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• Log a user in to an ASP.net application using Windows Authentication without using Windows Authentic

  - by Rising Star

  I have an ASP.net application I'm developing authentication for. I am using an existing cookie-based log on system to log users in to the system. The application runs as an anonymous account and then checks the cookie when the user wants to do something restricted. This is working fine. However, there is one caveat: I've been told that for each page that connects to our SQL server, I need to make it so that the user connects using an Active Directory account. because the system I'm using is cookie based, the user isn't logged in to Active Directory. Therefore, I use impersonation to connect to the server as a specific account. However, the powers that be here don't like impersonation; they say that it clutters up the code. I agree, but I've found no way around this. It seems that the only way that a user can be logged in to an ASP.net application is by either connecting with Internet Explorer from a machine where the user is logged in with their Active Directory account or by typing an Active Directory username and password. Neither of these two are workable in my application. I think it would be nice if I could make it so that when a user logs in and receives the cookie (which actually comes from a separate log on application, by the way), there could be some code run which tells the application to perform all network operations as the user's Active Directory account, just as if they had typed an Active Directory username and password. It seems like this ought to be possible somehow, but the solution evades me. How can I make this work? Update To those who have responded so far, I apologize for the confusion I have caused. The responses I've received indicate that you've misunderstood the question, so please allow me to clarify. I have no control over the requirement that users must perform network operations (such as SQL queries) using Active Directory accounts. I've been told several times (online and in meat-space) that this is an unusual requirement and possibly bad practice. I also have no control over the requirement that users must log in using the existing cookie-based log on application. I understand that in an ideal MS ecosystem, I would simply dis-allow anonymous access in my IIS settings and users would log in using Windows Authentication. This is not the case. The current system is that as far as IIS is concerned, the user logs in anonymously (even though they supply credentials which result in the issuance of a cookie) and we must programmatically check the cookie to see if the user has access to any restricted resources. In times past, we have simply used a single SQL account to perform all queries. My direct supervisor (who has many years of experience with this sort of thing) wants to change this. He says that if each user has his own AD account to perform SQL queries, it gives us more of a trail to follow if someone tries to do something wrong. The closest thing I've managed to come up with is using WIF to give the user a claim to a specific Active Directory account, but I still have to use impersonation because even still, the ASP.net process presents anonymous credentials to the SQL server. It boils down to this: Can I log users in with Active Directory accounts in my ASP.net application without having the users manually enter their AD credentials? (Windows Authentication)

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• Slicing a time range into parts

  - by beporter

  First question. Be gentle. I'm working on software that tracks technicians' time spent working on tasks. The software needs to be enhanced to recognize different billable rate multipliers based on the day of the week and the time of day. (For example, "Time and a half after 5 PM on weekdays.") The tech using the software is only required to log the date, his start time and his stop time (in hours and minutes). The software is expected to break the time entry into parts at the boundaries of when the rate multipliers change. A single time entry is not permitted to span multiple days. Here is a partial sample of the rate table. The first-level array keys are the days of the week, obviously. The second-level array keys represent the time of the day when the new multiplier kicks in, and runs until the next sequential entry in the array. The array values are the multiplier for that time range. [rateTable] => Array ( [Monday] => Array ( [00:00:00] => 1.5 [08:00:00] => 1 [17:00:00] => 1.5 [23:59:59] => 1 ) [Tuesday] => Array ( [00:00:00] => 1.5 [08:00:00] => 1 [17:00:00] => 1.5 [23:59:59] => 1 ) ... ) In plain English, this represents a time-and-a-half rate from midnight to 8 am, regular rate from 8 to 5 pm, and time-and-a-half again from 5 till 11:59 pm. The time that these breaks occur may be arbitrary to the second and there can be an arbitrary number of them for each day. (This format is entirely negotiable, but my goal is to make it as easily human-readable as possible.) As an example: a time entry logged on Monday from 15:00:00 (3 PM) to 21:00:00 (9 PM) would consist of 2 hours billed at 1x and 4 hours billed at 1.5x. It is also possible for a single time entry to span multiple breaks. Using the example rateTable above, a time entry from 6 AM to 9 PM would have 3 sub-ranges from 6-8 AM @ 1.5x, 8AM-5PM @ 1x, and 5-9 PM @ 1.5x. By contrast, it's also possible that a time entry may only be from 08:15:00 to 08:30:00 and be entirely encompassed in the range of a single multiplier. I could really use some help coding up some PHP (or at least devising an algorithm) that can take a day of the week, a start time and a stop time and parse into into the required subparts. It would be ideal to have the output be an array that consists of multiple entries for a (start,stop,multiplier) triplet. For the above example, the output would be: [output] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [start] => 15:00:00 [stop] => 17:00:00 [multiplier] => 1 ) [1] => Array ( [start] => 17:00:00 [stop] => 21:00:00 [multiplier] => 1.5 ) ) I just plain can't wrap my head around the logic of splitting a single (start,stop) into (potentially) multiple subparts.

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• How do I launch a WPF app from command.com. I'm getting a FontCache error.

  - by jttraino

  I know this is not ideal, but my constraint is that I have a legacy application written in Clipper. I want to launch a new, WinForms/WPF application from inside the application (to ease transition). This legacy application written in Clipper launches using: SwpRunCmd("C:\MyApp\MyBat.bat",0) The batch file contains something like this command: C:\PROGRA~1\INTERN~1\iexplore "http://QASVR/MyApp/AppWin/MyCompany.MyApp.AppWin.application#MyCompany.MyApp.AppWin.application" It is launching a WinForms/WPF app that is we deploy via ClickOnce. Everything has been going well until we introduced WPF into the application. We were able to easily launch from the legacy application. Since we have introduced WPF, however, we have the following behavior. If we launch via the Clipper application first, we get an exception when launching the application. The error text is: The type initializer for 'System.Windows.FrameworkElement' threw an exception. at System.Windows.FrameworkElement..ctor() at System.Windows.Controls.Panel..ctor() at System.Windows.Controls.DockPanel..ctor() at System.Windows.Forms.Integration.AvalonAdapter..ctor(ElementHost hostControl) at System.Windows.Forms.Integration.ElementHost..ctor() at MyCompany.MyApp.AppWin.Main.InitializeComponent() at MyCompany.MyApp.AppWin.Main..ctor(String[] args) at MyCompany.MyApp.AppWin.Program.Main(String[] args) The type initializer for 'System.Windows.Documents.TextElement' threw an exception. at System.Windows.FrameworkElement..cctor() The type initializer for 'System.Windows.Media.FontFamily' threw an exception. at System.Windows.Media.FontFamily..ctor(String familyName) at System.Windows.SystemFonts.get_MessageFontFamily() at System.Windows.Documents.TextElement..cctor() The type initializer for 'MS.Internal.FontCache.Util' threw an exception. at MS.Internal.FontCache.Util.get_WindowsFontsUriObject() at System.Windows.Media.FontFamily.PreCreateDefaultFamilyCollection() at System.Windows.Media.FontFamily..cctor() Invalid URI: The format of the URI could not be determined. at System.Uri.CreateThis(String uri, Boolean dontEscape, UriKind uriKind) at System.Uri..ctor(String uriString, UriKind uriKind) at MS.Internal.FontCache.Util..cctor() If we launch the application via the URL (in IE) or via the icon on the desktop first, we do not get the exception and application launches as expected. The neat thing is that whatever we launch with first determines whether the app will launch at all. So, if we launch with legacy first, it breaks right away and we can't get the app to run even if we launch with the otherwise successful URL or icon. To get it to work, we have to logout and log back in and start it from the URL or icon. If we first use the URL or the icon, we have no problem launching from the legacy application from that point forward (until we logout and come back in). One other piece of information is that we are able to simulate the problem in the following fashion. If we enter a command prompt using "cmd.exe" and execute a statement to launch from a URL, we are successful. If, however, we enter a command prompt using "command.com" and we execute that same statement, we experience the breaking behavior. We assume it is because the legacy application in Clipper uses the equivalent of command.com to create the shell to spawn the other app. We have tried a bunch of hacks like having command.com run cmd.exe or psexec and then executing, but nothing seems to work. We have some ideas for workarounds (like making the app launch on startup so we force the successful launch from a URL, making all subsequent launches successful), but they all are sub-optimal even though we have a great deal of control over our workstations. To reduce the chance that this is related to permissions, we have given the launching account administrative rights (as well as non-administrative rights in case that made a difference). Any ideas would be greatly-appreciate. Like I said, we have some work arounds, but I would love to avoid them. Thanks!

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• How can I disable 'output escaping' in minidom

  - by William

  I'm trying to build an xml document from scratch using xml.dom.minidom. Everything was going well until I tried to make a text node with a ® (Registered Trademark) symbol in. My objective is for when I finally hit print mydoc.toxml() this particular node will actually contain a ® symbol. First I tried: import xml.dom.minidom as mdom data = '®' which gives the rather obvious error of: File "C:\src\python\HTMLGen\test2.py", line 3 SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xae' in file C:\src\python\HTMLGen\test2.py on line 3, but no encoding declared; see http://www.python.or g/peps/pep-0263.html for details I have of course also tried changing the encoding of my python script to 'utf-8' using the opening line comment method, but this didn't help. So I thought import xml.dom.minidom as mdom data = '&#174;' #Both accepted xml encodings for registered trademark data = '&reg;' text = mdom.Text() text.data = data print data print text.toxml() But because when I print text.toxml(), the ampersands are being escaped, I get this output: &reg; &amp;reg; My question is, does anybody know of a way that I can force the ampersands not to be escaped in the output, so that I can have my special character reference carry through to the XML document? Basically, for this node, I want print text.toxml() to produce output of &reg; or &#174; in a happy and cooperative way! EDIT 1: By the way, if minidom actually doesn't have this capacity, I am perfectly happy using another module that you can recommend which does. EDIT 2: As Hugh suggested, I tried using data = u'®' (while also using data # -*- coding: utf-8 -*- Python source tags). This almost helped in the sense that it actually caused the ® symbol itself to be outputted to my xml. This is actually not the result I am looking for. As you may have guessed by now (and perhaps I should have specified earlier) this xml document happens to be an HTML page, which needs to work in a browser. So having ® in the document ends up causing rubbish in the browser (® to be precise!). I also tried: data = unichr(174) text.data = data.encode('ascii','xmlcharrefreplace') print text.toxml() But of course this lead to the same origional problem where all that happens is the ampersand gets escaped by .toxml(). My ideal scenario would be some way of escaping the ampersand so that the XML printing function won't "escape" it on my behalf for the document (in other words, achieving my original goal of having &reg; or &#174; appear in the document). Seems like soon I'm going to have to resort to regular expressions! EDIT 2a: Or perhaps not. Seems like getting my html meta information correct <META http-equiv="Content-Type" Content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> could help, but I'm not sure yet how this fits in with the xml structure...

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• Where are the function address literals in c++?

  - by academicRobot

  First of all, maybe literals is not the right term for this concept, but its the closest I could think of (not literals in the sense of functions as first class citizens). <UPDATE> After some reading with help from answer by Chris Dodd, what I'm looking for is literal function addresses as template parameters. Chris' answer indicates how to do this for standard functions, but how can the addresses of member functions be used as template parameters? Since the standard prohibits non-static member function addresses as template parameters (c++03 14.3.2.3), I suspect the work around is quite complicated. Any ideas for a workaround? Below the original form of the question is left as is for context. </UPDATE> The idea is that when you make a conventional function call, it compiles to something like this: callq <immediate address> But if you make a function call using a function pointer, it compiles to something like this: mov <memory location>,%rax callq *%rax Which is all well and good. However, what if I'm writing a template library that requires a callback of some sort with a specified argument list and the user of the library is expected to know what function they want to call at compile time? Then I would like to write my template to accept a function literal as a template parameter. So, similar to template <int int_literal> struct my_template {...};` I'd like to write template <func_literal_t func_literal> struct my_template {...}; and have calls to func_literal within my_template compile to callq <immediate address>. Is there a facility in C++ for this, or a work around to achieve the same effect? If not, why not (e.g. some cataclysmic side effects)? How about C++0x or another language? Solutions that are not portable are fine. Solutions that include the use of member function pointers would be ideal. I'm not particularly interested in being told "You are a <socially unacceptable term for a person of low IQ>, just use function pointers/functors." This is a curiosity based question, and it seems that it might be useful in some (albeit limited) applications. It seems like this should be possible since function names are just placeholders for a (relative) memory address, so why not allow more liberal use (e.g. aliasing) of this placeholder. p.s. I use function pointers and functions objects all the the time and they are great. But this post got me thinking about the don't pay for what you don't use principle in relation to function calls, and it seems like forcing the use of function pointers or similar facility when the function is known at compile time is a violation of this principle, though a small one. Edit The intent of this question is not to implement delegates, rather to identify a pattern that will embed a conventional function call, (in immediate mode) directly into third party code, possibly a template.

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• (Ordered) Set Partitions in fixed-size Blocks

  - by Eugen

  Here is a function I would like to write but am unable to do so. Even if you don't / can't give a solution I would be grateful for tips. For example, I know that there is a correlation between the ordered represantions of the sum of an integer and ordered set partitions but that alone does not help me in finding the solution. So here is the description of the function I need: The Task Create an efficient* function List<int[]> createOrderedPartitions(int n_1, int n_2,..., int n_k) that returns a list of arrays of all set partions of the set {0,...,n_1+n_2+...+n_k-1} in number of arguments blocks of size (in this order) n_1,n_2,...,n_k (e.g. n_1=2, n_2=1, n_3=1 -> ({0,1},{3},{2}),...). Here is a usage example: int[] partition = createOrderedPartitions(2,1,1).get(0); partition[0]; // -> 0 partition[1]; // -> 1 partition[2]; // -> 3 partition[3]; // -> 2 Note that the number of elements in the list is (n_1+n_2+...+n_n choose n_1) * (n_2+n_3+...+n_n choose n_2) * ... * (n_k choose n_k). Also, createOrderedPartitions(1,1,1) would create the permutations of {0,1,2} and thus there would be 3! = 6 elements in the list. * by efficient I mean that you should not initially create a bigger list like all partitions and then filter out results. You should do it directly. Extra Requirements If an argument is 0 treat it as if it was not there, e.g. createOrderedPartitions(2,0,1,1) should yield the same result as createOrderedPartitions(2,1,1). But at least one argument must not be 0. Of course all arguments must be = 0. Remarks The provided pseudo code is quasi Java but the language of the solution doesn't matter. In fact, as long as the solution is fairly general and can be reproduced in other languages it is ideal. Actually, even better would be a return type of List<Tuple<Set>> (e.g. when creating such a function in Python). However, then the arguments wich have a value of 0 must not be ignored. createOrderedPartitions(2,0,2) would then create [({0,1},{},{2,3}),({0,2},{},{1,3}),({0,3},{},{1,2}),({1,2},{},{0,3}),...] Background I need this function to make my mastermind-variation bot more efficient and most of all the code more "beautiful". Take a look at the filterCandidates function in my source code. There are unnecessary / duplicate queries because I'm simply using permutations instead of specifically ordered partitions. Also, I'm just interested in how to write this function. My ideas for (ugly) "solutions" Create the powerset of {0,...,n_1+...+n_k}, filter out the subsets of size n_1, n_2 etc. and create the cartesian product of the n subsets. However this won't actually work because there would be duplicates, e.g. ({1,2},{1})... First choose n_1 of x = {0,...,n_1+n_2+...+n_n-1} and put them in the first set. Then choose n_2 of x without the n_1 chosen elements beforehand and so on. You then get for example ({0,2},{},{1,3},{4}). Of course, every possible combination must be created so ({0,4},{},{1,3},{2}), too, and so on. Seems rather hard to implement but might be possible. Research I guess this goes in the direction I want however I don't see how I can utilize it for my specific scenario. http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Combinations

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• Resolving a Forward Declaration Issue Involving a State Machine in C++

  - by hypersonicninja

  I've recently returned to C++ development after a hiatus, and have a question regarding implementation of the State Design Pattern. I'm using the vanilla pattern, exactly as per the GoF book. My problem is that the state machine itself is based on some hardware used as part of an embedded system - so the design is fixed and can't be changed. This results in a circular dependency between two of the states (in particular), and I'm trying to resolve this. Here's the simplified code (note that I tried to resolve this by using headers as usual but still had problems - I've omitted them in this code snippet): #include <iostream> #include <memory> using namespace std; class Context { public: friend class State; Context() { } private: State* m_state; }; class State { public: State() { } virtual void Trigger1() = 0; virtual void Trigger2() = 0; }; class LLT : public State { public: LLT() { } void Trigger1() { new DH(); } void Trigger2() { new DL(); } }; class ALL : public State { public: ALL() { } void Trigger1() { new LLT(); } void Trigger2() { new DH(); } }; // DL needs to 'know' about DH. class DL : public State { public: DL() { } void Trigger1() { new ALL(); } void Trigger2() { new DH(); } }; class HLT : public State { public: HLT() { } void Trigger1() { new DH(); } void Trigger2() { new DL(); } }; class AHL : public State { public: AHL() { } void Trigger1() { new DH(); } void Trigger2() { new HLT(); } }; // DH needs to 'know' about DL. class DH : public State { public: DH () { } void Trigger1() { new AHL(); } void Trigger2() { new DL(); } }; int main() { auto_ptr<LLT> llt (new LLT); auto_ptr<ALL> all (new ALL); auto_ptr<DL> dl (new DL); auto_ptr<HLT> hlt (new HLT); auto_ptr<AHL> ahl (new AHL); auto_ptr<DH> dh (new DH); return 0; } The problem is basically that in the State Pattern, state transitions are made by invoking the the ChangeState method in the Context class, which invokes the constructor of the next state. Because of the circular dependency, I can't invoke the constructor because it's not possible to pre-define both of the constructors of the 'problem' states. I had a look at this article, and the template method which seemed to be the ideal solution - but it doesn't compile and my knowledge of templates is a rather limited... The other idea I had is to try and introduce a Helper class to the subclassed states, via multiple inheritance, to see if it's possible to specify the base class's constructor and have a reference to the state subclasse's constructor. But I think that was rather ambitious... Finally, would a direct implmentation of the Factory Method Design Pattern be the best way to resolve the entire problem?

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• Passing an address inside a WordPress post to a Google Map elsewhere on the Page

  - by ael_ecurai

  Background: My client is building their own WordPress site (using a purchased feature-rich theme), and I'm modifying a child theme as necessary to achieve customizations she wants. The theme comes with a Page template that includes a full-width Google Map across the top, which pulls its marker from a single address set within the Theme Options. It's meant to be used for one main "Contact Us" page. The client's business has several locations, and she wants each location's page to include such a map. (Example linked below.) It seems that the ideal solution would be the ability to specify an address within a shortcode in the Post, and have that set the map marker. Here's how the theme makes the map (where $mapAddress is the address from the Theme Options): <?php $mapAddress = ot_get_option( 'map_address' ); $mapHeight = ot_get_option( 'map_height' ); $mapContent = ot_get_option( 'map_content' ); ?> <section id="block-map-wrapper"> <div id="block-map" class="clearfix"> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?sensor=true"></script> <script> jQuery(document).ready(function(){ // Map Options var mapOptions = { zoom: 15, scrollwheel: false, zoomControl: true, zoomControlOptions: { style: google.maps.ZoomControlStyle.SMALL, position: google.maps.ControlPosition.TOP_LEFT }, mapTypeControl: true, scaleControl: false, panControl: false, mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP }; // The Map Object var map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById("map"), mapOptions); var address = ""; var geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder(); geocoder.geocode({ "address" : "<?php echo $mapAddress; ?>" }, function (results, status) { if (status == google.maps.GeocoderStatus.OK) { address = results[0].geometry.location; map.setCenter(results[0].geometry.location); var marker = new google.maps.Marker({ position: address, map: map, clickable: true, animation: google.maps.Animation.DROP }); var infowindow = new google.maps.InfoWindow({ content: "<?php echo $mapContent; ?>" }); google.maps.event.addListener(marker, "click", function() { infowindow.open(map, marker); }); } }); }); </script> <div id="map" class = "map" style = "width: 100%; height: <?php echo $mapHeight; ?>px"></div> </div><!-- #block-map --> <div class="shadow-bottom"></div> </section><!-- #block-map-wrapper --> Here's a test page using a custom Page template I've created. Right now it's using the same map code as above. I've tried creating a shortcode that takes an address attribute and sets it as $mapAddress, but that didn't work. I believe it's because the map is already loaded by the time the Loop gets parsed. How can I tell Maps to "come back" to the post to get the proper address? My specialty lies in HTML & CSS, but Javascript befuddles me fairly easily, so please be explicit when explaining implementation. Bonus: A further goal is to have the locations' parent Page also include such a map, but have multiple markers representing the multiple locations. When taking more than one location, Google Maps only accepts latitude/longitude. I don't want my client to be concerned with coordinates, so I know there's got to be something I can do with the geocoding service so she can just input a list of addresses instead (into the same, or similar, shortcode solution developed for my main question). But I am extra-clueless about how to do that.

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• Is it possible to shuffle a 2D matrix while preserving row AND column frequencies?

  - by j_random_hacker

  Suppose I have a 2D array like the following: GACTG AGATA TCCGA Each array element is taken from a small finite set (in my case, DNA nucleotides -- {A, C, G, T}). I would like to randomly shuffle this array somehow while preserving both row and column nucleotide frequencies. Is this possible? Can it be done efficiently? [EDIT]: By this I mean I want to produce a new matrix where each row has the same number of As, Cs, Gs and Ts as the corresponding row of the original matrix, and where each column has the same number of As, Cs, Gs and Ts as the corresponding column of the original matrix. Permuting the rows or columns of the original matrix will not achieve this in general. (E.g. for the example above, the top row has 2 Gs, and 1 each of A, C and T; if this row was swapped with row 2, the top row in the resulting matrix would have 3 As, 1 G and 1 T.) It's simple enough to preserve just column frequencies by shuffling a column at a time, and likewise for rows. But doing this will in general alter the frequencies of the other kind. My thoughts so far: If it's possible to pick 2 rows and 2 columns so that the 4 elements at the corners of this rectangle have the pattern XY YX for some pair of distinct elements X and Y, then replacing these 4 elements with YX XY will maintain both row and column frequencies. In the example at the top, this can be done for (at least) rows 1 and 2 and columns 2 and 5 (whose corners give the 2x2 matrix AG;GA), and for rows 1 and 3 and columns 1 and 4 (whose corners give GT;TG). Clearly this could be repeated a number of times to produce some level of randomisation. Generalising a bit, any "subrectangle" induced by a subset of rows and a subset of columns, in which the frequencies of all rows are the same and the frequencies of all columns are the same, can have both its rows and columns permuted to produce a valid complete rectangle. (Of these, only those subrectangles in which at least 1 element is changed are actually interesting.) Big questions: Are all valid complete matrices reachable by a series of such "subrectangle rearrangements"? I suspect the answer is yes. Are all valid subrectangle rearrangements decomposable into a series of 2x2 swaps? I suspect the answer is no, but I hope it's yes, since that would seem to make it easier to come up with an efficient algorithm. Can some or all of the valid rearrangements be computed efficiently? This question addresses a special case in which the set of possible elements is {0, 1}. The solutions people have come up with there are similar to what I have come up with myself, and are probably usable, but not ideal as they require an arbitrary amount of backtracking to work correctly. Also I'm concerned that only 2x2 swaps are considered. Finally, I would ideally like a solution that can be proven to select a matrix uniformly at random from the set of all matrices having identical row frequencies and column frequencies to the original. I know, I'm asking for a lot :)

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• Same source, multiple targets with different resources (Visual Studio .Net 2008)

  - by Mike Bell

  A set of software products differ only by their resource strings, binary resources, and by the strings / graphics / product keys used by their Visual Studio Setup projects. What is the best way to create, organize, and maintain them? i.e. All the products essentially consist of the same core functionality customized by graphics, strings, and other resource data to form each product. Imagine you are creating a set of products like "Excel for Bankers", Excel for Gardeners", "Excel for CEOs", etc. Each product has the the same functionality, but differs in name, graphics, help files, included templates etc. The environment in which these are being built is: vanilla Windows.Forms / Visual Studio 2008 / C# / .Net. The ideal solution would be easy to maintain. e.g. If I introduce a new string / new resource projects I haven't added the resource to should fail at compile time, not run time. (And subsequent localization of the products should also be feasible). Hopefully I've missed the blindingly-obvious and easy way of doing all this. What is it? ============ Clarification(s) ================ By "product" I mean the package of software that gets installed by the installer and sold to the end user. Currently I have one solution, consisting of multiple projects, (including a Setup project), which builds a set of assemblies and create a single installer. What I need to produce are multiple products/installers, all with similar functionality, which are built from the same set of assemblies but differ in the set of resources used by one of the assemblies. What's the best way of doing this? ------------ The 95% Solution ----------------- Based upon Daminen_the_unbeliever's answer, a resource file per configuration can be achieved as follows: Create a class library project ("Satellite"). Delete the default .cs file and add a folder ("Default") Create a resource file in the folder "MyResources" Properties - set CustomToolNamespace to something appropriate (e.g. "XXX") Make sure the access modifier for the resources is "Public". Add the resources. Edit the source code. Refer to the resources in your code as XXX.MyResources.ResourceName) Create Configurations for each product variant ("ConfigN") For each product variant, create a folder ("VariantN") Copy and Paste the MyResources file into each VariantN folder Unload the "Satellite" project, and edit the .csproj file For each "VariantN/MyResources" <Compile> or <EmbeddedResource> tag, add a Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'ConfigN'" attribute. Save, Reload the .csproj, and you're done... This creates a per-configuration resource file, which can (presumably) be further localized. Compile error messages are produced for any configuration that where a a resource is missing. The resource files can be localized using the standard method (create a second resources file (MyResources.fr.resx) and edit .csproj as before). The reason this is a 95% solution is that resources used to initialize forms (e.g. Form Titles, button texts) can't be easily handled in the same manner - the easiest approach seems to be to overwrite these with values from the satellite assembly.

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• UIImage rounded corners

  - by catlan

  I try to get rounded corners on a UIImage, what I read so far, the easiest way is to use a mask images. For this I used code from TheElements iPhone Example and some image resize code I found. My problem is that resizedImage is always nil and I don't find the error... - (UIImage *)imageByScalingProportionallyToSize:(CGSize)targetSize { CGSize imageSize = [self size]; float width = imageSize.width; float height = imageSize.height; // scaleFactor will be the fraction that we'll // use to adjust the size. For example, if we shrink // an image by half, scaleFactor will be 0.5. the // scaledWidth and scaledHeight will be the original, // multiplied by the scaleFactor. // // IMPORTANT: the "targetHeight" is the size of the space // we're drawing into. The "scaledHeight" is the height that // the image actually is drawn at, once we take into // account the ideal of maintaining proportions float scaleFactor = 0.0; float scaledWidth = targetSize.width; float scaledHeight = targetSize.height; CGPoint thumbnailPoint = CGPointMake(0,0); // since not all images are square, we want to scale // proportionately. To do this, we find the longest // edge and use that as a guide. if ( CGSizeEqualToSize(imageSize, targetSize) == NO ) { // use the longeset edge as a guide. if the // image is wider than tall, we'll figure out // the scale factor by dividing it by the // intended width. Otherwise, we'll use the // height. float widthFactor = targetSize.width / width; float heightFactor = targetSize.height / height; if ( widthFactor < heightFactor ) scaleFactor = widthFactor; else scaleFactor = heightFactor; // ex: 500 * 0.5 = 250 (newWidth) scaledWidth = width * scaleFactor; scaledHeight = height * scaleFactor; // center the thumbnail in the frame. if // wider than tall, we need to adjust the // vertical drawing point (y axis) if ( widthFactor < heightFactor ) thumbnailPoint.y = (targetSize.height - scaledHeight) * 0.5; else if ( widthFactor > heightFactor ) thumbnailPoint.x = (targetSize.width - scaledWidth) * 0.5; } CGContextRef mainViewContentContext; CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace; colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB(); // create a bitmap graphics context the size of the image mainViewContentContext = CGBitmapContextCreate (NULL, targetSize.width, targetSize.height, 8, 0, colorSpace, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast); // free the rgb colorspace CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace); if (mainViewContentContext==NULL) return NULL; //CGContextSetFillColorWithColor(mainViewContentContext, [[UIColor whiteColor] CGColor]); //CGContextFillRect(mainViewContentContext, CGRectMake(0, 0, targetSize.width, targetSize.height)); CGContextDrawImage(mainViewContentContext, CGRectMake(thumbnailPoint.x, thumbnailPoint.y, scaledWidth, scaledHeight), self.CGImage); // Create CGImageRef of the main view bitmap content, and then // release that bitmap context CGImageRef mainViewContentBitmapContext = CGBitmapContextCreateImage(mainViewContentContext); CGContextRelease(mainViewContentContext); CGImageRef maskImage = [[UIImage imageNamed:@"Mask.png"] CGImage]; CGImageRef resizedImage = CGImageCreateWithMask(mainViewContentBitmapContext, maskImage); CGImageRelease(mainViewContentBitmapContext); // convert the finished resized image to a UIImage UIImage *theImage = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:resizedImage]; // image is retained by the property setting above, so we can // release the original CGImageRelease(resizedImage); // return the image return theImage; }

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• Solution: Testing Web Services with MSTest on Team Build

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Guess what. About 20 minutes after I fixed the build, Allan broke it again! Update: 4th March 2010 – After having huge problems getting this working I read Billy Wang’s post which showed me the light. The problem here is that even though the test passes locally it will not during an Automated Build. When you send your tests to the build server it does not understand that you want to spin up the web site and run tests against that! When you run the test in Visual Studio it spins up the web site anyway, but would you expect your test to pass if you told the website not to spin up? Of course not. So, when you send the code to the build server you need to tell it what to spin up. First, the best way to get the parameters you need is to right click on the method you want to test and select “Create Unit Test”. This will detect wither you are running in IIS or ASP.NET Development Server or None, and create the relevant tags. Figure: Right clicking on “SaveDefaultProjectFile” will produce a context menu with “Create Unit tests…” on it. If you use this option it will AutoDetect most of the Attributes that are required. /// <summary> ///A test for SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web.Services.IProfileService.SaveDefaultProjectFile ///</summary> // TODO: Ensure that the UrlToTest attribute specifies a URL to an ASP.NET page (for example, // http://.../Default.aspx). This is necessary for the unit test to be executed on the web server, // whether you are testing a page, web service, or a WCF service. [TestMethod()] [HostType("ASP.NET")] [AspNetDevelopmentServerHost("D:\\Workspaces\\SSW\\SSW\\SqlDeploy\\DEV\\Main\\SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web", "/")] [UrlToTest("http://localhost:3100/")] [DeploymentItem("SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web.dll")] public void SaveDefaultProjectFileTest() { IProfileService target = new ProfileService(); // TODO: Initialize to an appropriate value string strComputerName = string.Empty; // TODO: Initialize to an appropriate value bool expected = false; // TODO: Initialize to an appropriate value bool actual; actual = target.SaveDefaultProjectFile(strComputerName); Assert.AreEqual(expected, actual); Assert.Inconclusive("Verify the correctness of this test method."); } Figure: Auto created code that shows the attributes required to run correctly in IIS or in this case ASP.NET Development Server If you are a purist and don’t like creating unit tests like this then you just need to add the three attributes manually. HostType – This attribute specified what host to use. Its an extensibility point, so you could write your own. Or you could just use “ASP.NET”. UrlToTest – This specifies the start URL. For most tests it does not matter which page you call, as long as it is a valid page otherwise your test may not run on the server, but may pass anyway. AspNetDevelopmentServerHost – This is a nasty one, it is only used if you are using ASP.NET Development Host and is unnecessary if you are using IIS. This sets the host settings and the first value MUST be the physical path to the root of your web application. OK, so all that was rubbish and I could not get anything working using the MSDN documentation. Google provided very little help until I ran into Billy Wang’s post  and I heard that heavenly music that all developers hear when understanding dawns that what they have been doing up until now is just plain stupid. I am sure that the above will work when I am doing Web Unit Tests, but there is a much easier way when doing web services. You need to add the AspNetDevelopmentServer attribute to your code. This will tell MSTest to spin up an ASP.NET Development server to host the service. Specify the path to the web application you want to use. [AspNetDevelopmentServer("WebApp1", "D:\\Workspaces\\SSW\\SSW\\SqlDeploy\\DEV\\Main\\SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web")] [DeploymentItem("SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web.dll")] [TestMethod] public void ProfileService_Integration_SaveDefaultProjectFile_Returns_True() { ProfileServiceClient target = new ProfileServiceClient(); bool isTrue = target.SaveDefaultProjectFile("Mav"); Assert.AreEqual(true, isTrue); } Figure: This AspNetDevelopmentServer will make sure that the specified web application is launched. Now we can run the test and have it pass, but if the dynamically assigned ASP.NET Development server port changes what happens to the details in your app.config that was generated when creating a reference to the web service? Well, it would be wrong and the test would fail. This is where Billy’s helper method comes in. Once you have created an instance of your service call, and it has loaded the config, but before you make any calls to it you need to go in and dynamically set the Endpoint address to the same address as your dynamically hosted Web Application. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting; using System.Reflection; using System.ServiceModel.Description; using System.ServiceModel; namespace SSW.SQLDeploy.Test { class WcfWebServiceHelper { public static bool TryUrlRedirection(object client, TestContext context, string identifier) { bool result = true; try { PropertyInfo property = client.GetType().GetProperty("Endpoint"); string webServer = context.Properties[string.Format("AspNetDevelopmentServer.{0}", identifier)].ToString(); Uri webServerUri = new Uri(webServer); ServiceEndpoint endpoint = (ServiceEndpoint)property.GetValue(client, null); EndpointAddressBuilder builder = new EndpointAddressBuilder(endpoint.Address); builder.Uri = new Uri(endpoint.Address.Uri.OriginalString.Replace(endpoint.Address.Uri.Authority, webServerUri.Authority)); endpoint.Address = builder.ToEndpointAddress(); } catch (Exception e) { context.WriteLine(e.Message); result = false; } return result; } } } Figure: This fixes a problem with the URL in your web.config not being the same as the dynamically hosted ASP.NET Development server port. We can now add a call to this method after we created the Proxy object and change the Endpoint for the Service to the correct one. This process is wrapped in an assert as if it fails there is no point in continuing. [AspNetDevelopmentServer("WebApp1", D:\\Workspaces\\SSW\\SSW\\SqlDeploy\\DEV\\Main\\SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web")] [DeploymentItem("SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web.dll")] [TestMethod] public void ProfileService_Integration_SaveDefaultProjectFile_Returns_True() { ProfileServiceClient target = new ProfileServiceClient(); Assert.IsTrue(WcfWebServiceHelper.TryUrlRedirection(target, TestContext, "WebApp1")); bool isTrue = target.SaveDefaultProjectFile("Mav"); Assert.AreEqual(true, isTrue); } Figure: Editing the Endpoint from the app.config on the fly to match the dynamically hosted ASP.NET Development Server URL and port is now easy. As you can imagine AspNetDevelopmentServer poses some problems of you have multiple developers. What are the chances of everyone using the same location to store the source? What about if you are using a build server, how do you tell MSTest where to look for the files? To the rescue is a property called" “%PathToWebRoot%” which is always right on the build server. It will always point to your build drop folder for your solutions web sites. Which will be “\\tfs.ssw.com.au\BuildDrop\[BuildName]\Debug\_PrecompiledWeb\” or whatever your build drop location is. So lets change the code above to add this. [AspNetDevelopmentServer("WebApp1", "%PathToWebRoot%\\SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web")] [DeploymentItem("SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web.dll")] [TestMethod] public void ProfileService_Integration_SaveDefaultProjectFile_Returns_True() { ProfileServiceClient target = new ProfileServiceClient(); Assert.IsTrue(WcfWebServiceHelper.TryUrlRedirection(target, TestContext, "WebApp1")); bool isTrue = target.SaveDefaultProjectFile("Mav"); Assert.AreEqual(true, isTrue); } Figure: Adding %PathToWebRoot% to the AspNetDevelopmentServer path makes it work everywhere. Now we have another problem… this will ONLY run on the build server and will fail locally as %PathToWebRoot%’s default value is “C:\Users\[profile]\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects”. Well this sucks… How do we get the test to run on any build server and any developer laptop. Open “Tools | Options | Test Tools | Test Execution” in Visual Studio and you will see a field called “Web application root directory”. This is where you override that default above. Figure: You can override the default website location for tests. In my case I would put in “D:\Workspaces\SSW\SSW\SqlDeploy\DEV\Main” and all the developers working with this branch would put in the folder that they have mapped. Can you see a problem? What is I create a “$/SSW/SqlDeploy/DEV/34567” branch from Main and I want to run tests in there. Well… I would have to change the value above. This is not ideal, but as you can put your projects anywhere on a computer, it has to be done. Conclusion Although this looks convoluted and complicated there are real problems being solved here that mean that you have a test ANYWHERE solution. Any build server, any Developer workstation. Resources: http://billwg.blogspot.com/2009/06/testing-wcf-web-services.html http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2008/04/testing-asmx-web-services-in-visual.html http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms243399(VS.100).aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/dscruggs/archive/2008/09/29/web-tests-unit-tests-the-asp-net-development-server-and-code-coverage.aspx http://www.5z5.com/News/?543f8bc8b36b174f Technorati Tags: VS2010,MSTest,Team Build 2010,Team Build,Visual Studio,Visual Studio 2010,Visual Studio ALM,Team Test,Team Test 2010

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• Real Excel Templates I

  - by Tim Dexter

  As promised, I'm starting to document the new Excel templates that I teased you all with a few weeks back. Leslie is buried in 11g documentation and will not get to officially documenting the templates for a while. I'll do my best to be professional and not ramble on about this and that, although the weather here has finally turned and its 'scorchio' here in Colorado today. Maybe our stand of Aspen will finally come into leaf ... but I digress. Preamble These templates are not actually that new, I helped in a small way to develop them a few years back with Excel 'meistress' Shirley for a company that was trying to use the Report Manager(RR) Excel FSG outputs under EBS 12. The functionality they needed was just not there in the RR FSG templates, the templates are actually XSL that is created from the the RR Excel template builder and fed to BIP for processing. Think of Excel from our RTF templates and you'll be there ie not really Excel but HTML masquerading as Excel. Although still under controlled release in EBS they have now made their way to the standlone release and are willing to share their Excel goodness. You get everything you have with hte Excel Analyzer Excel templates plus so much more. Therein lies a question, what will happen to the Analyzer templates? My understanding is that both will come together into a single Excel template format some time in the post-11g release world. The new XLSX format for Exce 2007/10 is also in the mix too so watch this space. What more do these templates offer? Well, you can structure data in the Excel output. Similar to RTF templates you can create sheets of data that have master-detail n relationships. Although the analyzer templates can do this, you have to get into macros whereas BIP will do this all for you. You can also use native XSL functions in your data to manipulate it prior to rendering. BP functions are not currently supported. The most impressive, for me at least, is the sheet 'bursting'. You can split your hierarchical data across multiple sheets and dynamically name those sheets. Finally, you of course, still get all the native Excel functionality. Pre-reqs You must be on 10.1.3.4.1 plus the latest rollup patch, 9546699. You can patch upa BIP instance running with OBIEE, no problem You need Excel 2000 or above to build the templates Some patience - there is no Excel template builder for these new templates. So its all going to have to be done by hand. Its not that tough but can get a little 'fiddly'. You can not test the template from Excel , it has to be deployed and then run. Limitations The new templates are definitely superior to the Analyzer templates but there are a few limitations. Re-grouping is not supported. You can only follow a data hierarchy not bend it to your will unless you want to get into macros. No support for BIP functions. The templates support native XSL functions only. No template builder Getting Started The templates make the use of named cells and groups of cells to allow BIP to find the insertion point for data points. It also uses a hidden sheet to store calculation mappings from named cells to XML data elements. To start with, in the great BIP tradition, we need some sample XML data. Becasue I wanted to show the master-detail output we need some hierarchical data. If you have not yet gotten into the data templates, now is a good time, I wrote a post a while back starting from the simple to more complex. They generate ideal data sets for these templates. Im working with the following data set: <EMPLOYEES> <LIST_G_DEPT> <G_DEPT> <DEPARTMENT_ID>10</DEPARTMENT_ID> <DEPARTMENT_NAME>Administration</DEPARTMENT_NAME> <LIST_G_EMP> <G_EMP> <EMPLOYEE_ID>200</EMPLOYEE_ID> <EMP_NAME>Jennifer Whalen</EMP_NAME> <EMAIL>JWHALEN</EMAIL> <PHONE_NUMBER>515.123.4444</PHONE_NUMBER> <HIRE_DATE>1987-09-17T00:00:00.000-06:00</HIRE_DATE> <SALARY>4400</SALARY> </G_EMP> </LIST_G_EMP> <TOTAL_EMPS>1</TOTAL_EMPS> <TOTAL_SALARY>4400</TOTAL_SALARY> <AVG_SALARY>4400</AVG_SALARY> <MAX_SALARY>4400</MAX_SALARY> <MIN_SALARY>4400</MIN_SALARY> </G_DEPT> ... <LIST_G_DEPT> <EMPLOYEES> Simple enough to follow and bread and butter stuff for an RTF template. Building the Template For an Excel template we need to start by thinking about how we want to render the data. Come up with a sample output in Excel. Its all dummy data, nothing marked up yet with one row of data for each level. I have the department name and then a repeating row for the employees. You can apply Excel formatting to the layout. The total is going to be derived from a data element. We'll get to Excel functions later. Marking Up Cells Next we need to start marking up the cells with custom names to map them to data elements. The cell names need to follow a specific format: For data grouping, XDO_GROUP_?group_name? For data elements, XDO_?element_name? Notice the question mark delimter, the group_name and element_name are case sensitive. The next step is to find how to name cells; the easiest method is to highlight the cell and then type in the name. You can also find the Name Manager dialog. I use 2007 and its available on the ribbon under the Formulas section Go thorugh the process of naming all the cells for the element values you have. Using my data set from above.You should end up with something like this in your 'Name Manager' dialog. You can update any mistakes you might have made through this dialog. Creating Groups In the image above you can see there are a couple of named group cells. To create these its a simple case of highlighting the cells that make up the group and then naming them. For the EMP group, highlight the employee row and then type in the name, XDO_GROUP?G_EMP? Notice the 10,000 total is outside of the G_EMP group. Its actually named, XDO_?TOTAL_SALARY?, a query calculated value. For the department group, we need to include the department name cell and the sub EMP grouping and name it, XDO_GROUP?G_DEPT? Notice, the 10,000 total is included in the G_DEPT group. This will ensure it repeats at the department level. Lastly, we do need to include a special sheet in the workbook. We will not have anything meaningful in there for now, but it needs to be present. Create a new sheet and name it XDO_METADATA. The name is important as the BIP rendering engine will looking for it. For our current example we do not need anything other than the required stuff in our XDO_METADATA sheet but, it must be present. Easy enough to hide it. Here's what I have: The only cell that is important is the 'Data Constraints:' cell. The rest is optional. To save curious users getting distracted, hide the metadata sheet. Deploying & Running Templates We should now have a usable Excel template. Loading it into a report is easy enough using the browser UI, just like an RTF template. Set the template type to Excel. You will now be able to run the report and hopefully get something like this. You will not get the red highlighting, thats just some conditional formatting I added to the template using Excel functionality. Your dates are probably going to look raw too. I got around this for now using an Excel function on the cell: =--REPLACE(SUBSTITUTE(E8,"T"," "),LEN(E8)-6,6,"") Google to the rescue on that one. Try some other stuff out. To avoid constantly loading the template through the UI. If you have BIP running locally or you can access the reports repository, once you have loaded the template the first time. Just save the template directly into the report folder. I have put together a sample report using a sample data set, available here. Just drop the xml data file, EmpbyDeptExcelData.xml into 'demo files' folder and you should be good to go. Thats the basics, next we'll start using some XSL functions in the template and move onto the 'bursting' across sheets.

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• Parallelism in .NET – Part 4, Imperative Data Parallelism: Aggregation

  - by Reed

  In the article on simple data parallelism, I described how to perform an operation on an entire collection of elements in parallel.  Often, this is not adequate, as the parallel operation is going to be performing some form of aggregation. Simple examples of this might include taking the sum of the results of processing a function on each element in the collection, or finding the minimum of the collection given some criteria.  This can be done using the techniques described in simple data parallelism, however, special care needs to be taken into account to synchronize the shared data appropriately.  The Task Parallel Library has tools to assist in this synchronization. The main issue with aggregation when parallelizing a routine is that you need to handle synchronization of data.  Since multiple threads will need to write to a shared portion of data.  Suppose, for example, that we wanted to parallelize a simple loop that looked for the minimum value within a dataset: double min = double.MaxValue; foreach(var item in collection) { double value = item.PerformComputation(); min = System.Math.Min(min, value); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This seems like a good candidate for parallelization, but there is a problem here.  If we just wrap this into a call to Parallel.ForEach, we’ll introduce a critical race condition, and get the wrong answer.  Let’s look at what happens here: // Buggy code! Do not use! double min = double.MaxValue; Parallel.ForEach(collection, item => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); min = System.Math.Min(min, value); }); This code has a fatal flaw: min will be checked, then set, by multiple threads simultaneously.  Two threads may perform the check at the same time, and set the wrong value for min.  Say we get a value of 1 in thread 1, and a value of 2 in thread 2, and these two elements are the first two to run.  If both hit the min check line at the same time, both will determine that min should change, to 1 and 2 respectively.  If element 1 happens to set the variable first, then element 2 sets the min variable, we’ll detect a min value of 2 instead of 1.  This can lead to wrong answers. Unfortunately, fixing this, with the Parallel.ForEach call we’re using, would require adding locking.  We would need to rewrite this like: // Safe, but slow double min = double.MaxValue; // Make a "lock" object object syncObject = new object(); Parallel.ForEach(collection, item => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); lock(syncObject) min = System.Math.Min(min, value); }); This will potentially add a huge amount of overhead to our calculation.  Since we can potentially block while waiting on the lock for every single iteration, we will most likely slow this down to where it is actually quite a bit slower than our serial implementation.  The problem is the lock statement – any time you use lock(object), you’re almost assuring reduced performance in a parallel situation.  This leads to two observations I’ll make: When parallelizing a routine, try to avoid locks. That being said: Always add any and all required synchronization to avoid race conditions. These two observations tend to be opposing forces – we often need to synchronize our algorithms, but we also want to avoid the synchronization when possible.  Looking at our routine, there is no way to directly avoid this lock, since each element is potentially being run on a separate thread, and this lock is necessary in order for our routine to function correctly every time. However, this isn’t the only way to design this routine to implement this algorithm.  Realize that, although our collection may have thousands or even millions of elements, we have a limited number of Processing Elements (PE).  Processing Element is the standard term for a hardware element which can process and execute instructions.  This typically is a core in your processor, but many modern systems have multiple hardware execution threads per core.  The Task Parallel Library will not execute the work for each item in the collection as a separate work item. Instead, when Parallel.ForEach executes, it will partition the collection into larger “chunks” which get processed on different threads via the ThreadPool.  This helps reduce the threading overhead, and help the overall speed.  In general, the Parallel class will only use one thread per PE in the system. Given the fact that there are typically fewer threads than work items, we can rethink our algorithm design.  We can parallelize our algorithm more effectively by approaching it differently.  Because the basic aggregation we are doing here (Min) is communitive, we do not need to perform this in a given order.  We knew this to be true already – otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to parallelize this routine in the first place.  With this in mind, we can treat each thread’s work independently, allowing each thread to serially process many elements with no locking, then, after all the threads are complete, “merge” together the results. This can be accomplished via a different set of overloads in the Parallel class: Parallel.ForEach<TSource,TLocal>.  The idea behind these overloads is to allow each thread to begin by initializing some local state (TLocal).  The thread will then process an entire set of items in the source collection, providing that state to the delegate which processes an individual item.  Finally, at the end, a separate delegate is run which allows you to handle merging that local state into your final results. To rewriting our routine using Parallel.ForEach<TSource,TLocal>, we need to provide three delegates instead of one.  The most basic version of this function is declared as: public static ParallelLoopResult ForEach<TSource, TLocal>( IEnumerable<TSource> source, Func<TLocal> localInit, Func<TSource, ParallelLoopState, TLocal, TLocal> body, Action<TLocal> localFinally ) The first delegate (the localInit argument) is defined as Func<TLocal>.  This delegate initializes our local state.  It should return some object we can use to track the results of a single thread’s operations. The second delegate (the body argument) is where our main processing occurs, although now, instead of being an Action<T>, we actually provide a Func<TSource, ParallelLoopState, TLocal, TLocal> delegate.  This delegate will receive three arguments: our original element from the collection (TSource), a ParallelLoopState which we can use for early termination, and the instance of our local state we created (TLocal).  It should do whatever processing you wish to occur per element, then return the value of the local state after processing is completed. The third delegate (the localFinally argument) is defined as Action<TLocal>.  This delegate is passed our local state after it’s been processed by all of the elements this thread will handle.  This is where you can merge your final results together.  This may require synchronization, but now, instead of synchronizing once per element (potentially millions of times), you’ll only have to synchronize once per thread, which is an ideal situation. Now that I’ve explained how this works, lets look at the code: // Safe, and fast! double min = double.MaxValue; // Make a "lock" object object syncObject = new object(); Parallel.ForEach( collection, // First, we provide a local state initialization delegate. () => double.MaxValue, // Next, we supply the body, which takes the original item, loop state, // and local state, and returns a new local state (item, loopState, localState) => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); return System.Math.Min(localState, value); }, // Finally, we provide an Action<TLocal>, to "merge" results together localState => { // This requires locking, but it's only once per used thread lock(syncObj) min = System.Math.Min(min, localState); } ); Although this is a bit more complicated than the previous version, it is now both thread-safe, and has minimal locking.  This same approach can be used by Parallel.For, although now, it’s Parallel.For<TLocal>.  When working with Parallel.For<TLocal>, you use the same triplet of delegates, with the same purpose and results. Also, many times, you can completely avoid locking by using a method of the Interlocked class to perform the final aggregation in an atomic operation.  The MSDN example demonstrating this same technique using Parallel.For uses the Interlocked class instead of a lock, since they are doing a sum operation on a long variable, which is possible via Interlocked.Add. By taking advantage of local state, we can use the Parallel class methods to parallelize algorithms such as aggregation, which, at first, may seem like poor candidates for parallelization.  Doing so requires careful consideration, and often requires a slight redesign of the algorithm, but the performance gains can be significant if handled in a way to avoid excessive synchronization.

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• Issue 15: Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ Oracle OpenWorld

  - by rituchhibber

       ORACLE FOCUS Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange@ ORACLE OpenWorld Sylvie MichouSenior DirectorPartner Marketing & Communications and Strategic Programs RESOURCES -- Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld Registration Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange SpecializationTest Fest Oracle OpenWorld Schedule Builder Oracle OpenWorld Promotional Toolkit for Partners Oracle Partner Events Oracle Partner Webcasts Oracle EMEA Partner News SUBSCRIBE FEEDBACK PREVIOUS ISSUES If you are attending our forthcoming Oracle OpenWorld 2012 conference in San Francisco from 30 September to 4 October, you will discover a new dedicated programme of keynotes and sessions tailored especially for you, our valued partners. Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld has been created to enhance the opportunities for you to learn from and network with Oracle executives and experts. The programme also provides more informal opportunities than ever throughout the week to meet up with the people who are most important to your business: customers, prospects, colleagues and the Oracle EMEA Alliances & Channels management team. Oracle remains fully focused on building the industry's most admired partner ecosystem—which today spans over 25,000 partners. This new OPN Exchange programme offers an exciting change of pace for partners throughout the conference. Now it will be possible to enjoy a fully-integrated, partner-dedicated session schedule throughout the week, as well as key social events such as the Sunday night Welcome Reception, networking lunches from Monday to Thursday at the Howard Street Tent, and a fantastic closing event on the last Thursday afternoon. In addition to the regular Oracle OpenWorld conference schedule, if you have registered for the Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld programme, you will be invited to attend a much anticipated global partner keynote presentation, plus more than 40 conference sessions aimed squarely at what's most important to you, as partners. Prominent topics for discussion will include: Oracle technologies and roadmaps and how they fit with partners' business plans; business development; regional distinctions in business practices; and much more. Each session will provide plenty of food for thought ahead of the numerous networking opportunities throughout the week, encouraging the knowledge exchange with Oracle executives, customers, prospects, and colleagues that will make this conference of even greater value for you. At Oracle we always work closely with our partners to deliver solution offerings that improve business value, simplify the IT experience and drive innovation and efficiencies for joint customers. The most important element of our new OPN Exchange is content that helps you get more from technology investments, more from your peer-to-peer connections, and more from your interactions with customers. To this end we've created some partner-specific tools which can be used by OPN members ahead of the conference itself. Crucially, a comprehensive Content Catalog already lists and organises details of every OPN Exchange session, speaker, exhibitor, demonstration and related materials. This Content Catalog can be used by all our partners to identify interesting content that you can add to your own personalised Oracle OpenWorld Schedule Builder, allowing more effective planning and pre-enrolment for vital sessions. There are numerous highlights that you will definitely want to include in those personal schedules. On Sunday morning, 30 September we will start the week with partner dedicated OPN Exchange sessions, following our Global Partner Keynote at 13:00 with Judson Althoff, SVP, Worldwide Alliances & Channels and Embedded Sales and senior executives, giving insight into Oracle's partner vision, strategy, and resources—all designed to help build and strengthen market opportunities for you. This will be followed by a number of OPN Exchange general sessions, the Oracle OpenWorld Opening Keynote with Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle and concluded with the OPN Exchange AfterDark Welcome Reception, starting at 19:30 at the Metreon. From Monday 1 to Thursday 4 October, you can attend the OPN Exchange sessions that are most relevant to your business today and over the coming year. Oracle's top product and sales leaders will be on hand to discuss Oracle's strategic direction in 40+ targeted and in-depth sessions focussing on critical success factors to develop your business. Oracle's dedication to innovation, specialization, enablement and engineering provides Oracle partners with a huge opportunity to create new services and solutions, differentiate themselves and deliver extreme value to joint customers across the globe. Oracle will even be helping over 1000 partners to earn OPN Specialization certification during the Oracle OpenWorld OPN Exchange Test Fest, which will be providing all the study materials and exams required to drive Specialization for free at the conference. You simply need to check the list of current certification tracks available, and make sure you pre-register to reserve a seat in one of the ten sessions being offered free to OPN Exchange registered attendees. And finally, let's not forget those all-important networking opportunities, which can so often provide partners with valuable long-term alliances as well as exciting new business leads. The Oracle PartnerNetwork Lounge, located at Moscone South, exhibition hall, room 100 is the place where partners can meet formally or informally with colleagues, customers, prospects, and other industry professionals. OPN Specialized partners with OPN Exchange passes can also visit the OPN Video Blogging room to record and share ideas, and at the OPN Information Station you will find consultants available to answer your questions. "For the first time ever we will have a full partner conference within OpenWorld. OPN Exchange @ OpenWorld will kick-off on the first Sunday and run the entire week. We'll have over 40 sessions throughout that time and partners will hear from our top development executives, with special sessions dedicated to partnering throughout. It's going to be a phenomenal event, and we look forward to seeing our partners there." Judson Althoff, SVP, Oracle Worldwide Alliances & Channels and Embedded Sales So if you haven't done so already, please register for Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld today or add OPN Exchange to your existing registration for just $100 through My Account. And if you have any further questions regarding partner activities at Oracle OpenWorld, please don't hesitate to contact the Oracle PartnerNetwork team at [email protected] will be on hand to share the very latest information about: Oracle's SPARC Superclusters: the latest Engineered Systems from Oracle, delivering radically improved performance, faster deployment and greatly reduced operational costs for mixed database and enterprise application consolidation Oracle's SPARC T4 servers: with the newly developed T4 processor and Oracle Solaris providing up to five times the single threaded performance and better overall system throughput for expanded application versatility Oracle Database Appliance: a new way to take advantage of the world's most popular database, Oracle Database 11g, in a single, easy-to-deploy and manage system. It's a complete package engineered to deliver simple, reliable and affordable database services to small and medium size businesses and departmental systems. All hardware and software components are supported together and offer customers unique pay-as-you-grow software licensing to quickly scale from two to 24 processor cores without incurring the costs and downtime usually associated with hardware upgrades Oracle Exalogic: the world's only integrated cloud machine, featuring server hardware and middleware software engineered together for maximum performance with minimum set-up and operational cost Oracle Exadata Database Machine: the only database machine that provides extreme performance for both data warehousing and online transaction processing (OLTP) applications, making it the ideal platform for consolidating onto grids or private clouds. It is a complete package of servers, storage, networking and software that is massively scalable, secure and redundant Oracle Sun ZFS Storage Appliances: providing enterprise-class NAS performance, price-performance, manageability and TCO by combining third-generation software with high-performance controllers, flash-based caches and disks Oracle Pillar Axiom Quality-of-Service: confidently consolidate storage for multiple applications into a single datacentre storage solution Oracle Solaris 11: delivering secure enterprise cloud deployments with the ability to run hundreds of virtual application with no overhead and co-engineered with other Oracle software products to provide the highest levels of security, manageability and performance Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: Oracle's integrated enterprise IT management product, providing the industry's only complete, integrated and business-driven enterprise cloud management solution Oracle VM 3.0: the latest release of Oracle's server virtualisation and management solution, helping to move datacentres beyond server consolidation to improve application deployment and management. Register today and ensure your place at the Extreme Performance Tour! Extreme Performance Tour events are free to attend, but places are limited. To make sure that you don't miss out, please visit Oracle's Extreme Performance Tour website, select the city that you'd be interest in attending an event in, and then click on the 'Register Now' button for that city to secure your interest. Each individual city page also contains more in-depth information about your local event, including logistics, agenda and maybe even a preview of VIP guest speakers. -- Oracle OpenWorld 2010 Whether you attended Oracle OpenWorld 2009 or not, don't forget to save the date now for Oracle OpenWorld 2010. The event will be held a little earlier next year, from 19th-23rd September, so please don't miss out. With thousands of sessions and hundreds of exhibits and demos already lined up, there's no better place to learn how to optimise your existing systems, get an inside line on upcoming technology breakthroughs, and meet with your partner peers, Oracle strategists and even the developers responsible for the products and services that help you get better results for your end customers. Register Now for Oracle OpenWorld 2010! Perhaps you are interested in learning more about Oracle OpenWorld 2010, but don't wish to register at this time? Great! Please just enter your contact information here and we will contact you at a later date. How to Exhibit at Oracle OpenWorld 2010 Sponsorship Opportunities at Oracle OpenWorld 2010 Advertising Opportunities at Oracle OpenWorld 2010 -- Back to the welcome page

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• Cleaner HTML Markup with ASP.NET 4 Web Forms - Client IDs (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series)

  - by ScottGu

  This is the sixteenth in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release. Today’s post is the first of a few blog posts I’ll be doing that talk about some of the important changes we’ve made to make Web Forms in ASP.NET 4 generate clean, standards-compliant, CSS-friendly markup.  Today I’ll cover the work we are doing to provide better control over the “ID” attributes rendered by server controls to the client. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Clean, Standards-Based, CSS-Friendly Markup One of the common complaints developers have often had with ASP.NET Web Forms is that when using server controls they don’t have the ability to easily generate clean, CSS-friendly output and markup.  Some of the specific complaints with previous ASP.NET releases include: Auto-generated ID attributes within HTML make it hard to write JavaScript and style with CSS Use of tables instead of semantic markup for certain controls (in particular the asp:menu control) make styling ugly Some controls render inline style properties even if no style property on the control has been set ViewState can often be bigger than ideal ASP.NET 4 provides better support for building standards-compliant pages out of the box.  The built-in <asp:> server controls with ASP.NET 4 now generate cleaner markup and support CSS styling – and help address all of the above issues.  Markup Compatibility When Upgrading Existing ASP.NET Web Forms Applications A common question people often ask when hearing about the cleaner markup coming with ASP.NET 4 is “Great - but what about my existing applications?  Will these changes/improvements break things when I upgrade?” To help ensure that we don’t break assumptions around markup and styling with existing ASP.NET Web Forms applications, we’ve enabled a configuration flag – controlRenderingCompatbilityVersion – within web.config that let’s you decide if you want to use the new cleaner markup approach that is the default with new ASP.NET 4 applications, or for compatibility reasons render the same markup that previous versions of ASP.NET used:   When the controlRenderingCompatbilityVersion flag is set to “3.5” your application and server controls will by default render output using the same markup generation used with VS 2008 and .NET 3.5.  When the controlRenderingCompatbilityVersion flag is set to “4.0” your application and server controls will strictly adhere to the XHTML 1.1 specification, have cleaner client IDs, render with semantic correctness in mind, and have extraneous inline styles removed. This flag defaults to 4.0 for all new ASP.NET Web Forms applications built using ASP.NET 4. Any previous application that is upgraded using VS 2010 will have the controlRenderingCompatbilityVersion flag automatically set to 3.5 by the upgrade wizard to ensure backwards compatibility.  You can then optionally change it (either at the application level, or scope it within the web.config file to be on a per page or directory level) if you move your pages to use CSS and take advantage of the new markup rendering. Today’s Cleaner Markup Topic: Client IDs The ability to have clean, predictable, ID attributes on rendered HTML elements is something developers have long asked for with Web Forms (ID values like “ctl00_ContentPlaceholder1_ListView1_ctrl0_Label1” are not very popular).  Having control over the ID values rendered helps make it much easier to write client-side JavaScript against the output, makes it easier to style elements using CSS, and on large pages can help reduce the overall size of the markup generated. New ClientIDMode Property on Controls ASP.NET 4 supports a new ClientIDMode property on the Control base class.  The ClientIDMode property indicates how controls should generate client ID values when they render.  The ClientIDMode property supports four possible values: AutoID—Renders the output as in .NET 3.5 (auto-generated IDs which will still render prefixes like ctrl00 for compatibility) Predictable (Default)— Trims any “ctl00” ID string and if a list/container control concatenates child ids (example: id=”ParentControl_ChildControl”) Static—Hands over full ID naming control to the developer – whatever they set as the ID of the control is what is rendered (example: id=”JustMyId”) Inherit—Tells the control to defer to the naming behavior mode of the parent container control The ClientIDMode property can be set directly on individual controls (or within container controls – in which case the controls within them will by default inherit the setting): Or it can be specified at a page or usercontrol level (using the <%@ Page %> or <%@ Control %> directives) – in which case controls within the pages/usercontrols inherit the setting (and can optionally override it): Or it can be set within the web.config file of an application – in which case pages within the application inherit the setting (and can optionally override it): This gives you the flexibility to customize/override the naming behavior however you want. Example: Using the ClientIDMode property to control the IDs of Non-List Controls Let’s take a look at how we can use the new ClientIDMode property to control the rendering of “ID” elements within a page.  To help illustrate this we can create a simple page called “SingleControlExample.aspx” that is based on a master-page called “Site.Master”, and which has a single <asp:label> control with an ID of “Message” that is contained with an <asp:content> container control called “MainContent”: Within our code-behind we’ll then add some simple code like below to dynamically populate the Label’s Text property at runtime:   If we were running this application using ASP.NET 3.5 (or had our ASP.NET 4 application configured to run using 3.5 rendering or ClientIDMode=AutoID), then the generated markup sent down to the client would look like below: This ID is unique (which is good) – but rather ugly because of the “ct100” prefix (which is bad). Markup Rendering when using ASP.NET 4 and the ClientIDMode is set to “Predictable” With ASP.NET 4, server controls by default now render their ID’s using ClientIDMode=”Predictable”.  This helps ensure that ID values are still unique and don’t conflict on a page, but at the same time it makes the IDs less verbose and more predictable.  This means that the generated markup of our <asp:label> control above will by default now look like below with ASP.NET 4: Notice that the “ct100” prefix is gone. Because the “Message” control is embedded within a “MainContent” container control, by default it’s ID will be prefixed “MainContent_Message” to avoid potential collisions with other controls elsewhere within the page. Markup Rendering when using ASP.NET 4 and the ClientIDMode is set to “Static” Sometimes you don’t want your ID values to be nested hierarchically, though, and instead just want the ID rendered to be whatever value you set it as.  To enable this you can now use ClientIDMode=static, in which case the ID rendered will be exactly the same as what you set it on the server-side on your control.  This will cause the below markup to be rendered with ASP.NET 4: This option now gives you the ability to completely control the client ID values sent down by controls. Example: Using the ClientIDMode property to control the IDs of Data-Bound List Controls Data-bound list/grid controls have historically been the hardest to use/style when it comes to working with Web Form’s automatically generated IDs.  Let’s now take a look at a scenario where we’ll customize the ID’s rendered using a ListView control with ASP.NET 4. The code snippet below is an example of a ListView control that displays the contents of a data-bound collection — in this case, airports: We can then write code like below within our code-behind to dynamically databind a list of airports to the ListView above: At runtime this will then by default generate a <ul> list of airports like below.  Note that because the <ul> and <li> elements in the ListView’s template are not server controls, no IDs are rendered in our markup: Adding Client ID’s to Each Row Item Now, let’s say that we wanted to add client-ID’s to the output so that we can programmatically access each <li> via JavaScript.  We want these ID’s to be unique, predictable, and identifiable. A first approach would be to mark each <li> element within the template as being a server control (by giving it a runat=server attribute) and by giving each one an id of “airport”: By default ASP.NET 4 will now render clean IDs like below (no ctl001-like ids are rendered):   Using the ClientIDRowSuffix Property Our template above now generates unique ID’s for each <li> element – but if we are going to access them programmatically on the client using JavaScript we might want to instead have the ID’s contain the airport code within them to make them easier to reference.  The good news is that we can easily do this by taking advantage of the new ClientIDRowSuffix property on databound controls in ASP.NET 4 to better control the ID’s of our individual row elements. To do this, we’ll set the ClientIDRowSuffix property to “Code” on our ListView control.  This tells the ListView to use the databound “Code” property from our Airport class when generating the ID: And now instead of having row suffixes like “1”, “2”, and “3”, we’ll instead have the Airport.Code value embedded within the IDs (e.g: _CLE, _CAK, _PDX, etc): You can use this ClientIDRowSuffix approach with other databound controls like the GridView as well. It is useful anytime you want to program row elements on the client – and use clean/identified IDs to easily reference them from JavaScript code. Summary ASP.NET 4 enables you to generate much cleaner HTML markup from server controls and from within your Web Forms applications.  In today’s post I covered how you can now easily control the client ID values that are rendered by server controls.  In upcoming posts I’ll cover some of the other markup improvements that are also coming with the ASP.NET 4 release. Hope this helps, Scott

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• SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Jonathan Kehayias – Wait Type – Day 16 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter) is a MCITP Database Administrator and Developer, who got started in SQL Server in 2004 as a database developer and report writer in the natural gas industry. After spending two and a half years working in TSQL, in late 2006, he transitioned to the role of SQL Database Administrator. His primary passion is performance tuning, where he frequently rewrites queries for better performance and performs in depth analysis of index implementation and usage. Jonathan blogs regularly on SQLBlog, and was a coauthor of Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting. On a personal note, I think Jonathan is extremely positive person. In every conversation with him I have found that he is always eager to help and encourage. Every time he finds something needs to be approved, he has contacted me without hesitation and guided me to improve, change and learn. During all the time, he has not lost his focus to help larger community. I am honored that he has accepted to provide his views on complex subject of Wait Types and Queues. Currently I am reading his series on Extended Events. Here is the guest blog post by Jonathan: SQL Server troubleshooting is all about correlating related pieces of information together to indentify where exactly the root cause of a problem lies. In my daily work as a DBA, I generally get phone calls like, “So and so application is slow, what’s wrong with the SQL Server.” One of the funny things about the letters DBA is that they go so well with Default Blame Acceptor, and I really wish that I knew exactly who the first person was that pointed that out to me, because it really fits at times. A lot of times when I get this call, the problem isn’t related to SQL Server at all, but every now and then in my initial quick checks, something pops up that makes me start looking at things further. The SQL Server is slow, we see a number of tasks waiting on ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION, IO_COMPLETION, or PAGEIOLATCH_* waits in sys.dm_exec_requests and sys.dm_exec_waiting_tasks. These are also some of the highest wait types in sys.dm_os_wait_stats for the server, so it would appear that we have a disk I/O bottleneck on the machine. A quick check of sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats() and tempdb shows a high write stall rate, while our user databases show high read stall rates on the data files. A quick check of some performance counters and Page Life Expectancy on the server is bouncing up and down in the 50-150 range, the Free Page counter consistently hits zero, and the Free List Stalls/sec counter keeps jumping over 10, but Buffer Cache Hit Ratio is 98-99%. Where exactly is the problem? In this case, which happens to be based on a real scenario I faced a few years back, the problem may not be a disk bottleneck at all; it may very well be a memory pressure issue on the server. A quick check of the system spec’s and it is a dual duo core server with 8GB RAM running SQL Server 2005 SP1 x64 on Windows Server 2003 R2 x64. Max Server memory is configured at 6GB and we think that this should be enough to handle the workload; or is it? This is a unique scenario because there are a couple of things happening inside of this system, and they all relate to what the root cause of the performance problem is on the system. If we were to query sys.dm_exec_query_stats for the TOP 10 queries, by max_physical_reads, max_logical_reads, and max_worker_time, we may be able to find some queries that were using excessive I/O and possibly CPU against the system in their worst single execution. We can also CROSS APPLY to sys.dm_exec_sql_text() and see the statement text, and also CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan() to get the execution plan stored in cache. Ok, quick check, the plans are pretty big, I see some large index seeks, that estimate 2.8GB of data movement between operators, but everything looks like it is optimized the best it can be. Nothing really stands out in the code, and the indexing looks correct, and I should have enough memory to handle this in cache, so it must be a disk I/O problem right? Not exactly! If we were to look at how much memory the plan cache is taking by querying sys.dm_os_memory_clerks for the CACHESTORE_SQLCP and CACHESTORE_OBJCP clerks we might be surprised at what we find. In SQL Server 2005 RTM and SP1, the plan cache was allowed to take up to 75% of the memory under 8GB. I’ll give you a second to go back and read that again. Yes, you read it correctly, it says 75% of the memory under 8GB, but you don’t have to take my word for it, you can validate this by reading Changes in Caching Behavior between SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 RTM and SQL Server 2005 SP2. In this scenario the application uses an entirely adhoc workload against SQL Server and this leads to plan cache bloat, and up to 4.5GB of our 6GB of memory for SQL can be consumed by the plan cache in SQL Server 2005 SP1. This in turn reduces the size of the buffer cache to just 1.5GB, causing our 2.8GB of data movement in this expensive plan to cause complete flushing of the buffer cache, not just once initially, but then another time during the queries execution, resulting in excessive physical I/O from disk. Keep in mind that this is not the only query executing at the time this occurs. Remember the output of sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats() showed high read stalls on the data files for our user databases versus higher write stalls for tempdb? The memory pressure is also forcing heavier use of tempdb to handle sorting and hashing in the environment as well. The real clue here is the Memory counters for the instance; Page Life Expectancy, Free List Pages, and Free List Stalls/sec. The fact that Page Life Expectancy is fluctuating between 50 and 150 constantly is a sign that the buffer cache is experiencing constant churn of data, once every minute to two and a half minutes. If you add to the Page Life Expectancy counter, the consistent bottoming out of Free List Pages along with Free List Stalls/sec consistently spiking over 10, and you have the perfect memory pressure scenario. All of sudden it may not be that our disk subsystem is the problem, but is instead an innocent bystander and victim. Side Note: The Page Life Expectancy counter dropping briefly and then returning to normal operating values intermittently is not necessarily a sign that the server is under memory pressure. The Books Online and a number of other references will tell you that this counter should remain on average above 300 which is the time in seconds a page will remain in cache before being flushed or aged out. This number, which equates to just five minutes, is incredibly low for modern systems and most published documents pre-date the predominance of 64 bit computing and easy availability to larger amounts of memory in SQL Servers. As food for thought, consider that my personal laptop has more memory in it than most SQL Servers did at the time those numbers were posted. I would argue that today, a system churning the buffer cache every five minutes is in need of some serious tuning or a hardware upgrade. Back to our problem and its investigation: There are two things really wrong with this server; first the plan cache is excessively consuming memory and bloated in size and we need to look at that and second we need to evaluate upgrading the memory to accommodate the workload being performed. In the case of the server I was working on there were a lot of single use plans found in sys.dm_exec_cached_plans (where usecounts=1). Single use plans waste space in the plan cache, especially when they are adhoc plans for statements that had concatenated filter criteria that is not likely to reoccur with any frequency.  SQL Server 2005 doesn’t natively have a way to evict a single plan from cache like SQL Server 2008 does, but MVP Kalen Delaney, showed a hack to evict a single plan by creating a plan guide for the statement and then dropping that plan guide in her blog post Geek City: Clearing a Single Plan from Cache. We could put that hack in place in a job to automate cleaning out all the single use plans periodically, minimizing the size of the plan cache, but a better solution would be to fix the application so that it uses proper parameterized calls to the database. You didn’t write the app, and you can’t change its design? Ok, well you could try to force parameterization to occur by creating and keeping plan guides in place, or we can try forcing parameterization at the database level by using ALTER DATABASE <dbname> SET PARAMETERIZATION FORCED and that might help. If neither of these help, we could periodically dump the plan cache for that database, as discussed as being a problem in Kalen’s blog post referenced above; not an ideal scenario. The other option is to increase the memory on the server to 16GB or 32GB, if the hardware allows it, which will increase the size of the plan cache as well as the buffer cache. In SQL Server 2005 SP1, on a system with 16GB of memory, if we set max server memory to 14GB the plan cache could use at most 9GB  [(8GB*.75)+(6GB*.5)=(6+3)=9GB], leaving 5GB for the buffer cache.  If we went to 32GB of memory and set max server memory to 28GB, the plan cache could use at most 16GB [(8*.75)+(20*.5)=(6+10)=16GB], leaving 12GB for the buffer cache. Thankfully we have SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2, 3, and 4 these days which include the changes in plan cache sizing discussed in the Changes to Caching Behavior between SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 RTM and SQL Server 2005 SP2 blog post. In real life, when I was troubleshooting this problem, I spent a week trying to chase down the cause of the disk I/O bottleneck with our Server Admin and SAN Admin, and there wasn’t much that could be done immediately there, so I finally asked if we could increase the memory on the server to 16GB, which did fix the problem. It wasn’t until I had this same problem occur on another system that I actually figured out how to really troubleshoot this down to the root cause.  I couldn’t believe the size of the plan cache on the server with 16GB of memory when I actually learned about this and went back to look at it. SQL Server is constantly telling a story to anyone that will listen. As the DBA, you have to sit back and listen to all that it’s telling you and then evaluate the big picture and how all the data you can gather from SQL about performance relate to each other. One of the greatest tools out there is actually a free in the form of Diagnostic Scripts for SQL Server 2005 and 2008, created by MVP Glenn Alan Berry. Glenn’s scripts collect a majority of the information that SQL has to offer for rapid troubleshooting of problems, and he includes a lot of notes about what the outputs of each individual query might be telling you. When I read Pinal’s blog post SQL SERVER – ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 11 of 28, I noticed that he referenced Checking Memory Related Performance Counters in his post, but there was no real explanation about why checking memory counters is so important when looking at an I/O related wait type. I thought I’d chat with him briefly on Google Talk/Twitter DM and point this out, and offer a couple of other points I noted, so that he could add the information to his blog post if he found it useful.  Instead he asked that I write a guest blog for this. I am honored to be a guest blogger, and to be able to share this kind of information with the community. The information contained in this blog post is a glimpse at how I do troubleshooting almost every day of the week in my own environment. SQL Server provides us with a lot of information about how it is running, and where it may be having problems, it is up to us to play detective and find out how all that information comes together to tell us what’s really the problem. This blog post is written by Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter). Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: MVP, Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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• NINE Questions with Michelle Juett

  - by NINEQuestions

  Michelle Juett is one of the more interesting people I know, even though we’ve never met face to face. She’s part artist, part techie and all cool. We “met” via my good buddy George Clingerman and have plotting to take over the world, errr… I mean “collaborating” ever since. If you happen to live in the Seattle area, you can catch her and her work at Sakura Con on April 2-4, 2010 and various other gamer and art cons throughout the year. You can also find her on Twitter as @Shelldragon. Now that you know a little bit, I’ll let her tell you the rest of the story in these NINE Questions: 1. Where are you from? I was born in Clearwater, Florida. I like to tell people I'm from the Bermuda Triangle, it just makes explaining myself so much easier. My family moved to Washington when I was 5 and I've been in the Pacific Northwest ever since. We like to QQ about the rain but we really love the green trees and clean water. 2. What do you do? I fight evil by moonlight and win love by daylight.. or something like that.  I’ve been in quality assurance for games during the day since January 2008 and an artist for life. I currently work in QA for a really awesome game company in Bellevue.  At home, I work on personal digital art, making game assets as well as other random freelance projects as they pop up. 3. How did you get to where you are now? I'm still not where I want to be but I'm getting closer. The biggest piece of advice I can give is to work hard and never settle for the minimum required. I tend to overwork myself but I've never regretted it. You can want something really bad but if you aren't willing to work for it, then you can't expect it to just happen. I've always drawn and had an unhealthy love for video games that I was told I’d grow out of.  I knew I would not ‘grow out’ of games and that real adults make them and I could too. After I graduated, in searching for jobs, I discovered game testing. I figured this would be a good way to get my foot in the door and start networking. I’ve worked with consoles, websites and now, PC games.  I stuck with my journey, although it has been a rocky one, daylighting as a tester and moonlighting as an artist. I'm still on that journey but I wouldn't have it any other way. Test has given me a perspective that is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain any other way. It gives an unconditional respect for other hard working testers and an insight into creative problem solving. 4. So video game testing probably sounds WAY cooler than the reality. What's it like? What's a given day for you? Game testers don't get a lot of respect because of their stigmas and the fact most people don't actually know what we do.  People hear about the opening and closing disc trays all day. Many places do treat their testers like numbers. It all depends on where you work and how awesome your company is. I've had to deal with a lot of bad work situations to get to a really good one. QA exists to ensure the game is as flawless and enjoyable as it can be by the time it has to leave the nest and go out into the world. This includes everything obvious: “can I beat the level and save the princess?” to the more obscure: ‘What happens when I lose internet connection while trying to save right before falling into a pit to my death while holding the jump key then my cat pulls out my memory card and hides it in her litter box?” On the dev side, for developers, testers can be very scary people. Especially when the test team is not in house and you can’t see each other’s faces.  I've seen both sides. We don't mean to hurt your feelings. We really DO love you and want your game to be the best it can be! It can be some serious tough love. 5. You are also an accomplished artist. Got any major projects right now you'd like to talk about? LOL, I don't know if I’d say I'm an accomplished artist just yet. I’m still a long way from where I want to be. I figure that’s what makes you grow though: the desire to never stop improving. I like QA but I want to be a full time artist. I was lucky enough to register for a table at Sakura Con in the 11 second window that the tables sold out. As such, I’ll be selling my wares in the Artist Alley April 2-4th. Part of preparing for this is actually making the art to be sold there. Anime is a fun pass time but I don’t draw a whole lot of it so I’m making up for lost time. As I seem to enjoy burying myself in work, I’m an art lead for a secret project that’s so secret I might be killed tonight for even mentioning it. I also take on various freelance projects and do what I can to help out indie games. I discovered the XNA community a year and a half ago and developed a love for Indies when I was writing a weekly newsletter on XBLA news. I’m a little late to the party but I find myself in a unique position where I am an artist and also have technical skills in games. While not programmer myself, I have a lot of game sense and experience. I hope to make some awesome happen. Lastly, I have an ongoing web comic Shell’s Angels) that tends to get neglected when I get busy. I still love drawing comics and keep a little book with me to sketch down ideas as they pop into my head. I may pick it back up again as a larger project sometime in the future. 6. Can you talk about any of the other freelance projects you're doing or are you sworn to secrecy on those too? We wouldn't want a team of game developer ninjas to take you out or anything. All my projects are currently 2d. I have personal projects such as the ongoing comic as well as a graphic novel I've been picking at here and there. My main focus until April is Sakura Con, Sakura Con, Sakura Con.  I see it as a great way to get exposure and convention experience. I found out I love conventions a couple years ago and I want to get more involved in them. 7. As an artist, what is your weapon of choice? What do you use to get most of your stuff done? I am a Photoshop Hero and I have the hoodie to prove it. (http://www.pennyarcademerch.com/pah090011.html) I've dabbled in other paint programs but I always gravitate back to Photoshop. She is my one true love. I'd like to learn programs like Flash or Anime Studio when I get a bit more time because of their animation abilities. I've worked on frame by frame animation forever but I would love to learn 2d rigging. Still, nothing can compare to a simple sketchpad and a pencil. I always have one on me in case I come across or think of something interesting and can't get to a computer. If the Courier ever comes to exist it will be an ideal weapon for me. 8. You did some videos too, depicting the art creation process. What was the motivation behind those? The creative process is just as important as the final product, if not more so.  I've always loved watching speed paint videos and wanted to try it out myself. Turns out it's a lot of work and time but it's definitely fun to go back and rewatch them. Art isn't always the end result and is more often the process itself. 9. Got any interesting tattoos? Designed any for yourself or other people? Not yet, but not for lack of desire. I've toiled over what and where for years. Last year, I finally decided the back of my shoulders would be the place. Like anything permanent, I want it to have meaning. I thought of somehow incorporating games but I couldn't find something I felt would stand the test of time even with all the classic sprite games. I'm very picky so we'll see if I can get something solid decided. Come see me at Sakura Con April 2 -4!!!

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• How do I get a Dane-Elec mp3/mp4 player working?

  - by user40432

  My MP3/MP4 does not plug-in and play and therefore I can not transfer any file to the MP3/MP4 dane-elec music my touch or only dane-elec with 8 gb in memory and perhapses model zt1 with radio,..and microsdhc card slot following the above link the mp3/mp4 is there and it is MP3 Player: TOUCH MY MUSIC and the complete information is on this site http://www.danedigital.com/8-Music-Media-Players/2-music-touch.html as the Technical Specifications MP3 Player: TOUCH MY MUSIC The Mp4 player has a very classy. It allows its users to play music and view photos and video. His fluent interface, its touch-pad, his radio and RDS Micro SDHC reader makes him a very complete device will become the ideal musical companion. ubuntu i am with is ubuntu 11.10 kernel 3.0.0-14-generic the latest I tried to install many applications but nothing worked. With disk utility I can see that Ubuntu can recognize something, that as a peripheral device named rockchip usbdisk user and rockchip usbdisk sd, and i can plug and play other devices, and only this mp3/mp4 do not connect to the computer with ubuntu and the device as no problem working disconnected to computer I try to see if work on Windows and it does! I can see the device and transfer files to the MP3/MP4 dane-elec folder device and use FAT32. So why can not do on Ubuntu!? What can I do and why does not work on Ubuntu? What is wrong with it? Here are the logs: Jan 4 17:27:34 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 141.948863] init: apport pre-start process (1970) terminated with status 1 Jan 4 17:27:34 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 141.963202] init: apport post-stop process (1994) terminated with status 1 Jan 4 17:30:02 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 289.564049] usb 2-4: new high speed USB device number 3 using ehci_hcd Jan 4 17:30:02 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 289.988706] usbcore: registered new interface driver uas Jan 4 17:30:02 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 289.992056] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver... Jan 4 17:30:02 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 289.992272] scsi6 : usb-storage 2-4:1.0 Jan 4 17:30:02 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 289.993082] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage Jan 4 17:30:02 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 289.993088] USB Mass Storage support registered. Jan 4 17:30:03 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 290.996887] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access RockChip USBDISK User 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 Jan 4 17:30:03 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 290.997372] scsi 6:0:0:1: Direct-Access RockChip USBDISK SD 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 Jan 4 17:30:03 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 290.997478] scsi: killing requests for dead queue Jan 4 17:30:03 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.002712] scsi: killing requests for dead queue Jan 4 17:30:03 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.002880] scsi: killing requests for dead queue Jan 4 17:30:04 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.016249] scsi: killing requests for dead queue Jan 4 17:30:04 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.032252] scsi: killing requests for dead queue Jan 4 17:30:04 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.048182] scsi: killing requests for dead queue Jan 4 17:30:04 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.060178] scsi: killing requests for dead queue Jan 4 17:30:04 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.060357] scsi: killing requests for dead queue Jan 4 17:30:04 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.080381] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0 Jan 4 17:30:04 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.080646] sd 6:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0 Jan 4 17:30:04 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.088381] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 16015360 512-byte logical blocks: (8.19 GB/7.63 GiB) Jan 4 17:30:04 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.088988] sd 6:0:0:1: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk Jan 4 17:30:04 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.200050] usb 2-4: reset high speed USB device number 3 using ehci_hcd Jan 4 17:30:04 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.448044] usb 2-4: reset high speed USB device number 3 using ehci_hcd Jan 4 17:30:04 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.696055] usb 2-4: reset high speed USB device number 3 using ehci_hcd Jan 4 17:30:04 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.832046] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled Jan 4 17:30:04 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.832994] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Asking for cache data failed Jan 4 17:30:04 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.833001] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through Jan 4 17:30:04 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.834378] sdb: detected capacity change from 8199864320 to 0 Jan 4 17:30:04 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 291.835367] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk Jan 4 17:30:06 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 293.004741] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 16015360 512-byte logical blocks: (8.19 GB/7.63 GiB) Jan 4 17:30:06 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 293.116051] usb 2-4: reset high speed USB device number 3 using ehci_hcd Jan 4 17:30:21 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 308.228043] usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -110 Jan 4 17:30:36 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 323.444072] usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -110 Jan 4 17:30:36 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 323.660047] usb 2-4: reset high speed USB device number 3 using ehci_hcd Jan 4 17:30:51 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 338.772085] usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -110 Jan 4 17:31:06 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 353.988064] usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -110 Jan 4 17:31:07 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 354.204058] usb 2-4: reset high speed USB device number 3 using ehci_hcd Jan 4 17:31:12 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 359.224115] usb 2-4: device descriptor read/8, error -110 Jan 4 17:31:17 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 364.344136] usb 2-4: device descriptor read/8, error -110 Jan 4 17:31:17 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 364.560037] usb 2-4: reset high speed USB device number 3 using ehci_hcd Jan 4 17:31:22 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 369.580132] usb 2-4: device descriptor read/8, error -110 Jan 4 17:31:27 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 374.700126] usb 2-4: device descriptor read/8, error -110 Jan 4 17:31:27 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 374.804121] usb 2-4: USB disconnect, device number 3 Jan 4 17:31:27 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 374.804518] sd 6:0:0:0: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery Jan 4 17:31:27 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 374.804600] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present Jan 4 17:31:27 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 374.804606] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through Jan 4 17:31:27 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 374.804693] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] READ CAPACITY failed Jan 4 17:31:27 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 374.804698] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_NO_CONNECT driverbyte=DRIVER_OK Jan 4 17:31:27 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 374.804704] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense not available. Jan 4 17:31:27 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 374.804744] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present Jan 4 17:31:27 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 374.804748] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through Jan 4 17:31:27 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 374.804754] sdb: detected capacity change from 8199864320 to 0 Jan 4 17:31:27 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 374.820273] scsi: killing requests for dead queue Jan 4 17:31:27 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 374.852240] scsi: killing requests for dead queue Jan 4 17:31:27 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 374.980054] usb 2-4: new high speed USB device number 4 using ehci_hcd Jan 4 17:31:43 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 390.092059] usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -110 Jan 4 17:31:58 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 405.308070] usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -110 Jan 4 17:31:58 a-ubuntu kernel: [ 405.524078] usb 2-4: new high speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd and the other post is: http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/792915/ and the other bDeviceSubClass 2 ? bDeviceProtocol 1 Interface Association bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x04f2 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd idProduct 0xb008 USB 2.0 Camera bcdDevice 93.27 iManufacturer 2 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd. iProduct 1 Chicony USB 2.0 Camera iSerial 3 SN0001 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 565 bNumInterfaces 2 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0x80 (Bus Powered) MaxPower 500mA Interface Association: bLength 8 bDescriptorType 11 bFirstInterface 0 bInterfaceCount 2 bFunctionClass 14 Video bFunctionSubClass 3 Video Interface Collection bFunctionProtocol 0 iFunction 1 Chicony USB 2.0 Camera Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 14 Video bInterfaceSubClass 1 Video Control bInterfaceProtocol 0 iInterface 1 Chicony USB 2.0 Camera VideoControl Interface Descriptor: bLength 13 bDescriptorType 36 bDescriptorSubtype 1 (HEADER) bcdUVC 1.00 wTotalLength 77 dwClockFrequency 15.000000MHz bInCollection 1 baInterfaceNr( 0) 1 VideoControl Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 36 bDescriptorSubtype 3 (OUTPUT_TERMINAL) bTerminalID 2 wTerminalType 0x0101 USB Streaming bAssocTerminal 0 bSourceID 4 iTerminal 0 VideoControl Interface Descriptor: bLength 26 bDescriptorType 36 bDescriptorSubtype 6 (EXTENSION_UNIT) bUnitID 4 guidExtensionCode {7033f028-1163-2e4a-ba2c-6890eb334016} bNumControl 1 bNrPins 1 baSourceID( 0) 3 bControlSize 1 bmControls( 0) 0x01 iExtension 0 VideoControl Interface Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 36 bDescriptorSubtype 2 (INPUT_TERMINAL) bTerminalID 1 wTerminalType 0x0201 Camera Sensor bAssocTerminal 0 iTerminal 0 wObjectiveFocalLengthMin 0 wObjectiveFocalLengthMax 0 wOcularFocalLength 0 bControlSize 3 bmControls 0x00000000 VideoControl Interface Descriptor: bLength 11 bDescriptorType 36 bDescriptorSubtype 5 (PROCESSING_UNIT) Warning: Descriptor too short bUnitID 3 bSourceID 1 wMaxMultiplier 0 bControlSize 2 bmControls 0x0000053f Brightness Contrast Hue Saturation Sharpness Gamma Backlight Compensation Power Line Frequency iProcessing 0 bmVideoStandards 0x a NTSC - 525/60 SECAM - 625/50 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x83 EP 3 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0010 1x 16 bytes bInterval 6 Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 1 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 0 bInterfaceClass 14 Video bInterfaceSubClass 2 Video Streaming bInterfaceProtocol 0 iInterface 0 VideoStreaming Interface Descriptor: bLength 14 bDescriptorType 36 bDescriptorSubtype 1 (INPUT_HEADER) bNumFormats 1 wTotalLength 345 bEndPointAddress 129 bmInfo 0 bTerminalLink 2 bStillCaptureMethod 0 bTriggerSupport 1 bTriggerUsage 0 bControlSize 1 bmaControls( 0) 27 VideoStreaming Interface Descriptor: bLength 27 bDescriptorType 36 bDescriptorSubtype 4 (FORMAT_UNCOMPRESSED) bFormatIndex 1 bNumFrameDescriptors 7 guidFormat {59555932-0000-1000-8000-00aa00389b71} bBitsPerPixel 16 bDefaultFrameIndex 1 bAspectRatioX 0 bAspectRatioY 0 bmInterlaceFlags 0x00 Interlaced stream or variable: No Fields per frame: 2 fields Field 1 first: No Field pattern: Field 1 only bCopyProtect 0 VideoStreaming Interface Descriptor: bLength 46 bDescriptorType 36 bDescriptorSubtype 5 (FRAME_UNCOMPRESSED) bFrameIndex 1 bmCapabilities 0x00 Still image unsupported wWidth 640 wHeight 480 dwMinBitRate 614400 dwMaxBitRate 18432000 dwMaxVideoFrameBufferSize 614400 dwDefaultFrameInterval 333333 bFrameIntervalType 5 dwFrameInterval( 0) 333333 dwFrameInterval( 1) 500000 dwFrameInterval( 2) 666666 dwFrameInterval( 3) 1000000 dwFrameInterval( 4) 2000000 VideoStreaming Interface Descriptor: bLength 46 bDescriptorType 36 bDescriptorSubtype 5 (FRAME_UNCOMPRESSED) bFrameIndex 2 bmCapabilities 0x00 Still image unsupported wWidth 352 wHeight 288 dwMinBitRate 202752 dwMaxBitRate 6082560 dwMaxVideoFrameBufferSize 202752 dwDefaultFrameInterval 333333 bFrameIntervalType 5 dwFrameInterval( 0) 333333 dwFrameInterval( 1) 500000 dwFrameInterval( 2) 666666 dwFrameInterval( 3) 1000000 dwFrameInterval( 4) 2000000 VideoStreaming Interface Descriptor: bLength 46 bDescriptorType 36 bDescriptorSubtype 5 (FRAME_UNCOMPRESSED) bFrameIndex 3 bmCapabilities 0x00 Still image unsupported wWidth 320 wHeight 240 dwMinBitRate 153600 dwMaxBitRate 4608000 dwMaxVideoFrameBufferSize 153600 dwDefaultFrameInterval 333333 bFrameIntervalType 5 dwFrameInterval( 0) 333333 dwFrameInterval( 1) 500000 dwFrameInterval( 2) 666666 dwFrameInterval( 3) 1000000 dwFrameInterval( 4) 2000000 VideoStreaming Interface Descriptor: bLength 46 bDescriptorType 36 bDescriptorSubtype 5 (FRAME_UNCOMPRESSED) bFrameIndex 4 bmCapabilities 0x00 Still image unsupported wWidth 176 wHeight 144 dwMinBitRate 50688 dwMaxBitRate 1520640 dwMaxVideoFrameBufferSize 50688 dwDefaultFrameInterval 333333 bFrameIntervalType 5 dwFrameInterval( 0) 333333 dwFrameInterval( 1) 500000 dwFrameInterval( 2) 666666 dwFrameInterval( 3) 1000000 dwFrameInterval( 4) 2000000 VideoStreaming Interface Descriptor: bLength 46 bDescriptorType 36 bDescriptorSubtype 5 (FRAME_UNCOMPRESSED) bFrameIndex 5 bmCapabilities 0x00 Still image unsupported wWidth 160 wHeight 120 dwMinBitRate 38400 dwMaxBitRate 1152000 dwMaxVideoFrameBufferSize 38400 dwDefaultFrameInterval 333333 bFrameIntervalType 5 dwFrameInterval( 0) 333333 dwFrameInterval( 1) 500000 dwFrameInterval( 2) 666666 dwFrameInterval( 3) 1000000 dwFrameInterval( 4) 2000000 VideoStreaming Interface Descriptor: bLength 34 bDescriptorType 36 bDescriptorSubtype 5 (FRAME_UNCOMPRESSED) bFrameIndex 6 bmCapabilities 0x00 Still image unsupported wWidth 1280 wHeight 800 dwMinBitRate 2048000 dwMaxBitRate 18432000 dwMaxVideoFrameBufferSize 2048000 dwDefaultFrameInterval 1333333 bFrameIntervalType 2 dwFrameInterval( 0) 1333333 dwFrameInterval( 1) 2000000 VideoStreaming Interface Descriptor: bLength 34 bDescriptorType 36 bDescriptorSubtype 5 (FRAME_UNCOMPRESSED) bFrameIndex 7 bmCapabilities 0x00 Still image unsupported wWidth 1280 wHeight 1024 dwMinBitRate 2621440 dwMaxBitRate 23592960 dwMaxVideoFrameBufferSize 2621440 dwDefaultFrameInterval 1333333 bFrameIntervalType 2 dwFrameInterval( 0) 1333333 dwFrameInterval( 1) 2000000 VideoStreaming Interface Descriptor: bLength 6 bDescriptorType 36 bDescriptorSubtype 13 (COLORFORMAT) bColorPrimaries 1 (BT.709,sRGB) bTransferCharacteristics 1 (BT.709) bMatrixCoefficients 4 (SMPTE 170M (BT.601)) Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 1 bAlternateSetting 1 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 14 Video bInterfaceSubClass 2 Video Streaming bInterfaceProtocol 0 iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 5 Transfer Type Isochronous Synch Type Asynchronous Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0080 1x 128 bytes bInterval 1 Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 1 bAlternateSetting 2 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 14 Video bInterfaceSubClass 2 Video Streaming bInterfaceProtocol 0 iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 5 Transfer Type Isochronous Synch Type Asynchronous Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0100 1x 256 bytes bInterval 1 Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 1 bAlternateSetting 3 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 14 Video bInterfaceSubClass 2 Video Streaming bInterfaceProtocol 0 iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 5 Transfer Type Isochronous Synch Type Asynchronous Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0320 1x 800 bytes bInterval 1 Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 1 bAlternateSetting 4 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 14 Video bInterfaceSubClass 2 Video Streaming bInterfaceProtocol 0 iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 5 Transfer Type Isochronous Synch Type Asynchronous Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0b20 2x 800 bytes bInterval 1 Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 1 bAlternateSetting 5 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 14 Video bInterfaceSubClass 2 Video Streaming bInterfaceProtocol 0 iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 5 Transfer Type Isochronous Synch Type Asynchronous Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x1320 3x 800 bytes bInterval 1 Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 1 bAlternateSetting 6 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 14 Video bInterfaceSubClass 2 Video Streaming bInterfaceProtocol 0 iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 5 Transfer Type Isochronous Synch Type Asynchronous Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x13e8 3x 1000 bytes bInterval 1 Device Qualifier (for other device speed): bLength 10 bDescriptorType 6 bcdUSB 2.00 bDeviceClass 239 Miscellaneous Device bDeviceSubClass 2 ? bDeviceProtocol 1 Interface Association bMaxPacketSize0 64 bNumConfigurations 1 Device Status: 0x0000 (Bus Powered) Bus 006 Device 002: ID 04d9:1503 Holtek Semiconductor, Inc. Shortboard Lefty Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 1.10 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 8 idVendor 0x04d9 Holtek Semiconductor, Inc. idProduct 0x1503 Shortboard Lefty bcdDevice 3.10 iManufacturer 1 iProduct 2 USB Keyboard iSerial 0 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 59 bNumInterfaces 2 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xa0 (Bus Powered) Remote Wakeup MaxPower 100mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 3 Human Interface Device bInterfaceSubClass 1 Boot Interface Subclass bInterfaceProtocol 1 Keyboard iInterface 0 HID Device Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 33 bcdHID 1.10 bCountryCode 0 Not supported bNumDescriptors 1 bDescriptorType 34 Report wDescriptorLength 62 Report Descriptors: ** UNAVAILABLE ** Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0008 1x 8 bytes bInterval 10 Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 1 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 3 Human Interface Device bInterfaceSubClass 0 No Subclass bInterfaceProtocol 0 None iInterface 0 HID Device Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 33 bcdHID 1.10 bCountryCode 0 Not supported bNumDescriptors 1 bDescriptorType 34 Report wDescriptorLength 101 Report Descriptors: ** UNAVAILABLE ** Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x82 EP 2 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0008 1x 8 bytes bInterval 10 Device Status: 0x0000 (Bus Powered)

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• Move Files from a Failing PC with an Ubuntu Live CD

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  You’ve loaded the Ubuntu Live CD to salvage files from a failing system, but where do you store the recovered files? We’ll show you how to store them on external drives, drives on the same PC, a Windows home network, and other locations. We’ve shown you how to recover data like a forensics expert, but you can’t store recovered files back on your failed hard drive! There are lots of ways to transfer the files you access from an Ubuntu Live CD to a place that a stable Windows machine can access them. We’ll go through several methods, starting each section from the Ubuntu desktop – if you don’t yet have an Ubuntu Live CD, follow our guide to creating a bootable USB flash drive, and then our instructions for booting into Ubuntu. If your BIOS doesn’t let you boot using a USB flash drive, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! Use a Healthy Hard Drive If your computer has more than one hard drive, or your hard drive is healthy and you’re in Ubuntu for non-recovery reasons, then accessing your hard drive is easy as pie, even if the hard drive is formatted for Windows. To access a hard drive, it must first be mounted. To mount a healthy hard drive, you just have to select it from the Places menu at the top-left of the screen. You will have to identify your hard drive by its size. Clicking on the appropriate hard drive mounts it, and opens it in a file browser. You can now move files to this hard drive by drag-and-drop or copy-and-paste, both of which are done the same way they’re done in Windows. Once a hard drive, or other external storage device, is mounted, it will show up in the /media directory. To see a list of currently mounted storage devices, navigate to /media by clicking on File System in a File Browser window, and then double-clicking on the media folder. Right now, our media folder contains links to the hard drive, which Ubuntu has assigned a terribly uninformative label, and the PLoP Boot Manager CD that is currently in the CD-ROM drive. Connect a USB Hard Drive or Flash Drive An external USB hard drive gives you the advantage of portability, and is still large enough to store an entire hard disk dump, if need be. Flash drives are also very quick and easy to connect, though they are limited in how much they can store. When you plug a USB hard drive or flash drive in, Ubuntu should automatically detect it and mount it. It may even open it in a File Browser automatically. Since it’s been mounted, you will also see it show up on the desktop, and in the /media folder. Once it’s been mounted, you can access it and store files on it like you would any other folder in Ubuntu. If, for whatever reason, it doesn’t mount automatically, click on Places in the top-left of your screen and select your USB device. If it does not show up in the Places list, then you may need to format your USB drive. To properly remove the USB drive when you’re done moving files, right click on the desktop icon or the folder in /media and select Safely Remove Drive. If you’re not given that option, then Eject or Unmount will effectively do the same thing. Connect to a Windows PC on your Local Network If you have another PC or a laptop connected through the same router (wired or wireless) then you can transfer files over the network relatively quickly. To do this, we will share one or more folders from the machine booted up with the Ubuntu Live CD over the network, letting our Windows PC grab the files contained in that folder. As an example, we’re going to share a folder on the desktop called ToShare. Right-click on the folder you want to share, and click Sharing Options. A Folder Sharing window will pop up. Check the box labeled Share this folder. A window will pop up about the sharing service. Click the Install service button. Some files will be downloaded, and then installed. When they’re done installing, you’ll be appropriately notified. You will be prompted to restart your session. Don’t worry, this won’t actually log you out, so go ahead and press the Restart session button. The Folder Sharing window returns, with Share this folder now checked. Edit the Share name if you’d like, and add checkmarks in the two checkboxes below the text fields. Click Create Share. Nautilus will ask your permission to add some permissions to the folder you want to share. Allow it to Add the permissions automatically. The folder is now shared, as evidenced by the new arrows above the folder’s icon. At this point, you are done with the Ubuntu machine. Head to your Windows PC, and open up Windows Explorer. Click on Network in the list on the left, and you should see a machine called UBUNTU in the right pane. Note: This example is shown in Windows 7; the same steps should work for Windows XP and Vista, but we have not tested them. Double-click on UBUNTU, and you will see the folder you shared earlier! As well as any other folders you’ve shared from Ubuntu. Double click on the folder you want to access, and from there, you can move the files from the machine booted with Ubuntu to your Windows PC. Upload to an Online Service There are many services online that will allow you to upload files, either temporarily or permanently. As long as you aren’t transferring an entire hard drive, these services should allow you to transfer your important files from the Ubuntu environment to any other machine with Internet access. We recommend compressing the files that you want to move, both to save a little bit of bandwidth, and to save time clicking on files, as uploading a single file will be much less work than a ton of little files. To compress one or more files or folders, select them, and then right-click on one of the members of the group. Click Compress…. Give the compressed file a suitable name, and then select a compression format. We’re using .zip because we can open it anywhere, and the compression rate is acceptable. Click Create and the compressed file will show up in the location selected in the Compress window. Dropbox If you have a Dropbox account, then you can easily upload files from the Ubuntu environment to Dropbox. There is no explicit limit on the size of file that can be uploaded to Dropbox, though a free account begins with a total limit of 2 GB of files in total. Access your account through Firefox, which can be opened by clicking on the Firefox logo to the right of the System menu at the top of the screen. Once into your account, press the Upload button on top of the main file list. Because Flash is not installed in the Live CD environment, you will have to switch to the basic uploader. Click Browse…find your compressed file, and then click Upload file. Depending on the size of the file, this could take some time. However, once the file has been uploaded, it should show up on any computer connected through Dropbox in a matter of minutes. Google Docs Google Docs allows the upload of any type of file – making it an ideal place to upload files that we want to access from another computer. While your total allocation of space varies (mine is around 7.5 GB), there is a per-file maximum of 1 GB. Log into Google Docs, and click on the Upload button at the top left of the page. Click Select files to upload and select your compressed file. For safety’s sake, uncheck the checkbox concerning converting files to Google Docs format, and then click Start upload. Go Online – Through FTP If you have access to an FTP server – perhaps through your web hosting company, or you’ve set up an FTP server on a different machine – you can easily access the FTP server in Ubuntu and transfer files. Just make sure you don’t go over your quota if you have one. You will need to know the address of the FTP server, as well as the login information. Click on Places > Connect to Server… Choose the FTP (with login) Service type, and fill in your information. Adding a bookmark is optional, but recommended. You will be asked for your password. You can choose to remember it until you logout, or indefinitely. You can now browse your FTP server just like any other folder. Drop files into the FTP server and you can retrieve them from any computer with an Internet connection and an FTP client. Conclusion While at first the Ubuntu Live CD environment may seem claustrophobic, it has a wealth of options for connecting to peripheral devices, local computers, and machines on the Internet – and this article has only scratched the surface. Whatever the storage medium, Ubuntu’s got an interface for it! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Backup Your Windows Live Writer SettingsMove a Window Without Clicking the Titlebar in UbuntuRecover Deleted Files on an NTFS Hard Drive from a Ubuntu Live CDCreate a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive the Easy WayReset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CD TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Tech Fanboys Field Guide Check these Awesome Chrome Add-ons iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools Track Daily Goals With 42Goals

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• The Internet of Things & Commerce: Part 2 -- Interview with Brian Celenza, Commerce Innovation Strategist

  - by Katrina Gosek, Director | Commerce Product Strategy-Oracle

  Internet of Things & Commerce Series: Part 2 (of 3) Welcome back to the second installation of my three part series on the Internet of Things & Commerce. A few weeks ago, I wrote “The Next 7,000 Days” about how we’ve become embedded in a digital architecture in the last 7,000 days since the birth of the internet – an architecture that everyday ties the massive expanse of the internet evermore closely with our physical lives. This blog series explores how this new blend of virtual and material will change how we shop and how businesses sell. Now enjoy reading my interview with Brian Celenza, one of the chief strategists in our Oracle Commerce innovation group. He comments on the past, present, and future of the how the growing Internet of Things relates and will relate to the buying and selling of goods on and offline. -------------------------------------------- QUESTION: You probably have one of the coolest jobs on our team, Brian – and frankly, one of the coolest jobs in our industry. As part of the innovation team for Oracle Commerce, you’re regularly working on bold features and groundbreaking commerce-focused experiences for our vision demos. As you look back over the past couple of years, what is the biggest trend (or trends) you’ve seen in digital commerce that started to bring us closer to this idea of what people are calling an “Internet of Things”? Brian: Well as you look back over the last couple of years, the speed at which change in our industry has moved looks like one of those blurred movement photos – you know the ones where the landscape blurs because the observer is moving so quickly your eye focus can’t keep up. But one thing that is absolutely clear is that the biggest catalyst for that speed of change – especially over the last three years – has been mobile. Mobile technology changed everything. Over the last three years the entire thought process of how to sell on (and offline) has shifted because of mobile technology advances. Particularly for eCommerce professionals who have started to move past the notion of “channels” for selling goods to this notion of “Mobile First”… then the Web site. Or more accurately, that everything – smartphones, web, store, tablet – is just one channel or has to act like one singular access point to the same product catalog, information and content. The most innovative eCommerce professionals realized some time ago that it’s not ideal to build an eCommerce Web site and then build everything on top of or off of it. Rather, they want to build an eCommerce API and then integrate it will all other systems. To accomplish this, they are leveraging all the latest mobile technologies or possibilities mobile technology has opened up: 4G and LTE, GPS, bluetooth, touch screens, apps, html5… How has this all started to come together for shopping experiences on and offline? Well to give you a personal example, I remember visiting an Apple store a few years ago and being amazed that I didn’t have to wait in line because a store associate knew everything about me from my ID – right there on the sales floor – and could check me out anywhere. Then just a few months later (when like any good addict) I went back to get the latest and greatest new gadget, I felt like I was stealing it because I could check myself out with my smartphone. I didn’t even need to see a sales associate OR go to a cash register. Amazing. And since then, all sort sorts of companies across all different types of industries – from food service to apparel –  are starting to see mobile payments in the billions of dollars now thanks not only to the convenience factor but to smart loyalty rewards programs as well. These are just some really simple current examples that come to mind. So many different things have happened in the last couple of years, it’s hard to really absorb all of the quickly – because as soon as you do, everything changes again! Just like that blurry speed photo image. For eCommerce, however, this type of new environment underscores the importance of building an eCommerce API – a platform that has services you can tap in to and build on as the landscape changes at a fever pitch. It’s a mobile first perspective. A web service perspective – particularly if you are thinking of how to engage customers across digital and physical spaces. —— QUESTION: Thanks for bringing us into the present – some really great examples you gave there to put things into perspective. So what do you see as the biggest trend right now around the “Internet of Things” – and what’s coming next few years? Brian: Honestly, even sitting where I am in the innovation group – it’s hard to look out even 12 months because, well, I don’t even think we’ve fully caught up with what is possible now. But I can definitely say that in the last 12 months and in the coming 12 months, in the technology and eCommerce world it’s all about iBeacons. iBeacons are awesome tools we have right now to tie together physical and digital shopping experiences. They know exactly where you are as a shopper and can communicate that to businesses. Currently there seem to be two camps of thought around iBeacons. First, many people are thinking of them like an “indoor GPS”, which to be fair they literally are. The use case this first camp envisions for iBeacons is primarily for advertising and marketing. So they use iBeacons to push location-based promotions to customers if they are close to a store or in a store. You may have seen these types of mobile promotions start to pop up occasionally on your smart phone as you pass by a store you’ve bought from in the past. That’s the work of iBeacons. But in my humble opinion, these promotions probably come too early in the customer journey and although they may be well timed and work to “convert” in some cases, I imagine in most they are just eroding customer trust because they are kind of a “one-size-fits-all” solution rather than one that is taking into account what exactly the customer might be looking for in that particular moment. Maybe they just want more information and a promotion is way too soon for that type of customer. The second camp is more in line with where my thinking falls. In this case, businesses take a more sensitive approach with iBeacons to customers’ needs. Instead of throwing out a “one-size-fits-all” to any passer by with iBeacons, the use case is more around looking at the physical proximity of a customer as an opportunity to provide a service: show expert reviews on a product they may be looking at in a particular aisle of a store, offer the opportunity to compare prices (and then offer a promotion), signal an in-store associate if a customer has been in the store for more than 10 minutes in one place. These are all less intrusive more value-driven uses of iBeacons. And they are more about building customer trust through service. To take this example a bit further into the future realm of “Big Data” and “Internet of Things” businesses could actually use the Oracle Commerce Platform and iBeacons to “silently” track customer movement w/in the store to provide higher quality service. And this doesn’t have to be creepy or intrusive. Simply if a customer has been in a particular department or aisle for more than a 5 or 10 minutes, an in-store associate could come over an offer some assistance already knowing customer preferences from their online profile and maybe even seeing the items in a shopping cart they started at home. None of this has to be revealed to the customer, but it certainly could boost the level of service an in-store sales associate could provide. Or, in another futuristic example, stores could use the digital footprint of the physical store transmitted by iBeacons to generate heat maps of the store that could be tracked over time. Imagine how much you could find out about which parts of the store are more busy during certain parts of the day or seasons. This could completely revolutionize how physical merchandising is deployed or where certain high value / new items are placed. And / or this use of iBeacons could also help businesses figure out if customers are getting held up in certain parts of the store during busy days like Black Friday. If long lines are causing customers to bounce from a physical store and leave those holiday gifts behind, maybe having employees with mobile check as an option could remove the cash register bottleneck. But going to back to my original statement, it’s all still very early in the story for iBeacons. The hardware manufacturers are still very new and there is still not one clear standard.  Honestly, it all goes back to building and maintaining an extensible and flexible platform for anywhere engagement. What you’re building today should allow you to rapidly take advantage of whatever unimaginable use cases wait around the corner. ------------------------------------------------------ I hope you enjoyed the brief interview with Brian. It’s really awesome to have such smart and innovation-minded individuals on our Oracle Commerce innovation team. Please join me again in a few weeks for Part 3 of this series where I interview one of the product managers on our team about how the blending of digital and in-store selling in influencing our product development and vision.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 25, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 25, 2011Popular ReleasesMosaic Project: Mosaic Alpha build 252: First public release There are 8 widgets: - Desktop - Gmail - Weather - Control panel - Me - Video - Clock - PicturesUsage Agent: Usage Agent 9.0.8: Latest release. Changes include: - Fixes for Optus - Usage Delta statistic for BigPond - Eliminated the need for UAC prompt at every startupjQuery List DragSort: jQuery List DragSort 0.4.3: Fix item not dropping correctly on Chrome and jQuery 1.6KinectNUI: Jun 25 Alpha Release: Initial public version. No installer needed, just run the EXE.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v3.3 [v1.0.5 Compatible]: I have added support for all the new items in Terraria v1.0.5. I have also added the ability to put your character in hardcore mode or take them out via a simple checkbox on the stats tab. If you come across any bugs, please let me know immediately.Terraria World Viewer: Version 1.5: Update June 24th Made compatible with the new tiles found in Terraria 1.0.5Kinect Earth Move: KinectEarthMove sample code: Sample code releasedThis is a sample code for Kinect for Windows SDK beta, which was demonstrated on Channel 9 Kinect for Windows SKD beta launch event on June 17 2011. Using color image and skeleton data from Kinect and user in front of Kinect can manipulate the earth between his/her hands.NetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.9b: Changes: - fix critical issue 262334 (AccessViolationException while using events in a COMAddin) - remove x64 Assemblies (not necessary) Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:..............................................................COM Proxy Management, Events, etc. - Examples in C# and VB.Net:............................................................Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access - COMAddi...MiniTwitter: 1.70: MiniTwitter 1.70 ???? ?? ????? xAuth ?? OAuth ??????? 1.70 ??????????????????????????。 ???????????????? Twitter ? Web ??????????、PIN ????????????????????。??????????????????、???????????????????????????。Total Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin (.wfx): Total Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin 0.8.7b: Total Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin version 0.8.7b. Bug fixes: - BROKEN PLUGIN by upgrading SkyDriveServiceClient version 2.0.1b. Please do not forget to express your opinion of the plugin by rating it! Donate (EUR)SkyDrive .Net API Client: SkyDrive .Net API Client 2.0.1b (RELOADED): SkyDrive .Net API Client assembly has been RELOADED in version 2.0.1b as a REAL API. It supports the followings: - Creating root and sub folders - Uploading and downloading files - Renaming and deleting folders and files Bug fixes: - BROKEN API (issue 6834) Please do not forget to express your opinion of the assembly by rating it! Donate (EUR)Mini SQL Query: Mini SQL Query v1.0.0.59794: This release includes the following enhancements: Added a Most Recently Used file list Added Row counts to the query (per tab) and table view windows Added the Command Timeout option, only valid for MSSQL for now - see options If you have no idea what this thing is make sure you check out http://pksoftware.net/MiniSqlQuery/Help/MiniSqlQueryQuickStart.docx for an introduction. PK :-]HydroDesktop - CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System Desktop Application: 1.2.591 Beta Release: 1.2.591 Beta Releasepatterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 12 - June 22, 2011: Changes from previous drop: Minor code changes. New "Introduction" chapter. New "Modularity" chapter. Updated "Architecture" chapter. Updated "Server-Side Implementation" chapter. Updated "Client Data Management and Caching" chapter. Guidance Chapters Ready for Review The Word documents for the chapters are included with the source code in addition to the CHM to help you provide feedback. The PDF is provided as a separate download for your convenience. Installation Overview To ins...SQL Server HowTo: Version 1.0: Initial ReleaseDropBox Linker: DropBox Linker 1.3: Added "Get links..." dialog, that provides selective public files links copying Get links link added to tray menu as the default option Fixed URL encoding .NET Framework 4.0 Client Profile requiredDotNetNuke® Community Edition: 06.00.00 Beta: Beta 1 (Build 2300) includes many important enhancements to the user experience. The control panel has been updated for easier access to the most important features and additional forms have been adapted to the new pattern. This release also includes many bug fixes that make it more stable than previous CTP releases. Beta ForumsBlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.5 RC: BlogEngine.NET Hosting - Click Here! 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! This is a Release Candidate version for BlogEngine.NET 2.5. The most current, stable version of BlogEngine.NET is version 2.0. Find out more about the BlogEngine.NET 2.5 RC here. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. To get started, be sure to check out our installation documentation. If you are upgrading from a previous version, please take a look at ...Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - a centralized code sample library: All-In-One Code Framework 2011-06-19: Alternatively, you can install Sample Browser or Sample Browser VS extension, and download the code samples from Sample Browser. Improved and Newly Added Examples:For an up-to-date code sample index, please refer to All-In-One Code Framework Sample Catalog. NEW Samples for Windows Azure Sample Description Owner CSAzureStartupTask The sample demonstrates using the startup tasks to install the prerequisites or to modify configuration settings for your environment in Windows Azure Rafe Wu ...IronPython: 2.7.1 Beta 1: This is the first beta release of IronPython 2.7. Like IronPython 54498, this release requires .NET 4 or Silverlight 4. This release will replace any existing IronPython installation. The highlights of this release are: Updated the standard library to match CPython 2.7.2. Add the ast, csv, and unicodedata modules. Fixed several bugs. IronPython Tools for Visual Studio are disabled by default. See http://pytools.codeplex.com for the next generation of Python Visual Studio support. See...New Projects.Net Image Processor: An image processing wrapper around GDI+, allowing you to apply one or more filters against an image source. Out-of-the-box support: * Conversion from one image type to another * Image resizing and various strategies for resolving aspect ratio * Edge detection * GIF support * Chaining filters together to perform complex operations on a single image Filters can be stacked and queued so that they run one after the other in a process queue. The processor can accept filenames, streams o...AsyncGetListSample: Reactive Extensions?????、Twitter??????????????????????????????。Awful for Windows Phone 7: Awful for Windows Phone 7 is a work-in-progress forum reader software for the Something Awful Forums.binzlog2.com: BlogEngine sourceCaffeine Model: A view model framework that specifically targets problems such as change recognition, validation and graph traversal. Provides robust support in these areas and base classes from which to build off of.CxBuild: cxbuildDotNetNuke Scheduler DashboardControl: The DNNSchedulerDashboard control adds a new control to the DotNetNuke Dashboard module that monitors the execution of the tasks in the DNN Scheduler. This control will keep host administrators informed on the tasks that are not executing on time.fkanban: A free Agile tool insist of Product backlog,sprint,Kanban etcKillstone Spycam: A "WebCam Timershot" style application that can take photos from a DirectShow device at a specified interval and save to disk and/or upload via FTP.Live Services for Moodle 1.9: This is a modification to the original Microsoft Live Services for Moodle allowing users to chat through Live Messenger using the web client.MoreEPG: Import of Extern EPG in Windows Media Center (Windows 7)NAntExt: The NAntExt is an extensions library for NAnt. This library includes Tasks and Functions which are much needed in using NAnt, but are not included in NAnt or NAntContrib. The ideal would be to eventually cycle them back into one of these projects. NetSquare - FourSquare C#.NET Open Source Class Library: NetSquare makes it easy to access Foursquare via the new v2 OAuth interface. This will be published as a VS 2010 C# project with associated examples.Power Presenter 2011: Do you want to make a great photo slideshow? Then get Power Presenter the best for showing phothos. Music with a click from the menu of the window. Better for you!!! If you want to join us it is a single rule NO-SEELING & NO-MONEY. It is developed in VB.NET. PowerPackPS: PowerPackPS is a DSV for creating PowerGUI PowerPacks using Powershell instead of the GUI or XML.Resuming Action Results for ASP.NET MVC: Resuming Action Results for MVC provides a similar implementation as the standard FileResult ActionResult objects but with the intelligence to detect range requests and respond appropriately with no need to write a single extra line of code.SoundSwitch: SoundSwitch makes it easier to switch playback devices (sound cards). Normally, to switch a Playback device you need to right click the sound icon in the bottom right corner of your screen (system tray), choose "Playback devices" and then change the default playback device. Every time you want to switch. With SoundSwitch you just configure once between which Playback devices you want to toggle and then you can press Ctrl+Alt+F11 to toggle automatically!StopWatch Plus: This is a simple stopwatch with which you can set a countdown, save and control the various steps imposed by the pause button. The projects will is still under development and not yet possess all the qualities mentioned above, currently is a simple countdown. _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Questo è un semplice cronometro col quale si potrà impostare un conto alla rovescia, salvare e tenere sotto controllo i vari step ...TFS Reports: The TFS Reports project is about sharing knowledge around the reporting capabilities in TFS and contains both guidance as well as ready to use reports. TRK ATR: Website for TV/Radio channel UpdateTool: A tool used to update client This project is for personal use. Please do not download in now.Windows Service Helper: Helps by creating a Play/Stop/Pause UI when running with a debugger attached, but also allows the windows service to be installed and run by the Windows Services environment as well. All this with one line of code!XNB filetype plugin for Paint.NET: This plugin allows viewing and editing of XNA compiled textures from inside Paint.NET.

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• C#: Why Decorate When You Can Intercept

  - by James Michael Hare

  We've all heard of the old Decorator Design Pattern (here) or used it at one time or another either directly or indirectly.  A decorator is a class that wraps a given abstract class or interface and presents the same (or a superset) public interface but "decorated" with additional functionality.   As a really simplistic example, consider the System.IO.BufferedStream, it itself is a descendent of System.IO.Stream and wraps the given stream with buffering logic while still presenting System.IO.Stream's public interface:   1: Stream buffStream = new BufferedStream(rawStream); Now, let's take a look at a custom-code example.  Let's say that we have a class in our data access layer that retrieves a list of products from a database:  1: // a class that handles our CRUD operations for products 2: public class ProductDao 3: { 4: ... 5:  6: // a method that would retrieve all available products 7: public IEnumerable<Product> GetAvailableProducts() 8: { 9: var results = new List<Product>(); 10:  11: // must create the connection 12: using (var con = _factory.CreateConnection()) 13: { 14: con.ConnectionString = _productsConnectionString; 15: con.Open(); 16:  17: // create the command 18: using (var cmd = _factory.CreateCommand()) 19: { 20: cmd.Connection = con; 21: cmd.CommandText = _getAllProductsStoredProc; 22: cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure; 23:  24: // get a reader and pass back all results 25: using (var reader = cmd.ExecuteReader()) 26: { 27: while(reader.Read()) 28: { 29: results.Add(new Product 30: { 31: Name = reader["product_name"].ToString(), 32: ... 33: }); 34: } 35: } 36: } 37: }            38:  39: return results; 40: } 41: } Yes, you could use EF or any myriad other choices for this sort of thing, but the germaine point is that you have some operation that takes a non-trivial amount of time.  What if, during the production day I notice that my application is performing slowly and I want to see how much of that slowness is in the query versus my code.  Well, I could easily wrap the logic block in a System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch and log the results to log4net or other logging flavor of choice: 1:     // a class that handles our CRUD operations for products 2:     public class ProductDao 3:     { 4:         private static readonly ILog _log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(ProductDao)); 5:         ... 6:         7:         // a method that would retrieve all available products 8:         public IEnumerable<Product> GetAvailableProducts() 9:         { 10:             var results = new List<Product>(); 11:             var timer = Stopwatch.StartNew(); 12:             13:             // must create the connection 14:             using (var con = _factory.CreateConnection()) 15:             { 16:                 con.ConnectionString = _productsConnectionString; 17:                 18:                 // and all that other DB code... 19:                 ... 20:             } 21:             22:             timer.Stop(); 23:             24:             if (timer.ElapsedMilliseconds > 5000) 25:             { 26:                 _log.WarnFormat("Long query in GetAvailableProducts() took {0} ms", 27:                     timer.ElapsedMillseconds); 28:             } 29:             30:             return results; 31:         } 32:     } In my eye, this is very ugly.  It violates Single Responsibility Principle (SRP), which says that a class should only ever have one responsibility, where responsibility is often defined as a reason to change.  This class (and in particular this method) has two reasons to change: If the method of retrieving products changes. If the method of logging changes. Well, we could “simplify” this using the Decorator Design Pattern (here).  If we followed the pattern to the letter, we'd need to create a base decorator that implements the DAOs public interface and forwards to the wrapped instance.  So let's assume we break out the ProductDAO interface into IProductDAO using your refactoring tool of choice (Resharper is great for this). Now, ProductDao will implement IProductDao and get rid of all logging logic: 1:     public class ProductDao : IProductDao 2:     { 3:         // this reverts back to original version except for the interface added 4:     } 5:  And we create the base Decorator that also implements the interface and forwards all calls: 1:     public class ProductDaoDecorator : IProductDao 2:     { 3:         private readonly IProductDao _wrappedDao; 4:         5:         // constructor takes the dao to wrap 6:         public ProductDaoDecorator(IProductDao wrappedDao) 7:         { 8:             _wrappedDao = wrappedDao; 9:         } 10:         11:         ... 12:         13:         // and then all methods just forward their calls 14:         public IEnumerable<Product> GetAvailableProducts() 15:         { 16:             return _wrappedDao.GetAvailableProducts(); 17:         } 18:     } This defines our base decorator, then we can create decorators that add items of interest, and for any methods we don't decorate, we'll get the default behavior which just forwards the call to the wrapper in the base decorator: 1:     public class TimedThresholdProductDaoDecorator : ProductDaoDecorator 2:     { 3:         private static readonly ILog _log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(TimedThresholdProductDaoDecorator)); 4:         5:         public TimedThresholdProductDaoDecorator(IProductDao wrappedDao) : 6:             base(wrappedDao) 7:         { 8:         } 9:         10:         ... 11:         12:         public IEnumerable<Product> GetAvailableProducts() 13:         { 14:             var timer = Stopwatch.StartNew(); 15:             16:             var results = _wrapped.GetAvailableProducts(); 17:             18:             timer.Stop(); 19:             20:             if (timer.ElapsedMilliseconds > 5000) 21:             { 22:                 _log.WarnFormat("Long query in GetAvailableProducts() took {0} ms", 23:                     timer.ElapsedMillseconds); 24:             } 25:             26:             return results; 27:         } 28:     } Well, it's a bit better.  Now the logging is in its own class, and the database logic is in its own class.  But we've essentially multiplied the number of classes.  We now have 3 classes and one interface!  Now if you want to do that same logging decorating on all your DAOs, imagine the code bloat!  Sure, you can simplify and avoid creating the base decorator, or chuck it all and just inherit directly.  But regardless all of these have the problem of tying the logging logic into the code itself. Enter the Interceptors.  Things like this to me are a perfect example of when it's good to write an Interceptor using your class library of choice.  Sure, you could design your own perfectly generic decorator with delegates and all that, but personally I'm a big fan of Castle's Dynamic Proxy (here) which is actually used by many projects including Moq. What DynamicProxy allows you to do is intercept calls into any object by wrapping it with a proxy on the fly that intercepts the method and allows you to add functionality.  Essentially, the code would now look like this using DynamicProxy: 1: // Note: I like hiding DynamicProxy behind the scenes so users 2: // don't have to explicitly add reference to Castle's libraries. 3: public static class TimeThresholdInterceptor 4: { 5: // Our logging handle 6: private static readonly ILog _log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(TimeThresholdInterceptor)); 7:  8: // Handle to Castle's proxy generator 9: private static readonly ProxyGenerator _generator = new ProxyGenerator(); 10:  11: // generic form for those who prefer it 12: public static object Create<TInterface>(object target, TimeSpan threshold) 13: { 14: return Create(typeof(TInterface), target, threshold); 15: } 16:  17: // Form that uses type instead 18: public static object Create(Type interfaceType, object target, TimeSpan threshold) 19: { 20: return _generator.CreateInterfaceProxyWithTarget(interfaceType, target, 21: new TimedThreshold(threshold, level)); 22: } 23:  24: // The interceptor that is created to intercept the interface calls. 25: // Hidden as a private inner class so not exposing Castle libraries. 26: private class TimedThreshold : IInterceptor 27: { 28: // The threshold as a positive timespan that triggers a log message. 29: private readonly TimeSpan _threshold; 30:  31: // interceptor constructor 32: public TimedThreshold(TimeSpan threshold) 33: { 34: _threshold = threshold; 35: } 36:  37: // Intercept functor for each method invokation 38: public void Intercept(IInvocation invocation) 39: { 40: // time the method invocation 41: var timer = Stopwatch.StartNew(); 42:  43: // the Castle magic that tells the method to go ahead 44: invocation.Proceed(); 45:  46: timer.Stop(); 47:  48: // check if threshold is exceeded 49: if (timer.Elapsed > _threshold) 50: { 51: _log.WarnFormat("Long execution in {0} took {1} ms", 52: invocation.Method.Name, 53: timer.ElapsedMillseconds); 54: } 55: } 56: } 57: } Yes, it's a bit longer, but notice that: This class ONLY deals with logging long method calls, no DAO interface leftovers. This class can be used to time ANY class that has an interface or virtual methods. Personally, I like to wrap and hide the usage of DynamicProxy and IInterceptor so that anyone who uses this class doesn't need to know to add a Castle library reference.  As far as they are concerned, they're using my interceptor.  If I change to a new library if a better one comes along, they're insulated. Now, all we have to do to use this is to tell it to wrap our ProductDao and it does the rest: 1: // wraps a new ProductDao with a timing interceptor with a threshold of 5 seconds 2: IProductDao dao = TimeThresholdInterceptor.Create<IProductDao>(new ProductDao(), 5000); Automatic decoration of all methods!  You can even refine the proxy so that it only intercepts certain methods. This is ideal for so many things.  These are just some of the interceptors we've dreamed up and use: Log parameters and returns of methods to XML for auditing. Block invocations to methods and return default value (stubbing). Throw exception if certain methods are called (good for blocking access to deprecated methods). Log entrance and exit of a method and the duration. Log a message if a method takes more than a given time threshold to execute. Whether you use DynamicProxy or some other technology, I hope you see the benefits this adds.  Does it completely eliminate all need for the Decorator pattern?  No, there may still be cases where you want to decorate a particular class with functionality that doesn't apply to the world at large. But for all those cases where you are using Decorator to add functionality that's truly generic.  I strongly suggest you give this a try!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, October 10, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, October 10, 2012Popular ReleasesA C# 4.0 Push Notification Helper Library for WP7.0 & WP7.1: Easy Notification 1.0.0: New Feature - Send Tile, Toast & Raw Notifications to Windows Phone Devices. New Feature - Supports Windows Phone 7.0 & Windows Phone 7.1. New Feature - Validation rules are in-built for Push Notification Messages. New Feature - Strongly typed interfaces. New Feature - Supports synchronous & asynchronous methods to send notifications. New Feature - Supports authenticated notifications using X509 Certificates. New Feature - Supports Callback Registration Requests. New Feature - S...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...Online Image Editor: Online Image Editor v1.1: If you have problems with this tool, please email me at amisouvikdas@gmail.com or You can also participate this project to improve this.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:...DevLib: 69721 binary dll: 69721 binary dllVidCoder: 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...DotNetNuke Boards: 01.00.00: This beta release represents the end of training session 1, based on jQuery and Knockout integration in DotNetNuke 6.2.3. It is designed to allow a single user or multiple users to add/edit/delete cards but no cards can be assigned to anyone at this point. This release is not intended for production use!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).Snoop, the WPF Spy Utility: Snoop 2.8.0: Snoop 2.8.0Announcing Snoop 2.8.0! It's been exactly six months since the last release, and this one has a bunch of goodies in it. In particular, there is now a PowerShell scripting tab, compliments of Bailey Ling. With this tab, the possibilities are limitless. It basically lets you automate/script the application that you are Snooping. Bailey has a couple blog posts (one and two) on his tab already, and I am sure more is to come. Please note that if you do not have PowerShell installed, y....NET Micro Framework: .NET MF 4.3 (Beta): This is the 4.3 Beta version of the .NET Micro Framework. Feature List for v4.3 Support for Visual Studio 2012 (including the Windows Desktop Express version) All v4.2 QFEs features and bug fixes (PWM enhancements, lwIP and network driver reliability improvements, Analog Output, WinUSB and latest GCC support) Improved diagnostic information for deployment Decreased boot time Bug fixes Work Item 1736 - Create link for MFDeploy under start menu Work Item 1504 - Customizing lwIP o...New Projectsadcc2: adccAP.Framework: This a asp.net mvc3 of test web site .EFCodeFirst: Projeto criado para experimentos e estudos com o Entity FrameworkEXPS-RAT: HelloFiskalizacija za developere: Projekt je namijenjen razvojnim inženjerima, programerima, developerima i svima ostalima koji se bave razvojem programskih rješenja za fiskalne blagajne.Galleriffic App for SharePoint 2013: Galleriffic App is an app part for SharePoint 2013 to display a picture gallery with cool JQuery animations and effects. Hack.net: Hack.net is a Roguelike clone similar to NetHack or Roguelike.Inno Setup For .NET Application: This is a simple inno setup for .net developerJava Special Functions Library: Java Special Functions Library implemented as a public class part of my larger mathematical package.LocalFileOpener: The LocalFileOpener plugin opens an intent to help you easily open local files on the device under installed applications.localizr - .NET Collaborative Translation & Localization: Localizr is a platform for collaborative localization and translation of .NET projects.Metro UI CSS: Metro UI CSS a set of styles to create a site with an interface similar to Windows 8 Metro UI. MoskieDotNet: A sandbox for me learn some new technologies.Mouse Automation: Allows a user to automate repetitive clicking within EverQuestMS SQL DB Schema Updater: Simple tool for updating MS SQL database schema based on "ideal" database model.n8design Tools: Tools any Source Code by Stefan Bauer.NasosCS: ???? ?? ??????Pokemonochan: ALright this is a Pokemon MMo bound to come out someday!PotatoSoft: ?????????????!Power Mirrors: Leverage the usefulness of SQL Server mirrors using PowerShell and SMO. Create mirrors from scratch, assign witnesses and test failovers, all from PowerShell! Project13251010: sdfdReal Time Data Bus: A collection of real time data bus implementations.Ricky Tailor's ASP.NET Web 2.0 Project: 7COM0203 Web Scripting And Content Creation Task 1. SampleTFS2: Sample Projectslotcarduino - An Arduino based slotcar timing project: Slotcar timing project based on Arduino Uno/Mega 2560. Standalone system with serial enabled graphic display.System.Data.Entity.Repository: Entity framework code first framework wrapper with support for generic repository pattern, N-Tier application and Transaction Management for rapid developmentTest Marron: This project is a test to explore codeplexTmib Video Downloader: A small youtube video downloader. Created in C#Web Scripting & Content Creation: Fhame Rashid MSc Software Engineering Module Log: Web-Scripting and Content Creationwebbase: webbaseWebScriptingandContentCreation: This project is for the MSc module Web Scripting and Content Creation.Zuordnung: Zuordnung

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 04, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 04, 2013Popular ReleasesDNN Blog: 06.00.01: 06.00.01 ReleaseThis is the first bugfix release of the new v6 blog module. These are the changes: Added some robustness in v5-v6 scripts to cater for some rare upgrade scenarios Changed the name of the module definition to avoid clash with Evoq Social Addition of sitemap providerStock Track: Version 1.2 Stable: Overhaul and re-think of the user interface in normal mode. Added stock history view in normal mode. Allows user to enter orders in normal mode. Allow advanced user to run database queries within the program. Improved sales statistics feature, able to calculate against a single category.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.50: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageHostHQ.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgMoney.net" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgSavy.com" links NEW: Added Support for "PixTreat.com" links Bug fixesVidCoder: 1.5.11 Beta: Added Encode Details window. Exposes elapsed time, ETA, current and average FPS, running file size, current pass and pass progress. Open it by going to Windows -> Encode Details while an encode is running. Subtitle dialog now disables the "Burn In" checkbox when it's either unavailable or it's the only option. It also disables the "Forced Only" when the subtitle type doesn't support the "Forced" flag. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5872. Fixed crash in the preview window when a source fil...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1311.02: Add three new Actions in Custom Updates : Work with Files (Copy, Delete, Rename), Work with Folders (Add, Delete, Rename) and Work with Registry Keys (Add, Delete, Rename). Fix a bug, where after resigning an update, the display is not refresh. Modify the way WPP sort rows in 'Updates Detail Viewer' and 'Computer List Viewer' so that dates are correctly sorted. Add a Tab in the settings form to set Proxy settings when WPP needs to go on Internet. Fix a bug where 'Manage Catalogs Subsc...uComponents: uComponents v6.0.0: This release of uComponents will compile against and support the new API in Umbraco v6.1.0. What's new in uComponents v6.0.0? New DataTypesImage Point XML DropDownList XPath Templatable List New features / Resolved issuesThe following workitems have been implemented and/or resolved: 14781 14805 14808 14818 14854 14827 14868 14859 14790 14853 14790 DataType Grid 14788 14810 14873 14833 14864 14855 / 14860 14816 14823 Drag & Drop support for rows Su...SharePoint 2013 Global Metadata Navigation: SP 2013 Metadata Navigation Sandbox Solution: SharePoint 2013 Global Metadata Navigation sandbox solution version 1.0. Upload to your site collection solution store and activate. See the Documentation tab for detailed instructions.SmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 1.2.1: New FeaturesAdded option Limit to current basket subtotal to HadSpentAmount discount rule Items in product lists can be labelled as NEW for a configurable period of time Product templates can optionally display a discount sign when discounts were applied Added the ability to set multiple favicons depending on stores and/or themes Plugin management: multiple plugins can now be (un)installed in one go Added a field for the HTML body id to store entity (Developer) New property 'Extra...CodeGen Code Generator: CodeGen 4.3.2: Changes in this release include: Removed old tag tokens from several example templates. Fixed a bug which was causing the default author and company names not to be picked up from the registry under .NET. Added several additional tag loop expressions: <IF FIRST_TAG>, <IF LAST_TAG>, <IF MULTIPLE_TAGS> and<IF SINGLE_TAG>. Upgraded to Synergy/DE 10.1.1b, Visual Studio 2013 and Installshield Limited Edition 2013.Dynamics CRM 2013 Easy Solution Importer: Dynamics CRM 2013 Easy Solution Importer 1.0.0.0: First Version of Easy Solution Importer contains: - Entity to handle solutions - PBL to deactivate fields in form - Business Process Flow to launch the Solution Import - Plugin to import solutions - ChartSQL Power Doc: Version 1.0.2.2 BETA 1: Fixes for issues introduced with PowerShell 4.0 with serialization/deserialization. Fixed an issue with the max length of an Excel cell being exceeded by AD groups with a large number of members.Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V54 (LiveConnect): This is the first release which can be used with the new LiveConnect authentication. Fixes the problem that the authentication will not work after 1 hour. Also a logfile will now be stored in "%AppData%\Community\CommunityForumsNNTPServer". If you have any problems please feel free to sent me the file "LogFile.txt".AutoAudit: AutoAudit 3.20f: Here is a high level list of the things I have changed between AutoAudit 2.00h and 3.20f ... Note: 3.20f corrects a minor bug found in 3.20e in the _RowHistory UDF when using column names with spaces. 1. AutoAudit has been tested on SQL Server 2005, 2008, 2008R2 and 2012. 2. Added the capability for AutoAudit to handle primary keys with up to 5 columns. 3. Added the capability for AutoAudit to save changes for a subset of the columns in a table. 4. Normalized the Audit table and created...Aricie - Friendlier Url Provider: Aricie - Friendlier Url Provider Version 2.5.3: This is mainly a maintenance release to stabilize the new Url Group paradigm. As usual, don't forget to install the Aricie - Shared extension first Highlights Fixed: UI bugs Min Requirements: .Net 3.5+ DotNetNuke 4.8.1+ Aricie - Shared 1.7.7+Aricie Shared: Aricie.Shared Version 1.7.7: This is mainly a maintenance version. Fixes in Property Editor: list import/export Min Requirements: DotNetNuke 4.8.1+ .Net 3.5+WPF Extended DataGrid: WPF Extended DataGrid 2.0.0.9 binaries: Fixed issue with ICollectionView containg null values (AutoFilter issue)SuperSocket, an extensible socket server framework: SuperSocket 1.6 stable: Changes included in this release: Process level isolation SuperSocket ServerManager (include server and client) Connect to client from server side initiatively Client certificate validation New configuration attributes "textEncoding", "defaultCulture", and "storeLocation" (certificate node) Many bug fixes http://docs.supersocket.net/v1-6/en-US/New-Features-and-Breaking-ChangesBarbaTunnel: BarbaTunnel 8.1: Check Version History for more information about this release.NAudio: NAudio 1.7: full release notes available at http://mark-dot-net.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/naudio-17-release-notes.htmlDirectX Tool Kit: October 2013: October 28, 2013 Updated for Visual Studio 2013 and Windows 8.1 SDK RTM Added DGSLEffect, DGSLEffectFactory, VertexPositionNormalTangentColorTexture, and VertexPositionNormalTangentColorTextureSkinning Model loading and effect factories support loading skinned models MakeSpriteFont now has a smooth vs. sharp antialiasing option: /sharp Model loading from CMOs now handles UV transforms for texture coordinates A number of small fixes for EffectFactory Minor code and project cleanup ...New ProjectsActive Directory User Home Directory and Home Drive Management: The script is great for migrations and overall user management. Questions please send an email to delagardecodeplex@hotmail.com.Computational Mathematics in TSQL: Combinatorial mathematics is easily expressed with computational assistance. The SQL Server engine is the canvas.Demo3: this is a demoEraDeiFessi: Un parser per un certo sito molto pesante e scomodo da navigareFinditbyme Local Search: Multi-lingual search engine that can index entities with multiple attributes.MVC Demo Project - 6: Demo project showing how to use partial views inside an ASP.NET MVC application.OLM to PST Converters: An Ideal Approach for Mac Users: OLM to PST converter helps you to access MAC Outlook emails with Windows platformOpen Source Grow Pack Ship: The Open Source Grow Pack Ship system is for the produce industry. It will allow companies with low funds and infrastructure to operate inside their own budget.Pauli: Pauli is a small .NET based password manager for home use. The Software helps a user to organize passwords, PIN codes, login accounts and notes.Refraction: Member element sorting. Contains reusable Visual Studio Extensibility code in the 'CodeManifold' project.Sensarium Cybernetic Art: Sensarium Cybernetic Art will use Kinect and brainwave technologies to create a true cybernetic art system. SharePoint - Tetris WebPart: Tetris webpart for SharePoint 2013Software Product Licensing: Dot License is very easy for your software product licensing. Product activation based on AES encryption, Processor ID and a single GUID key.VBS Class Framework: The 'VBS Class Framework' is an experimental project whcih aims at delivering 'Visual Basic Script Classes' for some commonly used Objects / Components (COM).VisualME7Logger: Graphical tools for logging real time performance statistics from VW and Audi automobilesVM Role Authoring Tool: VM ROLE Authoring Tool is used to author consistent VM Role gallery workloads for Windows Azure Pack and Windows Azure. wallet: Wallet Windows 8 Store Application: Windows 8 Store Application with XAML and C#Windows Azure Cache Extension Library: Windows Azure Cache Extension LibraryWindows Firewall Notifier: Windows Firewall Notifier (WFN) extends the default Windows embedded firewall behavior, allowing to visualize and handle incoming or outgoing connections.

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