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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 16, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 16, 2013Popular ReleasesEmployee Info Starter Kit: v6.0 - ASP.NET MVC Edition: Release Home - Getting Started - Hands on Coding Walkthrough – Technology Stack - Design & Architecture EISK v6.0 – ASP.NET MVC edition bundles most of the greatest and successful platforms, frameworks and technologies together, to enable web developers to learn and build manageable and high performance web applications with rich user experience effectively and quickly. User End SpecificationsCreating a new employee record Read existing employee records Update an existing employee reco...OLAP PivotTable Extensions: Release 0.8.1: Use the 32-bit download for... Excel 2007 Excel 2010 32-bit (even Excel 2010 32-bit on a 64-bit operating system) Excel 2013 32-bit (even Excel 2013 32-bit on a 64-bit operating system) Use the 64-bit download for... Excel 2010 64-bit Excel 2013 64-bit Just download and run the EXE. There is no need to uninstall the previous release. If you have problems getting the add-in to work, see the Troubleshooting Installation wiki page. The new features in this release are: View #VALUE! Err...VidCoder: 1.4.22: New in 1.4.22 Added Xbox 360 preset, thanks to Relhak. Added Spanish translation, thanks to fantasmanegro. Added Basque translation, thanks to azpidatziak. Fixed behavior of custom anamorphic auto display width and max width/height. Fixed double-logging on local encodes. Fixed remote encoder not using libdvdnav even when enabled, which had caused some problems with multi-angle DVDs. New in 1.4 Updated HandBrake core to 0.9.9 Blu-ray subtitle (PGS) support Additional framerates: 30...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 3.0.0.440: Version: 3.0.0.440 (Release Candidate): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Please build the whole solution before you start one of the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.5 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2012) Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete Samples: Use ValueConverters via StaticResource instead of x:Static. Other Downloads Downloads OverviewSFDL.NET: SFDL.NET v1.1.0.5: Changelog: Implemeted SFDL Container v4 (AES Encryption, Set Character Set) Added Stopwatch (download time) Many Bugfixes and ImprovementsBlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.1: 2013.06.13 Ver5.9.1 (1) Web??????SSI?#include???、CGI?????????????????????? (2) ???????????????????????????Lakana - WPF Framework: Lakana V2.1 RTM: - Dynamic text localization - A new application wide message busFree language translator and file converter: Free Language Translator 3.3: some bug fixes and a new link to video tutorials on Youtube.Pokemon Battle Online: ETV: ETV???2012?12??????，????，???????$/PBO/branches/PrivateBeta??。 ???????bug???????。 ???? Server??????，?????。 ?????????，?????????????，?????????。 ????????，????，?????????，???????????（??）??。 ???? ????????????。 ???????。 ???PP????，????????????????????PP????，??3。 ?????????????，??????????。 ???????? ??? ?? ???? ??? ???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??? ??? ??? ???????? ???? ???? ???????????????、???????????，??“???????”??。 ???bug ???Modern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.4: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. Related downloads NuGet ModernUI for WPF is also available as NuGet package in the NuGet gallery, id: ModernUI.WPF Download Modern UI for WPF Templates A Visual Studio 2012 extension containing a collection of project and item templates for Modern UI for WPF. The extension includes the ModernUI.WPF NuGet package. DownloadToolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011: XrmToolBox (v1.2013.6.11): XrmToolbox improvement Add exception handling when loading plugins Updated information panel for displaying two lines of text Tools improvementMetadata Document Generator (v1.2013.6.10)New tool Web Resources Manager (v1.2013.6.11)Retrieve list of unused web resources Retrieve web resources from a solution All tools listAccess Checker (v1.2013.2.5) Attribute Bulk Updater (v1.2013.1.17) FetchXml Tester (v1.2013.3.4) Iconator (v1.2013.1.17) Metadata Document Generator (v1.2013.6.10) Privilege...Document.Editor: 2013.23: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.23: New Insert Emoticon support Improved Format support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsChristoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke 7 Project Templates V2.4 for VS2012: V2.4 - Release Date 6/10/2013 Items addressed in this 2.4 release Updated MSBuild Community Tasks reference to 1.4.0.61 Setting up your DotNetNuke Module Development Environment Installing Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Templates Customizing the latest DotNetNuke Module Development Project TemplatesLayered Architecture Sample for .NET: Leave Sample - June 2013 (for .NET 4.5): Thank You for downloading Layered Architecture Sample. Please read the accompanying README.txt file for setup and installation instructions. This is the first set of a series of revised samples that will be released to illustrate the layered architecture design pattern. This version is only supported on Visual Studio 2012. This set contains 2 samples that illustrates the use of: ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET Model Binding, Windows Communications Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (W...Papercut: Papercut 2013-6-10: Feature: Shows From, To, Date and Subject of Email. Feature: Async UI and loading spinner. Enhancement: Improved speed when loading large attachments. Enhancement: Decoupled SMTP server into secondary assembly. Enhancement: Upgraded to .NET v4. Fix: Messages lost when received very fast. Fix: Email encoding issues on display/Automatically detect message Encoding Installation Note:Installation is copy and paste. Incoming messages are written to the start-up directory of Papercut. If you do n...Supporting Guidance and Whitepapers: v1.BETA Unit test Generator Documentation: Welcome to the Unit Test Generator Once you’ve moved to Visual Studio 2012, what’s a dev to do without the Create Unit Tests feature? Based on the high demand on User Voice for this feature to be restored, the Visual Studio ALM Rangers have introduced the Unit Test Generator Visual Studio Extension. The extension adds the “create unit test” feature back, with a focus on automating project creation, adding references and generating stubs, extensibility, and targeting of multiple test framewor...MapWindow 4: MapWindow GIS v4.8.8 - Release Candidate - 32Bit: Download the release notes here: http://svn.mapwindow.org/svnroot/MapWindow4Dev/Bin/MapWindowNotes.rtfLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.06: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.VR Player: VR Player 0.3.1 ALPHA: New plugin system with individual folders TrackIR support Maya and 3ds max formats support Dual screen support Mono layouts (left and right) Cylinder height parameter Barel effect factor parameter Razer hydra filter parameter VRPN bug fixes UI improvements Performances improvements Stabilization and logging with Log4Net New default values base on users feedback CTRL key to open menuSimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8 New features: Import BMP color palettes for vehicles Import RASTER file (uncompressed 8.8.8.8 DDS files) View different channels of RASTER files or preview of all layers combined Find text in javascripts TGA viewer Ground textures added to lot editor Many additional identified instances and propertiesNew ProjectsADJD-S311-CR99 Colour Sensor Arduino: Integrating the Avago ADJD-s311-CR999 with ArduinoBerkeley Algorithm: student project for DS course Berkeley Algorithm C#Code Kata - HarryPotter Win8: HarryPotter Series discount programming excerciseHad CMS: Had CMSjean0615mercurialmm: ddjet.version.Incrementor: It's a console tool parse AssemblyInfo.cs files in given directory and set AssemblyVersion and AssemblyFileVersion attribtes to given version. It can be easilyLogger - logging for your .NET project using file, mail, debug output: A light weight yet competent logger for .NET with configurable output modules, such as log file, e-mail and debug log. Easy to add your own output module if needed.MatUtils: Um projecto onde se incluem algumas ferramentas matemáticas.MoGo Mobile: The first makings of an open source Mobile Game!myFirstHTML5: Project was to create a mobile responsive websiteNeTools: This Tool Allows You To Know & Monitor Your Network Better. You'l Be Able To Hijack The Network's Traffic, Poison The Network, Kick Devices From It & Many More.Prism Photo Browser: This is a functioning photo browser written in C# for a WPF platform implementing the Model View View-Model (MVVM) design pattern and PrismQuesTime: This is a quiz projectSM130 Arduino Integration: A project to integrate an SM130 RFID module with Arduino.SQL Server Analysis Services Cube Status Web Part for SharePoint: The Cube Status project provides a SharePoint Web Part that connects to a SQL Server Analysis Services instance and shows the status of a specific cubeSQLite Sync for Windows Phone 8: Project Description This project is the Windows Phone 8 implementation of the Sync Framework Toolkit to enable synchronization with Windows Phone 8 and SQLite.Test Project: testTool To Recover or Restore Windows 7 Files: Impossible Is Nothing!: Get easy to use Windows 2007 Recovery software which is fully helpful application that can easily recover or restore Windows 2007 files with full of quality.Vitus Localization: An Orchard module containing a collection of features useful for localized or multilingual Orchard websites.Wedn.Net: Blog ????: ????? ??? ?????? ????? ???? ??? ????? ???? ??? ?? ??? ???????

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• Setup routing and iptables for new VPN connection to redirect **only** ports 80 and 443

  - by Steve

  I have a new VPN connection (using openvpn) to allow me to route around some ISP restrictions. Whilst it is working fine, it is taking all the traffic over the vpn. This is causing me issues for downloading (my internet connection is a lot faster than the vpn allows), and for remote access. I run an ssh server, and have a daemon running that allows me to schdule downloads via my phone. I have my existing ethernet connection on eth0, and the new VPN connection on tun0. I believe I need to setup the default route to use my existing eth0 connection on the 192.168.0.0/24 network, and set the default gateway to 192.168.0.1 (my knowledge is shaky as I haven't done this for a number of years). If that is correct, then I'm not exactly sure how to do it!. My current routing table is: Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface MSS Window irtt 0.0.0.0 10.51.0.169 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 tun0 0 0 0 10.51.0.1 10.51.0.169 255.255.255.255 UGH 0 0 0 tun0 0 0 0 10.51.0.169 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 tun0 0 0 0 85.25.147.49 192.168.0.1 255.255.255.255 UGH 0 0 0 eth0 0 0 0 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 1000 0 0 eth0 0 0 0 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 1 0 0 eth0 0 0 0 After fixing the routing, I believe I need to use iptables to configure prerouting or masquerading to force everything for destination port 80 or 443 over tun0. Again, I'm not exactly sure how to do this! Everything I've found on the internet is trying to do something far more complicated, and trying to sort the wood from the trees is proving difficult. Any help would be much appreciated. UPDATE So far, from the various sources, I've cobbled together the following: #!/bin/sh DEV1=eth0 IP1=`ifconfig|perl -nE'/dr:(\S+)/&&say$1'|grep 192.` GW1=192.168.0.1 TABLE1=internet TABLE2=vpn DEV2=tun0 IP2=`ifconfig|perl -nE'/dr:(\S+)/&&say$1'|grep 10.` GW2=`route -n | grep 'UG[ \t]' | awk '{print $2}'` ip route flush table $TABLE1 ip route flush table $TABLE2 ip route show table main | grep -Ev ^default | while read ROUTE ; do ip route add table $TABLE1 $ROUTE ip route add table $TABLE2 $ROUTE done ip route add table $TABLE1 $GW1 dev $DEV1 src $IP1 ip route add table $TABLE2 $GW2 dev $DEV2 src $IP2 ip route add table $TABLE1 default via $GW1 ip route add table $TABLE2 default via $GW2 echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_dynaddr ip rule add from $IP1 lookup $TABLE1 ip rule add from $IP2 lookup $TABLE2 ip rule add fwmark 1 lookup $TABLE1 ip rule add fwmark 2 lookup $TABLE2 iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $DEV1 -j SNAT --to-source $IP1 iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $DEV2 -j SNAT --to-source $IP2 iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j CONNMARK --restore-mark iptables -A OUTPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j CONNMARK --restore-mark iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i $DEV1 -m state --state NEW -j CONNMARK --set-mark 1 iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i $DEV2 -m state --state NEW -j CONNMARK --set-mark 2 iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -m connmark --mark 1 -j MARK --set-mark 1 iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -m connmark --mark 2 -j MARK --set-mark 2 iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -m state --state NEW -m connmark ! --mark 0 -j CONNMARK --save-mark iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -i $DEV2 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 80 -j CONNMARK --set-mark 2 iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -i $DEV2 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 443 -j CONNMARK --set-mark 2 route del default route add default gw 192.168.0.1 eth0 Now this seems to be working. Except it isn't! Connections to the blocked websites are going through, connections not on ports 80 and 443 are using the non-VPN connection. However port 80 and 443 connections that aren't to the blocked websites are using the non-VPN connection too! As the general goal has been reached, I'm relatively happy, but it would be nice to know why it isn't working exactly right. Any ideas? For reference, I now have 3 routing tables, main, internet, and vpn. The listing of them is as follows... Main: default via 192.168.0.1 dev eth0 10.38.0.1 via 10.38.0.205 dev tun0 10.38.0.205 dev tun0 proto kernel scope link src 10.38.0.206 85.removed via 192.168.0.1 dev eth0 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0 scope link metric 1000 192.168.0.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.0.73 metric 1 Internet: default via 192.168.0.1 dev eth0 10.38.0.1 via 10.38.0.205 dev tun0 10.38.0.205 dev tun0 proto kernel scope link src 10.38.0.206 85.removed via 192.168.0.1 dev eth0 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0 scope link metric 1000 192.168.0.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.0.73 metric 1 192.168.0.1 dev eth0 scope link src 192.168.0.73 VPN: default via 10.38.0.205 dev tun0 10.38.0.1 via 10.38.0.205 dev tun0 10.38.0.205 dev tun0 proto kernel scope link src 10.38.0.206 85.removed via 192.168.0.1 dev eth0 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0 scope link metric 1000 192.168.0.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.0.73 metric 1

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• Combining Shared Secret and Username Token – Azure Service Bus

  - by Michael Stephenson

  As discussed in the introduction article this walkthrough will explain how you can implement WCF security with the Windows Azure Service Bus to ensure that you can protect your endpoint in the cloud with a shared secret but also flow through a username token so that in your listening WCF service you will be able to identify who sent the message. This could either be in the form of an application or a user depending on how you want to use your token. Prerequisites Before going into the walk through I want to explain a few assumptions about the scenario we are implementing but to keep the article shorter I am not going to walk through all of the steps in how to setup some of this. In the solution we have a simple console application which will represent the client application. There is also the services WCF application which contains the WCF service we will expose via the Windows Azure Service Bus. The WCF Service application in this example was hosted in IIS 7 on Windows 2008 R2 with AppFabric Server installed and configured to auto-start the WCF listening services. I am not going to go through significant detail around the IIS setup because it should not matter in relation to this article however if you want to understand more about how to configure WCF and IIS for such a scenario please refer to the following paper which goes into a lot of detail about how to configure this. The link is: http://tinyurl.com/8s5nwrz   The Service Component To begin with let's look at the service component and how it can be configured to listen to the service bus using a shared secret but to also accept a username token from the client. In the sample the service component is called Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.UN.Services. It has a single service which is the Visual Studio template for a WCF service when you add a new WCF Service Application so we have a service called Service1 with its Echo method. Nothing special so far!.... The next step is to look at the web.config file to see how we have configured the WCF service. In the services section of the WCF configuration you can see I have created my service and I have created a local endpoint which I simply used to do a little bit of diagnostics and to check it was working, but more importantly there is the Windows Azure endpoint which is using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding (note that this should also work just the same if your using netTcpRelayBinding). The key points to note on the above picture are the service behavior called MyServiceBehaviour and the service bus endpoints behavior called MyEndpointBehaviour. We will go into these in more detail later.   The Relay Binding The relay binding for the service has been configured to use the TransportWithMessageCredential security mode. This is the important bit where the transport security really relates to the interaction between the service and listening to the Azure Service Bus and the message credential is where we will use our username token like we have specified in the message/clientCrentialType attribute. Note also that we have left the relayClientAuthenticationType set to RelayAccessToken. This means that authentication will be made against ACS for accessing the service bus and messages will not be accepted from any sender who has not been authenticated by ACS.   The Endpoint Behaviour In the below picture you can see the endpoint behavior which is configured to use the shared secret client credential for accessing the service bus and also for diagnostic purposes I have included the service registry element. Hopefully if you are familiar with using Windows Azure Service Bus relay feature the above is very familiar to you and this is a very common setup for this section. There is nothing specific to the username token implementation here. The Service Behaviour Now we come to the bit with most of the username token bits in it. When you configure the service behavior I have included the serviceCredentials element and then setup to use userNameAuthentication and you can see that I have created my own custom username token validator.   This setup means that WCF will hand off to my class for validating the username token details. I have also added the serviceSecurityAudit element to give me a simple auditing of access capability. My UsernamePassword Validator The below picture shows you the details of the username password validator class I have implemented. WCF will hand off to this class when validating the token and give me a nice way to check the token credentials against an on-premise store. You have all of the validation features with a non-service bus WCF implementation available such as validating the username password against active directory or ASP.net membership features or as in my case above something much simpler.   The Client Now let's take a look at the client side of this solution and how we can configure the client to authenticate against ACS but also send a username token over to the service component so it can implement additional security checks on-premise. I have a console application and in the program class I want to use the proxy generated with Add Service Reference to send a message via the Azure Service Bus. You can see in my WCF client configuration below I have setup my details for the azure service bus url and am using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding. Next is my configuration for the relay binding. You can see below I have configured security to use TransportWithMessageCredential so we will flow the username token with the message and also the RelayAccessToken relayClientAuthenticationType which means the component will validate against ACS before being allowed to access the relay endpoint to send a message.     After the binding we need to configure the endpoint behavior like in the below picture. This is the normal configuration to use a shared secret for accessing a Service Bus endpoint.   Finally below we have the code of the client in the console application which will call the service bus. You can see that we have created our proxy and then made a normal call to a WCF service but this time we have also set the ClientCredentials to use the appropriate username and password which will be flown through the service bus and to our service which will validate them.     Conclusion As you can see from the above walkthrough it is not too difficult to configure a service to use both a shared secret and username token at the same time. This gives you the power and protection offered by the access control service in the cloud but also the ability to flow additional tokens to the on-premise component for additional security features to be implemented. Sample The sample used in this post is available at the following location: https://s3.amazonaws.com/CSCBlogSamples/Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.UN.zip

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• Autodetect/mount SDCards and run script for them on Linux

  - by Brendan

  Hey Everyone, I'm currently running SME Server, and need to have a script run upon the attachment of SD Cards to my server. The script itself works fine (it copies the contents of the cards), but the automounting and execution of the script is where I'm having issues. The I have a USB hub consisting of 10 USB ports; that shows up as: [root@server ~]# lsusb Bus 004 Device 002: ID 0000:0000 Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 Bus 001 Device 055: ID 1a40:0101 TERMINUS TECHNOLOGY INC. Bus 001 Device 051: ID 1a40:0101 TERMINUS TECHNOLOGY INC. Bus 001 Device 050: ID 1a40:0101 TERMINUS TECHNOLOGY INC. Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 (The hub is the TERMINUS TECHNOLOGY INC entries) As I cannot plug SD Cards directly into the server; I use a USB to SD card attachement (10 of them) plugged into the hub to read the cards. Upon pluggig the 10 attachments (without cards) into the hub; lsusb yields the following: [root@server ~]# lsusb Bus 004 Device 002: ID 0000:0000 Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 Bus 001 Device 073: ID 05e3:0723 Genesys Logic, Inc. Bus 001 Device 072: ID 05e3:0723 Genesys Logic, Inc. Bus 001 Device 071: ID 05e3:0723 Genesys Logic, Inc. Bus 001 Device 070: ID 05e3:0723 Genesys Logic, Inc. Bus 001 Device 069: ID 05e3:0723 Genesys Logic, Inc. Bus 001 Device 068: ID 05e3:0723 Genesys Logic, Inc. Bus 001 Device 067: ID 05e3:0723 Genesys Logic, Inc. Bus 001 Device 066: ID 05e3:0723 Genesys Logic, Inc. Bus 001 Device 065: ID 05e3:0723 Genesys Logic, Inc. Bus 001 Device 064: ID 05e3:0723 Genesys Logic, Inc. Bus 001 Device 055: ID 1a40:0101 TERMINUS TECHNOLOGY INC. Bus 001 Device 051: ID 1a40:0101 TERMINUS TECHNOLOGY INC. Bus 001 Device 050: ID 1a40:0101 TERMINUS TECHNOLOGY INC. Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 As you can see, the readers are the "Gensys Logic, Inc" entries. Plugging in an SD card to a reader doesn't affect lsusb (it reads exactly as above), however my system recognises the cards fine; as indicated by dmesg: Attached scsi generic sg11 at scsi54, channel 0, id 0, lun 0, type 0 USB Mass Storage device found at 73 SCSI device sdd: 31388672 512-byte hdwr sectors (16071 MB) sdd: Write Protect is on sdd: Mode Sense: 03 00 80 00 sdd: assuming drive cache: write through SCSI device sdd: 31388672 512-byte hdwr sectors (16071 MB) sdd: Write Protect is on sdd: Mode Sense: 03 00 80 00 sdd: assuming drive cache: write through sdd: sdd1 SCSI device sdd: 31388672 512-byte hdwr sectors (16071 MB) sdd: Write Protect is on sdd: Mode Sense: 03 00 80 00 sdd: assuming drive cache: write through SCSI device sdd: 31388672 512-byte hdwr sectors (16071 MB) sdd: Write Protect is on sdd: Mode Sense: 03 00 80 00 sdd: assuming drive cache: write through sdd: sdd1 SCSI device sdd: 31388672 512-byte hdwr sectors (16071 MB) sdd: Write Protect is on sdd: Mode Sense: 03 00 80 00 sdd: assuming drive cache: write through SCSI device sdd: 31388672 512-byte hdwr sectors (16071 MB) sdd: Write Protect is on sdd: Mode Sense: 03 00 80 00 sdd: assuming drive cache: write through sdd: sdd1 If I manually mount sdd1 (mount /dev/sdd1 /somedirectory/) this works fine. What I'm really after is a solution that automounts each of the cards as they are inputted into the reader; and executes a script for them (this will involve copying their contents to another directory). My problem is that I don't know how to do this; I don't think udev will work as the USB devices don't change; if I could somehow get udev working with /dev/disk/by-path/ however I think this is doable (it seems to keep constant entries). ls /dev/disk returns: pci-0000:00:1d.7-usb-0:4.1.1.1:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 pci-0000:00:1d.7-usb-0:4.1.1.2:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 pci-0000:00:1d.7-usb-0:4.1.1.3:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 pci-0000:00:1d.7-usb-0:4.1.1.4:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 pci-0000:00:1d.7-usb-0:4.1.2:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 pci-0000:00:1d.7-usb-0:4.1.3:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 pci-0000:00:1d.7-usb-0:4.1.4:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 pci-0000:00:1d.7-usb-0:4.2:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 pci-0000:00:1d.7-usb-0:4.3:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 pci-0000:00:1d.7-usb-0:4.4:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 pci-0000:00:1d.7-usb-0:4.4:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part1 pci-0000:0b:01.0-scsi-0:0:1:0 pci-0000:0b:01.0-scsi-0:0:1:0-part1 pci-0000:0b:01.0-scsi-0:0:1:0-part2 From above, we can see I have only one card plugged into the reader (pci-0000:00:1d.7-usb-0:4.4:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part1). Going mount /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000\:00\:1d.7-usb-0\:4.4\:1.0-scsi-0\:0\:0\:0-part1 Works and places the card under /media/usbdisk/, however: mount /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000\:00\:1d.7-usb-0\:4.4\:1.0-scsi-0\:0\:0\:0-part1 slot1/ doesn't work, and returns "mount: can't get address for /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000" Any ideas and solutions would be great, I've seen the knowledge of a lot of the guys on here before so I'm hopeful someone can help me out. Thanks

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• HTG Explains: Why Does Rebooting a Computer Fix So Many Problems?

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Ask a geek how to fix a problem you’ve having with your Windows computer and they’ll likely ask “Have you tried rebooting it?” This seems like a flippant response, but rebooting a computer can actually solve many problems. So what’s going on here? Why does resetting a device or restarting a program fix so many problems? And why don’t geeks try to identify and fix problems rather than use the blunt hammer of “reset it”? This Isn’t Just About Windows Bear in mind that this soltion isn’t just limited to Windows computers, but applies to all types of computing devices. You’ll find the advice “try resetting it” applied to wireless routers, iPads, Android phones, and more. This same advice even applies to software — is Firefox acting slow and consuming a lot of memory? Try closing it and reopening it! Some Problems Require a Restart To illustrate why rebooting can fix so many problems, let’s take a look at the ultimate software problem a Windows computer can face: Windows halts, showing a blue screen of death. The blue screen was caused by a low-level error, likely a problem with a hardware driver or a hardware malfunction. Windows reaches a state where it doesn’t know how to recover, so it halts, shows a blue-screen of death, gathers information about the problem, and automatically restarts the computer for you . This restart fixes the blue screen of death. Windows has gotten better at dealing with errors — for example, if your graphics driver crashes, Windows XP would have frozen. In Windows Vista and newer versions of Windows, the Windows desktop will lose its fancy graphical effects for a few moments before regaining them. Behind the scenes, Windows is restarting the malfunctioning graphics driver. But why doesn’t Windows simply fix the problem rather than restarting the driver or the computer itself?  Well, because it can’t — the code has encountered a problem and stopped working completely, so there’s no way for it to continue. By restarting, the code can start from square one and hopefully it won’t encounter the same problem again. Examples of Restarting Fixing Problems While certain problems require a complete restart because the operating system or a hardware driver has stopped working, not every problem does. Some problems may be fixable without a restart, though a restart may be the easiest option. Windows is Slow: Let’s say Windows is running very slowly. It’s possible that a misbehaving program is using 99% CPU and draining the computer’s resources. A geek could head to the task manager and look around, hoping to locate the misbehaving process an end it. If an average user encountered this same problem, they could simply reboot their computer to fix it rather than dig through their running processes. Firefox or Another Program is Using Too Much Memory: In the past, Firefox has been the poster child for memory leaks on average PCs. Over time, Firefox would often consume more and more memory, getting larger and larger and slowing down. Closing Firefox will cause it to relinquish all of its memory. When it starts again, it will start from a clean state without any leaked memory. This doesn’t just apply to Firefox, but applies to any software with memory leaks. Internet or Wi-Fi Network Problems: If you have a problem with your Wi-Fi or Internet connection, the software on your router or modem may have encountered a problem. Resetting the router — just by unplugging it from its power socket and then plugging it back in — is a common solution for connection problems. In all cases, a restart wipes away the current state of the software . Any code that’s stuck in a misbehaving state will be swept away, too. When you restart, the computer or device will bring the system up from scratch, restarting all the software from square one so it will work just as well as it was working before. “Soft Resets” vs. “Hard Resets” In the mobile device world, there are two types of “resets” you can perform. A “soft reset” is simply restarting a device normally — turning it off and then on again. A “hard reset” is resetting its software state back to its factory default state. When you think about it, both types of resets fix problems for a similar reason. For example, let’s say your Windows computer refuses to boot or becomes completely infected with malware. Simply restarting the computer won’t fix the problem, as the problem is with the files on the computer’s hard drive — it has corrupted files or malware that loads at startup on its hard drive. However, reinstalling Windows (performing a “Refresh or Reset your PC” operation in Windows 8 terms) will wipe away everything on the computer’s hard drive, restoring it to its formerly clean state. This is simpler than looking through the computer’s hard drive, trying to identify the exact reason for the problems or trying to ensure you’ve obliterated every last trace of malware. It’s much faster to simply start over from a known-good, clean state instead of trying to locate every possible problem and fix it. Ultimately, the answer is that “resetting a computer wipes away the current state of the software, including any problems that have developed, and allows it to start over from square one.” It’s easier and faster to start from a clean state than identify and fix any problems that may be occurring — in fact, in some cases, it may be impossible to fix problems without beginning from that clean state. Image Credit: Arria Belli on Flickr, DeclanTM on Flickr     

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• Skanska Builds Global Workforce Insight with Cloud-Based HCM System

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By David Baum - Originally posted on Profit Peter Bjork grew up building things. He started his work life learning all sorts of trades at his father’s construction company in the northern part of Sweden. So in college, it was natural for him to pursue a bachelor’s degree in construction engineering—but he broke new ground when he added a master’s degree in finance to his curriculum vitae. Written on a traditional résumé, Bjork’s current title (vice president of information systems strategies) doesn’t reveal the diversity of his experience—that he’s adept with hammer and nails as well as rows and columns. But a big part of his current job is to work with his counterparts in human resources (HR) designing, building, and deploying the systems needed to get a complete view of the skills and potential of Skanska’s 22,000-strong white-collar workforce. And Bjork believes that complete view is essential to Skanska’s success. “Our business is really all about people,” says Bjork, who has worked with Skanska for 16 years. “You can have equipment and financial resources, but to truly succeed in a business like ours you need to have the right people in the right places. That’s what this system is helping us accomplish.” In a global HR environment that suffers from a paradox of high unemployment and a scarcity of skilled labor, managers need to have a complete understanding of workforce capabilities to develop management skills, recruit for open positions, ensure that staff is getting the training they need, and reduce attrition. Skanska’s human capital management (HCM) systems, based on Oracle Talent Management Cloud, play a critical role delivering that understanding. “Skanska’s philosophy of having great people, encouraging their development, and giving them the chance to move across business units has nurtured a culture of collaboration, but managing a diverse workforce spread across the globe is a monumental challenge,” says Annika Lindholm, global human resources system owner in the HR department at Skanska’s headquarters just outside of Stockholm, Sweden. “We depend heavily on Oracle’s cloud technology to support our HCM function.” Construction, Workers For Skanska’s more than 60,000 employees and contractors, managing huge construction projects is an everyday job. Beyond erecting signature buildings, management’s goal is to build a corporate culture where valuable talent can be sought out and developed, bringing in the right mix of people to support and grow the business. “Of all the companies in our space, Skanska is probably one of the strongest ones, with a laser focus on people and people development,” notes Tom Crane, chief HR and communications officer for Skanska in the United States. “Our business looks like equipment and material, but all we really have at the end of the day are people and their intellectual capital. Without them, second only to clients, of course, you really can’t achieve great things in the high-profile environment in which we work.” During the 1990s, Skanska entered an expansive growth phase. A string of successful acquisitions paved the way for the company’s transformation into a global enterprise. “Today the company’s focus is on profitable growth,” continues Crane. “But you can’t really achieve growth unless you are doing a very good job of developing your people and having the right people in the right places and driving a culture of growth.” In the United States alone, Skanska has more than 8,000 employees in four distinct business units: Skanska USA Building, also known as the Construction Manager, builds everything at ground level and above—hospitals, educational facilities, stadiums, airport terminals, and other massive projects. Skanska USA Civil does everything at ground level and below, such as light rail, water treatment facilities, power plants or power industry facilities, highways, and bridges. Skanska Infrastructure Development develops public-private partnerships—projects in which Skanska adds equity and also arranges for outside financing. Skanska Commercial Development acts like a commercial real estate developer, acquiring land and building offices on spec or build-to-suit for its clients. Skanska's international portfolio includes construction of the new Meadowlands Stadium. Getting the various units to operate collaboratatively helps Skanska deliver high value to clients and shareholders. “When we have this collaboration among units, it allows us to enrich each of the business units and, at the same time, develop our future leaders to be more facile in operating across business units—more accepting of a ‘one Skanska’ approach,” explains Crane. Workforce Worldwide But HR needs processes and tools to support managers who face such business dynamics. Oracle Talent Management Cloud is helping Skanska implement world-class recruiting strategies and generate the insights needed to drive quality hiring practices, internal mobility, and a proactive approach to building talent pipelines. With their new cloud system in place, Skanska HR leaders can manage everything from recruiting, compensation, and goal and performance management to employee learning and talent review—all as part of a single, cohesive software-as-a-service (SaaS) environment. Skanska has successfully implemented two modules from Oracle Talent Management Cloud—the recruiting and performance management modules—and is in the process of implementing the learn module. Internally, they call the systems Skanska Recruit, Skanska Talent, and Skanska Learn. The timing is apropos. With high rates of unemployment in recent years, there have been many job candidates on the market. However, talent scarcity continues to frustrate recruiters. Oracle Taleo Recruiting Cloud Service, one of the applications in the Oracle Talent Management cloud portfolio, enables Skanska managers to create more-intelligent recruiting strategies, pulling high-performer profile statistics to create new candidate profiles and using multitiered screening and assessments to ensure that only the best-suited candidate applications make it to the recruiter’s desk. Tools such as applicant tracking, interview management, and requisition management help recruiters and hiring managers streamline the hiring process. Oracle’s cloud-based software system automates and streamlines many other HR processes for Skanska’s multinational organization and delivers insight into the success of recruiting and talent-management efforts. “The Oracle system is definitely helping us to construct global HR processes,” adds Bjork. “It is really important that we have a business model that is decentralized, so we can effectively serve our local markets, and interact with our global ERP [enterprise resource planning] systems as well. We would not be able to do this without a really good, well-integrated HCM system that could support these efforts.” A key piece of this effort is something Skanska has developed internally called the Skanska Leadership Profile. Core competencies, on which all employees are measured, are used in performance reviews to determine weak areas but also to discover talent, such as those who will be promoted or need succession plans. This global profiling system brings consistency to the way HR professionals evaluate and review talent across the company, with a consistent set of ratings and a consistent definition of competencies. All salaried employees in Skanska are tied to a talent management process that gives opportunity for midyear and year-end reviews. Using the performance management module, managers can align individual goals with corporate goals; provide clear visibility into how each employee contributes to the success of the organization; and drive a strategic, end-to-end talent management strategy with a single, integrated system for all talent-related activities. This is critical to a company that is highly focused on ensuring that every employee has a development plan linked to his or her succession potential. “Our approach all along has been to deploy software applications that are seamless to end users,” says Crane. “The beauty of a cloud-based system is that much of the functionality takes place behind the scenes so we can focus on making sure users can access the data when they need it. This model greatly improves their efficiency.” The employee profile not only sets a competency baseline for new employees but is also integrated with Skanska’s other back-office Oracle systems to ensure consistency in the way information is used to support other business functions. “Since we have about a dozen different HR systems that are providing us with information, we built a master database that collects all the information,” explains Lindholm. “That data is sent not only to Oracle Talent Management Cloud, but also to other systems that are dependent on this information.” Collaboration to Scale Skanska is poised to launch a new Oracle module to link employee learning plans to the review process and recruitment assessments. According to Crane, connecting these processes allows Skanska managers to see employees’ progress and produce an updated learning program. For example, as employees take classes, supervisors can consult the Oracle Talent Management Cloud portal to monitor progress and align it to each individual’s training and development plan. “That’s a pretty compelling solution for an organization that wants to manage its talent on a real-time basis and see how the training is working,” Crane says. Rolling out Oracle Talent Management Cloud was a joint effort among HR, IT, and a global group that oversaw the worldwide implementation. Skanska deployed the solution quickly across all markets at once. In the United States, for example, more than 35 offices quickly got up to speed on the new system via webinars for employees and face-to-face training for the HR group. “With any migration, there are moments when you hold your breath, but in this case, we had very few problems getting the system up and running,” says Crane. Lindholm adds, “There has been very little resistance to the system as users recognize its potential. Customizations are easy, and a lasting partnership has developed between Skanska and Oracle when help is needed. They listen to us.” Bjork elaborates on the implementation process from an IT perspective. “Deploying a SaaS system removes a lot of the complexity,” he says. “You can downsize the IT part and focus on the business part, which increases the probability of a successful implementation. If you want to scale the system, you make a quick phone call. That’s all it took recently when we added 4,000 users. We didn’t have to think about resizing the servers or hiring more IT people. Oracle does that for us, and they have provided very good support.” As a result, Skanska has been able to implement a single, cost-effective talent management solution across the organization to support its strategy to recruit and develop a world-class staff. Stakeholders are confident that they are providing the most efficient recruitment system possible for competent personnel at all levels within the company—from skilled workers at construction sites to top management at headquarters. And Skanska can retain skilled employees and ensure that they receive the development opportunities they need to grow and advance.

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• Exalogic 2.0.1 Tea Break Snippets - Creating a ModifyJeOS VirtualBox

  - by The Old Toxophilist

  Following on from my previous blog entry "Modifying the Base Template" I decided to put together a quick blog to show how to create a small VirtualBox, guest, that can be used to execute the ModifyJeOS and hence edit you templates. One of the main advantages of this is that Templates can be created away from the Exalogic Environment. For the Guest OS I chose OEL 6u3 and decided to create it as a basic server because I did not require a graphical interface but it's a simple change to create it with a GUI. Required Software Virtual Box. Oracle Enterprise Linux. Creating the VM I'll assume that the reader is experienced with Virtual Box and installing OEL and hence will make this section brief. Create VirtualBox Guest Create a new VirtualBox Guest and select oracle Linux 64 bit. Follow through the create process and select Dynamic Disk Size and the default 12GB disk size. The actual image will be a lot smaller than this but the OEL install will fail with insufficient disk space if you attempt a smaller size. Once the guest has been created attach the previously downloaded OEL 6u3 iso to the cd drive and start the guest. Install OEL On starting the guest the system will boot off the associated OEL 6u3 iso and take you through the standard installation process. Select all the appropriate information but when you reach the installation type select Basic Server because we do not need that additional packages and only need to access through the command line interface. Complete the installation and reboot the Guest. At this point we now have a basic OEL server running. Installing Guest Add-ons Before we can easily access the Guest we will need to add the VirtualBox guest add-ons. These will provide better keyboard and mouse integration and allow access the shared folders on the host machine. Before we can do this we will need to do the following: Enable Networking. Install additional rpms.  To enable the networking (eth0), that appears to be disabled by default, we can execute: ifup eth0 This will start the eth0 connection but once the Guest is rebooted the network will be down again. To resolve this you will need to edit the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 file and change the ONBOOT parameter to "yes". Now we have enabled the network we will need to install a number of addition rpm. First we will need to configure the yum repository as follows: [ol6_latest] name=Oracle Linux $releasever Latest ($basearch) baseurl=http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/latest/$basearch/ gpgkey=http://public-yum.oracle.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle-ol6 gpgcheck=1 enabled=1 [ol6_ga_base] name=Oracle Linux $releasever GA installation media copy ($basearch) baseurl=http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/0/base/$basearch/ gpgkey=http://public-yum.oracle.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle-ol6 gpgcheck=1 enabled=0 [ol6_u1_base] name=Oracle Linux $releasever Update 1 installation media copy ($basearch) baseurl=http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/1/base/$basearch/ gpgkey=http://public-yum.oracle.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle-ol6 gpgcheck=1 enabled=0 [ol6_u2_base] name=Oracle Linux $releasever Update 2 installation media copy ($basearch) baseurl=http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/2/base/$basearch/ gpgkey=http://public-yum.oracle.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle-ol6 gpgcheck=1 enabled=0 [ol6_u3_base] name=Oracle Linux $releasever Update 3 installation media copy ($basearch) baseurl=http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/3/base/$basearch/ gpgkey=http://public-yum.oracle.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle-ol6 gpgcheck=1 enabled=0 [ol6_UEK_latest] name=Latest Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel for Oracle Linux $releasever ($basearch) baseurl=http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/UEK/latest/$basearch/ gpgkey=http://public-yum.oracle.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle-ol6 gpgcheck=1 enabled=1 [ol6_UEK_base] name=Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel for Oracle Linux $releasever ($basearch) baseurl=http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/UEK/base/$basearch/ gpgkey=http://public-yum.oracle.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle-ol6 gpgcheck=1 enabled=0 Once the repository has been edited we will need to execute the following yum commands: yum update yum install gcc yum install kernel-uek-devel yum install kernel-devel yum install createrepo At this point we now have all the additional packages required to install the VirtualBox Guest Add-ons. So select Devices->InstallGuest Additions on you running guest: This will simply place the VirtualBoxGuestAdditions.iso in the virtual cd and we will need to execute the following before we can run them. mkdir /media/cdrom mount -t iso9660 -o ro /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom cd /media/cdrom/ ls ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run This will initiate the install and kernel rebuild. What you will notice is that during the installation a Failed will be displayed but this is simply because we have no graphical components. At this point we the installation will also have added the vboxsf group to the system and to access any shared folders we will create our user will need to be a member of this group an so the next stage is to add the root user to this group as follows: usermod -G vboxsf root cat /etc/group cat /etc/passwd init 0 Now simply shutdown the guest and add the Shared folder within your guests settings. Install ModifyJeOS Once the shared folder has been added restart the guest and change directory into the shared folder (/media/sf_<folder name>). For the next step I am assuming the ModifyJeOS rpms are located in the shared folder. We can simply execute: rpm -ivh ovm-modify-jeos-1.1.0-17.el5.noarch.rpm # Test with modifyjeos Using ModifyJeOS I have a modified MountSystemImg.sh script that should be copied into the /root/bin directory (you may need to create this) and from here it can be executed from any location: MountSystemImg.sh #!/bin/sh # The script assumes it's being run from the directory containing the System.img # Export for later i.e. during unmount export LOOP=`losetup -f` export SYSTEMIMG=/mnt/elsystem export TEMPLATEDIR=`pwd` # Make Temp Mount Directory mkdir -p $SYSTEMIMG # Create Loop for the System Image losetup $LOOP System.img kpartx -a $LOOP mount /dev/mapper/`basename $LOOP`p2 $SYSTEMIMG #Change Dir into mounted Image cd $SYSTEMIMG echo "######################################################################" echo "### ###" echo "### Starting Bash shell for editing. When completed log out to ###" echo "### Unmount the System.img file. ###" echo "### ###" echo "######################################################################" echo bash cd ~ cd $TEMPLATEDIR umount $SYSTEMIMG kpartx -d $LOOP losetup -d $LOOP rm -rf $SYSTEMIMG This script will simple create a mount directory, mount the System.img and then start a new shell in the mounted directory. On exiting the shell it will unmount the System.img. It only requires that you execute the script in the directory containing the System.img. These can be created under the mounted shared directory. In the example below I have extracted the Base template within the shared folder and then renamed it OEL_40GB_ROOT before changing into that directory and executing the script.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, November 30, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, November 30, 2012Popular ReleasesTFS Branch Permission Removal Event Subscriber: Release 1.0: first release of the Branch Security Inherit Only libraryMagelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 2.2: new UI for the Administration console Bugs fixes and improvement version 2.2.215.3JayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.2.5: What's new in JayData 1.2.5For detailed release notes check the release notes. Handlebars template engine supportImplement data manager applications with JayData using Handlebars.js for templating. Include JayDataModules/handlebars.js and begin typing the mustaches :) Blogpost: Handlebars templates in JayData Handlebars helpers and model driven commanding in JayData Easy JayStorm cloud data managementManage cloud data using the same syntax and data management concept just like any other data ...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.70: Highlight features & improvements: • Performance optimization. • Search engine optimization. ID-less URLs for products, categories, and manufacturers. • Added ACL support (access control list) on products and categories. • Minify and bundle JavaScript files. • Allow a store owner to decide which billing/shipping address fields are enabled/disabled/required (like it's already done for the registration page). • Moved to MVC 4 (.NET 4.5 is required). • Now Visual Studio 2012 is required to work ...SQL Server Partition Management: Partition Management Release 3.0: Release 3.0 adds support for SQL Server 2012 and is backward compatible with SQL Server 2008 and 2005. The release consists of: • A Readme file • The Executable • The source code (Visual Studio project) Enhancements include: -- Support for Columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 -- Ability to create TSQL scripts for staging table and index creation operations -- Full support for global date and time formats, locale independent -- Support for binary partitioning column types -- Fixes to is...NHook - A debugger API: NHook 1.0: x86 debugger Resolve symbol from MS Public server Resolve RVA from executable's image Add breakpoints Assemble / Disassemble target process assembly More information here, you can also check unit tests that are real sample code.PDF Library: PDFLib v2.0: Release notes This new version include many bug fixes and include support for stream objects and cross-reference object streams. New FeatureExtract images from the PDFCommand Line Parser Library: 1.9.3.23 beta: Fixes an issue notified by github user sbambrick about parsing negative numbers.MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.10: Critical Update to 2.3.9: Changelog for 2.3.10 (32bit and 64bit) 1. AsfBin executable missing from build 2. Removed extra references from build to avoid conflict 3. Showanalyzer installation now checked on remote engine machine Changelog for 2.3.9 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Added support for WTV output profile 2. Added support for minimizing MCEBuddy to the system tray 3. Added support for custom archive folder 4. Added support to disable subdirectory monitoring 5. Added support for better TS fil...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 07.00.00: Major Highlights Fixed issue that caused profiles of deleted users to be available Removed the postback after checkboxes are selected in Page Settings > Taxonomy Implemented the functionality required to edit security role names and social group names Fixed JavaScript error when using a ";" semicolon as a profile property Fixed issue when using DateTime properties in profiles Fixed viewstate error when using Facebook authentication in conjunction with "require valid profile fo...CODE Framework: 4.0.21128.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.76: Fixed a typo in ObjectLiteralProperty.IsConstant that caused all object literals to be treated like they were constants, and possibly moved around in the code when they shouldn't be.Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.3.0: New features: Dropdown/Radio/Checkbox Lists no longer references the userkey. Instead they refer to the UUID field for input value. You can now delete, export, import content from database in the site settings. Labels can now be imported and exported. You can now set the required password strength and maximum number of incorrect login attempts. Child sites can inherit plugins from its parent sites. The view parameter can be changed through the page_context.current value. Addition of c...Team Foundation Server Administration Tool: 2.2: TFS Administration Tool 2.2 supports the Team Foundation Server 2012 Object Model. Visual Studio 2012 or Team Explorer 2012 must be installed before you can install this tool. You can download and install Team Explorer 2012 from http://aka.ms/TeamExplorer2012. There are no functional changes between the previous release (2.1) and this release.Coding Guidelines for C# 3.0, C# 4.0 and C# 5.0: Coding Guidelines for CSharp 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0: See Change History for a detailed list of modifications.Math.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.3.0: Portable Library Build: Adds support for WP8 (.Net 4.0 and higher, SL5, WP8 and .NET for Windows Store apps) New: portable build also for F# extensions (.Net 4.5, SL5 and .NET for Windows Store apps) NuGet: portable builds are now included in the main packages, no more need for special portable packages Linear Algebra: Continued major storage rework, in this release focusing on vectors (previous release was on matrices) Thin QR decomposition (in addition to existing full QR) Static Cr...ExtJS based ASP.NET 2.0 Controls: FineUI v3.2.1: +2012-11-25 v3.2.1 +????????。 -MenuCheckBox?CheckedChanged??????，??????????。 -???????window.IDS??????????????。 -?????（??TabCollection，ControlBaseCollection）???，????????????????。 +Grid??。 -??SelectAllRows??。 -??PageItems??，?????????????，?????、??、?????。 -????grid/gridpageitems.aspx、grid/gridpageitemsrowexpander.aspx、grid/gridpageitems_pagesize.aspx。 -???????????????????。 -??ExpandAllRowExpanders??，?????????????????（grid/gridrowexpanderexpandall2.aspx）。 -??????ExpandRowExpande...VidCoder: 1.4.9 Beta: Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5079. Fixed crashes when encoding DVDs with title gaps.ZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.10.0.0: On the way to a release 1.0 the API should be stable now with this version. sync with rev. 2521 of the java version windows phone 8 assemblies improvements and fixesBlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.3: 2012.11.24 Ver5.7.3 (1)SMTP???????、?????????、??????????????????????? (2)?????????、?????????????????????????? (3)DNS???????CNAME????CNAME????????????????? (4)DNS????????????TTL???????? (5)???????????????????????、?????????????????? (6)???????????????????????????????New ProjectsAlpha Solutions Software Engineering Group Project: A Software Engineering Group Project from the University of Northampton.Arduino_Color_Tracker: CMUCAM arduino code for tracking the amount a pixels of the color being tracked.CAudioEndpointVolume: CAudioEndpointVolume for 32 bit and 64 bit Microsoft Office VBACollaborationItem: ?????????????codeplex??,???????????.Commerce Server Contrib Code Generation: A dll and set of T4 templates that help you generate code for interacting with Commerce Server.Commerce Server Contrib Site Templates: A set of site templates and libraries to help you get started with developing sites for Commerce Server.Creation Kit - Script Editor: CKSE is a script editor for Skyrim Papyrus scripts at the moment. Extending to other games is plannned.CSR Fiddle: CSR Fiddle is an App for SharePoint that allows you to "fiddle" with your list and form templates right from the browser.DNN RTL: RTL (Hebrew, Farsi, Arabic etc.) CSS files for Dotnetnuke. CSS files for right to left DNN sites. Dynamic Query: Uses expression tree to dynamically generate Entity Framework query. Also contains tool set for easy integration with asp.net mvc websites.FinalFrontier Autopilot: Autopilot for FinalFrontier MudHorror Encode: ¿pIEnSaS QUe eScRIbiR así eS SoLo PARA ReTrASadOS? Piénsalo dos veces, puede ser que haya un mensaje oculto y tú sólo estés suponiendo demasiado.Interop 2: Microformats for Azure Cloud with OData-InterfaceIT Security Feed Reader: Este es el proyecto de ISec PeruIVO 12_13 A5 Programmeren1 Lessen: Lessen voor de module A5 Programmeren 1 IVO Brugge William SchokkeléLingo: Lingo is a word game developed for Windows Phone 8. It's some sort of word version of Mastermind where you have to guess words in the least amount of guesses.one day one demo: Demos while learning, developing .NET programming skills, e.g. C#, Winform, WPF, WCF, ASP.NET, etc.PDF odd even merger: Merge odd pages with even pages, Useful when you scan a lot of pages from both sides and want to use a feeder ....Print list view button on SharePoint 2010 Ribbon: SP feature with new functionality where you can add "Print Button" on each type of SharePoint lists, even if it is SharePoint Calendar list,Document librariessevengen : 7 segment code calculator and generator: this software helps electrical engineers to calculate codes used in microcontrollers firmwares. SMBC Feebback Module: Bespoke feedback moduleSQL Server Compact Merge Replication Library: This library simplifies the code to do Merge Replication from a SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2 client, with useful helper methods.Subnetwork Toolkit: The Subnetwork Toolkit is a set of tools to analyze biological subnetworks.uTreeFormat: Umbraco Tree Formatting You can format every documenttype you want by using the alias in the config. Currently only the nodetype 'content' is supported.

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• Real tortoises keep it slow and steady. How about the backups?

  - by Maria Zakourdaev

    … Four tortoises were playing in the backyard when they decided they needed hibiscus flower snacks. They pooled their money and sent the smallest tortoise out to fetch the snacks. Two days passed and there was no sign of the tortoise. "You know, she is taking a lot of time", said one of the tortoises. A little voice from just out side the fence said, "If you are going to talk that way about me I won't go." Is it too much to request from the quite expensive 3rd party backup tool to be a way faster than the SQL server native backup? Or at least save a respectable amount of storage by producing a really smaller backup files?  By saying “really smaller”, I mean at least getting a file in half size. After Googling the internet in an attempt to understand what other “sql people” are using for database backups, I see that most people are using one of three tools which are the main players in SQL backup area:  LiteSpeed by Quest SQL Backup by Red Gate SQL Safe by Idera The feedbacks about those tools are truly emotional and happy. However, while reading the forums and blogs I have wondered, is it possible that many are accustomed to using the above tools since SQL 2000 and 2005.  This can easily be understood due to the fact that a 300GB database backup for instance, using regular a SQL 2005 backup statement would have run for about 3 hours and have produced ~150GB file (depending on the content, of course).  Then you take a 3rd party tool which performs the same backup in 30 minutes resulting in a 30GB file leaving you speechless, you run to management persuading them to buy it due to the fact that it is definitely worth the price. In addition to the increased speed and disk space savings you would also get backup file encryption and virtual restore -  features that are still missing from the SQL server. But in case you, as well as me, don’t need these additional features and only want a tool that performs a full backup MUCH faster AND produces a far smaller backup file (like the gain you observed back in SQL 2005 days) you will be quite disappointed. SQL Server backup compression feature has totally changed the market picture. Medium size database. Take a look at the table below, check out how my SQL server 2008 R2 compares to other tools when backing up a 300GB database. It appears that when talking about the backup speed, SQL 2008 R2 compresses and performs backup in similar overall times as all three other tools. 3rd party tools maximum compression level takes twice longer. Backup file gain is not that impressive, except the highest compression levels but the price that you pay is very high cpu load and much longer time. Only SQL Safe by Idera was quite fast with it’s maximum compression level but most of the run time have used 95% cpu on the server. Note that I have used two types of destination storage, SATA 11 disks and FC 53 disks and, obviously, on faster storage have got my backup ready in half time. Looking at the above results, should we spend money, bother with another layer of complexity and software middle-man for the medium sized databases? I’m definitely not going to do so.  Very large database As a next phase of this benchmark, I have moved to a 6 terabyte database which was actually my main backup target. Note, how multiple files usage enables the SQL Server backup operation to use parallel I/O and remarkably increases it’s speed, especially when the backup device is heavily striped. SQL Server supports a maximum of 64 backup devices for a single backup operation but the most speed is gained when using one file per CPU, in the case above 8 files for a 2 Quad CPU server. The impact of additional files is minimal.  However, SQLsafe doesn’t show any speed improvement between 4 files and 8 files. Of course, with such huge databases every half percent of the compression transforms into the noticeable numbers. Saving almost 470GB of space may turn the backup tool into quite valuable purchase. Still, the backup speed and high CPU are the variables that should be taken into the consideration. As for us, the backup speed is more critical than the storage and we cannot allow a production server to sustain 95% cpu for such a long time. Bottomline, 3rd party backup tool developers, we are waiting for some breakthrough release. There are a few unanswered questions, like the restore speed comparison between different tools and the impact of multiple backup files on restore operation. Stay tuned for the next benchmarks.    Benchmark server: SQL Server 2008 R2 sp1 2 Quad CPU Database location: NetApp FC 15K Aggregate 53 discs Backup statements: No matter how good that UI is, we need to run the backup tasks from inside of SQL Server Agent to make sure they are covered by our monitoring systems. I have used extended stored procedures (command line execution also is an option, I haven’t noticed any impact on the backup performance). SQL backup LiteSpeed SQL Backup SQL safe backup database <DBNAME> to disk= '\\<networkpath>\par1.bak' , disk= '\\<networkpath>\par2.bak', disk= '\\<networkpath>\par3.bak' with format, compression EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_backup_database @database = N'<DBName>', @backupname= N'<DBName> full backup', @desc = N'Test', @compressionlevel=8, @filename= N'\\<networkpath>\par1.bak', @filename= N'\\<networkpath>\par2.bak', @filename= N'\\<networkpath>\par3.bak', @init = 1 EXECUTE master.dbo.sqlbackup '-SQL "BACKUP DATABASE <DBNAME> TO DISK= ''\\<networkpath>\par1.sqb'', DISK= ''\\<networkpath>\par2.sqb'', DISK= ''\\<networkpath>\par3.sqb'' WITH DISKRETRYINTERVAL = 30, DISKRETRYCOUNT = 10, COMPRESSION = 4, INIT"' EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_ss_backup @database = 'UCMSDB', @filename = '\\<networkpath>\par1.bak', @backuptype = 'Full', @compressionlevel = 4, @backupfile = '\\<networkpath>\par2.bak', @backupfile = '\\<networkpath>\par3.bak' If you still insist on using 3rd party tools for the backups in your production environment with maximum compression level, you will definitely need to consider limiting cpu usage which will increase the backup operation time even more: RedGate : use THREADPRIORITY option ( values 0 – 6 ) LiteSpeed : use  @throttle ( percentage, like 70%) SQL safe :  the only thing I have found was @Threads option.   Yours, Maria

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• REST to Objects in C#

  RESTful interfaces for web services are all the rage for many Web 2.0 sites.  If you want to consume these in a very simple fashion, LINQ to XML can do the job pretty easily in C#.  If you go searching for help on this, youll find a lot of incomplete solutions and fairly large toolkits and frameworks (guess how I know this) this quick article is meant to be a no fluff just stuff approach to making this work. POCO Objects Lets assume you have a Model that you want to suck data into from a RESTful web service.  Ideally this is a Plain Old CLR Object, meaning it isnt infected with any persistence or serialization goop.  It might look something like this: public class Entry { public int Id; public int UserId; public DateTime Date; public float Hours; public string Notes; public bool Billable;   public override string ToString() { return String.Format("[{0}] User: {1} Date: {2} Hours: {3} Notes: {4} Billable {5}", Id, UserId, Date, Hours, Notes, Billable); } } Not that this isnt a completely trivial object.  Lets look at the API for the service.  RESTful HTTP Service In this case, its TickSpots API, with the following sample output: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <entries type="array"> <entry> <id type="integer">24</id> <task_id type="integer">14</task_id> <user_id type="integer">3</user_id> <date type="date">2008-03-08</date> <hours type="float">1.00</hours> <notes>Had trouble with tribbles.</notes> <billable>true</billable> # Billable is an attribute inherited from the task <billed>true</billed> # Billed is an attribute to track whether the entry has been invoiced <created_at type="datetime">Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:46:16 -0400</created_at> <updated_at type="datetime">Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:46:16 -0400</updated_at> # The following attributes are derived and provided for informational purposes: <user_email>[email protected]</user_email> <task_name>Remove converter assembly</task_name> <sum_hours type="float">2.00</sum_hours> <budget type="float">10.00</budget> <project_name>Realign dilithium crystals</project_name> <client_name>Starfleet Command</client_name> </entry> </entries> Im assuming in this case that I dont necessarily care about all of the data fields the service is returning I just need some of them for my applications purposes.  Thus, you can see there are more elements in the <entry> XML than I have in my Entry class. Get The XML with C# The next step is to get the XML.  The following snippet does the heavy lifting once you pass it the appropriate URL: protected XElement GetResponse(string uri) { var request = WebRequest.Create(uri) as HttpWebRequest; request.UserAgent = ".NET Sample"; request.KeepAlive = false;   request.Timeout = 15 * 1000;   var response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse;   if (request.HaveResponse == true && response != null) { var reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()); return XElement.Parse(reader.ReadToEnd()); } throw new Exception("Error fetching data."); } This is adapted from the Yahoo Developer article on Web Service REST calls.  Once you have the XML, the last step is to get the data back as your POCO. Use LINQ-To-XML to Deserialize POCOs from XML This is done via the following code: public IEnumerable<Entry> List(DateTime startDate, DateTime endDate) { string additionalParameters = String.Format("start_date={0}&end_date={1}", startDate.ToShortDateString(), endDate.ToShortDateString()); string uri = BuildUrl("entries", additionalParameters);   XElement elements = GetResponse(uri);   var entries = from e in elements.Elements() where e.Name.LocalName == "entry" select new Entry { Id = int.Parse(e.Element("id").Value), UserId = int.Parse(e.Element("user_id").Value), Date = DateTime.Parse(e.Element("date").Value), Hours = float.Parse(e.Element("hours").Value), Notes = e.Element("notes").Value, Billable = bool.Parse(e.Element("billable").Value) }; return entries; }   For completeness, heres the BuildUrl method for my TickSpot API wrapper: // Change these to your settings protected const string projectDomain = "DOMAIN.tickspot.com"; private const string authParams = "[email protected]&password=MyTickSpotPassword";   protected string BuildUrl(string apiMethod, string additionalParams) { if (projectDomain.Contains("DOMAIN")) { throw new ApplicationException("You must update your domain in ProjectRepository.cs."); } if (authParams.Contains("MyTickSpotPassword")) { throw new ApplicationException("You must update your email and password in ProjectRepository.cs."); } return string.Format("https://{0}/api/{1}?{2}&{3}", projectDomain, apiMethod, authParams, additionalParams); } Thats it!  Now go forth and consume XML and map it to classes you actually want to work with.  Have fun! Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, February 26, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, February 26, 2011Popular ReleasesDirectQ: Release 1.8.7 Beta 2: Beta 2 release to fix some early reported problems with the original 1.8.7 Beta.Chiave File Encryption: Chiave 0.9.2: Release Notes Application for file encryption and decryption using 512 Bit rijndael encyrption algorithm with simple to use UI. Its written in C# and compiled in .Net version 3.5. It incorporates features of Windows 7 like Jumplists, Taskbar progress and Aero Glass. Now with added support to Windows XP! Change Log from 0.9.1 to 0.9.2: ==================== Added: > Now it displays number of files added in the wizard to the Window Title bar. > Added support to Windows XP. > Minor UI tweaks. I...Claims Based Identity & Access Control Guide: Drop 1 - Claims Identity Guide V2: Highlights of drop #1 This is the first drop of the new "Claims Identity Guide" edition. In this release you will find: All previous samples updated and enhanced. All code upgraded to .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010. Extensive cleanup. Refactored Simulated Issuers: each solution now gets its own issuers. This results in much cleaner and simpler to understand code. Added Single Sign Out support. Added first sample using ACS ("ACS as a Federation Provider"). This sample extends the ori...HFR7 - Forum Hardware.fr pour Windows Phone 7: HFR7 - v1.1.1: NOUVELLES FONCTIONS : - Aucune. AMÉLIORATIONS : - La page "Catégories" est désormais intégrée au pivot "Bienvenue". - Apparition de boutons de changement de page en bas du sujet en consultation. - Les en-têtes sur les sujets sont désormais de la même couleur que la couleur d'accentuation de votre téléphone. BUGFIXES : - Les catégories s'affichent correctement. - Cliquer sur le bouton "drapeau" alors qu'on est dans la liste des topics d'une page n'amenait pas directement au dernier post non ...Simple Notify: Simple Notify Beta 2011-02-25: Feature: host the service with a single click in console Feature: host the service as a windows service Feature: notification cient application Feature: push client application Feature: push notifications from your powershell script Feature: C# wrapper libraries for your applicationsMono.Addins: Mono.Addins 0.6: The 0.6 release of Mono.Addins includes many improvements, bug fixes and new features: Add-in engine Add-in name and description can now be localized. There are new custom attributes for defining them, and can also be specified as xml elements in an add-in manifest instead of attributes. Support for custom add-in properties. It is now possible to specify arbitrary properties in add-ins, which can be queried at install time (using the Mono.Addins.Setup API) or at run-time. Custom extensio...patterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 3 - 25 Feb 2011: IntroductionWelcome to the third community drop of Project Silk. For this drop we are requesting feedback on overall application architecture, code review of the JavaScript Conductor and Widgets, and general direction of the application. Project Silk provides guidance and sample implementations that describe and illustrate recommended practices for building modern web applications using technologies such as HTML5, jQuery, CSS3 and Internet Explorer 9. This guidance is intended for experien...PhoneyTools: Initial Release (0.1): This is the 0.1 version for preview of the features.Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.5: Now supports new Minecraft beta v1.3 map format, thanks to updated mcmap. Disabled biomes, until Minecraft Biome Extractor supports new format.Smartkernel: Smartkernel: ????，??????Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.2: New control, Toast Prompt! Removed progress bar since Silverlight Toolkit Feb 2010 has it.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.7: Service release fixing 31 issues. A full changelog will be available with the final stable release of 4.7 Important when upgradingUpgrade as if it was a patch release (update /bin, /umbraco and /umbraco_client). For general upgrade information follow the guide found at http://our.umbraco.org/wiki/install-and-setup/upgrading-an-umbraco-installation 4.7 requires the .NET 4.0 framework Web.Config changes Update the web web.config to include the 4 changes found in (they're clearly marked in...HubbleDotNet - Open source full-text search engine: V1.1.0.0: Add Sqlite3 DBAdapter Add App Report when Query Cache is Collecting. Improve the performance of index through Synchronize. Add top 0 feature so that we can only get count of the result. Improve the score calculating algorithm of match. Let the score of the record that match all items large then others. Add MySql DBAdapter Improve performance for multi-fields sort . Using hash table to access the Payload data. The version before used bin search. Using heap sort instead of qui...Silverlight????[???]: silverlight????[???]2.0: ???????，?????，????????silverlight??????。DBSourceTools: DBSourceTools_1.3.0.0: Release 1.3.0.0 Changed editors from FireEdit to ICSharpCode.TextEditor. Complete re-vamp of Intellisense ( further testing needed). Hightlight Field and Table Names in sql scripts. Added field dropdown on all tables and views in DBExplorer. Added data option for viewing data in Tables. Fixed comment / uncomment bug as reported by tareq. Included Synonyms in scripting engine ( nickt_ch ).IronPython: 2.7 Release Candidate 1: We are pleased to announce the first Release Candidate for IronPython 2.7. This release contains over two dozen bugs fixed in preparation for 2.7 Final. See the release notes for 60193 for details and what has already been fixed in the earlier 2.7 prereleases. - IronPython TeamCaliburn Micro: A Micro-Framework for WPF, Silverlight and WP7: Caliburn.Micro 1.0 RC: This is the official Release Candicate for Caliburn.Micro 1.0. The download contains the binaries, samples and VS templates. VS Templates The templates included are designed for situations where the Caliburn.Micro source needs to be embedded within a single project solution. This was targeted at government and other organizations that expressed specific requirements around using an open source project like this. NuGet This release does not have a corresponding NuGet package. The NuGet pack...Caliburn: A Client Framework for WPF and Silverlight: Caliburn 2.0 RC: This is the official Release Candidate for Caliburn 2.0. It contains all binaries, samples and generated code docs.Rawr: Rawr 4.0.20 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Trac...Windows Phone 7 Isolated Storage Explorer: WP7 Isolated Storage Explorer v1.0 Beta: Current release features:WPF desktop explorer client Visual Studio integrated tool window explorer client (Visual Studio 2010 Professional and above) Supported operations: Refresh (isolated storage information), Add Folder, Add Existing Item, Download File, Delete Folder, Delete File Explorer supports operations running on multiple remote applications at the same time Explorer detects application disconnect (1-2 second delay) Explorer confirms operation completed status Explorer d...New Projectsconvert digit to word upto thousand: convert digit to word upto thousandCustom XSLT with recursive loop in Biztalk 2009: Custom XSLT with recursive loop in Biztalk 2009ECO contrib: ECO ist a excellent framework for domain driven design developed by CapableObjects AB. Share your additional features in this contrib project.euler21: euler 21euler22: euler 22 problemflowless: Some workflow thingHFR7 - Forum Hardware.fr pour Windows Phone 7: HFR7 vous permet de surfer sur le forum de Hardware.fr via votre Windows Phone. Il est développé sous Silverlight (C#/XAML).ISP.NET: ISP.NET is a code level verification tool for MPI programs. It includes a Visual Studio 2010 extension that allows for push button verification of user programs that are written in C, C++ and C#. ISP checks for deadlocks, assertion violations, and other MPI program issues. IVY Frameworks: Ivy Frameworks is an architectural framework to create multi-tire application in a consistent way. We are creating specific application blocks. When completed it will help to create a software development pattern, to mass produce .Net applications in a software factory model. Jobeet: Just another Symfony Tutorial I'm following.Lurity: Project Codename "Lurity".Metro Toolkit: Metro ToolkitMySchoolManager: MySchoolManager es un programa de fines didácticos, de código fuente abierto y documentado en español, que simula un sistema de administración del personal de una escuela. NewRapp: Project at KTH in course DD2388NHibernateCMS: NHibernateCMSParametero - Yet Another Console Arguments Parsing Library: Parametero - Yet Another Console Arguments Parsing LibraryRasifiel's test: Test projectSilverlight Gantt Chart: Don't waste time creating your own Gantt Chart. We've already done it!SKWebSite: This is my first ASP.NET MVC3 projectTechChat: TechChat is a ASP.net AJAX based stylish chat room. It demonstrates the use of database and use of AJAX. It is developed in VB.netUDK Development Kit Addons: UDK Development Kit Addons makes it easier for UDK users to develop and debug UDK scripts. It's developed in C# with using Visual Studio Shell.UltraLight.mvvm Windows Phone 7 MVVM Framework: A lightweight (< 300 lines, < 25KB) framework for developing MVVM Silverlight applications with support for tombstoning on the Windows Phone 7.Website Panel: Website PanelxMS (eXtensible Management System): The xMS is a simple console that can be extended using plugins. Those plugins can be written by developers using a simple interface. It's a good starting for who want to develop a plugin based application.Xna Midi Project: A project that will allow midi functionality using only the compact framework for windows and Xbox solutions.

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• Why unhandled exceptions are useful

  - by Simon Cooper

  It’s the bane of most programmers’ lives – an unhandled exception causes your application or webapp to crash, an ugly dialog gets displayed to the user, and they come complaining to you. Then, somehow, you need to figure out what went wrong. Hopefully, you’ve got a log file, or some other way of reporting unhandled exceptions (obligatory employer plug: SmartAssembly reports an application’s unhandled exceptions straight to you, along with the entire state of the stack and variables at that point). If not, you have to try and replicate it yourself, or do some psychic debugging to try and figure out what’s wrong. However, it’s good that the program crashed. Or, more precisely, it is correct behaviour. An unhandled exception in your application means that, somewhere in your code, there is an assumption that you made that is actually invalid. Coding assumptions Let me explain a bit more. Every method, every line of code you write, depends on implicit assumptions that you have made. Take this following simple method, that copies a collection to an array and includes an item if it isn’t in the collection already, using a supplied IEqualityComparer: public static T[] ToArrayWithItem( ICollection<T> coll, T obj, IEqualityComparer<T> comparer) { // check if the object is in collection already // using the supplied comparer foreach (var item in coll) { if (comparer.Equals(item, obj)) { // it's in the collection already // simply copy the collection to an array // and return it T[] array = new T[coll.Count]; coll.CopyTo(array, 0); return array; } } // not in the collection // copy coll to an array, and add obj to it // then return it T[] array = new T[coll.Count+1]; coll.CopyTo(array, 0); array[array.Length-1] = obj; return array; } What’s all the assumptions made by this fairly simple bit of code? coll is never null comparer is never null coll.CopyTo(array, 0) will copy all the items in the collection into the array, in the order defined for the collection, starting at the first item in the array. The enumerator for coll returns all the items in the collection, in the order defined for the collection comparer.Equals returns true if the items are equal (for whatever definition of ‘equal’ the comparer uses), false otherwise comparer.Equals, coll.CopyTo, and the coll enumerator will never throw an exception or hang for any possible input and any possible values of T coll will have less than 4 billion items in it (this is a built-in limit of the CLR) array won’t be more than 2GB, both on 32 and 64-bit systems, for any possible values of T (again, a limit of the CLR) There are no threads that will modify coll while this method is running and, more esoterically: The C# compiler will compile this code to IL according to the C# specification The CLR and JIT compiler will produce machine code to execute the IL on the user’s computer The computer will execute the machine code correctly That’s a lot of assumptions. Now, it could be that all these assumptions are valid for the situations this method is called. But if this does crash out with an exception, or crash later on, then that shows one of the assumptions has been invalidated somehow. An unhandled exception shows that your code is running in a situation which you did not anticipate, and there is something about how your code runs that you do not understand. Debugging the problem is the process of learning more about the new situation and how your code interacts with it. When you understand the problem, the solution is (usually) obvious. The solution may be a one-line fix, the rewrite of a method or class, or a large-scale refactoring of the codebase, but whatever it is, the fix for the crash will incorporate the new information you’ve gained about your own code, along with the modified assumptions. When code is running with an assumption or invariant it depended on broken, then the result is ‘undefined behaviour’. Anything can happen, up to and including formatting the entire disk or making the user’s computer sentient and start doing a good impression of Skynet. You might think that those can’t happen, but at Halting problem levels of generality, as soon as an assumption the code depended on is broken, the program can do anything. That is why it’s important to fail-fast and stop the program as soon as an invariant is broken, to minimise the damage that is done. What does this mean in practice? To start with, document and check your assumptions. As with most things, there is a level of judgement required. How you check and document your assumptions depends on how the code is used (that’s some more assumptions you’ve made), how likely it is a method will be passed invalid arguments or called in an invalid state, how likely it is the assumptions will be broken, how expensive it is to check the assumptions, and how bad things are likely to get if the assumptions are broken. Now, some assumptions you can assume unless proven otherwise. You can safely assume the C# compiler, CLR, and computer all run the method correctly, unless you have evidence of a compiler, CLR or processor bug. You can also assume that interface implementations work the way you expect them to; implementing an interface is more than simply declaring methods with certain signatures in your type. The behaviour of those methods, and how they work, is part of the interface contract as well. For example, for members of a public API, it is very important to document your assumptions and check your state before running the bulk of the method, throwing ArgumentException, ArgumentNullException, InvalidOperationException, or another exception type as appropriate if the input or state is wrong. For internal and private methods, it is less important. If a private method expects collection items in a certain order, then you don’t necessarily need to explicitly check it in code, but you can add comments or documentation specifying what state you expect the collection to be in at a certain point. That way, anyone debugging your code can immediately see what’s wrong if this does ever become an issue. You can also use DEBUG preprocessor blocks and Debug.Assert to document and check your assumptions without incurring a performance hit in release builds. On my coding soapbox… A few pet peeves of mine around assumptions. Firstly, catch-all try blocks: try { ... } catch { } A catch-all hides exceptions generated by broken assumptions, and lets the program carry on in an unknown state. Later, an exception is likely to be generated due to further broken assumptions due to the unknown state, causing difficulties when debugging as the catch-all has hidden the original problem. It’s much better to let the program crash straight away, so you know where the problem is. You should only use a catch-all if you are sure that any exception generated in the try block is safe to ignore. That’s a pretty big ask! Secondly, using as when you should be casting. Doing this: (obj as IFoo).Method(); or this: IFoo foo = obj as IFoo; ... foo.Method(); when you should be doing this: ((IFoo)obj).Method(); or this: IFoo foo = (IFoo)obj; ... foo.Method(); There’s an assumption here that obj will always implement IFoo. If it doesn’t, then by using as instead of a cast you’ve turned an obvious InvalidCastException at the point of the cast that will probably tell you what type obj actually is, into a non-obvious NullReferenceException at some later point that gives you no information at all. If you believe obj is always an IFoo, then say so in code! Let it fail-fast if not, then it’s far easier to figure out what’s wrong. Thirdly, document your assumptions. If an algorithm depends on a non-trivial relationship between several objects or variables, then say so. A single-line comment will do. Don’t leave it up to whoever’s debugging your code after you to figure it out. Conclusion It’s better to crash out and fail-fast when an assumption is broken. If it doesn’t, then there’s likely to be further crashes along the way that hide the original problem. Or, even worse, your program will be running in an undefined state, where anything can happen. Unhandled exceptions aren’t good per-se, but they give you some very useful information about your code that you didn’t know before. And that can only be a good thing.

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• Why Is Vertical Resolution Monitor Resolution so Often a Multiple of 360?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Stare at a list of monitor resolutions long enough and you might notice a pattern: many of the vertical resolutions, especially those of gaming or multimedia displays, are multiples of 360 (720, 1080, 1440, etc.) But why exactly is this the case? Is it arbitrary or is there something more at work? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Trojandestroy recently noticed something about his display interface and needs answers: YouTube recently added 1440p functionality, and for the first time I realized that all (most?) vertical resolutions are multiples of 360. Is this just because the smallest common resolution is 480×360, and it’s convenient to use multiples? (Not doubting that multiples are convenient.) And/or was that the first viewable/conveniently sized resolution, so hardware (TVs, monitors, etc) grew with 360 in mind? Taking it further, why not have a square resolution? Or something else unusual? (Assuming it’s usual enough that it’s viewable). Is it merely a pleasing-the-eye situation? So why have the display be a multiple of 360? The Answer SuperUser contributor User26129 offers us not just an answer as to why the numerical pattern exists but a history of screen design in the process: Alright, there are a couple of questions and a lot of factors here. Resolutions are a really interesting field of psychooptics meeting marketing. First of all, why are the vertical resolutions on youtube multiples of 360. This is of course just arbitrary, there is no real reason this is the case. The reason is that resolution here is not the limiting factor for Youtube videos – bandwidth is. Youtube has to re-encode every video that is uploaded a couple of times, and tries to use as little re-encoding formats/bitrates/resolutions as possible to cover all the different use cases. For low-res mobile devices they have 360×240, for higher res mobile there’s 480p, and for the computer crowd there is 360p for 2xISDN/multiuser landlines, 720p for DSL and 1080p for higher speed internet. For a while there were some other codecs than h.264, but these are slowly being phased out with h.264 having essentially ‘won’ the format war and all computers being outfitted with hardware codecs for this. Now, there is some interesting psychooptics going on as well. As I said: resolution isn’t everything. 720p with really strong compression can and will look worse than 240p at a very high bitrate. But on the other side of the spectrum: throwing more bits at a certain resolution doesn’t magically make it better beyond some point. There is an optimum here, which of course depends on both resolution and codec. In general: the optimal bitrate is actually proportional to the resolution. So the next question is: what kind of resolution steps make sense? Apparently, people need about a 2x increase in resolution to really see (and prefer) a marked difference. Anything less than that and many people will simply not bother with the higher bitrates, they’d rather use their bandwidth for other stuff. This has been researched quite a long time ago and is the big reason why we went from 720×576 (415kpix) to 1280×720 (922kpix), and then again from 1280×720 to 1920×1080 (2MP). Stuff in between is not a viable optimization target. And again, 1440P is about 3.7MP, another ~2x increase over HD. You will see a difference there. 4K is the next step after that. Next up is that magical number of 360 vertical pixels. Actually, the magic number is 120 or 128. All resolutions are some kind of multiple of 120 pixels nowadays, back in the day they used to be multiples of 128. This is something that just grew out of LCD panel industry. LCD panels use what are called line drivers, little chips that sit on the sides of your LCD screen that control how bright each subpixel is. Because historically, for reasons I don’t really know for sure, probably memory constraints, these multiple-of-128 or multiple-of-120 resolutions already existed, the industry standard line drivers became drivers with 360 line outputs (1 per subpixel). If you would tear down your 1920×1080 screen, I would be putting money on there being 16 line drivers on the top/bottom and 9 on one of the sides. Oh hey, that’s 16:9. Guess how obvious that resolution choice was back when 16:9 was ‘invented’. Then there’s the issue of aspect ratio. This is really a completely different field of psychology, but it boils down to: historically, people have believed and measured that we have a sort of wide-screen view of the world. Naturally, people believed that the most natural representation of data on a screen would be in a wide-screen view, and this is where the great anamorphic revolution of the ’60s came from when films were shot in ever wider aspect ratios. Since then, this kind of knowledge has been refined and mostly debunked. Yes, we do have a wide-angle view, but the area where we can actually see sharply – the center of our vision – is fairly round. Slightly elliptical and squashed, but not really more than about 4:3 or 3:2. So for detailed viewing, for instance for reading text on a screen, you can utilize most of your detail vision by employing an almost-square screen, a bit like the screens up to the mid-2000s. However, again this is not how marketing took it. Computers in ye olden days were used mostly for productivity and detailed work, but as they commoditized and as the computer as media consumption device evolved, people didn’t necessarily use their computer for work most of the time. They used it to watch media content: movies, television series and photos. And for that kind of viewing, you get the most ‘immersion factor’ if the screen fills as much of your vision (including your peripheral vision) as possible. Which means widescreen. But there’s more marketing still. When detail work was still an important factor, people cared about resolution. As many pixels as possible on the screen. SGI was selling almost-4K CRTs! The most optimal way to get the maximum amount of pixels out of a glass substrate is to cut it as square as possible. 1:1 or 4:3 screens have the most pixels per diagonal inch. But with displays becoming more consumery, inch-size became more important, not amount of pixels. And this is a completely different optimization target. To get the most diagonal inches out of a substrate, you want to make the screen as wide as possible. First we got 16:10, then 16:9 and there have been moderately successful panel manufacturers making 22:9 and 2:1 screens (like Philips). Even though pixel density and absolute resolution went down for a couple of years, inch-sizes went up and that’s what sold. Why buy a 19″ 1280×1024 when you can buy a 21″ 1366×768? Eh… I think that about covers all the major aspects here. There’s more of course; bandwidth limits of HDMI, DVI, DP and of course VGA played a role, and if you go back to the pre-2000s, graphics memory, in-computer bandwdith and simply the limits of commercially available RAMDACs played an important role. But for today’s considerations, this is about all you need to know. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 15, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 15, 2013Popular ReleasesNuPattern: NuPattern 1.3.22.0: Just download the 'NuPattern Installer.msi' above to install NuPattern for both VS2010 and VS2012. All the extensions listed above are included within this installer. This release includes a version of the 'NuPattern Toolkit Builder' tools and 'NuPattern Toolkit Builder Hands-On Labs' VSIXes for both VS2010 and for VS2012. Both of these extensions are installed in to both VS2010 and VS2012 in the combined MSI installer. Once NuPattern has been installed, please go to the Getting Started pag...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.1: 2013.06.13 Ver5.9.1 (1) Web??????SSI?#include???、CGI?????????????????????? (2) ???????????????????????????Lakana - WPF Framework: Lakana V2.1 RTM: - Dynamic text localization - A new application wide message busFree language translator and file converter: Free Language Translator 3.3: some bug fixes and a new link to video tutorials on Youtube.Pokemon Battle Online: ETV: ETV???2012?12??????，????，???????$/PBO/branches/PrivateBeta??。 ???????bug???????。 ???? Server??????，?????。 ?????????，?????????????，?????????。 ????????，????，?????????，???????????（??）??。 ???? ????????????。 ???????。 ???PP????，????????????????????PP????，??3。 ?????????????，??????????。 ???????? ??? ?? ???? ??? ???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??? ??? ??? ???????? ???? ???? ???????????????、???????????，??“???????”??。 ???bug ???Web Pages CMS: 0.5.0.5: Added empty media directoryModern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.4: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. Related downloads NuGet ModernUI for WPF is also available as NuGet package in the NuGet gallery, id: ModernUI.WPF Download Modern UI for WPF Templates A Visual Studio 2012 extension containing a collection of project and item templates for Modern UI for WPF. The extension includes the ModernUI.WPF NuGet package. DownloadToolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011: XrmToolBox (v1.2013.6.11): XrmToolbox improvement Add exception handling when loading plugins Updated information panel for displaying two lines of text Tools improvementMetadata Document Generator (v1.2013.6.10)New tool Web Resources Manager (v1.2013.6.11)Retrieve list of unused web resources Retrieve web resources from a solution All tools listAccess Checker (v1.2013.2.5) Attribute Bulk Updater (v1.2013.1.17) FetchXml Tester (v1.2013.3.4) Iconator (v1.2013.1.17) Metadata Document Generator (v1.2013.6.10) Privilege...Document.Editor: 2013.23: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.23: New Insert Emoticon support Improved Format support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsChristoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke 7 Project Templates V2.4 for VS2012: V2.4 - Release Date 6/10/2013 Items addressed in this 2.4 release Updated MSBuild Community Tasks reference to 1.4.0.61 Setting up your DotNetNuke Module Development Environment Installing Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Templates Customizing the latest DotNetNuke Module Development Project TemplatesLayered Architecture Sample for .NET: Leave Sample - June 2013 (for .NET 4.5): Thank You for downloading Layered Architecture Sample. Please read the accompanying README.txt file for setup and installation instructions. This is the first set of a series of revised samples that will be released to illustrate the layered architecture design pattern. This version is only supported on Visual Studio 2012. This set contains 2 samples that illustrates the use of: ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET Model Binding, Windows Communications Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (W...Papercut: Papercut 2013-6-10: Feature: Shows From, To, Date and Subject of Email. Feature: Async UI and loading spinner. Enhancement: Improved speed when loading large attachments. Enhancement: Decoupled SMTP server into secondary assembly. Enhancement: Upgraded to .NET v4. Fix: Messages lost when received very fast. Fix: Email encoding issues on display/Automatically detect message Encoding Installation Note:Installation is copy and paste. Incoming messages are written to the start-up directory of Papercut. If you do n...Supporting Guidance and Whitepapers: v1.BETA Unit test Generator Documentation: Welcome to the Unit Test Generator Once you’ve moved to Visual Studio 2012, what’s a dev to do without the Create Unit Tests feature? Based on the high demand on User Voice for this feature to be restored, the Visual Studio ALM Rangers have introduced the Unit Test Generator Visual Studio Extension. The extension adds the “create unit test” feature back, with a focus on automating project creation, adding references and generating stubs, extensibility, and targeting of multiple test framewor...MapWindow 4: MapWindow GIS v4.8.8 - Release Candidate - 32Bit: Download the release notes here: http://svn.mapwindow.org/svnroot/MapWindow4Dev/Bin/MapWindowNotes.rtfLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.06: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.VR Player: VR Player 0.3.1 ALPHA: New plugin system with individual folders TrackIR support Maya and 3ds max formats support Dual screen support Mono layouts (left and right) Cylinder height parameter Barel effect factor parameter Razer hydra filter parameter VRPN bug fixes UI improvements Performances improvements Stabilization and logging with Log4Net New default values base on users feedback CTRL key to open menuSimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8: SimCityPak 0.1.0.8 New features: Import BMP color palettes for vehicles Import RASTER file (uncompressed 8.8.8.8 DDS files) View different channels of RASTER files or preview of all layers combined Find text in javascripts TGA viewer Ground textures added to lot editor Many additional identified instances and propertiesWsus Package Publisher: Release v1.2.1306.09: Add more verifications on certificate validation. WPP will not let user to try publishing an update until the certificate is valid. Add certificate expiration date on the 'About' form. Filter Approbation to avoid a user to try to approve an update for uninstallation when the update do not support uninstallation. Add the server and console version on the 'About' form. WPP will not let user to publish an update until the server and console are not at the same level. WPP do not let user ...AJAX Control Toolkit: June 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - June 2013 Release Version 7.0607June 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - Instructions for using the AJAX Control Toolkit with ASP.NET 4.5 can be found at...Rawr: Rawr 5.2.1: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...New Projects3000????C?????????: 3000??C??????????AspTestPage: asp test Chiroredactie voor MS Word 2010: Chiroredactie voor MS Word dient om medewerkers en vrijwilligers van de Chiro te helpen wanneer ze teksten schrijven en/of eindredactie doen.Coastal Climbing: Coastal Climbing is the best bouldering gym in the south east!Data Moving Plug-in Examples: Examples of usage of the Data Moving Plug-in, of the Mvc Controls toolkit. The Data Moving Plug-in is an advanced set of controls and tools for Asp.net Mvc.Dynamics AX Admin Utilities: Dynamics AX Admin Utilities provide the utilities missing for Dynamics AX 2012: silent install, client and server configuration, AOS and Model Store management.Epilog Blogging Framework: A customisable, editable blogging framework based on MVC4 and written in C#.fashion photomania: fashion photomaniaGetemp: Gerenciador do Tempo de ProduçãoGlobal Tracker: Solução para rastreamento de dispositivos móveis composta por: - Uma Aplicação ASP.NET; - Um Web Service; - Uma Aplicação utilizando o plugin Xamarin.HyperLinkTagEditor: URL Appender using regexisotopos2: otra vez se borro, dejate de joder codeplexxlatex-tools: Latex supports, including syntax highlight.Lighter: Text to Braille: Lighter is an extensible and flexible Thai/English and further language translation to Braille format.Lock Screen Switcher: Change your Windows Logon or Lock Screen background image. Specify a directory and it will choose an image from that directory for your background.Patient Database Planning: The Patient Information Database will lower design costs for the Health Care Industry and the software will be user to use / understand for the average user.PERRS: perrsPHPReport: PHP ReportrapSharp: lightweight Audio PlayerRedmine Task List: Redmine Task List Visual Studio Package.RoHuay - 2013: Desarrollo del sistema web logistico para RoHuaySkautSIS: SkautSIS is a web based information system for Czech scouting centers which helps them manage their agenda and present their activities on the Web.test061501jabbr: testThorMVR: ThorMVRWindows Azure Cloud Sensor Sample for Windows Embedded Compact 2013: Windows Azure Cloud Sensor Sample for Windows Embedded Compact 2013, Windows CEWindows Phone 8 Mapping Samples: This project contains a set of code for basic location acquisition, location updates and mapping in Windows Phone 8.

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• Conducting Effective Web Meetings

  - by BuckWoody

  There are several forms of corporate communication. From immediate, rich communications like phones and IM messaging to historical transactions like e-mail, there are a lot of ways to get information to one or more people. From time to time, it's even useful to have a meeting. (This is where a witty picture of a guy sleeping in a meeting goes. I won't bother actually putting one here; you're already envisioning it in your mind) Most meetings are pointless, and a complete waste of time. This is the fault, completely and solely, of the organizer. It's because he or she hasn't thought things through enough to think about alternate forms of information passing. Here's the criteria for a good meeting - whether in-person or over the web: 100% of the content of a meeting should require the participation of 100% of the attendees for 100% of the time It doesn't get any simpler than that. If it doesn't meet that criteria, then don't invite that person to that meeting. If you're just conveying information and no one has the need for immediate interaction with that information (like telling you something that modifies the message), then send an e-mail. If you're a manager, and you need to get status from lots of people, pick up the phone.If you need a quick answer, use IM. I once had a high-level manager that called frequent meetings. His real need was status updates on various processes, so 50 of us would sit in a room while he asked each one of us questions. He believed this larger meeting helped us "cross pollinate ideas". In fact, it was a complete waste of time for most everyone, except in the one or two moments that they interacted with him. So I wrote some code for a Palm Pilot (which was a kind of SmartPhone but with no phone and no real graphics, but this was in the days when we had just discovered fire and the wheel, although the order of those things is still in debate) that took an average of the salaries of the people in the room (I guessed at it) and ran a timer which multiplied the number of people against the salaries. I left that running in plain sight for him, and when he asked about it, I explained how much the meetings were really costing the company. We had far fewer meetings after. Meetings are now web-enabled. I believe that's largely a good thing, since it saves on travel time and allows more people to participate, but I think the rule above still holds. And in fact, there are some other rules that you should follow to have a great meeting - and fewer of them. Be Clear About the Goal This is important in any meeting, but all of us have probably gotten an invite with a web link and an ambiguous title. Then you get to the meeting, and it's a 500-level deep-dive on something everyone expects you to know. This is unfair to the "expert" and to the participants. I always tell people that invite me to a meeting that I will be as detailed as I can - but the more detail they can tell me about the questions, the more detailed I can be in my responses. Granted, there are times when you don't know what you don't know, but the more you can say about the topic the better. There's another point here - and it's that you should have a clearly defined "win" for the meeting. When the meeting is over, and everyone goes back to work, what were you expecting them to do with the information? Have that clearly defined in your head, and in the meeting invite. Understand the Technology There are several web-meeting clients out there. I use them all, since I meet with clients all over the world. They all work differently - so I take a few moments and read up on the different clients and find out how I can use the tools properly. I do this with the technology I use for everything else, and it's important to understand it if the meeting is to be a success. If you're running the meeting, know the tools. I don't care if you like the tools or not, learn them anyway. Don't waste everyone else's time just because you're too bitter/snarky/lazy to spend a few minutes reading. Check your phone or mic. Check your video size. Install (and learn to use)  ZoomIT (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx). Format your slides or screen or output correctly. Learn to use the voting features of the meeting software, and especially it's whiteboard features. Figure out how multiple monitors work. Try a quick meeting with someone to test all this. Do this *before* you invite lots of other people to your meeting.   Use a WebCam I'm not a pretty man. I have a face fit for radio. But after attending a meeting with clients where one Microsoft person used a webcam and another did not, I'm convinced that people pay more attention when a face is involved. There are tons of studies around this, or you can take my word for it, but toss a shirt on over those pajamas and turn the webcam on. Set Up Early Whether you're attending or leading the meeting, don't wait to sign on to the meeting at the time when it starts. I can almost plan that a 10:00 meeting will actually start at 10:10 because the participants/leader is just now installing the web client for the meeting at 10:00. Sign on early, go on mute, and then wait for everyone to arrive. Mute When Not Talking No one wants to hear your screaming offspring / yappy dog / other cubicle conversations / car wind noise (are you driving in a desert storm or something?) while the person leading the meeting is trying to talk. I use the Lync software from Microsoft for my meetings, and I mute everyone by default, and then tell them to un-mute to talk to the group. Share Collateral If you have a PowerPoint deck, mail it out in case you have a tech failure. If you have a document, share it as an attachment to the meeting. Don't make people ask you for the information - that's why you're there to begin with. Even better, send it out early. "But", you say, "then no one will come to the meeting if they have the deck first!" Uhm, then don't have a meeting. Send out the deck and a quick e-mail and let everyone get on with their productive day. Set Actions At the Meeting A meeting should have some sort of outcome (see point one). That means there are actions to take, a follow up, or some deliverable. Otherwise, it's an e-mail. At the meeting, decide who will do what, when things are needed, and so on. And avoid, if at all possible, setting up another meeting, unless absolutely necessary. So there you have it. Whether it's on-premises or on the web, meetings are a necessary evil, and should be treated that way. Like politicians, you should have as few of them as are necessary to keep the roads paved and public libraries open.

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• FreeBSD high load loopback interface

  - by user1740915

  I have a problem with a FreeBSD server. There is a FreeBSD 9.0 amd64, two network cards em1 (internet), em0 (local network) configured firewall ipfw, natd, squid (not transparent), the server acts as a gateway for access to the Internet. Next problem: upload via squid is very low. At this moment I see next: natd, dhcpd load the cpu at that time when uploading through squid and there are a lot of traffic through the loopback interface. ipfw show output 0100 655389684 36707144666 allow ip from any to any via lo0 00200 0 0 deny ip from any to 127.0.0.0/8 00300 0 0 deny ip from 127.0.0.0/8 to any 00400 0 0 deny ip from any to ::1 00500 0 0 deny ip from ::1 to any 00600 4 292 allow ipv6-icmp from :: to ff02::/16 00700 0 0 allow ipv6-icmp from fe80::/10 to fe80::/10 00800 1 76 allow ipv6-icmp from fe80::/10 to ff02::/16 00900 0 0 allow ipv6-icmp from any to any ip6 icmp6types 1 01000 0 0 allow ipv6-icmp from any to any ip6 icmp6types 2,135,136 01100 1615 76160 deny ip from 192.168.1.1 to any in via em1 01200 0 0 deny ip from 199.69.99.11 to any in via em0 01300 46652 3705426 deny ip from any to 172.16.0.0/12 via em1 01400 3936404 345618870 deny ip from any to 192.168.0.0/16 via em1 01500 4 336 deny ip from any to 0.0.0.0/8 via em1 01600 4129 387621 deny ip from any to 169.254.0.0/16 via em1 01700 0 0 deny ip from any to 192.0.2.0/24 via em1 01800 917566 33777571 deny ip from any to 224.0.0.0/4 via em1 01900 147872 22029252 deny ip from any to 240.0.0.0/4 via em1 02000 1132194739 1190981955947 divert 8668 ip4 from any to any via em1 02100 3 248 deny ip from 172.16.0.0/12 to any via em1 02200 35925 2281289 deny ip from 192.168.0.0/16 to any via em1 02300 1808 122494 deny ip from 0.0.0.0/8 to any via em1 02400 3 174 deny ip from 169.254.0.0/16 to any via em1 02500 0 0 deny ip from 192.0.2.0/24 to any via em1 02600 0 0 deny ip from 224.0.0.0/4 to any via em1 02700 0 0 deny ip from 240.0.0.0/4 to any via em1 02800 960156249 1095316736582 allow tcp from any to any established 02900 64236062 8243196577 allow ip from any to any frag 03000 34 1756 allow tcp from any to me dst-port 25 setup 03100 193 11580 allow tcp from any to me dst-port 53 setup 03200 63 4222 allow udp from any to me dst-port 53 03300 64 8350 allow udp from me 53 to any 03400 417 24140 allow tcp from any to me dst-port 80 setup 03500 211 10472 allow ip from any to me dst-port 3389 setup 05300 77 4488 allow ip from any to me dst-port 1723 setup 05400 3 156 allow ip from any to me dst-port 8443 setup 05500 9882 590596 allow tcp from any to me dst-port 22 setup 05600 1 60 allow ip from any to me dst-port 2000 setup 05700 0 0 allow ip from any to me dst-port 2201 setup 07400 4241779 216690096 deny log logamount 1000 ip4 from any to any in via em1 setup proto tcp 07500 21135656 1048824936 allow tcp from any to any setup 07600 474447 35298081 allow udp from me to any dst-port 53 keep-state 07700 532 40612 allow udp from me to any dst-port 123 keep-state 65535 1990638432 1122305322718 allow ip from any to any systat -ifstat when uploading via squid Load Average ||| Interface Traffic Peak Total tun0 in 79.507 KB/s 232.479 KB/s 42.314 GB out 2.022 MB/s 2.424 MB/s 59.662 GB lo0 in 4.450 MB/s 4.450 MB/s 43.723 GB out 4.450 MB/s 4.450 MB/s 43.723 GB em1 in 2.629 MB/s 2.982 MB/s 464.533 GB out 2.493 MB/s 2.875 MB/s 484.673 GB em0 in 240.458 KB/s 296.941 KB/s 442.368 GB out 512.508 KB/s 850.857 KB/s 416.122 GB top output PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE C TIME WCPU COMMAND 66885 root 1 92 0 26672K 2784K CPU3 3 528:43 65.48% natd 9160 dhcpd 1 45 0 31032K 9280K CPU1 1 7:40 32.96% dhcpd 66455 root 1 20 0 18344K 2856K select 1 119:27 1.37% openvpn 16043 squid 1 20 0 44404K 17884K kqread 2 0:22 0.29% squid squid.conf cat /usr/local/etc/squid/squid.conf # # Recommended minimum configuration: # acl manager proto cache_object acl localhost src 127.0.0.1/32 ::1 acl to_localhost dst 127.0.0.0/8 0.0.0.0/32 ::1 # Example rule allowing access from your local networks. # Adapt to list your (internal) IP networks from where browsing # should be allowed acl localnet src 10.0.0.0/8 # RFC1918 possible internal network acl localnet src 172.16.0.0/12 # RFC1918 possible internal network acl localnet src 192.168.0.0/16 # RFC1918 possible internal network acl localnet src fc00::/7 # RFC 4193 local private network range acl localnet src fe80::/10 # RFC 4291 link-local (directly plugged) machines acl SSL_ports port 443 acl Safe_ports port 80 # http acl Safe_ports port 21 # ftp acl Safe_ports port 443 # https acl Safe_ports port 70 # gopher acl Safe_ports port 210 # wais acl Safe_ports port 1025-65535 # unregistered ports acl Safe_ports port 280 # http-mgmt acl Safe_ports port 488 # gss-http acl Safe_ports port 591 # filemaker acl Safe_ports port 777 # multiling http acl CONNECT method CONNECT # # Recommended minimum Access Permission configuration: # # Only allow cachemgr access from localhost http_access allow manager localhost http_access deny manager # Deny requests to certain unsafe ports http_access deny !Safe_ports # Deny CONNECT to other than secure SSL ports http_access deny CONNECT !SSL_ports # We strongly recommend the following be uncommented to protect innocent # web applications running on the proxy server who think the only # one who can access services on "localhost" is a local user http_access deny to_localhost # # INSERT YOUR OWN RULE(S) HERE TO ALLOW ACCESS FROM YOUR CLIENTS # # Example rule allowing access from your local networks. # Adapt localnet in the ACL section to list your (internal) IP networks # from where browsing should be allowed http_access allow localnet http_access allow localhost # And finally deny all other access to this proxy http_access deny all # Squid normally listens to port 3128 http_port 192.168.1.1:3128 # Uncomment and adjust the following to add a disk cache directory. #cache_dir ufs /var/squid/cache 100 16 256 # Leave coredumps in the first cache dir coredump_dir /var/squid/cache I understand that the traffic passes through the SQUID several times. But can not find why.

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• Deployment Workbench no longer available after PXE boot

  - by Patrick

  Our build process revolves around windows Deployment Workbench. Unfortunately this was setup by someone who is no longer with the company, and no-one has ever dared/needed to make any changes. The other day it stopped working. It turns out that one of our build guys started thinking about changing some stuff in it, clicked something and now it no longer works (He is saying now that he right clicked on the 'LAB' entry in 'Deployment points' and hit 'Update', which took some time to run through apparently). The job has fallen on me to resolve and frankly I'm not sure what I'm doing. I was wondering if someone with more experience than me can provide some pointers as to troubleshooting cos I'm feeling quite a lot in the dark here. On the server I have Deployment Workbench up and running (MMC snapin) version 3.0. There is a WDS service that appears to be running ok, as does the tFTPd service. Nothing specific to this in event logs. From the client side; PXE boot works and gets you to the Win PE launch, and it has the correct company logo as the background (proving to me that its loading win PE from the network). WPEINIT runs, and asks for domain credentials, here the team simply put User/Pass/Domain in the boxes and click ok. Normally the build would kick off. Instead they get an error message saying that the \NATBLU01\Distribution$ share isn't available. Checking \NATBLU01\Distribution$ shows that its there and accessible over the network. Security/permissions seem ok, even 'ANONYMOUS LOGON' has read access to that share so I don't see that being a problem. Digging the trace files from C:\MININT\SMSOSD\OSDLOGS\ after an attempt to run the build I can see an error saying much the same - <![LOG[Validating connection to \\NATBLU01\Distribution$]LOG]!><time="16:42:14.000+000" date="03-15-2012" component="LiteTouch" context="" type="1" thread="" file="LiteTouch"> <![LOG[FindFile: The file OSDConnectToUNC.exe could not be found in any standard locations.]LOG]!><time="16:42:14.000+000" date="03-15-2012" component="LiteTouch" context="" type="1" thread="" file="LiteTouch"> <![LOG[The network location cannot be reached. For information about network troubleshooting, see Windows Help.]LOG]!><time="16:42:24.000+000" date="03-15-2012" component="LiteTouch" context="" type="3" thread="" file="LiteTouch"> <![LOG[ERROR - Unable to map a network drive to \\NATBLU01\Distribution$.]LOG]!><time="16:42:24.000+000" date="03-15-2012" component="LiteTouch" context="" type="3" thread="" file="LiteTouch"> BDD.LOG shows much the same. Full copies of the .LOG files can both files be found here : BDD.LOG LITETOUCH.LOG I can get to a command prompt from the Win PE that boots from PXE, however there isn't any network stuff there. IPCONFIG returns nothing so none of the tests I would usually run resolve anything. I'm at a loss frankly. I did wonder if I could perhaps start a new build process but if the change to the DeploymentWorkbench has knocked it offline I don't think I'm going to be able to create a new deployment. Failing that; we do have a deployment point labeled type 'Media' which appears to be a DVD ISO image of one of the builds, but its dated 2008, is it possible to export the network build to .ISO and build from DVD? We are looking at new hardware to run this from anyway (for the impending Windows 7 roll out) so a temporary work round isn't going to be too much of a problem. All assistance is appreciated! EDIT : OK. Got it working again. Solution was close to Newmanth's idea. The problem was that our PE image didn't appear to be connecting the network. I had an older copy of the PE boot.WIM on a stick that I had been using for other purposes. I booted that and correctly got a network connection. Showed a correct internal IP and could ping out etc etc. However I was still getting the same errors in all the logs and in when wpeinit was running. What I did seperately was to update the PE image that DeploymentWorkbench was pushing out to display a different back ground. I wanted to prove that I was working in the correct place. Turns out that I wasn't. I went and looked at the other deployment stuff we had on this machine, Windows Deployment Services was installed and although all the install images are off line the boot image was online, so I uploaded the copy from my stick to that. Booted straight off. And fixed. Working. Yay! For anyone stumbling across this in the future you may find that although your deployment images are located in the DeploymentWorkbench, the Win PE boot image you are launching from is located in the associated Windows Deployment Services images.

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• Importing an XML file into excel

  - by Sudhee

  I have a multilevel XML file. When I import the XML into excel, it creates multiple columns for the multilevel data. However, I need the multilevel data as additional rows. Is there any way I can achieve this ? Thanks a lot for your help. My XML File: <L1> <L1dataId>07320</L1dataId> <DateDetail>13-Oct-2013</DateDetail> <TypeDetail> <TypeId>1</TypeId> <Rate1> <Current> <onsite>100</onsite> <net>100</net> <gross>100</gross> </Current> <Past> <onsite>100</onsite> <net>100</net> <gross>100</gross> </Past> </Rate1> <Rate2> <Current> <onsite>2100</onsite> <net>2100</net> <gross>2100</gross> </Current> <Past> <onsite>2100</onsite> <net>2200</net> <gross>1200</gross> </Past> </Rate2> <Rate3> <Current> <onsite>300</onsite> <net>300</net> <gross>300</gross> </Current> <Past> <onsite>400</onsite> <net>400</net> <gross>400</gross> </Past> </Rate3> </TypeDetail> <TypeDetail> <TypeId>2</TypeId> <Rate1> <Current> <onsite>100</onsite> <net>100</net> <gross>100</gross> </Current> <Past> <onsite>100</onsite> <net>100</net> <gross>100</gross> </Past> </Rate1> <Rate2> <Current> <onsite>2100</onsite> <net>2100</net> <gross>2100</gross> </Current> <Past> <onsite>2100</onsite> <net>2200</net> <gross>1200</gross> </Past> </Rate2> <Rate3> <Current> <onsite>300</onsite> <net>300</net> <gross>300</gross> </Current> <Past> <onsite>400</onsite> <net>400</net> <gross>400</gross> </Past> </Rate3> </TypeDetail> </L1> How Excel converts it and how I need it:

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• Disaster, or Migration?

  - by Rob Farley

  This post is in two parts – technical and personal. And I should point out that it’s prompted in part by this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Allen Kinsel. First, the technical: I’ve had a few conversations with people recently about migration – moving a SQL Server database from one box to another (sometimes, but not primarily, involving an upgrade). One question that tends to come up is that of downtime. Obviously there will be some period of time between the old server being available and the new one. The way that most people seem to think of migration is this: Build a new server. Stop people from using the old server. Take a backup of the old server Restore it on the new server. Reconfigure the client applications (or alternatively, configure the new server to use the same address as the old) Make the new server online. There are other things involved, such as testing, of course. But this is essentially the process that people tell me they’re planning to follow. The bit that I want to look at today (as you’ve probably guessed from my title) is the “backup and restore” section. If a SQL database is using the Simple Recovery Model, then the only restore option is the last database backup. This backup could be full or differential. The transaction log never gets backed up in the Simple Recovery Model. Instead, it truncates regularly to stay small. One that’s using the Full Recovery Model (or Bulk-Logged) won’t truncate its log – the log must be backed up regularly. This provides the benefit of having a lot more option available for restores. It’s a requirement for most systems of High Availability, because if you’re making sure that a spare box is up-and-running, ready to take over, then you have to be interested in the logs that are happening on the current box, rather than truncating them all the time. A High Availability system such as Mirroring, Replication or Log Shipping will initialise the spare machine by restoring a full database backup (and maybe a differential backup if available), and then any subsequent log backups. Once the secondary copy is close, transactions can be applied to keep the two in sync. The main aspect of any High Availability system is to have a redundant system that is ready to take over. So the similarity for migration should be obvious. If you need to move a database from one box to another, then introducing a High Availability mechanism can help. By turning on the Full Recovery Model and then taking a backup (so that the now-interesting logs have some context), logs start being kept, and are therefore available for getting the new box ready (even if it’s an upgraded version). When the migration is ready to occur, a failover can be done, letting the new server take over the responsibility of the old, just as if a disaster had happened. Except that this is a planned failover, not a disaster at all. There’s a fine line between a disaster and a migration. Failovers can be useful in patching, upgrading, maintenance, and more. Hopefully, even an unexpected disaster can be seen as just another failover, and there can be an opportunity there – perhaps to get some work done on the principal server to increase robustness. And if I’ve just set up a High Availability system for even the simplest of databases, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. :) So now the personal: It’s been an interesting time recently... June has been somewhat odd. A court case with which I was involved got resolved (through mediation). I can’t go into details, but my lawyers tell me that I’m allowed to say how I feel about it. The answer is ‘lousy’. I don’t regret pursuing it as long as I did – but in the end I had to make a decision regarding the commerciality of letting it continue, and I’m going to look forward to the days when the kind of money I spent on my lawyers is small change. Mind you, if I had a similar situation with an employer, I’d do the same again, but that doesn’t really stop me feeling frustrated about it. The following day I had to fly to country Victoria to see my grandmother, who wasn’t expected to last the weekend. She’s still around a week later as I write this, but her 92-year-old body has basically given up on her. She’s been a Christian all her life, and is looking forward to eternity. We’ll all miss her though, and it’s hard to see my family grieving. Then on Tuesday, I was driving back to the airport with my family to come home, when something really bizarre happened. We were travelling down the freeway, just pulled out to go past a truck (farm-truck sized, not a semi-trailer), when a car-sized mass of metal fell off it. It was something like an industrial air-conditioner, but from where I was sitting, it was just a mass of spinning metal, like something out of a movie (one friend described it as “holidays by Michael Bay”). Somehow, and I’m really don’t know how, the part of it nearest us bounced high enough to clear the car, and there wasn’t even a scratch. We pulled over the check, and I was just thanking God that we’d changed lanes when we had, and that we remained unharmed. I had all kinds of thoughts about what could’ve happened if we’d had something that size land on the windscreen... All this has drilled home that while I feel that I haven’t provided as well for the family as I could’ve done (like by pursuing an expensive legal case), I shouldn’t even consider that I have proper control over things. I get to live life, and make decisions based on what I feel is right at the time. But I’m not going to get everything right, and there will be things that feel like disasters, some which could’ve been in my control and some which are very much beyond my control. The case feels like something I could’ve pursued differently, a disaster that could’ve been avoided in some way. Gran dying is lousy of course. An accident on the freeway would have been awful. I need to recognise that the worst disasters are ones that I can’t affect, and that I need to look at things in context – perhaps seeing everything that happens as a migration instead. Life is never the same from one day to the next. Every event has a before and an after – sometimes it’s clearly positive, sometimes it’s not. I remember good events in my life (such as my wedding), and bad (such as the loss of my father when I was ten, or the back injury I had eight years ago). I’m not suggesting that I know how to view everything from the “God works all things for good” perspective, but I am trying to look at last week as a migration of sorts. Those things are behind me now, and the future is in God’s hands. Hopefully I’ve learned things, and will be able to live accordingly. I’ve come through this time now, and even though I’ll miss Gran, I’ll see her again one day, and the future is bright.

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• We've completed the first iteration

  - by CliveT

  There are a lot of features in C# that are implemented by the compiler and not by the underlying platform. One such feature is a lambda expression. Since local variables cannot be accessed once the current method activation finishes, the compiler has to go out of its way to generate a new class which acts as a home for any variable whose lifetime needs to be extended past the activation of the procedure. Take the following example:     Random generator = new Random();     Func func = () = generator.Next(10); In this case, the compiler generates a new class called c_DisplayClass1 which is marked with the CompilerGenerated attribute. [CompilerGenerated] private sealed class c__DisplayClass1 {     // Fields     public Random generator;     // Methods     public int b__0()     {         return this.generator.Next(10);     } } Two quick comments on this: (i)    A display was the means that compilers for languages like Algol recorded the various lexical contours of the nested procedure activations on the stack. I imagine that this is what has led to the name. (ii)    It is a shame that the same attribute is used to mark all compiler generated classes as it makes it hard to figure out what they are being used for. Indeed, you could imagine optimisations that the runtime could perform if it knew that classes corresponded to certain high level concepts. We can see that the local variable generator has been turned into a field in the class, and the body of the lambda expression has been turned into a method of the new class. The code that builds the Func object simply constructs an instance of this class and initialises the fields to their initial values.     c__DisplayClass1 class2 = new c__DisplayClass1();     class2.generator = new Random();     Func func = new Func(class2.b__0); Reflector already contains code to spot this pattern of code and reproduce the form containing the lambda expression, so this is example is correctly decompiled. The use of compiler generated code is even more spectacular in the case of iterators. C# introduced the idea of a method that could automatically store its state between calls, so that it can pick up where it left off. The code can express the logical flow with yield return and yield break denoting places where the method should return a particular value and be prepared to resume.         {             yield return 1;             yield return 2;             yield return 3;         } Of course, there was already a .NET pattern for expressing the idea of returning a sequence of values with the computation proceeding lazily (in the sense that the work for the next value is executed on demand). This is expressed by the IEnumerable interface with its Current property for fetching the current value and the MoveNext method for forcing the computation of the next value. The sequence is terminated when this method returns false. The C# compiler links these two ideas together so that an IEnumerator returning method using the yield keyword causes the compiler to produce the implementation of an Iterator. Take the following piece of code.         IEnumerable GetItems()         {             yield return 1;             yield return 2;             yield return 3;         } The compiler implements this by defining a new class that implements a state machine. This has an integer state that records which yield point we should go to if we are resumed. It also has a field that records the Current value of the enumerator and a field for recording the thread. This latter value is used for optimising the creation of iterator instances. [CompilerGenerated] private sealed class d__0 : IEnumerable, IEnumerable, IEnumerator, IEnumerator, IDisposable {     // Fields     private int 1__state;     private int 2__current;     public Program 4__this;     private int l__initialThreadId; The body gets converted into the code to construct and initialize this new class. private IEnumerable GetItems() {     d__0 d__ = new d__0(-2);     d__.4__this = this;     return d__; } When the class is constructed we set the state, which was passed through as -2 and the current thread. public d__0(int 1__state) {     this.1__state = 1__state;     this.l__initialThreadId = Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId; } The state needs to be set to 0 to represent a valid enumerator and this is done in the GetEnumerator method which optimises for the usual case where the returned enumerator is only used once. IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator() {     if ((Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId == this.l__initialThreadId)               && (this.1__state == -2))     {         this.1__state = 0;         return this;     } The state machine itself is implemented inside the MoveNext method. private bool MoveNext() {     switch (this.1__state)     {         case 0:             this.1__state = -1;             this.2__current = 1;             this.1__state = 1;             return true;         case 1:             this.1__state = -1;             this.2__current = 2;             this.1__state = 2;             return true;         case 2:             this.1__state = -1;             this.2__current = 3;             this.1__state = 3;             return true;         case 3:             this.1__state = -1;             break;     }     return false; } At each stage, the current value of the state is used to determine how far we got, and then we generate the next value which we return after recording the next state. Finally we return false from the MoveNext to signify the end of the sequence. Of course, that example was really simple. The original method body didn't have any local variables. Any local variables need to live between the calls to MoveNext and so they need to be transformed into fields in much the same way that we did in the case of the lambda expression. More complicated MoveNext methods are required to deal with resources that need to be disposed when the iterator finishes, and sometimes the compiler uses a temporary variable to hold the return value. Why all of this explanation? We've implemented the de-compilation of iterators in the current EAP version of Reflector (7). This contrasts with previous version where all you could do was look at the MoveNext method and try to figure out the control flow. There's a fair amount of things we have to do. We have to spot the use of a CompilerGenerated class which implements the Enumerator pattern. We need to go to the class and figure out the fields corresponding to the local variables. We then need to go to the MoveNext method and try to break it into the various possible states and spot the state transitions. We can then take these pieces and put them back together into an object model that uses yield return to show the transition points. After that Reflector can carry on optimising using its usual optimisations. The pattern matching is currently a little too sensitive to changes in the code generation, and we only do a limited analysis of the MoveNext method to determine use of the compiler generated fields. In some ways, it is a pity that iterators are compiled away and there is no metadata that reflects the original intent. Without it, we are always going to dependent on our knowledge of the compiler's implementation. For example, we have noticed that the Async CTP changes the way that iterators are code generated, so we'll have to do some more work to support that. However, with that warning in place, we seem to do a reasonable job of decompiling the iterators that are built into the framework. Hopefully, the EAP will give us a chance to find examples where we don't spot the pattern correctly or regenerate the wrong code, and we can improve things. Please give it a go, and report any problems.

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• Agilist, Heal Thyself!

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve been meaning to blog about a great experience I had earlier in the year at Prairie Dev Con Calgary.  Myself and Steve Rogalsky did a session that we called “Agilist, Heal Thyself!”.  We used a format that was new to me, but that Steve had seen used at another conference.  What we did was start by asking the audience to give us a list of challenges they had had when adopting agile.  We wrote them all down, then had everybody vote on the most interesting ones.  Then we split into two groups, and each group was assigned one of the agile challenges.  We had 20 minutes to discuss the challenge, and suggest solutions or approaches to improve things.  At the end of the 20 minutes, each of the groups gave a brief summary of their discussion and learning's, then we mixed up the groups and repeated with another 2 challenges. The 2 groups I was part of had some really interesting discussions, and suggestions: Unfinished Stories at the end of Sprints The first agile challenge we tackled, was something that every single Scrum team I have worked with has struggled with.  What happens when you get to the end of a Sprint, and there are some stories that are only partially completed.  The team in question was getting very de-moralized as they felt that every Sprint was a failure as they never had a set of fully completed stories. How do you avoid this? and/or what do you do when it happens? There were 2 pieces of advice that were well received: 1. Try to bring stories to completion before starting new ones.  This is advice I give all my Scrum teams.  If you have a 3-week sprint, what happens all too often is you get to the end of week 2, and a lot of stories are almost done; but almost none are completely done.  This is a Bad Thing.  I encourage the teams I work with to only start a new story as a very last resort.  If you finish your task look at the stories in progress and see if there’s anything you can do to help before moving onto a new story.  In the daily standup, put a focus on seeing what stories got completed yesterday, if a few days go by with none getting completed, be sure this fact is visible to the team and do something about it.  Something I’ve been doing recently is introducing WIP (Work In Progress) limits while using Scrum.  My current team has 2-week sprints, and we usually have about a dozen or stories in a sprint.  We instituted a WIP limit of 4 stories.  If 4 stories have been started but not finished then nobody is allowed to start new stories.  This made it obvious very quickly that our QA tasks were our bottleneck (we have 4 devs, but only 1.5 testers).  The WIP limit forced the developers to start to pickup QA tasks before moving onto the next dev tasks, and we ended our sprints with many more stories completely finished than we did before introducing WIP limits. 2. Rather than using time-boxed sprints, why not just do away with them altogether and go to a continuous flow type approach like KanBan.  Limit WIP to keep things under control, but don’t have a fixed time box at the end of which all tasks are supposed to be done.  This eliminates the problem almost entirely.  At some points in the project (releases) you need to be able to burn down all the half finished stories to get a stable release build, but this probably occurs less often than every sprint, and there are alternative approaches to achieve it using branching strategies rather than forcing your team to try to get to Zero WIP every 2-weeks (e.g. when you are ready for a release, create a new branch for any new stories, but finish all existing stories in the current branch and release it). Trying to Introduce Agile into a team with previous Bad Agile Experiences One of the agile adoption challenges somebody described, was he was in a leadership role on a team he had recently joined – lets call him Dave.  This team was currently very waterfall in their ALM process, but they were about to start on a new green-field project.  Dave wanted to use this new project as an opportunity to do things the “right way”, using an Agile methodology like Scrum, adopting TDD, automated builds, proper branching strategies, etc.  The problem he was facing is everybody else on the team had previously gone through an “Agile Adoption” that was a horrible failure.  Dave blamed this failure on the consultant brought in previously to lead this agile transition, but regardless of the reason, the team had very negative feelings towards agile, and was very resistant to trying it out again.  Dave possibly had the authority to try to force the team to adopt Agile practices, but we all know that doesn’t work very well.  What was Dave to do? Ultimately, the best advice was to question *why* did Dave want to adopt all these various practices. Rather than trying to convince his team that these were the “right way” to run a dev project, and trying to do a Big Bang approach to introducing change.  He would be better served by identifying problems the team currently faces, have a discussion with the team to get everybody to agree that specific problems existed, then have an open discussion about ways to address those problems.  This way Dave could incrementally introduce agile practices, and he doesn’t even need to identify them as “agile” practices if he doesn’t want to.  For example, when we discussed with Dave, he said probably the teams biggest problem was long periods without feedback from users, then finding out too late that the software is not going to meet their needs.  Rather than Dave jumping right to introducing Scrum and all it entails, it would be easier to get buy-in from team if he framed it as a discussion of existing problems, and brainstorming possible solutions.  And possibly most importantly, don’t try to do massive changes all at once with a team that has not bought-into those changes.  Taking an incremental approach has a greater chance of success. I see something similar in my day job all the time too.  Clients who for one reason or another claim to not be fans of agile (or not ready for agile yet).  But then they go on to ask me to help them get shorter feedback cycles, quicker delivery cycles, iterative development processes, etc.  It’s kind of funny at times, sometimes you just need to phrase the suggestions in terms they are using and avoid the word “agile”. PS – I haven’t blogged all that much over the past couple of years, but in an attempt to motivate myself, a few of us have accepted a blogger challenge.  There’s 6 of us who have all put some money into a pool, and the agreement is that we each need to blog at least once every 2-weeks.  The first 2-week period that we miss we’re eliminated.  Last person standing gets the money.  So expect at least one blog post every couple of weeks for the near future (I hope!).  And check out the blogs of the other 5 people in this blogger challenge: Steve Rogalsky: http://winnipegagilist.blogspot.ca Aaron Kowall: http://www.geekswithblogs.net/caffeinatedgeek Tyler Doerkson: http://blog.tylerdoerksen.com David Alpert: http://www.spinthemoose.com Dave White: http://www.agileramblings.com (note: site not available yet.  should be shortly or he owes me some money!)

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, October 12, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, October 12, 2012Popular ReleasesHyperCrunch Druid: HyperCrunch Druid 1.0.2102: For all documentation and feedback, visit http://druid.hypercrunch.com.GoogleMap Control: GoogleMap Control 6.1: Some important bug fixes and couple of new features were added. There are no major changes to the sample website. Source code could be downloaded from the Source Code section selecting branch release-6.1. Thus just builds of GoogleMap Control are issued here in this release. NuGet Package GoogleMap Control 6.1 NuGet Package FeaturesBounds property to provide ability to create a map by center and bounds as well; Setting in markup <artem:GoogleMap ID="GoogleMap1" runat="server" MapType="HY...Bundle Transformer - a modular extension for ASP.NET Web Optimization Framework: Bundle Transformer 1.6.5: Version: 1.6.5 Published: 10/12/2012 In the configuration elements css and js added the usePreMinifiedFiles attribute, which enables/disables usage of pre-minified files; Added translator-adapter, which produces translation of TypeScript-code to JS-code; In BundleTransformer.MicrosoftAjax added support of the Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.69; In BundleTransformer.Yui added support of the YUI Compressor for .NET 2.1.0.0; In BundleTransformer.Csso added support of the CSSO version 1.3.4. ...OrgCharts for SharePoint: OrgChart web part for SharePoint: Key features: • Central License management so no need to remember the license key details when adding to pages. • Builtin-asp.net caching for high performing loading of the Org Chart. • Create Org Chart from SharePoint list data OR SQL server queries. • Multi-level drill through • Use SharePoint lists or SQL Data as datasource • Support node level Images. {Example: Peoples my site photos} • AJAX enabled for fast client side processing • Optionally set the TAB field for an Auto-generated TAB i...mojoPortal: 2.3.9.3: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2393-released Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0, but we recommend you to use .NET 4, we will probably drop support for .NET 3.5 once .NET 4.5 is available The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code and are not intended for use in Visual Studio. To download the source code see getting the lates...OstrivDB: OstrivDB 0.1: - Storage configuration: objects serialization (Xml, Json), storage file compressing, data block size. - Caching for Select queries. - Indexing. - Batch of queries. - No special query language (LINQ used). - Integrated sorting and paging. - Multithreaded data processing.D3 Loot Tracker: 1.5.4: Fixed a bug where the server ip was not logged properly in the stats file.Captcha MVC: Captcha Mvc 2.1.2: v 2.1.2: Fixed problem with serialization. Made all classes from a namespace Jetbrains.Annotaions as the internal. Added autocomplete attribute and autocorrect attribute for captcha input element. Minor changes. v 2.1.1: Fixed problem with serialization. Minor changes. v 2.1: Added support for storing captcha in the session or cookie. See the updated example. Updated example. Minor changes. v 2.0.1: Added support for a partial captcha. Now you can easily customize the layout, s...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.04: Major Highlights Fixed issue where the module printing function was only visible to administrators Fixed issue where pane level skinning was being assigned to a default container for any content pane Fixed issue when using password aging and FB / Google authentication Fixed issue that was causing the DateEditControl to not load the assigned value Fixed issue that stopped additional profile properties to be displayed in the member directory after modifying the template Fixed er...Advanced DataGridView with Excel-like auto filter: 1.0.0.0: ?????? ??????Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.69: Fix for issue #18766: build task should not build the output if it's newer than all the input files. Fix for Issue #18764: build taks -res switch not working. update build task to concatenate input source and then minify, rather than minify and then concatenate. include resource string-replacement root name in the assumed globals list. Stop replacing new Date().getTime() with +new Date -- the latter is smaller, but turns out it executes up to 45% slower. add CSS support for single-...WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.3.3: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features Attachable Behaviors AwaitableUI extensions Controls Converters Debugging helpers Extension methods Imaging helpers IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE:...VidCoder: 1.4.4 Beta: Fixed inability to create new presets with "Save As".MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.2: Changelog for 2.3.2 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Added support for generating XBMC XML NFO files for files in the conversion queue (store it along with the source video with source video name.nfo). Right click on the file in queue and select generate XML 2. UI bugifx, start and end trim box locations interchanged 3. Added support for removing commercials from non DVRMS/WTV files (MP4, AVI etc) 4. Now checking for Firewall port status before enabling (might help with some firewall problems) 5. User In...Sandcastle Help File Builder: SHFB v1.9.5.0 with Visual Studio Package: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This release supports the Sandcastle October 2012 Release (v2.7.1.0). It includes full support for generating, installing, and removing MS Help Viewer files. This new release suppor...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.68.0: ClosedXML now resolves formulas! Yes it finally happened. If you call cell.Value and it has a formula the library will try to evaluate the formula and give you the result. For example: var wb = new XLWorkbook(); var ws = wb.AddWorksheet("Sheet1"); ws.Cell("A1").SetValue(1).CellBelow().SetValue(1); ws.Cell("B1").SetValue(1).CellBelow().SetValue(1); ws.Cell("C1").FormulaA1 = "\"The total value is: \" & SUM(A1:B2)"; var...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 10: New feature - Added Portable build to NuGet package New feature - Added GetValue and TryGetValue with StringComparison to JObject Change - Improved duplicate object reference id error message Fix - Fixed error when comparing empty JObjects Fix - Fixed SecAnnotate warnings Fix - Fixed error when comparing DateTime JValue with a DateTimeOffset JValue Fix - Fixed serializer sometimes not using DateParseHandling setting Fix - Fixed error in JsonWriter.WriteToken when writing a DateT...Readable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.7.2: Changes: Tested against KeePass 2.20.1 Tested under Ubuntu 12.10 (and KeePass 2.20) Added GenerateAsUtf8 method returning the encrypted passphrase as a UTF8 byte array.JSLint for Visual Studio 2010: 1.4.2: 1.4.2patterns & practices: Prism: Prism for .NET 4.5: This is a release does not include any functionality changes over Prism 4.1 Desktop. These assemblies target .NET 4.5. These assemblies also were compiled against updated dependencies: Unity 3.0 and Common Service Locator (Portable Class Library).New ProjectsATM Stimulate Using WCF Service: This project is my homework Basic Events: Basic Events makes it easier for developers to use out of the box events with basic properties in their eventargs like string message and datetime.BCCP-DEX: sumary not avaibleBing Maps TypeScript Declarations: Unofficial TypeScript declarations for the Bing Maps v7 AJAX Control.CodePlex Practice: Testing CodePlexDepIC: Dependency Injection Container with a very simple API.DNN TaskManger: This is the a project build with the DotNetNuke task manager tutorial videos series.Document Importer For SharePoint: Quickly import large volumes of documents into SharePoint document libraries using an effective user interface.Drop Me!!: cOMING SOON...wORKING ON THISGesPro: PFE de fin de BAC MB MLGL2DX (OpenGL to DirectX Wrapper Library): GL2DX is a wrapper library that allows you to build your OpenGL app for WinRT.MoControls - XNA 4 GUI Controls Library: XNA 4 GUI Controls Library aimed to simplify porting of a XNA 4.0 GUI interface to various platforms.Morph implementation in Delphi: Morph Protocol implementation written in Delphi XE3. Morph is a very powerful application level protocol. For more about Morph, go to http://morph.codeplex.com/Musicallis: Projeto da disciplina de Técnicas de Programação Aplicada II da Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie - SP.NHook - A debugger API for your hooking projects: A debugger API for your hooking projectsOperation Timber System: This is a Timber system aimed at merchants/wholesalers/Mills. It is only in design phase.Oryon .Net Extension Methods Library: This project contains a lot of useful extension methods for .Net Applications.OstrivDB: OstrivDB is an embedded NoSQL database engine.Outreach02: A research project for website development.PARCIAL-CP-2012: Proyecto De Calidad y Pruebas de Software - Examen ParcialProject13261011: dfdsfProject13271011: 11project-3D-fabien: C# project 3D IN4M12 -->http://www.esiee.fr/~mustafan/IN4M12-13/Pulsar Programming Language: Pulsar, is a free open source programming language alternative to Assembly. Create your dream Operating System without using Assembly, or C#, or C++!Scoot: A rowing club management application.Sfaar Bytex: an hexadecimal file readerSSIS RAW File Viewer: SSIS 2008 RAW file viewer.testddgit1011201201: ttesttom10112012tfs02: fdsf fsd???WindowsPhone???: ???Windows Phone??????www.yidingcan.com?????。??????、??

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• Bad disks in ancient server

  - by Joel Coel

  I have a 1998-era Netware 3.12 server that runs everything on our campus: general ledger, purchasing, payroll, student information, grades, you name it. The server has an Adaptec RAID controller with two volumes: RAID 1, 2 17GB scsi disks, Seagate ST318417W RAID 5, 3 4GB scsi disks, 2 Seagate ST34573W and 1 ST34572W. We are currently in the early stages of a project to replace this system, but you don't just jump into a new system like that and so I need to keep this server running until at least November 2011. This week we had not one but two hard drives fail. Thankfully they are from different volumes and we're able to keep running for the moment, but given the close nature of these failures I have serious doubts that I'll be able to avoid catastrophic failure from this server through the November target as is without restoring the RAID redundancy — it'll only take one more drive failure anywhere and I'm completely hosed. We are fortunate enough to have exact match "spares" lying around for both drives, but the spares are in unknown condition. I tried swapping just them in, but the RAID controller isn't smart enough to handle this and it renders the system unbootable. As for the RAID controller itself, there is utility I can get into during POST via a Ctrl-A shortcut, but I can't do much useful from there. To actually manage volumes I must first boot in to Netware, at which point I can use CI/O Array Management Software Version 2.0 to actually look at volume information. I suspect that the normal way to manage things is to boot from a special floppy with the controller software on it, but that floppy is long gone. Going through the options in the RAID software, I think the only supported way to replace a disk in an existing RAID volume is to physically add the disk, boot up and configure it as a "spare" for a volume, force the volume to use the spare to replace an existing down disk (and at this point I'm only guessing) so that the down disk becomes the spare, repair the volume, remove the spare from the volume, and then shut down and remove the disk. Then start all over for the other failed disk. All this amounts to a lot of downtime, assuming I can even make it work and that my spares are any good. As for finding reliable spares, I have no clue where to even begin looking to find a new 4GB scsi drive, or even which exact scsi system I'm looking for, as it's gone through a few different iterations over time. Another option is to migrate this to a virtual machine (hyper-v), but all previous attempts we've made in this area have failed to get very far. When this machine was installed I was just graduating from high school, and so it requires lower level knowledge of netware and dos than I ever developed, or if I did have since forgotten (I'm not exactly a dos neophyte, either). Part of my problem is this is a high-use server, and taking it down for a few days to figure things out isn't gonna fly very well. As for the question, I'm looking for anything that might be helpful in this situation: a recommendation on a place to find good spares from this era, personal experience repairing RAID volumes using a similar controller or building a hyper-v vm from an old netware server, a line on a floppy with better software for the RAID controller, recommendation on a good Novell consultant in Nebraska that would be able to put things right, a whole other option I haven't considered yet, etc. Update: For backups, we have good (recently verified via restore) backups of the data only -- nothing for the software that actually runs things. Update 2: Just a progress report that I currently have a working Netware 3.12 install in VMWare Virtual Server 2.0, thanks largely to the guide I found here: http://cerbulescubogdan.blogspot.com/2010/11/novell-netware-312-on-vmware.html The next steps are preparing empty netware volumes to match the additional volumes on my existing server, taking a dump of everything on the C:\ drive and netware volumes on my existing server, and figuring out from that information what modules need added to netware, installing my licenses (we do still have that disk, if it's any good), and moving data over. I have approval to bring the server down for a week after the first of the year (sadly not before), so, aside from creating empty volumes, the rest of the work will have to wait until then. Final Update (Jan 5, 2011): I was able to get spares working in both raid arrays without data loss this week. Both are now listed by the controller as "FAULT TOLLERANT" (yay!). I was also able to build on the progress from my last update and now have a functional "spare" server in VMWare Server 2.0. The spare can run and use our erp software, but I can't put it into production because I can't (yet) print from that box (and I have no idea why). Even so, this VM will do in a pinch if I have no other choice, and between it and the repaired RAID arrays I'm comfortable pushing on until I can junk the machine in November.

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• Code Behaviour via Unit Tests

  - by Dewald Galjaard

  Normal 0 false false false EN-ZA X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Some four months ago my car started acting up. Symptoms included a sputtering as my car’s computer switched between gears intermittently. Imagine building up speed, then when you reach 80km/h the car magically and mysteriously decide to switch back to third or even second gear. Clearly it was confused! I managed to track down a technician, an expert in his field to help me out. As he fitted his handheld computer to some hidden port under the dash, he started to explain “These cars are quite intelligent, you know. When they sense something is wrong they run in a restrictive program which probably account for how you managed to drive here in the first place...”  I was surprised and thought this was certainly going to be an interesting test drive. The car ran smoothly down the first couple of stretches as the technician ran through routine checks. Then he said “Ok, all looking good. We need to start testing aspects of the gearbox. Inside the gearbox there are a couple of sensors. One of them is a speed sensor which talks to the computer, which in turn will decide which gear to switch to. The restrictive program avoid these sensors altogether and allow the computer to obtain its input from other [non-affected] sources”. Then, as soon as he forced the speed sensor to come back online the symptoms and ill behaviour re-emerged... What an incredible analogy for getting into a discussion on unit testing software? Besides I should probably put my ill fortune to some good use, right? This example provide a lot of insight into how and why we should conduct unit tests when writing code. More importantly, it captures what is easily and unfortunately often the most overlooked goal of writing unit tests by those new to the art and those who oppose it alike - The goal of writing unit tests is to test the behaviour of our code under predefined conditions. Although it is very possible to test the intrinsic workings of each and every component in your code, writing several tests for each method in practise will soon prove to be an exhausting and ultimately fruitless exercise given the certain and ever changing nature of business requirements. Consequently it is true and quite possible whilst conducting proper unit tests, to call any single method several times as you examine and contemplate different scenarios. Let’s write some code to demonstrate what I mean. In my example I make use of the Moq framework and NUnit to create my tests. Truly you can use whatever you’re comfortable with. First we’ll create an ISpeedSensor interface. This is to represent the speed sensor located in the gearbox.  Then we’ll create a Gearbox class which we’ll pass to a constructor when we instantiate an object of type Computer. All three are described below.   ISpeedSensor.cs namespace AutomaticVehicle {     public interface ISpeedSensor     {         int ReportCurrentSpeed();     } }   Gearbox.cs namespace AutomaticVehicle {      public class Gearbox     {         private ISpeedSensor _speedSensor;           public Gearbox( ISpeedSensor gearboxSpeedSensor )         {             _speedSensor = gearboxSpeedSensor;         }         /// <summary>         /// This method obtain it's reading from the speed sensor.         /// </summary>         /// <returns></returns>         public int ReportCurrentSpeed()         {             return _speedSensor.ReportCurrentSpeed();         }     } } Computer.cs namespace AutomaticVehicle {     public class Computer     {         private Gearbox _gearbox;         public Computer( Gearbox gearbox )         {                     }          public int GetCurrentSpeed()         {             return _gearbox.ReportCurrentSpeed( );         }     } } Since this post is about Unit testing, that is exactly what we’ll create next. Create a second project in your solution. I called mine AutomaticVehicleTests and I immediately referenced the respective nunit, moq and AutomaticVehicle dll’s. We’re going to write a test to examine what happens inside the Computer class. ComputerTests.cs namespace AutomaticVehicleTests {     [TestFixture]     public class ComputerTests     {         [Test]         public void Computer_Gearbox_SpeedSensor_DoesThrow()         {             // Mock ISpeedSensor in gearbox             Mock< ISpeedSensor > speedSensor = new Mock< ISpeedSensor >( );             speedSensor.Setup( n => n.ReportCurrentSpeed() ).Throws<Exception>();             Gearbox gearbox = new Gearbox( speedSensor.Object );               // Create Computer instance to test it's behaviour  towards an exception in gearbox             Computer carComputer = new Computer( gearbox );             // For simplicity let’s assume for now the car only travels at 60 km/h.             Assert.AreEqual( 60, carComputer.GetCurrentSpeed( ) );          }     } }   What is happening in this test? We have created a mocked object using the ISpeedsensor interface which we've passed to our Gearbox object. Notice that I created the mocked object using an interface, not the implementation. I’ll talk more about this in future posts but in short I do this to accentuate the fact that I'm not not really concerned with how SpeedSensor work internally at this particular point in time. Next I’ve gone ahead and created a scenario where I’ve declared the speed sensor in Gearbox to be faulty by forcing it to throw an exception should we ask Gearbox to report on its current speed. Sneaky, sneaky. This test is a simulation of how things may behave in the real world. Inevitability things break, whether it’s caused by mechanical failure, some logical error on your part or a fellow developer which didn’t consult the documentation (or the lack thereof ) - whether you’re calling a speed sensor, making a call to a database, calling a web service or just trying to write a file to disk. It’s a scenario I’ve created and this test is about how the code within the Computer instance will behave towards any such error as I’ve depicted. Now, if you’ve followed closely in my final assert method you would have noticed I did something quite unexpected. I might be getting ahead of myself now but I’m testing to see if the value returned is equal to what I expect it to be under perfect conditions – I’m not testing to see if an error has been thrown! Why is that? Well, in short this is TDD. Test Driven Development is about first writing your test to define the result we want, then to go back and change the implementation within your class to obtain the desired output (I need to make sure I can drive back to the repair shop. Remember? ) So let’s go ahead and run our test as is. It’s fails miserably... Good! Let’s go back to our Computer class and make a small change to the GetCurrentSpeed method.   Computer.cs public int GetCurrentSpeed() {   try   {     return _gearbox.ReportCurrentSpeed( );   }   catch   {     RunRestrictiveProgram( );   } }     This is a simple solution, I know, but it does provide a way to allow for different behaviour. You’re more than welcome to provide an implementation for RunRestrictiveProgram should you feel the need to. It's not within the scope of this post or related to the point I'm trying to make. What is important is to notice how the focus has shifted in our approach from how things can break - to how things behave when broken.   Happy coding!

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• SQL Server Developer Tools &ndash; Codename Juneau vs. Red-Gate SQL Source Control

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  So how do the new SQL Server Developer Tools (previously code-named Juneau) stack up against SQL Source Control?  Read on to find out. At the PASS Community Summit a couple of weeks ago, it was announced that the previously code-named Juneau software would be released under the name of SQL Server Developer Tools with the release of SQL Server 2012.  This replacement for Database Projects in Visual Studio (also known in a former life as Data Dude) has some great new features.  I won’t attempt to describe them all here, but I will applaud Microsoft for making major improvements.  One of my favorite changes is the way database elements are broken down.  Previously every little thing was in its own file.  For example, indexes were each in their own file.  I always hated that.  Now, SSDT uses a pattern similar to Red-Gate’s and puts the indexes and keys into the same file as the overall table definition. Of course there are really cool features to keep your database model in sync with the actual source scripts, and the rename refactoring feature is now touted as being more than just a search and replace, but rather a “semantic-aware” search and replace.  Funny, it reminds me of SQL Prompt’s Smart Rename feature.  But I’m not writing this just to criticize Microsoft and argue that they are late to the party with this feature set.  Instead, I do see it as a viable alternative for folks who want all of their source code to be version controlled, but there are a couple of key trade-offs that you need to know about when you choose which tool set to use. First, the basics Both tool sets integrate with a wide variety of source control systems including the most popular: Subversion, GIT, Vault, and Team Foundation Server.  Both tools have integrated functionality to produce objects to upgrade your target database when you are ready (DACPACs in SSDT, integration with SQL Compare for SQL Source Control).  If you regularly live in Visual Studio or the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) then SSDT will likely be comfortable for you.  Like BIDS, SSDT is a Visual Studio Project Type that comes with SQL Server, and if you don’t already have Visual Studio installed, it will install the shell for you.  If you already have Visual Studio 2010 installed, then it will just add this as an available project type.  On the other hand, if you regularly live in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) then you will really enjoy the SQL Source Control integration from within SSMS.  Both tool sets store their database model in script files.  In SSDT, these are on your file system like other source files; in SQL Source Control, these are stored in the folder structure in your source control system, and you can always GET them to your file system if you want to browse them directly. For me, the key differentiating factors are 1) a single, unified check-in, and 2) migration scripts.  How you value those two features will likely make your decision for you. Unified Check-In If you do a continuous-integration (CI) style of development that triggers an automated build with unit testing on every check-in of source code, and you use Visual Studio for the rest of your development, then you will want to really consider SSDT.  Because it is just another project in Visual Studio, it can be added to your existing Solution, and you can then do a complete, or unified single check-in of all changes whether they are application or database changes.  This is simply not possible with SQL Source Control because it is in a different development tool (SSMS instead of Visual Studio) and there is no way to do one unified check-in between the two.  You CAN do really fast back-to-back check-ins, but there is the possibility that the automated build that is triggered from the first check-in will cause your unit tests to fail and the CI tool to report that you broke the build.  Of course, the automated build that is triggered from the second check-in which contains the “other half” of your changes should pass and so the amount of time that the build was broken may be very, very short, but if that is very, very important to you, then SQL Source Control just won’t work; you’ll have to use SSDT. Refactoring and Migrations If you work on a mature system, or on a not-so-mature but also not-so-well-designed system, where you want to refactor the database schema as you go along, but you can’t have data suddenly disappearing from your target system, then you’ll probably want to go with SQL Source Control.  As I wrote previously, there are a number of changes which you can make to your database that the comparison tools (both from Microsoft and Red Gate) simply cannot handle without the possibility (or probability) of data loss.  Currently, SSDT only offers you the ability to inject PRE and POST custom deployment scripts.  There is no way to insert your own script in the middle to override the default behavior of the tool.  In version 3.0 of SQL Source Control (Early Access version now available) you have that ability to create your own custom migration script to take the place of the commands that the tool would have done, and ensure the preservation of your data.  Or, even if the default tool behavior would have worked, but you simply know a better way then you can take control and do things your way instead of theirs. You Decide In the environment I work in, our automated builds are not triggered off of check-ins, but off of the clock (currently once per night) and so there is no point at which the automated build and unit tests will be triggered without having both sides of the development effort already checked-in.  Therefore having a unified check-in, while handy, is not critical for us.  As for migration scripts, these are critically important to us.  We do a lot of new development on systems that have already been in production for years, and it is not uncommon for us to need to do a refactoring of the database.  Because of the maturity of the existing system, that often involves data migrations or other additional SQL tasks that the comparison tools just can’t detect on their own.  Therefore, the ability to create a custom migration script to override the tool’s default behavior is very important to us.  And so, you can see why we will continue to use Red Gate SQL Source Control for the foreseeable future.

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