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• How to recover dpkg from corrupted downloads?

  - by rocker9455

  I just upgraded to the 10.10 RC earlier and had a few problems with graphic drivers (x didnt start) But i have remedied that now. When i run 'sudo apt-get install -f' i get this: will@UbuntuBox:/mnt/slax$ sudo apt-get install -f [sudo] password for will: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Correcting dependencies... Done The following extra packages will be installed: libmono-wcf3.0-cil openoffice.org-calc openoffice.org-core The following NEW packages will be installed: libmono-wcf3.0-cil The following packages will be upgraded: openoffice.org-calc openoffice.org-core 2 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 16 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0B/32.5MB of archives. After this operation, 1,929kB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y (Reading database ... 201565 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace openoffice.org-calc 1:3.2.1-6ubuntu2~10.04.1 (using .../openoffice.org-calc_1%3a3.2.1-7ubuntu1_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement openoffice.org-calc ... xz: (stdin): Compressed data is corrupt dpkg-deb: subprocess <decompress> returned error exit status 1 dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/openoffice.org-calc_1%3a3.2.1-7ubuntu1_i386.deb (--unpack): short read on buffer copy for backend dpkg-deb during `./usr/lib/openoffice/basis3.2/program/libscfiltli.so' dpkg: regarding .../openoffice.org-core_1%3a3.2.1-7ubuntu1_i386.deb containing openoffice.org-core: openoffice.org-core conflicts with openoffice.org-calc (<< 1:3.2.1-7ubuntu1) openoffice.org-calc (version 1:3.2.1-6ubuntu2~10.04.1) is present and installed. dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/openoffice.org-core_1%3a3.2.1-7ubuntu1_i386.deb (--unpack): conflicting packages - not installing openoffice.org-core Unpacking libmono-wcf3.0-cil (from .../libmono-wcf3.0-cil_2.6.7-3ubuntu1_all.deb) ... dpkg-deb (subprocess): data: internal gzip read error: '<fd:0>: data error' dpkg-deb: subprocess <decompress> returned error exit status 2 dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libmono-wcf3.0-cil_2.6.7-3ubuntu1_all.deb (--unpack): subprocess dpkg-deb --fsys-tarfile returned error exit status 2 Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/openoffice.org-calc_1%3a3.2.1-7ubuntu1_i386.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/openoffice.org-core_1%3a3.2.1-7ubuntu1_i386.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/libmono-wcf3.0-cil_2.6.7-3ubuntu1_all.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) Any idea how i can get the broken packages fixed? Cheers, Will

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• Silverlight User Group of Switzerland (SLUGS)

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  Last Thursday, the Silverlight Firestarter event took place in Redmond, and was streamed live to a large audience worldwide (around 20’000 people). Approximately 30 if them were in Wallisellen near Zurich, in Microsoft Switzerland’s offices. This was not only a great occasion to learn more about the future of Silverlight and to see great demos, but also it was the very first meeting of the Silverlight User Group of Switzerland (SLUGS). Having 30 people for a first meeting was a great success, especially if we consider that it was REALLY cold that night, that it had snowed 20 cm the night before! We all had a good time, and 3 lucky winners went back home with a prize: One LG Optimus 7 Windows Phone and two copies of Silverlight 4 Unleashed. Congratulations to the winners! After the keynote (which went in a whirlwind, shortest 90 minutes ever!), we all had pizza and beverages generously sponsored by the Swiss DPE team, of which not less than 5 guys came to the event! Thanks to Stefano, Ronnie, Sascha, Big Mike and Ken for attending! We decided to have meetings every month. Stay tuned for announcements on when and where the events will take place. We are also in the process of creating various groups online where the attendees can find more information. For instance, I created a group on Flickr where the pictures taken at events will be published. The group is public, and the pictures of the first event are already online! We also have the already known page at http://www.slugs.ch/, check it out. A national group Even though the first event was in Zurich, and that 3 of the founding members live nearby, we would like to try and be a national group. That means having events sometimes in other parts of Switzerland, collaborating with other local user groups, etc. Stay tuned for more Join! We want you, we need you If you are doing Silverlight, for a living or as a hobby, if you are interested in user experience, XAML, Expression Blend and many more topics, you should consider joining! This is a great occasion to exchange experiences, to learn from Silverlight experts, to hear sessions about various topics related to Silverlight, etc. If you want to talk about a topic that is of interest to you, If you want to propose a topic of discussion Or if you just want to hang out then go to http://www.slugs.ch and register! Cheers, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Need to Know

  - by Tony Davis

  Sometimes, I wonder whether writers of documentation, tutorials and articles stop to ask themselves one very important question: Does the reader really need to know this? I recently took on the task of writing a concise series of articles about the transaction log, what is it, how it works and why it's important. It was an enjoyable task; rather like peering inside a giant, complex clock mechanism. Initially, one sees only the basic components, which work to guarantee the integrity of database transactions, and preserve these transactions so that data can be restored to a previous point in time. On closer inspection, one notices all of small, arcane mechanisms that are necessary to make this happen; LSNs, virtual log files, log chains, database checkpoints, and so on. It was engrossing, escapist, stuff; what I'd written looked weighty and steeped in mysterious significance. Suddenly, however, I jolted myself back to reality with the awful thought "does anyone really need to know all this?" The driver of a car needs only to be dimly aware of what goes on under the hood, however exciting the mechanism is to the engineer. Similarly, while everyone who uses SQL Server ought to be aware of the transaction log, its role in guaranteeing the ACID properties, and how to control its growth, the intricate mechanisms ticking away under its clock face are a world away from the daily work of the harassed developer. The DBA needs to know more, such as the correct rituals for ensuring optimal performance and data integrity, setting the appropriate growth characteristics, backup routines, restore procedures, and so on. However, even then, the average DBA only needs to understand enough about the arcane processes to spot problems and react appropriately, or to know how to Google for the best way of dealing with it. The art of technical writing is tied up in intimate knowledge of your audience and what they need to know at any point. It means serving up just enough at each point to help the reader in a practical way, but not to overcook it, or stuff the reader with information that does them no good. When I think of the books and articles that have helped me the most, they have been full of brief, practical, and well-informed guidance, based on experience. This seems far-removed from the 900-page "beginner's guides" that one now sees everywhere. The more I write and edit, the more I become convinced that the real art of technical communication lies in knowing what to leave out. In what areas do the SQL Server technical materials suffer from "information overload"? Where else does it seem that concise, practical advice is drowned out by endless discussion of the "clock mechanisms"? Cheers, Tony.

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• The .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2010 Road Trip

  - by Laila

  Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell, the two .NET Rocks radio show hosts, have decided to set off to 15 cities in the US, between April 19th and May 7th, in their DotNetMobile (a 30 foot RV). What for you'll ask me? Well, to drive around the US, meet up with .NET developers, and show off the latest and greatest in Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0! Each evening, they stop in a city and host a three hour event in front of a 100 to 300 crowd of developers, where Carl is showing off media features in Silverlight 4 and their road trip tracking application, whilst Richard is demo-ing the web performance testing features of VS2010 using his portable server rig. But before they take to the stage, they have a special guest brought in - a rock star from the Visual Studio world - whom they interview for an hour as a .NET Rock episode. So far, they've had - amongst others - Phil Haack, a Program Manager with the ASP.NET team working on ASP.NET MVC, Dan Fernandez, an Evangelism Manager in the Developer and Platform Evangelism team at Microsoft, and Beth Massi, Senior Program Manager on the Visual Studio Community Team at Microsoft. I love the fact that the audience gets a chance to participate, ask questions and have a great laugh, as you can hear in the first episode! Along the way, the .NET Rocks guys are giving away great prizes (including .NET Reflector Pro, ANTS Memory Profiler licenses, and "40" LCD TVs!). Even more out of the ordinary, at each stop on the road trip, one lucky attendee (who entered in the Ride Along competition) gets to jump in the RV with Carl and Richard and ride along with them to the next stop on the roadtrip. How cool is that! Richard told us: "Our first winner in Mountain View was Eric Ziko. I was looking for him to announce that he had won, when he found us and gave us a bottle of scotch he had brought just to say 'thanks for the great show'. We all had a toast from the bottle the next night when he headed back home." Cheeky! There's still space to a few of these events, so if you want to attend, register now, because it's first come first serve. We're grateful to Richard and Carl for giving us the opportunity to sponsor this major .NET event! A unique .NET adventure worth following for sure. Cheers, Laila

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• So it comes to PASS…

  - by Tony Davis

  How does your company gauge the benefit of attending a technical conference? What's the best change you made as a direct result of attendance? It's time again for the PASS Summit and I, like most people go with a set of general goals for enhancing technical knowledge; to learn more about PowerShell, to drill into SQL Server performance tuning techniques, and so on. Most will write up a brief report on the event for the rest of the team. Ideally, however, it will go a bit further than that; each conference should result in a specific improvement to one of your systems, or in the way you do your job. As co-editor of Simple-talk.com, and responsible for the majority of our SQL books, my “high level” goals don't vary much from conference to conference. I'm always on the lookout for good new authors. I target interesting new technologies and tools and try to learn more. I return with a list of actions, new articles to commission, and potential new authors. Three years ago, however, I started setting myself the goal of implementing “one new thing” after each conference. After one, I adopted Kanban for managing my workload, a technique that places strict limits on “work in progress” and makes the overall workload, and backlog, highly visible. After another I trialled a community book project. At PASS 2010, one of my general goals was to delve deeper into SQL Server transaction log mechanics, but on top of that, I set a specific goal of writing something useful on the topic. I started a Stairway series and, ultimately, it's turned into a book! If you're attending the PASS Summit this year, take some time to consider what specific improvement or change you'll implement as a result. Also, try to drop by the Red Gate booth (#101). During the Vendor event on Wednesday evening, Gail Shaw and I will be there to discuss, and hand out copies of the book. Cheers, Tony.  

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• Emoti-phrases

  - by Tony Davis

  Surely the next radical step in the development of User-interface design is for applications to react appropriately to the rising tide of bewilderment, frustration or antipathy of the users. When an application understands that rapport is lost, it should respond accordingly. When we, for example, become confused by an unforgiving interface, shouldn't there be a way of signalling our bewilderment and having the application respond appropriately? There is surprisingly little in the current interface standards that would help. If we're getting frustrated with an unresponsive application, perhaps we could let it know of our increasing irritation by means of an "I'm getting angry and exasperated" slider. Although, by 'responding appropriately', I don't include playing a "we are experiencing unusually heavy traffic: your application usage is important to us" message, accompanied by calming muzak. When confronted with a tide of wizards, 'are you sure?' messages, or page-after-page of tiresome and barely-relevant options, how one yearns for a handy 'JFDI' (Just Flaming Do It) button. One click and the application miraculously desists with its annoying questions and just gets on with the job, using the defaults, or whatever we selected last time. Much more satisfying, and more direct to most developers and DBAs, however, would be the facility to communicate to the application via a twitter-style input field, or via parameters to command-line applications ("I don't want a wide-ranging debate with you; just open the bl**dy PDF!" or, or "Don't forget which of us has the close button"). Although to avoid too much cultural-dependence, perhaps we should take the lead from emoticons, and use a set of standardized emoti-phrases such as 'sez you', 'huh?', 'Pshaw!', or 'meh', which could be used to vent a range of feelings in any given application, whether it be SQL Server stubbornly refusing to give us the result we are expecting, or when an online-survey is getting too personal. Or a 'Lingua Glaswegia' perhaps: 'Atsabelter' ("very good") 'Atspish' ("must try harder") 'AnThenYerArsFellAff ' ("I don't quite trust these results") 'BileYerHeid' or 'ShutYerGub' ("please stop these inane questions") There would, of course, have to be an ANSI standards body to define the phrases that were acceptable. Presumably, there would be a tussle amongst the different international standards organizations. Meanwhile Oracle, Microsoft and Apple would each release non-standard extensions. Time then, surely, to plant emoti-phrases on the lot of them and develop a user-driven consensus. Send us your suggestions! The best one will win an iPod nano! Cheers! Tony.

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• On Writing Blogs

  - by Tony Davis

  Why are so many blogs about IT so difficult to read? Over at SQLServerCentral.com, we do a special subscription-only newsletter called Database Weekly. Every other week, it is my turn to look through all the blogs, news and events that might be of relevance to people working with databases. We provide the title, with the link, and a short abstract of what you can expect to read. It is a popular service with close to a million subscribers. You might think that this is a happy and fascinating task. Sometimes, yes. If a blog comes to the point quickly, and says something both interesting and original, then it has our immediate attention. If it backs up what it says with supporting material, then it is more-or-less home and dry, featured in DBW's list. If it also takes trouble over the formatting and presentation, maybe with an illustration or two and any code well-formatted, then we are agog with joy and it is marked as a must-visit destination in our blog roll. More often, however, a task that should be fun becomes a routine chore, and the effort of trawling so many badly-written blogs is enough to make any conscientious Health & Safety officer whistle through their teeth at the risk to the editor's spiritual and psychological well-being. And yet, frustratingly, most blogs could be improved very easily. There is, I believe, a simple formula for a successful blog. First, choose a single topic that is reasonably fresh and interesting. Second, get to the point quickly; explain in the first paragraph exactly what the blog is about, and then stay on topic. In writing the first paragraph, you must picture yourself as a pilot, hearing the smooth roar of the engines as your plane gracefully takes air. Too often, however, the accompanying sound is that of the engine stuttering before the plane veers off the runway into a field, and a wheel falls off. The author meanders around the topic without getting to the point, and takes frequent off-radar diversions to talk about themselves, or the weather, or which friends have recently tagged them. This might work if you're J.D Salinger, or James Joyce, but it doesn't help a technical blog. Sometimes, the writing is so convoluted that we are entirely defeated in our quest to shoehorn its meaning into a simple summary sentence. Finally, write simply, in plain English, and in a conversational way such that you can read it out loud, and sound natural. That's it! If you could also avoid any references to The Matrix then this is a bonus but is purely personal preference. Cheers, Tony.

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• A Plea for Plain English

  - by Tony Davis

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

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• Fair Comments

  - by Tony Davis

  To what extent is good code self-documenting? In one of the most entertaining sessions I saw at the recent PASS summit, Jeremiah Peschka (blog | twitter) got a laugh out of a sleepy post-lunch audience with the following remark: "Some developers say good code is self-documenting; I say, get off my team" I silently applauded the sentiment. It's not that all comments are useful, but that I mistrust the basic premise that "my code is so clearly written, it doesn't need any comments". I've read many pieces describing the road to self-documenting code, and my problem with most of them is that they feed the myth that comments in code are a sign of weakness. They aren't; in fact, used correctly I'd say they are essential. Regardless of how far intelligent naming can get you in describing what the code does, or how well any accompanying unit tests can explain to your fellow developers why it works that way, it's no excuse not to document fully the public interfaces to your code. Maybe I just mixed with the wrong crowd while learning my favorite language, but when I open a stored procedure I lose the will even to read it unless I see a big Phil Factor- or Jeff Moden-style header summarizing in plain English what the code does, how it fits in to the broader application, and a usage example. This public interface describes the high-level process and should explain the role of the code, clearly, for fellow developers, language non-experts, and even any non-technical stake holders in the project. When you step into the body of the code, the low-level details, then I agree that the rules are somewhat different; especially when code is subject to frequent refactoring that can quickly render comments redundant or misleading. At their worst, here, inline comments are sticking plaster to cover up the scars caused by poor naming conventions, failure in clarity when mapping a complex domain into code, or just by not entirely understanding the problem (/ this is the clever part). If you design and refactor your code carefully so that it is as simple as possible, your functions do one thing only, you avoid having two completely different algorithms in the same piece of code, and your functions, classes and variables are intelligently named, then, yes, the need for inline comments should be minimal. And yet, even given this, I'd still argue that many languages (T-SQL certainly being one) just don't lend themselves to readability when performing even moderately-complex tasks. If the algorithm is complex, I still like to see the occasional helpful comment. Please, therefore, be as liberal as you see fit in the detail of the comments you apply to this editorial, for like code it is bound to increase its' clarity and usefulness. Cheers, Tony.

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• Music before bells and whistles

  - by Tony Davis

  Why is it that Windows has so much difficulty in finding content on its file system? This is not an insurmountable technical problem; on my laptop, I have a database within which I can instantly find text or names within millions of records, within 300 milliseconds. I have a copy of Google Desktop that can find phrases within emails or documents, almost as quickly. It is an important, though mundane, part of an operating system to be able to find files. The first thing I notice within Windows is that the facility to find files or text within files is called 'search' rather than 'find'. Hmm. This doesn’t bode well. What’s this? It does a brute-force search for file names? Here we are in an age when we can breed mice that glow in the dark, and manufacture computers that fit in our shirt pockets, and we find an operating system that is still entirely innocent of managing and indexing content in hierarchical data. I can actually read the files of my PC into a database, mimic the directory/folder hierarchies and then find files in a flash; but when I do the same with Windows Vista, we are suddenly back in a 1960s time warp. Finding files based on their name is bad enough, but finding files based on the content that they contain is more or less asking for an opportunity to wait 20 minutes in order to see a "file not found" message. Sadly, with Windows 7, Microsoft seems to have fallen into the familiar trap of adding bells and whistles before finishing the song. It's certainly true that Microsoft has added new features and a certain polish to Windows Search 4.0, the latest incarnation. It works more like a web search and offers a new search syntax, called Advanced Query Syntax, which allows you to search on file author, file size, date ranges (e.g. date:=7/4/09still does not work reliably. I've experienced first-hand its stubborn refusal, despite a full index, to acknowledge the existence of a file I know exists, based on a search for a specific term within that file that I know is in there somewhere; a file that Google Desktop search, or old wingrep, finds in seconds. When users hark back to the halcyon days of Windows XP search, you know something is seriously amiss. Shouldn't applications get the functionality right before applying animated menus and Teletubby graphics, or is advancing age making me grumpy? I’d be pleased to hear your views, as always. Cheers, Tony.

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• Eggnog and Oracle’s StorageTek SL150 Updates

  - by Kristin Rose

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Looks like the holiday’s came early this year! You may remember this snazzy blog that posted a couple months back,  “Keepin’ It Simple with Storage Tek SL150”, that was based on the benefits around Oracle’s StorageTek SL150. Well, in addition to these great benefits, OPN is pleased to provide you with a complete StorageTek SL150 winter wish list that is about to come true! 1. SL150 is the only product in the Oracle portfolio, for which OPN Members can become authorized to create and provide support.  2. OPN Members can qualify for the OPN Incentive Program Rebates, without Oracle Support Attach, (provided all other criteria is met). The requirement of Premier Support Attach has been exempted for this product. 3. OPN Members who become authorized under this model will be eligible for an additional discount on parts.  4. As always Oracle’s StorageTek SL150 is Simple, Scalable and will help you Save! To add just a bit more cheer to your cup of hot coco, watch this video on why Oracle’s StorageTek SL150 Tape Library is for you! So if you haven’t done so already, contact your Oracle Channel Sales representative — let them know if you’ve been nice this year, and tell them you want to learn more! Cheers! The OPN Communications Team

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• JSR 360 and JSR 361: A Big Leap for Java ME 8

  - by terrencebarr

  It might have gone unnoticed to some, but Java ME took a big leap forward a couple of weeks ago with the filing of two new JSRs: JSR 360: “Connected Limited Device Configuration 8″ (aka CLDC 8) JSR 361: “Java ME Embedded Profile” (aka ME EP) Together, these two JSRs will significantly update, enhance, and modernize the Java ME platform, and specifically small embedded Java, with a host of new features and functionality. JSR 360 – Connected Limited Device Configuration 8 CLDC 8 is based on JSR 139 (CLDC 1.1) and updates the core Java ME VM, language support, libraries, and features to be aligned with Java SE 8. This will include: VM updated to comply with the JVM language specification version 2 Support for SE 7/8 language features like Generics, Assertions, Annotations, Try-with-Resources, and more New libraries such as Collections, NIO subset, Logging API subset A consolidated and enhanced Generic Connection Framework for multi-protocol I/O With CLDC 8, Java ME and Java SE are entering their next phase of alignment – making Java the only technology today that truly scales application development, code re-use, and tooling across the whole range of IT platforms, from small embedded to large enterprise. JSR 361 – Java ME Embedded Profile ME EP is based on JSR 228 (IMP-NG) and updates the specification in key areas to provide a powerful and flexible application environment for small embedded Java platforms, building on the features of CLDC 8:  A new, lightweight component and services model Shared libraries Multi-application concurrency, inter-application communication, and event system Application management API optionality, to address low-footprint use cases With ME EP, application developers will have a modern application environment which allows development and deployment of  modular, robust, sophisticated, and footprint-optimized solutions for a wide range of embedded use cases and devices. Summary While these JSRs are still under development, it’s clear that there are exciting new times ahead for Java ME – turning into a serious application platform while maintaining the focus on resource-constrained devices to address the expected explosion of small, smart, and connected embedded platforms. To learn more, click on the above links for JSR 360 and JSR 361. Or review the JavaOne 2012 online presentations on the topic: CON11300: Expanding the reach of the Java ME Platform CON5943: Java ME 8 Service Platform And stay tuned for more in this space! Cheers, – Terrence Filed under: Mobile & Embedded Tagged: "jsr 360", "jsr 361", "me 8", embedded, Embedded Java, JCP

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• JSR 360 and JSR 361: A Big Leap for Java ME 8

  - by terrencebarr

  It might have gone unnoticed to some, but Java ME took a big leap forward a couple of weeks ago with the filing of two new JSRs: JSR 360: “Connected Limited Device Configuration 8″ (aka CLDC 8) JSR 361: “Java ME Embedded Profile” (aka ME EP) Together, these two JSRs will significantly update, enhance, and modernize the Java ME platform, and specifically small embedded Java, with a host of new features and functionality. JSR 360 – Connected Limited Device Configuration 8 CLDC 8 is based on JSR 139 (CLDC 1.1) and updates the core Java ME VM, language support, libraries, and features to be aligned with Java SE 8. This will include: VM updated to comply with the JVM language specification version 2 Support for SE 7/8 language features like Generics, Assertions, Annotations, Try-with-Resources, and more New libraries such as Collections, NIO subset, Logging API subset A consolidated and enhanced Generic Connection Framework for multi-protocol I/O With CLDC 8, Java ME and Java SE are entering their next phase of alignment – making Java the only technology today that truly scales application development, code re-use, and tooling across the whole range of IT platforms, from small embedded to large enterprise. JSR 361 – Java ME Embedded Profile ME EP is based on JSR 228 (IMP-NG) and updates the specification in key areas to provide a powerful and flexible application environment for small embedded Java platforms, building on the features of CLDC 8:  A new, lightweight component and services model Shared libraries Multi-application concurrency, inter-application communication, and event system Application management API optionality, to address low-footprint use cases With ME EP, application developers will have a modern application environment which allows development and deployment of  modular, robust, sophisticated, and footprint-optimized solutions for a wide range of embedded use cases and devices. Summary While these JSRs are still under development, it’s clear that there are exciting new times ahead for Java ME – turning into a serious application platform while maintaining the focus on resource-constrained devices to address the expected explosion of small, smart, and connected embedded platforms. To learn more, click on the above links for JSR 360 and JSR 361. Or review the JavaOne 2012 online presentations on the topic: CON11300: Expanding the reach of the Java ME Platform CON5943: Java ME 8 Service Platform And stay tuned for more in this space! Cheers, – Terrence Filed under: Mobile & Embedded Tagged: "jsr 360", "jsr 361", "me 8", embedded, Embedded Java, JCP

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• Going Metro

  - by Tony Davis

  When it was announced, I confess was somewhat surprised by the striking new "Metro" User Interface for Windows 8, based on Swiss typography, Bauhaus design, tiles, touches and gestures, and the new Windows Runtime (WinRT) API on which Metro apps were to be built. It all seemed to have come out of nowhere, like field mushrooms in the night and seemed quite out-of-character for a company like Microsoft, which has hung on determinedly for over twenty years to its quaint Windowing system. Many were initially puzzled by the lack of support for plug-ins in the "Metro" version of IE10, which ships with Win8, and the apparent demise of Silverlight, Microsoft's previous 'radical new framework'. Win8 signals the end of the road for Silverlight apps in the browser, but then its importance here has been waning for some time, anyway, now that HTML5 has usurped its most compelling use case, streaming video. As Shawn Wildermuth and others have noted, if you're doing enterprise, desktop development with Silverlight then nothing much changes immediately, though it seems clear that ultimately Silverlight will die off in favor of a single WPF/XAML framework that supports those technologies that were pioneered on the phones and tablets. There is a mystery here. Is Silverlight dead, or merely repurposed? The more you look at Metro, the more it seems to resemble Silverlight. A lot of the philosophies underpinning Silverlight applications, such as the fundamentally asynchronous nature of the design, have moved wholesale into Metro, along with most the Microsoft Silverlight dev team. As Simon Cooper points out, "Silverlight developers, already used to all the principles of sandboxing and separation, will have a much easier time writing Metro apps than desktop developers". Metro certainly has given the framework formerly known as Silverlight a new purpose. It has enabled Microsoft to bestow on Windows 8 a new "duality", as both a traditional desktop OS supporting 'legacy' Windows applications, and an OS that supports a new breed of application that can share functionality such as search, that understands, and can react to, the full range of gestures and screen-sizes, and has location-awareness. It's clear that Win8 is developed in the knowledge that the 'desktop computer' will soon be a very large, tilted, touch-screen monitor. Windows owes its new-found versatility to the lessons learned from Windows Phone, but it's developed for the big screen, and with full support for familiar .NET desktop apps as well as the new Metro apps. But the old mouse-driven Windows applications will soon look very passé, just as MSDOS character-mode applications did in the nineties. Cheers, Tony.

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• When done is not done

  - by Tony Davis

  Most developers and DBAs will know what it’s like to be asked to do "a quick tidy up" on a project that, on closer inspection, turns out to be a barely working prototype: as the cynical programmer says, "when you’re told that a project is 90% done, prepare for the next 90%". It is easy to convince a layperson that an application is complete just by using test data, and sticking to the workflow that the development team has implemented and tested. The application is ‘done’ only in the sense that the anticipated paths through the software features, using known data, are fully supported. Reality often strikes only when testers reveal its strange and erratic behavior in response to behavior from the end user that strays from the "ideal". The problem is this: how do we measure progress, accurately and objectively? Development methods such as Scrum or Kanban, when implemented rigorously, can mitigate these problems for developers, to some extent. They force a team to progress one small, but complete feature at a time, to find out how long it really takes for this feature to be "done done"; in other words done to the point where its performance and scalability is understood, it is tested for all conceivable edge cases and doesn’t break…it is ready for prime time. At that point, the team has a much more realistic idea of how long it will take them to really complete all the remaining features, and so how far away the end is. However, it is when software crosses team boundaries that we feel the limitations of such techniques. No matter how well drilled the development team is, problems will still arise if they don’t deploy frequently to a production environment. If they work feverishly for months on end before finally tossing the finished piece of software over the fence for the DBA to deploy to the "real world" then once again will dawn the realization that "done done" is still out of reach, as the DBA uncovers poorly code transactions, un-scalable queries, inefficient caching, and so on. By deploying regularly, end users will also have a much earlier opportunity to tell you how far what you implemented strayed from what they wanted. If you have a tale to tell, anonymized of course, of a "quick polish" project that turned out to be anything but, and what the major problems were, please do share it. Cheers, Tony.

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• IT Admin for Thrill Seekers

  - by Tony Davis

  A developer suggested to me recently that the life of the DBA was, surely, a dull one. My first reaction was indignation, but quickly followed by the thought that for many people excitement isn't necessarily the most desirable aspect of their job. It's true that some aspects of the DBA role seem guaranteed to quieten the pulse; in the days of tape backups, time must have slowed to eternity for the person whose job it was to oversee this process, placing tapes into secure containers, ensuring correct labeling, and.sorry, I drifted off there for a second. On the other hand, if you follow the adventures of the likes of Brent Ozar or Tom LaRock, you'd be forgiven for thinking that much of a database guy's time is spent, metaphorically, diving through plate glass windows in tight fitting underwear in order to extract grateful occupants from burning database applications. Alas it isn't true of the majority, but it isn't as dull as some people imagine, and is a helter-skelter ride compared with some other IT roles. Every IT department has people who toil away in shadowy corners doing quiet but mysterious tasks. When you ask them to explain what they do, you almost immediately want them to stop, but you hear enough to appreciate that these tasks are often absolutely vital to the smooth functioning of an IT organization. Compared with them, the DBAs are prima donnas. Here are a few nominations: Installation engineer - install all of the company's laptops and workstations, and software, deal with licensing, shipping and data entry.many organizations, especially those subject to tight regulation, would simply grind to a halt without their efforts. Localization engineer - Not quite software engineering, not quite translation, the job is to rebuild a product in a different language and make sure everything still works. QA Tester - firstly, I should say that the testers at Red Gate seem to me some of the most-fulfilled in the company. I refer here to the QA Tester whose job is more-or-less entirely to read a script, click some buttons and make sure the actual and expected values match. Configuration manager - for example, someone whose main job is to configure build environments so that devs can access their source code; assuredly necessary for the smooth functioning and productivity of the team, and hopefully well-paid. So what other sort of job in IT should one choose if the work of a DBA proves to be too exciting? Or are these roles secretly more exciting than many imagine? I invite you all to put forward your own suggestions. Cheers, Tony.

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• Download Internet Explorer 9 RTM

  - by Harish Ranganathan

  The much anticipated RTM release of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) happened today.  IE9 preview release was first showcased at MIX 2010 and post that there were 7-8 Platform Preview releases.  Also, IE9 Beta came out in September 2010 with close to 10 million downloads within a month.  More recently, the RC version was out with much improved performance.  Today, marks the launch of IE9 RTM.  What this means is that, within an year, the IE Team has shipped the stable product, much faster than the earlier cycles for IE8 and IE7.  I wanted to clarify a few things (myths) that arise in common 1. I am already using Chrome and its faster for me, why would I need IE9 IE9 uses 100% hardware acceleration which means, you are going to get the best of performance compared to any other browser that shipped/will ship in future.  With native Windows support, IE9 will outperform all other browsers in terms of performance. 2. What about standards and security Agreed IE6 hasn’t been in the best of standards, but why would someone compare IE6 which was released almost 10 years back.  Later, we shipped IE7 and IE8 which had the best of standards and supports during their timeframes, but one would agree that standards and specifications keep getting updated and its hard to keep pace with the same for older browsers.  Example. HTML5 support is not there in IE8 but it is very much there in IE9.  IE9 supports most of the stable standards of HTML5 and its going to provide preview releases for the work-in-progress standards. 3. IE doesn’t keep in pace with other browsers Agreed! we don’t force/release updates on major versions in very short time periods.  What we do is provide Windows Update that provides security updates/patches and other critical updates for not just IE but the whole of Windows operating system 4. I am running Windows XP, what do I do? This is the trickiest part.  Windows XP isn’t the supported operating system for IE9 and there are various reasons to it.  The recommended operating system is Windows Vista and Windows 7.  In the interest of technology and its pace, we had to discontinue Windows XP both from a retail selling perspective as well as IE9 support.  But, the recent 2 years has seen PCs/Laptops only shipped with Windows Vista or Windows 7 so, it shouldn't affect them. 5. Where do I verify IE9’s performance/standard support and other information. http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/ietestcenter/  Here below is a snapshot of one of the tests. Clearly IE9 outperforms all other browsers and will continue to outperform them in future.  You can download IE9 from www.beautyoftheweb.com Cheers!!!

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• Visual Studio 2010 RC &ndash; Silverlight 4 and WCF RIA Services Development - Updates from MIX Anno

  - by Harish Ranganathan

  MIX is happening and there is a lot of excitement around the various releases such as the Windows Phone 7 Developer Preview, IE9 Platform Preview and few other announcements that have been made.  Clearly, the Windows Phone 7 Developer Preview has generated the maximum interest and opened a plethora of opportunities for .NET Developers.  It also takes the mobile development to a new generation and doesn’t force developers to learn different programming language. Along with this, few other releases have been out.  The most anticipated Silverlight 4 RC is out and its corresponding templates are also out there for you to download.  Once VS 2010 RC was released, it was much of a disappointment that it doesn’t support SL4 development as well as the SL4 Business Application Development (a.k.a. WCF RIA Services).   There were few workarounds though nothing concrete.  Earlier I had written about how the WCF RIA Services Preview does work with ASP.NET Development using VS 2010 RC. However, with the release of SL4 RC and the corresponding tooling updates, one can develop for both SL4 as well as SL4 + WCF RIA Services using VS 2010 RC.  This is kind of important and keeps the continuum going until VS 2010 RTMs.  So, the purpose of this post is to quickly give the updates and links to install the relevant tools. Silverlight 4 RC Runtime Windows Runtime or the Mac Runtime Silverlight 4 RC Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2010 RC Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 (this would install the Runtime as well automatically) Expression Blend 4 Beta Expression Blend 4 Beta If you install the SL4 RC Developer Tools, it also installs the WCF RIA Services Preview automatically.  You just need to install the WCF RIA Services Toolkit that can be downloaded from Install the WCF RIA Services Toolkit Of course you can also just install the WCF RIA Services for VS 2010 RC separately (without SL4 Tools) from here Kindly note, all the above mentioned links are with respect to Visual Studio 2010 RC edition.  If you are developing with VS 2008, then you can just target SL3 (as I write this, there seems to be no official support for developing SL4 with VS 2008) and the related tools can be downloaded from http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/ Basically you need to download SL 3 Runtime, SDK, Expression Blend 3 and the Silverlight Toolkit.  All the links for the download are available in the above mentioned page. Also, a version of WCF RIA Services that is supported in VS 2008 is available for download at WCF RIA Services Beta for VS 2008 I know there are far too many things to keep in mind.  So, I put a flowchart that could help with depicting it pictorial.  Note that this is just my own imagination and doesn’t cover all scenarios.  for example, if you are neither developing for Webform, Silverlight, you end up nowhere whereas in actual scenario you may want to develop Desktop, Services, Console, Game and what not.  So, keep in mind this is just Web. Cheers !!!

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• Making the WPeFfort

  - by Laila

  Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 will be launched on April 12th. The basic layout looks pretty much as it did, so it is not immediately obvious on first inspection that it was completely rewritten in the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). The current VS 2008 codebase had reached the end of its life; It was getting slow to initialize and sluggish to run, and was never going to allow for multi-monitor support or easier extensibility. It can't have been an easy decision to rewrite Visual Studio, but the gamble seems to have paid off. Although certain bugs in the betas caused some anxiety about performance, these seem to have been fixed, and the new Visual Studio is definitely faster. In rewriting the codebase, it has been possible to make obvious improvements, such as being able to run different windows on different monitors, and you only being presented with the Toolbox controls and References that are appropriate to your target .NET version. There is also an IntelliTrace debugger, and Intellisense has been improved by virtue of separating a 'Suggestion Mode' and 'Completion Mode' (with its 'Generate From.' 'Highlight References.', and 'Navigate to...' features). At the same time, there has been quite a clearout; Certain features that had been tucked away in the previous versions, such as Brief or Emacs emulation support, have been dropped. (Yes, they were being used!) There are a lot of features that didn't require the rewrite, but are welcome. It is now easier to develop WPF applications (e.g. drag-and-drop Databinding), and there is support for Azure. There are more, and better templates and the design tools are greatly improved (e.g. Expression Web, Expression Blend, WPF Sketchflow, Silverlight designer, Document Map Margin and Inline Call Hierarchy). Sharepoint is better supported, and Office apps will benefit from C#'s support of optional and named arguments, and allowing several Office Solutions within a Deployment package. Most importantly, it is a vote of confidence in the WPF. VS 2010 is the essential missing component that has been impeding the faster adoption of WPF. The fact that it is actually now written in WPF should now reassure the doubters, and convince more developers to make the move from WinForms to WPF. In using WPF, the developers of Visual Studio have had the clout to fix some issues which have been bothering WPF developers for some time (such as blurred text). Do you see a brighter future as a result of transferring from WinForms to WPF? I'd love to know what you think. Cheers, Laila

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• Newbie worried about CASE tool.

  - by Jason Evans

  Hi there. I'm looking for some guidance on CASE tools and whether my concerns are valid. Recently I was in a meeting between my employer and an external software company which have a CASE tool currently in beta. They demonstrated this tool to us, showing how you build a UML model in Enterprise Architect (or something like it) and then, through their tool, that UML model is transformed into a Visual Studio project, with C# files, stored procedures for SQL Server, code for the data layer, WCF stuff, logging code and allsorts. Now, admittedly, I don't see the point in this, as in I'm not convinced it will save that much time (plus it feels like overkill). The tool authors said that a trial of the tool at another company had saved a team there 5 weeks of development time (from 6 weeks down to about 1 week) using this tool. I find the accuracy of that estimate hard to believe. My main concern is whether using this tool is going slow down my productivity. For example - Say I have a UML model which I built a VS solution from. Now, I want to rename a class method to something else; will this mean having to update the UML model first and then rebuilding the code? Is this how case tools normally work? Something I will need to check with the authors is the structure of the generated VS solution. I like the Domain Driven Design way of project structure - Infrstructure, Services, Model, etc. I doubt very much this tool will do that. Also, I've been playing around with Entity Framework Code First and think it's a great way to build the data model. I have nice repositories, unit of work classes and other design patterns that work well with EF. I have data anootations and stuff like that working great. By not having EF (the CASE tool uses it's own data layer code) I'm concerned that this tool's data layer code might not be a nice to integrate in the UoW pattern, repositories, etc. This I will need to verify when I get a closer look at the generated code. What are other people's experiences with CASE tools? Am I being paranoid about nothing? Am I being unfair - are my negativities unfounded? EDIT: I like to use TDD/BDD for building my code, and using a CASE tool looks like it will make this difficult. Again, any feedback on this would be great. Cheers. Jas.

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• Excel tables creation upon MySQL data import (new feature in MySQL for Excel 1.2.x)

  - by Javier Treviño

  In this blog post we are going to talk about one of the features included since MySQL for Excel 1.2.0, you can install the latest GA or maintenance version using the MySQL Installer or optionally you can download directly any GA or non-GA version from the MySQL Developer Zone. Remember how easy is to dump data from a MySQL table, view or stored procedure to an Excel worksheet? (If you don't you can check out this other post: How To - Guide to Importing Data from a MySQL Database to Excel using MySQL for Excel). In version 1.2.0 we introduced some advanced options for the Import MySQL Data operation regarding Excel tables. The Advanced Options dialog shown above is accessible from any Import Data dialog. When the Create an Excel table for the imported MySQL table data option is checked (which is by default), MySQL for Excel will create an Excel table (also known in Excel jargon as a ListObject) from the Excel range containing the imported MySQL data. This "little feature" enables the right-away usage of the Excel table in data analysis, like including it for summarization on a PivotTable, including a summarization row at the end of the table's data, sorting or filtering the table's data by clicking the drop-down button next to each column's header, among other actions. The Excel tables that are created automatically from imported MySQL data will have a name like [UserPrefix].<SchemaName>.<DbObjectName> for tables and views, and <Prefix>.<SchemaName>.<ProcedureName>.<ResultSetName> for stored procedures.  Notice the first piece of the name is an optional [UserPrefix], the prefix is only used if the Prefix Excel tables with the following text option is checked, notice that the suggested prefix is "MySQL" but it can be changed to whatever text is suitable for you. Excel tables must have a table style so they are easily identified. There are a lot of predefined Excel table styles, by default the MySqlDefault style is applied, which is the style you have seen applied to imported data for Edit Sessions, and which adds simple and elegant formatting to the table. If you wish to change it to any of the predefined Excel table style you can do it through the drop-down list on the Use style [[styles drop-down]] for the new Excel table option. Excel tables are the basic construction blocks for building data analysis or self-service Business Intelligence using other more advanced Excel tools like Power Pivot, Power View or Power Map. This feature empowers imported MySQL data to use it in more advanced ways.  We hope you give this and the other new features in the 1.2.x version family a try! Remember that your feedback is very important for us, so drop us a message and follow us: MySQL on Windows (this) Blog: https://blogs.oracle.com/MySqlOnWindows/ MySQL for Excel forum: http://forums.mysql.com/list.php?172 Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mysql YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/MySQLChannel Cheers!

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• The Politics of Junk Filtering

  - by mikef

  If the national postal service, such as the Royal Mail in the UK, were to go through your letters and throw away all the stuff it considered to be junk instead of delivering it to you, you might be rather pleased until you discovered that it took a too liberal decision about what was junk. Catalogs you'd asked for? Junk! Requests from charities? Who needs them! Parcels from competing carriers? Toss them away! The possibility for abuse for an agency that was in a monopolistic position is just too scary to tolerate. After all, the postal service could charge 'consultancy fees' to any sender who wanted to guarantee that his stuff got delivered, or they could even farm this out to other companies. Because Microsoft Outlook is just about the only email client used by the international business community in the west, its' SPAM filter is the final arbiter as to what gets read. My Outlook 2007, set to the default settings, junks all the perfectly innocent email newsletters that I subscribe to. Whereas Google Mail, Yahoo, and LIVE are all pretty accurate in detecting spam, Outlook makes all sorts of silly mistakes. The documentation speaks techno-babble about 'advanced heuristics', but the result boils down to an inaccurate mess. The more that Microsoft fiddles with it, the stickier the mess. To make matters worse, it still lets through obvious spam. The filter is occasionally updated along with other automatic 'security' updates you opt for automatic updates. As an editor for a popular online publication that provides a newsletter service, this is an obvious source of frustration. We follow all the best-practices we know about. We ensure that it is a trivial task to opt out of receiving it. We format the newsletter to the requirements of the Service Providers. We follow up, and resolve, every complaint. As a result, it gets delivered. It is galling to discover that, after all that effort, Outlook then often judges the contents to be junk on a whim, so you don't get to see it. A few days ago, Microsoft published the PST file format specification, under pressure from a European Union interoperability investigation by ECIS (the European Committee for Interoperable Systems). The objective was that other applications could then access existing PST files so as to migrate from existing Outlook installations to other solutions. Joaquín Almunia, the current competition commissioner, should now turn his attention to the more subtle problems of Microsoft Outlook. The Junk problem seems to have come from clumsy implementation of client-side spam filtering rather than from deliberate exploitation of a monopoly on the desktop email client for businesses, but it is a growing problem nonetheless. Cheers, Michael Francis

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• Fixing the #mvvmlight code snippets in Visual Studio 11

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  If you installed the latest MVVM Light version for Windows 8, you may encounter an issue where code snippets are not displayed correctly in the Intellisense popup. I am working on a fix, but for now here is how you can solve the issue manually. The code snippets MVVM Light, when installed correctly, will install a set of code snippets that are very useful to allow you to type less code. As I use to say, code is where bugs are, so you want to type as little of that as possible ;) With code snippets, you can easily auto-insert segments of code and easily replace the keywords where needed. For instance, every coder who uses MVVM as his favorite UI pattern for XAML based development is used to the INotifyPropertyChanged implementation, and how boring it can be to type these “observable properties”. Obviously a good fix would be something like an “Observable” attribute, but that is not supported in the language or the framework for the moment. Another fix involves “IL weaving”, which is a post-build operation modifying the generate IL code and inserting the “RaisePropertyChanged” instruction. I admire the invention of those who developed that, but it feels a bit too much like magic to me. I prefer more “down to earth” solutions, and thus I use the code snippets. Fixing the issue Normally, you should see the code snippets in Intellisense when you position your cursor in a C# file and type mvvm. All MVVM Light snippets start with these 4 letters. Normal MVVM Light code snippets However, in Windows 8 CP, there is an issue that prevents them to appear correctly, so you won’t see them in the Intellisense windows. To restore that, follow the steps: In Visual Studio 11, open the menu Tools, Code Snippets Manager. In the combobox, select Visual C#. Press Add… Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft)\Mvvm Light Toolkit\SnippetsWin8 and select the CSharp folder. Press Select Folder. Press OK to close the Code Snippets Manager. Now if you type mvvm in a C# file, you should see the snippets in your Intellisense window. Cheers Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Back-sliding into Unmanaged Code

  - by Laila

  It is difficult to write about Microsoft's ambivalence to .NET without mentioning clichés about dog food.  In case you've been away a long time, you'll remember that Microsoft surprised everyone with the speed and energy with which it introduced and evangelised the .NET Framework for managed code. There was good reason for this. Once it became obvious to all that it had sleepwalked into third place as a provider of development languages, behind Borland and Sun, it reacted quickly to attract the best talent in the industry to produce a windows version of the Java runtime, with Bounds-checking, Automatic Garbage collection, structures exception handling and common data types. To develop applications for this managed runtime, it produced several excellent languages, and more are being provided. The only thing Microsoft ever got wrong was to give it a stupid name. The logical step for Microsoft would be to base the entire operating system on the .NET framework, and to re-engineer its own applications. In 2002, Bill Gates, then Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect said about their plans for .NET, "This is a long-term approach. These things don't happen overnight." Now, eight years later, we're still waiting for signs of the 'long-term approach'. Microsoft's vision of an entirely managed operating system has subsided since the Vista fiasco, but stays alive yet dormant as Midori, still being developed by Microsoft Research. This is an Internet-centric fork of the singularity operating system, a research project started in 2003 to build a highly-dependable operating system in which the kernel, device drivers, and applications are all written in managed code. Midori is predicated on the prevalence of connected systems, with provisions for distributed concurrency where application components exist 'in the cloud', and supports a programming model that can tolerate cancellation, intermittent connectivity and latency. It features an entirely new security model that sandboxes applications for increased security. So have Microsoft converted its existing applications to the .NET framework? It seems not. What Windows applications can run on Mono? Very few, it seems. We all thought that .NET spelt the end of DLL Hell and the need for COM interop, but it looks as if Bill Gates' idea of 'not overnight' might stretch to a decade or more. The Operating System has shown only minimal signs of migrating to .NET. Even where the use of .NET has come to dominate, when used for server applications with IIS, IIS itself is still entirely developed in unmanaged code. This is an irritation to Microsoft's greatest supporters who committed themselves fully to the NET framework, only to find parts of the Ambivalent Microsoft Empire quietly backsliding into unmanaged code and the awful C++. It is a strategic mistake that the invigorated Apple didn't make with the Mac OS X Architecture. Cheers, Laila

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• New Wine in New Bottles

  - by Tony Davis

  How many people, when their car shows signs of wear and tear, would consider upgrading the engine and keeping the shell? Even if you're cash-strapped, you'll soon work out the subtlety of the economics, the cost of sudden breakdowns, the precious time lost coping with the hassle, and the low 'book value'. You'll generally buy a new car. The same philosophy should apply to database systems. Mainstream support for SQL Server 2005 ends on April 12; many DBAS, if they haven't done so already, will be considering the migration to SQL Server 2008 R2. Hopefully, that upgrade plan will include a fresh install of the operating system on brand new hardware. SQL Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are designed to work together. The improved architecture, processing power, and hyper-threading capabilities of modern processors will dramatically improve the performance of many SQL Server workloads, and allow consolidation opportunities. Of course, there will be many DBAs smiling ruefully at the suggestion of such indulgence. This is nothing like the real world, this halcyon place where hardware and software budgets are limitless, development and testing resources are plentiful, and third party vendors immediately certify their applications for the latest-and-greatest platform! As with cars, or any other technology, the justification for a complete upgrade is complex. With Servers, the extra cost at time of upgrade will generally pay you back in terms of the increased performance of your business applications, reduced maintenance costs, training costs and downtime. Also, if you plan and design carefully, it's possible to offset hardware costs with reduced SQL Server licence costs. In his forthcoming SQL Server Hardware book, Glenn Berry describes a recent case where he was able to replace 4 single-socket database servers with one two-socket server, saving about $90K in hardware costs and $350K in SQL Server license costs. Of course, there are exceptions. If you do have a stable, reliable, secure SQL Server 6.5 system that still admirably meets the needs of a specific business requirement, and has no security vulnerabilities, then by all means leave it alone. Why upgrade just for the sake of it? However, as soon as a system shows sign of being unfit for purpose, or is moving out of mainstream support, the ruthless DBA will make the strongest possible case for a belts-and-braces upgrade. We'd love to hear what you think. What does your typical upgrade path look like? What are the major obstacles? Cheers, Tony.

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