recommend this video to anyone who needs to grasp Pentaho concepts quick, likewise, the course is very well suited for any developer on a “supposed to be done yesterday” type of a project. It is for a beginner to intermediate level ETL/DW developer. But one would need to learn more on Data Warehousing and Pentaho, for such I recommend the 5 star Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook. Enjoy it! Disclaimer: I received this video from the publisher for the purpose of a public review.

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  • Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video Review by Diethard Steiner, Packt Publishing

    - by Compudicted
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2014/06/01/building-a-data-mart-with-pentaho-data-integration-video-review.aspx The Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video by Diethard Steiner from Packt Publishing is more than just a course on how to use Pentaho Data Integration, it also implements and uses the principals of the Data Warehousing (and I even heard the name of Ralph Kimball in the video). Indeed, a video watcher should be familiar with its concepts as the Star Schema, Slowly Changing Dimension types, etc. so I suggest prior to watching this course to consider skimming through the Data Warehouse concepts (if unfamiliar) or even better, read the excellent Ralph’s The Data Warehouse Tooolkit. By the way, the author expands beyond using Pentaho along to MySQL and MonetDB which is a real icing on the cake! Indeed, I even suggest the name of the course should be ‘Building a Data Warehouse with Pentaho’. To successfully complete the course one needs to know some Linux (Ubuntu used in the course), the VI editor and the Bash command shell, but it seems that similar requirements would also apply to the Weindows OS. Additionally, knowing some basic SQL would not hurt. As I had said, MonetDB is used in this course several times which seems to be not anymore complex than say MySQL, but based on what I read is very well suited for fast querying big volumes of data thanks to having a columnstore (vertical data storage). I don’t see what else can be a barrier, the material is very digestible. On this note, I must add that the author does not cover how to acquire the software, so here is what I found may help: Pentaho: the free Community Edition must be more than anyone needs to learn it. Or even go into a POC. MonetDB can be downloaded (exists for both, Linux and Windows) from http://goo.gl/FYxMy0 (just see the appropriate link on the left). The author seems to be using Eclipse to run SQL code, one can get it from http://goo.gl/5CcuN. To create, or edit database entities and/or schema otherwise one can use a universal tool called SQuirreL, get it from http://squirrel-sql.sourceforge.net.   Next, I must confess Diethard is very knowledgeable in what he does and beyond. However, there will be some accent heard to the user of the course especially if one’s mother tongue language is English, but it I got over it in a few chapters. I liked the rate at which the material is being presented, it makes me feel I paid for every second Eventually, my impressions are: Pentaho is an awesome ETL offering, it is worth learning it very much (I am an ETL fan and a heavy user of SSIS) MonetDB is nice, it tickles my fancy to know it more Data Warehousing, despite all the BigData tool offerings (Hive, Scoop, Pig on Hadoop), using the traditional tools still rocks Chapters 2 to 6 were the most fun to me with chapter 8 being the most difficult.   In terms of closing, I highly recommend this video to anyone who needs to grasp Pentaho concepts quick, likewise, the course is very well suited for any developer on a “supposed to be done yesterday” type of a project. It is for a beginner to intermediate level ETL/DW developer. But one would need to learn more on Data Warehousing and Pentaho, for such I recommend the 5 star Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook. Enjoy it! Disclaimer: I received this video from the publisher for the purpose of a public review.

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  • Simple task framework - building software from reusable pieces

    - by RuslanD
    I'm writing a web service with several APIs, and they will be sharing some of the implementation code. In order not to copy-paste, I would like to ideally implement each API call as a series of tasks, which are executed in a sequence determined by the business logic. One obvious question is whether that's the best strategy for code reuse, or whether I can look at it in a different way. But assuming I want to go with tasks, several issues arise: What's a good task interface to use? How do I pass data computed in one task to another task in the sequence that might need it? In the past, I've worked with task interfaces like: interface Task<T, U> { U execute(T input); } Then I also had sort of a "task context" object which had getters and setters for any kind of data my tasks needed to produce or consume, and it gets passed to all tasks. I'm aware that this suffers from a host of problems. So I wanted to figure out a better way to implement it this time around. My current idea is to have a TaskContext object which is a type-safe heterogeneous container (as described in Effective Java). Each task can ask for an item from this container (task input), or add an item to the container (task output). That way, tasks don't need to know about each other directly, and I don't have to write a class with dozens of methods for each data item. There are, however, several drawbacks: Each item in this TaskContext container should be a complex type that wraps around the actual item data. If task A uses a String for some purpose, and task B uses a String for something entirely different, then just storing a mapping between String.class and some object doesn't work for both tasks. The other reason is that I can't use that kind of container for generic collections directly, so they need to be wrapped in another object. This means that, based on how many tasks I define, I would need to also define a number of classes for the task items that may be consumed or produced, which may lead to code bloat and duplication. For instance, if a task takes some Long value as input and produces another Long value as output, I would have to have two classes that simply wrap around a Long, which IMO can spiral out of control pretty quickly as the codebase evolves. I briefly looked at workflow engine libraries, but they kind of seem like a heavy hammer for this particular nail. How would you go about writing a simple task framework with the following requirements: Tasks should be as self-contained as possible, so they can be composed in different ways to create different workflows. That being said, some tasks may perform expensive computations that are prerequisites for other tasks. We want to have a way of storing the results of intermediate computations done by tasks so that other tasks can use those results for free. The task framework should be light, i.e. growing the code doesn't involve introducing many new types just to plug into the framework.

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  • Using Live Data in Database Development Work

    - by Phil Factor
    Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk Newsletter... in which Phil Factor reacts with some exasperation when coming across a report that a majority of companies were still using financial and personal data for both developing and testing database applications. If you routinely test your development work using real production data that contains personal or financial information, you are probably being irresponsible, and at worst, risking a heavy financial penalty for your company. Surprisingly, over 80% of financial companies still do this. Plenty of data breaches and fraud have happened from the use of real data for testing, and a data breach is a nightmare for any organisation that suffers one. The cost of each data breach averages out at around $7.2 million in the US in notification, escalation, credit monitoring, fines, litigation, legal costs, and lost business due to customer churn, £1.9 million in the UK. 70% of data breaches are done from within the organisation. Real data can be exploited in a number of ways for malicious or criminal purposes. It isn't just the obvious use of items such as name and address, date of birth, social security number, and credit card and bank account numbers: Data can be exploited in many subtle ways, so there are excellent reasons to ensure that a high priority is given to the detection and prevention of any data breaches. You'll never successfully guess all the ways that real data can be exploited maliciously, or the ease with which it can be accessed. It would be silly to argue that developers never need access to a copy of the database containing live data. Developers sometimes need to track a bug that can only be replicated on the data from the live database. However, it has to be done in a very restrictive harness. The law makes no distinction between development and production databases when a data breach occurs, so the data has to be held with all appropriate security measures in place. In Europe, the use of personal data for testing requires the explicit consent of the people whose data is being held. There are federal standards such as GLBA, PCI DSS and HIPAA, and most US States have privacy legislation. The task of ensuring compliance and tight security in such circumstances is an expensive and time-consuming overhead. The developer is likely to suffer investigation if a data breach occurs, even if the company manages to stay in business. Ironically, the use of copies of live data isn't usually the most effective way to develop or test your data. Data is usually time-specific and isn't usually current by the time it is used for testing, Existing data doesn't help much for new functionality, and every time the data is refreshed from production, any test data is likely to be overwritten. Also, it is not always going to test all the 'edge' conditions that are likely to flush out bugs. You still have the task of simulating the dynamics of actual usage of the database, and here you have no alternative to creating 'spoofed' data. Because of the complexities of relational data, It used to be that there was no realistic alternative to developing and testing with live data. However, this is no longer the case. Real data can be obfuscated, or it can be created entirely from scratch. The latter process used to be impractical, now that there are plenty of third-party tools to choose from. The process of obfuscation isn't risk free. The process must access the live data, and the success of the obfuscation process has to be carefully monitored. Database data security isn't an exciting topic to you or I, but to a hacker it can be an all-consuming obsession, especially if there is financial or political gain involved. This is not the sort of adversary one would wish for and it is far better to accept, and work with, security restrictions that exist for using live data in database development work, especially when the tools exist to create large realistic database test data that can be better for several aspects of testing.

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  • Create and Track Your Own License Keys with PowerShell

    - by BuckWoody
    SQL Server used to have  cool little tool that would let you track your licenses. Microsoft didn’t use it to limit your system or anything, it was just a place on the server where you could put that this system used this license key. I miss those days – we don’t track that any more, and I want to make sure I’m up to date on my licensing, so I made my own. Now, there are a LOT of ways you could do this. You could add an extended property in SQL Server, add a table to a tracking database, use a text file, track it somewhere else, whatever. This is just the route I chose; if you want to use some other method, feel free. Just sharing here. Warning Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly by using Registry Editor or by using another method. These problems might require that you reinstall the operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved. Modify the registry at your own risk. And this is REALLY important. I include a disclaimer at the end of my scripts, but in this case you’re modifying your registry, and that could be EXTREMELY dangerous – only do this on a test server – and I’m just showing you how I did mine. It isn’t an endorsement or anything like that, and this is a “Buck Woody” thing, NOT a Microsoft thing. See this link first, and then you can read on. OK, here’s my script: # Track your own licenses # Write a New Key to be the License Location mkdir HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Buck   # Write the variables - one sets the type, the other sets the number, and the last one holds the key New-ItemProperty HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Buck -name "SQLServerLicenseType" -value "Processor" # Notice the Dword value here - this one is a number so it needs that. Keep this on one line! New-ItemProperty HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Buck -name "SQLServerLicenseNumber" -propertytype DWord -value 4 New-ItemProperty HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Buck -name "SQLServerLicenseKey" -value "ABCD1234"   # Read them all $LicenseKey = Get-Item HKCU:\Software\Buck $Licenses = Get-ItemProperty $LicenseKey.PSPath foreach ($License in $LicenseKey.Property) { $License + "=" + $Licenses.$License }   Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. Yes, there are always multiple ways to do things, and this script may not work in every situation, for everything. It’s just a script, people. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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