andy thomas cramer - Page 76

March 21st Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, AJAX, Visual Studio, Silverlight

- by ScottGu

Here is the latest in my link-listing series. If you haven’t already, check out this month’s "Find a Hoster” page on the www.asp.net website to learn about great (and very inexpensive) ASP.NET hosting offers. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] ASP.NET URL Routing in ASP.NET 4: Scott Mitchell has a nice article that talks about the new URL routing features coming to Web Forms applications with ASP.NET 4. Also check out my previous blog post on this topic. Control of Web Control ClientID Values in ASP.NET 4: Scott Mitchell has a nice article that describes how it is now easy to control the client “id” value emitted by server controls with ASP.NET 4. Web Deployment Made Awesome: Very nice MIX10 talk by Scott Hanselman on the new web deployment features coming with VS 2010, MSDeploy, and .NET 4. Makes deploying web applications much, much easier. ASP.NET 4’s Browser Capabilities Support: Nice blog post by Stephen Walther that talks about the new browser definition capabilities support coming with ASP.NET 4. Integrating Twitter into an ASP.NET Website: Nice article by Scott Mitchell that demonstrates how to call and integrate Twitter from within your ASP.NET applications. Improving CSS with .LESS: Nice article by Scott Mitchell that describes how to optimize CSS using .LESS – a free, open source library. ASP.NET MVC Upgrading ASP.NET MVC 1 applications to ASP.NET MVC 2: Eilon Lipton from the ASP.NET team has a nice post that describes how to easily upgrade your ASP.NET MVC 1 applications to ASP.NET MVC 2. He has an automated tool that makes this easy. Note that automated MVC upgrade support is also built-into VS 2010. Use the tool in this blog post for updating existing MVC projects using VS 2008. Advanced ASP.NET MVC 2: Nice video talk by Brad Wilson of the ASP.NET MVC team. In it he describes some of the more advanced features in ASP.NET MVC 2 and how to maximize your productivity with them. Dynamic Select Lists with ASP.NET MVC and jQuery: Michael Ceranski has a nice blog post that describes how to dynamically populate dropdownlists on the client using AJAX. AJAX Microsoft AJAX Minifier: We recently shipped an updated minifier utility that allows you to shrink/minify both JavaScript and CSS files – which can improve the performance of your web applications. You can run this either manually as a command-line tool or now automatically integrate it using a Visual Studio build task. You can download it for free here. Visual Studio VS 2010 Tip: Quickly Closing Documents: Nice blog post that describes some techniques for optimizing how windows are closed with the new VS 2010 IDE. Collpase to Definitions with Outlining: Nice tip from Zain on how to collapse your code editor to outline mode using Ctrl + M, Ctrl + O. Also check out his post on copy/paste with outlining here. $299 VS 2010 Upgrade Offer for VS 2005/2008 Standard Users: Soma blogs about a nice VS 2010 upgrade offer you can take advantage of if you have VS 2005 or VS 2008 Standard editions. For $299 you can upgrade to VS 2010 Professional edition. Dependency Graphics: Jason Zander (who runs the VS team) has a nice blog post that covers the new dependency graph support within VS 2010. This makes it easier to visualize the dependencies within your application. Also check out this video here. Layer Validation: Jason Zander has a nice blog post that talks about the new layer validation features in VS 2010. This enables you to enforce cleaner layering within your projects and solutions. VS 2010 Profiler Blog: The VS 2010 Profiler Team has their own blog and on it you can find a bunch of nice posts from the last few months that talk about a lot of the new features coming with VS 2010’s Profiler support. Some really nice features coming. Silverlight Silverlight 4 Training Course: Nice free set of training courses from Microsoft that can help bring you up to speed on all of the new Silverlight 4 features and how to build applications with them. Updated and current with the recently released Silverlight 4 RC build and tools. Getting Started with Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Development: Nice blog post by Tim Heuer that summarizes how to get started building Windows Phone 7 applications using Silverlight. Also check out my blog post from last week on how to build a Windows Phone 7 Twitter application using Silverlight. A Guide to What Has Changed with the Silverlight 4 RC: Nice summary post by Tim Heuer that describes all of the things that have changed between the Silverlight 4 Beta and the Silverlight 4 RC. Path Based Layout - Part 1 and Part 2: Christian Schormann has a nice blog post about a really cool new feature in Expression Blend 4 and Silverlight 4 called Path Layout. Also check out Andy Beaulieu’s blog post on this. Hope this helps, Scott

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SQL Saturday #44 Huntington Beach Recap

What a great day. It was long and tiring, but rewarding in so many ways. On Sunday morning, I was driving home and I decided to take the Pacific Coast Highway from Huntington Beach. It was a great chance to exhale and just enjoy the sun and smells of the beach (I really love SoCal sometimes). And for future reference for all you speakers, the beach and ocean are only 5 minutes from the SQL Saturday location. I just could help noticing also the shocking number of high priced cars on the road (4 Bentleys, 3 Ferraris, 1 Aston Martins, 3 Maserati, 1 Rolls Royce, and 2 Lamborghinis). It made me think about this: Price of all those cars: $ 150,000+. Impacting the ability of people to learn: Priceless. We have positively impacted the education, knowledge, capabilities of not only our attendees, but also all of their companies and people they might help as well. That is just staggering and something to be immensely proud of. To all of my fellow community leaders, I salute you. So lets talk about the event Overall We had over 220 people register for the event and had 180+ people attend the event. I was shooting for the magical 200 number, but I guess it just gives us more motivation to make it even bigger and better next time. We had a few snags along the way, but what event doesnt, but I think everything turned out great. I did not hear any negative comments and heard lots of positive comments along with people asking when the next one is going to be (More on that later). Location- Golden West College We could not have asked for a better partner for the event. Herb Cohen from Golden West College was the wizard behind the curtains. From the beginning, he was our advocate to the GWC Board and was instrumental in getting our event approved. The day off, Herb was a HUGE help getting any and all logistics that we needed taken care of. In the craziness of the early morning registration crush it was a big help knowing that he and Bret Stateham (Blog | Twitter) were taking care of testing projectors in all the rooms. Anything we needed he was there and was even proactive in getting some things that I had not even thought of (i.e. a dumpster for all of our garbage). I cannot thank Herb enough along with other members of the GWC staff including Minnie Higgins of the Career and Technical Education Division office, Jack Taylor, public safety, and Ron Pryor, Tech Services Support. And last, but not least, the Wireless on campus was absolutely FANTASTIC! Some lessons learned Unless you are a glutton for punishment, as I no doubt am, you most certainly want to give yourself more than six weeks to plan the event. I am lucky that I have a very understanding wife and had a wonderful set of co-coordinators helping me out. A big thanks goes out to Phil, Marlon (Blog | Twitter), Nitin (Twitter), Thomas (Blog | Twitter), Bret (Blog | Twitter), Ben, and Laurie. Thankfully, the sponsor and speaker community was hugely supportive and we were able to fill out the entire event with speakers and sponsors. I have to say that there is not a lot that I would change after this years event. There are obviously going to be some things that we can do better or differently next time, but overall I think it was a great event and I was more than happy with the response we received from the community. Sponsors We obviously could not have put together our event without our sponsors. So certainly have to show them some love. Platinum Sponsors Quest Software http://www.quest.com My Space http://www.myspace.com/ Gold Strategy Companion http://www.strategycompanion.com Silver Fusion-IO http://www.fusionio.com Bronze WestClinTech http://westclintech.com Professional Association For SQL Server http://www.sqlpass.org Attunity http://www.attunity.com Sharepoint 360 http://www.sharepoint360.com Some additional Thanks Andy Warren (Blog | Twitter) Always there to answer my question and help out when I had some issues or questions with the website. The amount of work that he and everyone else put into SQL Saturday is very amazing. What a great gift to the community! Einstein Bros. Bagels They were our Breakfast Vendor and arrived perfectly on time with yummy bagels, sweets and most importantly coffee. Luccis Deli (http://www.luccisdeli.com) Luccis was out Lunch Vendor. They were great to work with and the food was excellent. They worked with us to give us a great price. Heard lots of great comments about the lunches. Definitely not your ordinary box lunch. Moving Forward Unfortunately, the work does not end after the event. We have a few things to clear up such as surveys, sponsor stuff, presentations uploaded to the website, expense reimbursement, stuff like that. Hopefully, all that should be cleared up within the next couple weeks. After that as a group we are going to get together and decide what our next steps are. We definitely want to keep some of the momentum that we are building as a SQL Community and channel that into future SQL Saturdays and other types of community events. In the meantime, for additional training be sure to check out your local User Group and PASS. San Diego SQL Server Users Group ( http://www.sdsqlug.org/home/index.cfm ) Orange County SQL Server Users Group ( http://www.sqloc.com/ ) L.A. SQL Server Users Group ( http://www.sql.la/ ) SQL PASS ( http://www.sqlpass.org/ ) 24 Hours of PASS ( http://www.sqlpass.org/24hours/2010/ ) So stay tuned, there will be more events to come in SoCal!!Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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Data Mining Resources

- by Dejan Sarka

There are many different types of analyses, each one with its own pros and cons. Relational reports have a predefined structure, and end users cannot change it. They are simple to use for end users. Reports can use real-time data and snapshots of data to show the state of a report at specific points in time. One of the drawbacks is that report authoring is limited to IT pros and advanced users. Any kind of dynamic restructuring is very limited. If real-time data is used for a report, the report has a negative impact on the performance of the source system. Processing of the reports might be slow because the data comes from relational database management systems, which are not optimized for reporting only. If you create a semantic model of your data, your end users can create ad-hoc report structures. However, the development is more complex because a developer is needed to create these semantic models. For OLAP, you typically use specialized database management systems. You get lightning speed of analyses. End users can use rich and thin clients to interactively change the structure of the report. Typically, they do it graphically. However, the development of an OLAP system is many times quite complex. It involves the preparation and maintenance of an enterprise data warehouse and OLAP cubes. In order to exploit the possibility of real-time restructuring of reports, the users must be both active and educated. The data is usually stale, as it is loaded into data warehouses and OLAP cubes with a scheduled process. With data mining, a structure is not selected in advance; it searches for the structure. As a result, data mining can give you the most valuable results because you can discover patterns you did not expect. A data mining model structure is limited only by the attributes that you use to train the model. One of the drawbacks is that a lot of knowledge is needed for a successful data mining project. End users have to understand the results. Subject matter experts and IT professionals need to understand business problem thoroughly. The development might be sometimes even more complex than the development of OLAP cubes. Each type of analysis has its own place in an enterprise system. SQL Server has tools for all kinds of analyses. However, data mining is the most advanced way of analyzing the data; this is the “I” in BI. In order to get the most out of it, you need to learn quite a lot. In this blog post, I am gathering together resources for learning, including forthcoming events. Books Multiple authors: SQL Server MVP Deep Dives – I wrote an introductory data mining chapter there. Erik Veerman, Teo Lachev and Dejan Sarka: MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-448): Microsoft SQL Server 2008 - Business Intelligence Development and Maintenance – you can find a good overview of a complete BI solution, including data mining, in this book. Jamie MacLennan, ZhaoHui Tang, and Bogdan Crivat: Data Mining with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 – can’t miss this book if you want to mine your data with SQL Server tools. Michael Berry, Gordon Linoff: Mastering Data Mining: The Art and Science of Customer Relationship Management – data mining from both, business and technical perspective. Dorian Pyle: Data Preparation for Data Mining – an in-depth book about data preparation. Thomas and Ronald Wonnacott: Introductory Statistics – if you thought that you could get away without statistics, then you are not serious about data mining. Jiawei Han and Micheline Kamber: Data Mining Concepts and Techniques – in-depth explanation of the most popular data mining algorithms. Michael Berry and Gordon Linoff: Data Mining Techniques – another book that explains data mining algorithms, more fro a business perspective. Paolo Guidici: Applied Data Mining – very mathematical book, only if you enjoy statistics and mathematics in general. Forthcoming presentations I am presenting two data mining related sessions during the PASS Summit in Charlotte, NC: Wednesday, October 16th, 2013 - Fraud Detection: Notes from the Field – I am showing how to use data mining for a specific business problem. The presentation is based on real-life projects. Friday, October 18th: Excel 2013 Advanced Analytics – I am focusing on Excel Data Mining Add-ins, and how to use them together with Power Pivot and other add-ins. This is the most you can get out of Excel. Sinergija 2013, Belgrade, Serbia Tuesday, October 22nd: Excel 2013 Analytics to the Max – another presentation focusing on the most advanced analytics you can get in Excel. SQL Rally Amsterdam, Netherlands Thursday, November 7th: Advanced Analytics in Excel 2013 – and again I am presenting about data mining in Excel. Why three different titles for the same presentation? I don’t know, I guess I forgot the name I proposed every time right after I sent the proposal. Courses Data Mining with SQL Server 2012 – I wrote a 3-day course for SolidQ. If you are interested in this course, which I could also deliver in a shorter seminar way, you can contact your closes SolidQ subsidiary, or, of course, me directly on addresses [email protected] or [email protected]. This course could also complement the existing courseware portfolio of training providers, which are welcome to contact me as well. OK, now you know: no more excuses, start learning data mining, get the most out of your data

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SQL SERVER – Parsing SSIS Catalog Messages – Notes from the Field #030

- by Pinal Dave

[Note from Pinal]: This is a new episode of Notes from the Field series. SQL Server Integration Service (SSIS) is one of the most key essential part of the entire Business Intelligence (BI) story. It is a platform for data integration and workflow applications. The tool may also be used to automate maintenance of SQL Server databases and updates to multidimensional cube data. In this episode of the Notes from the Field series I requested SSIS Expert Andy Leonard to discuss one of the most interesting concepts of SSIS Catalog Messages. There are plenty of interesting and useful information captured in the SSIS catalog and we will learn together how to explore the same. The SSIS Catalog captures a lot of cool information by default. Here’s a query I use to parse messages from the catalog.operation_messages table in the SSISDB database, where the logged messages are stored. This query is set up to parse a default message transmitted by the Lookup Transformation. It’s one of my favorite messages in the SSIS log because it gives me excellent information when I’m tuning SSIS data flows. The message reads similar to: Data Flow Task:Information: The Lookup processed 4485 rows in the cache. The processing time was 0.015 seconds. The cache used 1376895 bytes of memory. The query: USE SSISDB GO DECLARE @MessageSourceType INT = 60 DECLARE @StartOfIDString VARCHAR(100) = 'The Lookup processed ' DECLARE @ProcessingTimeString VARCHAR(100) = 'The processing time was ' DECLARE @CacheUsedString VARCHAR(100) = 'The cache used ' DECLARE @StartOfIDSearchString VARCHAR(100) = '%' + @StartOfIDString + '%' DECLARE @ProcessingTimeSearchString VARCHAR(100) = '%' + @ProcessingTimeString + '%' DECLARE @CacheUsedSearchString VARCHAR(100) = '%' + @CacheUsedString + '%' SELECT operation_id , SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1))) AS LookupRowsCount , SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1))) AS LookupProcessingTime , CASE WHEN (CONVERT(numeric(3,3),SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1))))) = 0 THEN 0 ELSE CONVERT(bigint,SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)))) / CONVERT(numeric(3,3),SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@ProcessingTimeSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@ProcessingTimeString) + 1)))) END AS LookupRowsPerSecond , SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1))) AS LookupBytesUsed ,CASE WHEN (CONVERT(bigint,SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)))))= 0 THEN 0 ELSE CONVERT(bigint,SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@CacheUsedSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@CacheUsedString) + 1)))) / CONVERT(bigint,SUBSTRING(MESSAGE, (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1), ((CHARINDEX(' ', MESSAGE, PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString,MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)) - (PATINDEX(@StartOfIDSearchString, MESSAGE) + LEN(@StartOfIDString) + 1)))) END AS LookupBytesPerRow FROM [catalog].[operation_messages] WHERE message_source_type = @MessageSourceType AND MESSAGE LIKE @StartOfIDSearchString GO Note that you have to set some parameter values: @MessageSourceType [int] – represents the message source type value from the following results: Value Description 10 Entry APIs, such as T-SQL and CLR Stored procedures 20 External process used to run package (ISServerExec.exe) 30 Package-level objects 40 Control Flow tasks 50 Control Flow containers 60 Data Flow task 70 Custom execution message Note: Taken from Reza Rad’s (excellent!) helper.MessageSourceType table found here. @StartOfIDString [VarChar(100)] – use this to uniquely identify the message field value you wish to parse. In this case, the string ‘The Lookup processed ‘ identifies all the Lookup Transformation messages I desire to parse. @ProcessingTimeString [VarChar(100)] – this parameter is message-specific. I use this parameter to specifically search the message field value for the beginning of the Lookup Processing Time value. For this execution, I use the string ‘The processing time was ‘. @CacheUsedString [VarChar(100)] – this parameter is also message-specific. I use this parameter to specifically search the message field value for the beginning of the Lookup Cache Used value. It returns the memory used, in bytes. For this execution, I use the string ‘The cache used ‘. The other parameters are built from variations of the parameters listed above. The query parses the values into text. The string values are converted to numeric values for ratio calculations; LookupRowsPerSecond and LookupBytesPerRow. Since ratios involve division, CASE statements check for denominators that equal 0. Here are the results in an SSMS grid: This is not the only way to retrieve this information. And much of the code lends itself to conversion to functions. If there is interest, I will share the functions in an upcoming post. If you want to get started with SSIS with the help of experts, read more over at Fix Your SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Notes from the Field, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: SSIS

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How do you use blog content?

- by fatherjack

Do you write a blog, have you ever thought about it? I think people fall into one of a few categories when it comes to blogs, especially blogs with technical content. Writing articles furiously - daily, twice daily and reading dozens of others. Writing the odd piece of content and read plenty of others' output. Started a blog once and its fizzled out but reading lots. Thought about starting a blog someday but never got around to it, hopping into the occasional blog when a link or a Tweet takes them there. Never thought about writing one but often catching content from them when Google (or other preferred search engine) finds content related to their search. Now I am not saying that either of these is right or wrong, nor am I saying that anyone should feel any compulsion to be in any particular category. What I would say is that you as a blog reader have the power to move blog writers from one category to another. How, you might ask? How do I have any power over a blog writer? It is very simple - feedback. If you give feedback then the blog writer knows that they are reaching an audience, if there is no response then they we are simply writing down our thoughts for what could amount to nothing more than a feeble amount of exercise and a few more key stokes towards the onset of RSI. Most blogs have a mechanism to alert the writer when there are comments, and personally speaking, if an email is received saying there has been a response to a blog article then there is a rush of enthusiasm, a moment of excitement that someone is actually reading and considering the text that was submitted and made available for the whole world to read. I am relatively new to this blog game and could be in some extended honeymoon period as I have also recently been incorporated into the Simple Talk 'stable'. I can understand that once you get to the "Dizzy Heights of Ozar" (www.brentozar.com) then getting comments and feedback might not be such a pleasure and may even be rather more of a chore but that, I guess, is the price of fame. For us mere mortals starting out blogging, getting feedback (or even at the moment for me, simply the hope of getting feedback) is what keeps it going. The hope that you will pick a topic that hasn't been done recently by Brad McGehee, Grant Fritchey, Paul Randall, Thomas LaRock or any one of the dozen of rock star bloggers listed here or others from SQLServerPedia and so on, and then do it well enough to be found, reviewed, or <shudder> (re)tweeted to bring more visitors is what we are striving for, along with the fact that the content we might produce is something that will be of benefit to others. There is only so much point to typing content that no-one is reading and putting it on a blog. You may as well just write it in a diary. A technical blog is not like, say, a blog covering photography techniques where the way to frame and take a picture stands true whether it was written last week, last year or last century - technical content goes sour, quite quickly. There isn't much call for articles about yesterdays technology unless its something that still applies to current versions too, so some content written no more than 2 years ago isn't worth having now. The combination of a piece of content that you know is going to not last long and the fact that no-one reads it is a strong force against writing anything else. Getting feedback counters that despair and gives a value to writing something new. I would say that any feedback is good but there are obviously comments that are just so negative or otherwise badly phrased that they would hasten the demise of a blog but, in general most feedback will encourage a writer. It may not be a comment that supports or agrees with the main theme of a post but if it generates discussion or opens up a previously unexplored viewpoint it is contributing to the blog and is therefore encouraging to the writer. Even if you only say "thank you" before you leave a blog, having taken a section of script to use for yourself or having been given a few links to some content that has widened your knowledge it will be so welcome to the blog owner. Isn't it also the decent thing to do, acknowledging that you have benefited from another's efforts?

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Profit's COLLABORATE 10 Session Selections

- by Aaron Lazenby

COLLABORATE 2010 is a mere 11 days away (thanks for the reminder @ocp_advisor). Every year I publish my a list of the sessions I think reflect some of the more interesting people/trends in enterprise IT. I should be at all of these sessions, so drop by for a chat--I'll be the guy tapping out emails on my iPad... Monday, April 19 9:15 a.m. - Keynote: Transforming Customer Value, Delivering Highest Customer Service Location: Keynote Hall I never miss Charles Phillips when he speaks--it's one of the best opportunities to get an update on Oracle product developments and strategy. And there's certainly occasion for an update: this will be Phillips' first big presentation since the Oracle + Sun Strategy Update in late January. Phillips is appearing with Oracle Executive Vice President of Development Thomas Kurian which means there should be some excellent information about how customers are using Oracle's complete software and hardware stack to address enterprise IT challenges. The session should provide some excellent context for the rest of the week's session...don't miss it. 10:45 a.m. - Oracle Fusion Applications: Functional Overview Location: South Seas FI met Basheer Khan at COLLABORATE 08 in Denver and have followed his work ever since. He's a former member of the OAUG Board of Directors, an Oracle ACE, and a charismatic enterprise IT expert. Having worked with the Oracle Usability Advisory Board, Basheer should have some fascinating insights to share about the features and interface of Oracle's Fusine Applications. This session, along with Nadia Bendjedou's "10 Things You Can Do Today to Prepare for the Next Generation Applications" (on Tuesday, April 20 8:00 a.m. in room 3662) should give attendees the update they need about Oracle's next-generation applications. 1:15p.m. - E-Business Suite in the Amazon Cloud Location: South Seas HI did my first full-fledged cloud computing coverage at last year's COLLABORATE show (check out my interview with Oracle's Bill Hodak), where I first learned about Amazon's EC2 offering. I've since talked with several people who have provisioned server space on Amazon's cloud with great results. So I'm looking forward to watching the audience configure an instance of the Oracle E-Business Suite release 12 on the cloud while Chuck Edwards from Blue Gecko drives. This session should take some of the mist and vapor out of the cloud conversation.2:30 p.m. - "Zero Sign-on" to EBS - Enabling 96000 Users to Login to EBS Without User Maintenance Location: South Seas HI'll be sitting tight in South Seas H for the next session on Monday where Doug Pepka, a ten-year veteran of communications giant Comcast, will be walking attendees through a massive single sign-on (SSO) project across the enterprise. I'm working on a story about SSO for the August issue of Profit, so this session has real practical value to me. Plus the proliferation of user account logins--both personal and professional--makes this a critical usability/change management issue for IT leaders planning for successful long-term IT implementations. Tuesday 8:00 am - Information Architecture for Men in Kilts Location: SURF AGetting to a 8:00 a.m. presentation is a tall order in Las Vegas, but presenter Billy Cripe will make it worth your effort. Not only is the title of this session great, but the content should appeal to any IT strategist looking to push the limits of Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise. Cripe is a product management director of Enterprise 2.0 and Enterprise Content Management at Oracle, author of Reshaping Your Business with Web 2.0, and a prolific blogger--he knows how information architecture is critical to and enterprise 2.0 implementation. 10:30a.m. - Oracle Virtualization: From Desktop to Data Center Location: REEF FData center virtualization is still one of the best ways to reduce the cost of running enterprise IT. With the addition of Sun products, Oracle has the industry's most comprehensive virtualization portfolio. I must admit, I'm no expert in this subject. So I'm looking forward to Monica Kumar's presentation so I can get up to speed. Wednesday 8:00 a.m. - The Art of the Steal Location: Mandalay Bay Ballroom JMany will know Frank Abagnale from Steven Spielberg's 2002 film "Catch Me if You Can." The one-time con man and international fugitive who swindled $2.5 million in forged checks went on to help U.S. federal officials investigate fraud cases. Now the CEO of Abagnale and Associates, he has become an invaluable source to the business world on the subject of fraud and fraud protection. With identity theft and digital fraud still on the rise, this session should be an entertaining, and sobering, education on the threats facing businesses and customers around the world. A great way to start Wednesday.1:00 p.m. - Google Wave: Will it replace e-mail as we know it today? Location: SURF EBy many assessments (my own included), Google Wave is a bit of an open collaboration failure. It may seem like an odd reason for me to be excited about this session, but I'm looking forward to the chance to revisit the technology. Also, this is a great case study in connecting free, available Internet tools to existing enterprise computing environments--an issue that IT strategists must contend with as workers spreads out and choose their own productivity tools.

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XNA Notes 002

- by George Clingerman

This past week (much like every week in the XNA community) was filled with things happening and people doing cool things (and getting noticed for doing cool things!). You can definitely tell there are some Xbox LIVE Indie game developers starting to make some names for themselves. Can’t wait to name drop them at bars. Me- “Oh you played Game X? Yeah, I know the guy that made that. Pretty cool guy.” Yeah, I’ll be THAT guy. Time Critical XNA News 30 days left to submit XBLIGs made in XNA Game Studio 3.1 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/01/08/30-days-left-to-submit-xna-gs-3-1-games-to-app-hub.aspx Jeromy Walsh wants you to know his XNA 4.0 Winter Workshop starting soon, go get signed up! And the forum is now LIVE on GameDev.net http://gamedevelopedia.com/ http://tinyurl.com/4gg2cfv The XNA Team Per Nick Gravelyn, Aaron Stebner’s blog post is a must read for icons on Windows Phone http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/72022/439597.aspx#439597 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2010/10/01/10070507.aspx Shawn Hargreaves writes about Sprite Billboards in a 3D world http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/01/12/spritebatch-billboards-in-a-3d-world.aspx XNA MVPs Andy “The ZMan” Dunn wants YOU to come to the MVP Summit and run a 5K http://www.indiegameguy.com/blogs/zman/archive/2010/12/26/come-to-the-mvp-summit-and-run-a-5k-yes-you.aspx Jim Perry updates his forum signature just to make it clear that he’s not speaking for Microsoft or giving official information (LOL, thanks Jim, now if only people will take the time to read that...) XNA MVP | Please use the Forum Search and read the Forum FAQs | My posts are not official info http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/70849/439613.aspx#439613 XNA Developers Robert Boyd (@werezombie) working hard at converting his RPG engine used to make Breath of Death VII and Chtulu Saves the World to XNA 4.0. If you haven’t done the upgrade yet yourself, might be useful to read back through his tweets and recent forum posts to see the problems/solutions he’s encountered. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/71834/438099.aspx#438099 http://www.twitter.com/werezompire SpynDoctorGames is in the final phase before the release of Your Doodles are Bugged for the PC! Going to be interesting to watch as more XNA game developers explore the PC game market for their games. http://twitter.com/SpynDoctorGames/statuses/24503173217521664 http://www.spyn-doctor.de @DrMistry shares some details of his next title YoYoYo http://www.mstargames.co.uk/mistryblogmain/35-genblog/177-a-new-year-a-new-game-and-maybe-a-new-approach.html Travis Woodward (@RabidLionGames) has a blog post coming this weekend on Farseer and Mario-like platformer movement. http://twitter.com/RabidLionGames/statuses/24992762021548032 http://www.rabidlion.com/ S4G Interview with Radiangames http://n4g.com/news/679492/s4g-interview-with-radiangames XBLAratings.com interviews Steve Flores (@DragonDivide) developer of Alpha Squad http://www.xblaratings.com/developer-qaa/3621-alpha-squad-developer-interview XBox LIVE Indie Games If you haven’t been reading the roundups on IndieGames by NaviFairy on GayGamer, you’ve been missing out! http://gaygamer.net/2011/01/xbox_indie_review_roundup_1112.html Armless Octopus posts the Top 20 Games of 2010 Part 1 http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/10/top-20-xbox-live-indie-games-of-2010-part-1/ Armless Octopus posts the Top 20 Games of 2010 Part 2 http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/12/top-20-xbox-live-indie-games-of-2010-%E2%80%93-part-2/ Xbox LIVE Indie Game Reviews http://www.gamemarx.com/ Don’t forget to be following @XboxHornet . That’s a great way to snag free copies of Xbox LIVE Indie Games http://twitter.com/XboxHornet/statuses/24471103808208896 http://www.xboxhornet.com/wordpress/ Xbox LIVE Indie Game Review posts the top 20 Xbox 360 LIVE Indie Games of 2010 http://www.xbox-360-community-games-reviews.com/top-20-best-xbox-360-live-indie-games-of-2010/ VVGtv to Stream #XBLIG Again! Help out if you can. http://vvgtv.com/2011/01/07/vvgtv-to-stream-xblig-again/ Indie Gamer Magazine Issue 14 has a look at the Xbox LIVE Winter Indie Game Uprisiing http://www.indiegamemag.com/issue14/ XNA Game Development Andrew Russell announced and asked for help in his development of ExEn: XNA for iPhone, Android and Silverlight http://rockethub.com/projects/752-exen-xna-for-iphone-android-and-silverlight App Hub forums letting you down? Don’t forget about StackOverflow and the game development specific version gamedev.stackexchange http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/xna http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/xna Transmute gets an update from Aaron Foley (@slyprid) and you can now add and visually edit parallax layers to your 2D tile game. http://twitpic.com/3nudj0 http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/23418379574448128 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/Transmute/default.html Webcomics Weekly #75 touches on some feelings I’ve seen people try to express (myself included) when talking about game development and what types of games should be released for XBLIG http://www.pvponline.com/2011/01/05/webcomics-weekly-75-sour-oats/ Setting up a new PC for XNA development? Here’s a site that helps you quickly build a installer for all the most common applications developers use. http://ninite.com/ Fun wew thread on the XNA forums asking XBLIG/XNA developers just what their Top 10 favorite video games of all time are. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/107.aspx Christopher Hill (@Xalterax) stumbled across an entire community that does nothing but create box art. This is a great potential resource for Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers to get some awesome box art for their games. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/46582/441451.aspx#441451 http://www.vgboxart.com/browse/plat/360/ Don’t forget about the XNA Wiki, fantastic community resource (and roll up those sleeves and contribute already!) http://xnawiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

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Oracle WebCenter at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference

- by Brian Dirking

We had a great week at the E20 Conference, presenting in four sessions – Andy MacMillan gave a session titled Today’s Successful Enterprises are Social Enterprises and was on a panel that Tony Byrne moderated; Christian Finn spoke on a panel on Unified Communications Unified Communications + Social Computing = Best of Both Worlds?, Mark Bennett spoke on a panel on The Evolution of Talent Management. The key areas of focus this year were sentiment analysis, adoption and community building, the benefits of failure, and social’s role in process applications. Sentiment analysis. This was focused not on external audiences but more on employee sentiment. Tim Young showed his internal "NikoNiko" project, where employees use smilies to report their current mood. The result was a dashboard that showed the company mood by department. Since the goal is to improve productivity, people can see which departments are running into issues and try and address them. A company might otherwise wait until the end of the quarter financials to find out that there was a problem and product didn’t ship. This is a way to identify issues immediately. Tim is great – he had the crowd laughing as soon as he hit the stage, with his proposed hastag for his session: by making it 138 characters long, people couldn’t say much behind his back. And as I tweeted during his session, I loved his comment that complexity diffuses energy - it sounds like something Sun Tzu would say. Another example of employee sentiment analysis was CubeVibe. Founder and CEO Aaron Aycock, in his 3 minute pitch or die session talked about how engaged employees perform better. It was too bad he got gonged, he was just picking up speed, but CubeVibe did win the vote – congratulations to them. Internal adoption, community building, and involvement. On this topic I spoke to Terri Griffith, and she said there is some good work going on at University of Indiana regarding this, and hinted that she might be blogging about it in the near future. This area holds lots of interest for me. Amongst our customers, - CPAC stands out as an organization that has successfully built a community. So, I wonder - what are the building blocks? A strong leader? A common or unifying purpose? A certain level of engagement? I imagine someone has created an equation that says “for a community to grow at 30% per month, there must be an engagement level x to the square root of y, where x equals current community size, and y equals the expected growth rate, and the result is how many engagements the average user must contribute to maintain that growth.” Does anyone have a framework like that? The net result of everyone’s experience is that there is nothing to do but start early and fail often. Kevin Jones made this the focus of his keynote. He talked about the types of failure and what they mean. And he showed his famous kids at work video: Kevin’s blog also has this post: Social Business Failure #8: Workflow Integration. This is something that we’ve been working on at Oracle. Since so much of business is based in enterprise applications such as ERP and CRM (and since Oracle offers e-Business Suite, Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards, as well as Fusion Applications), it makes sense that the social capabilities of Oracle WebCenter is built right into these applications. There are two types of social collaboration – ad-hoc, and exception handling. When you are in a business process and encounter an exception, you immediately look for 1) the document that tells you how to handle it, or 2) the person who can tell you how to handle it. With WebCenter built into these processes, people either search their content management system, or engage in expertise location and conversation. The great thing is, THEY DON’T HAVE TO LEAVE THE APPLICATION TO DO IT. Oracle has built the social capabilities right into the applications and business processes. I don’t think enough folks were able to see that at the event, but I expect that over the next six months folks will become very aware of it. WebCenter also provides the ability to have ad-hoc collaboration, search, and expertise location that folks need when they are innovating or collaborating. We demonstrated Oracle Social Network. It’s built on our Oracle WebCenter product to provide social collaboration inside and outside of your company. When we showed it to people, there were a number of areas that they commented on that were different from the other products being shown at the conference: Screenshots from within the product Many authors working on documents simultaneously Flagging people for follow up Direct ability to call out to people Ability to see presence not just if someone is online, but which conversation they are actively in Great stuff, the conference was full of smart people that that we enjoy spending time with. We’ll keep up in the meantime, but we look forward to seeing you in Boston.

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Wildcards!

- by Tim Dexter

Yes, its been a while, Im sorry, mumble, mumble ... no excuses. Well other than its been, as my son would say 'hecka busy.' On a brighter note I see Kan has been posting some cool stuff in my absence, long may he continue! I received a question today asking about using a wildcard in a template, something like: <?if:INVOICE = 'MLP*'?> where * is the wildcard Well that particular try does not work but you can do it without building your own wildcard function. XSL, the underpinning language of the RTF templates, has some useful string functions - you can find them listed here. I used the starts-with function to achieve a simple wildcard scenario but the contains can be used in conjunction with some of the others to build something more sophisticated. Assume I have a a list of friends and the amounts of money they owe me ... Im very generous and my interest rates a pretty competitive :0) <ROWSET> <ROW> <NAME>Andy</NAME> <AMT>100</AMT> </ROW> <ROW> <NAME>Andrew</NAME> <AMT>60</AMT> </ROW> <ROW> <NAME>Aaron</NAME> <AMT>50</AMT> </ROW> <ROW> <NAME>Alice</NAME> <AMT>40</AMT> </ROW> <ROW> <NAME>Bob</NAME> <AMT>10</AMT> </ROW> <ROW> <NAME>Bill</NAME> <AMT>100</AMT> </ROW> Now, listing my friends is easy enough <for-each:ROW> <NAME> <AMT> <end for-each> but lets say I just want to see all my friends beginning with 'A'. To do that I can use an XPATH expression to filter the data and tack it on to the for-each expression. This is more efficient that using an 'if' statement just inside the for-each. <?for-each:ROW[starts-with(NAME,'A')]?> will find me all the A's. The square braces denote the start of the XPATH expression. starts-with is the function Im calling and Im passing the value I want to check i.e. NAME and the string Im looking for. Just substitute in the characters you are looking for. You can of course use the function in a if statement too. <?if:starts-with(NAME,'A')?><?attribute@incontext:color;'red'?><?end if?> Notice I removed the square braces, this will highlight text red if the name begins with an 'A' You can even use the function to do conditional calculations: <?sum (AMT[starts-with(../NAME,'A')])?> Sum only the amounts where the name begins with an 'A' Notice the square braces are back, its a function we want to apply to the AMT field. Also notice that we need to use ../NAME. The AMT and NAME elements are at the same level in the tree, so when we are at the AMT level we need the ../ to go up a level to then come back down to test the NAME value. I have built out the above functions in a sample template here. Huge prizes for the first person to come up with a 'true' wildcard solution i.e. if NAME like '*im*exter* demand cash now!

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VB Myth - Case Insensitivity is Awesome!

- by Damon

I was reading Andy Brown's article 10 Reasons Why Visual Basic is Better than C# and the first claim is that VB is superior because of case insensitivity. I think the reasons he outlines are basically as follows: Your fingers get tired finding the shift key (e.g. typing PascalCase and camelCase members) You are much more likely to make mistakes while typing names When you accidentally leave caps lock on, it really matters These three arguments culminate in the conclusion: "It doesn't matter if you disagree with everything else in this article: case-sensitivity alone is sufficient reason to ditch C#!" Righto. I've been using Visual Basic since version 5.0, I wrote a book about ASP.NET in Visual Basic, so I want everyone to know I'm definitely not a VB.NET hater. I had to converted to C# because it was the language of preference at the places I've worked, so I'm used to both languages. I love me some case sensitivity. So first, let's debunk the claims. First, your fingers do not get tired of finding the shift key unless you are writing code in notepad and compiling everything on the command line. Visual Studio pretty much takes away the need to use the shift key at all. For the most part, any programmer worth a damn doesn't have to type more than about 3-5 characters of any variable or method name before IntelliSense kicks in to help. VB or C#, if you are not using the tab key for autocomplete then you are typing too much anyway, regardless of whether the shift key is involved or not. Also, you've got to be a pretty hard-core candy ass if you're complaining at the end of the day that your little fingers are hurting from hitting the shift key. Second, I cannot logically refute the fact that if there are more stringent rules about case sensitivity it will lead to more mistakes. As such, know that you will be more prone to mistakes in C#. However, lets talk about the magnitude of the problem. If you are using IntelliSense then you have auto-correction built in so you probably won't have much of a problem in the first place. If you manage to bypass IntelliSense and type something wrong you normally are immediately presented with a red-squiggly to let you know something is amiss. Normally, a person would look at the problem, figure out what the heck went wrong, and then avoid that problem again in the future. Granted, I have met people who seem to lack this capability, but their problem is deeper than a decision between VB.NET and C#. So let's make sure that we're all on the same page about this problem. If you have two teams of developers, one that uses VB.NET and one that uses C#, do not expect to see the VB.NET team drinking beer at the end of the project in festive revelry while the C# team is crying over what the hell to do because their code is riddled with case-sensitivity problems that nobody can resolve. Lastly, if you leave your caps lock key on, turn it off. Really, what kind of ass-hat would write an entire VB.NET application ENTIRELY IN CAPS? I happen to be a fan of case sensitivity because it encourages precision and uniformity. The last thing I need is a code base that looks like it was ransacked by LeEt HacKors wHo Can uSe wHateVer cASe tHey wanT. I mean really, if you saw someone write this: PuBLIc Sub MyMethod . End Sub And upon asking them why BL was upper case, they responded "Oh, I accidentally hit the shift key there. Fortunately for me VB.NET is a case insensitive language so I saved a couple of keystrokes by leaving it in there." Or if you saw: PUBLIC SUB ANOTHERMETHOD . END SUB And the response to why it was uppercased was "Yeah, I accidentally had caps locks on, fortunately for me VB.NET doesn't care. Really dodged a bullet there, glad I wasn't using C#." Would you not think that a bit ridiculous? If you want to convince C# developers that C# sucks, go for it. But the case insensitivity argument is crap.

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Closing the gap between strategy and execution with Oracle Business Intelligence 11g

- by manan.goel(at)oracle.com

Wikipedia defines strategy as a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. An example of this is General Electric's acquisitions and divestiture strategy (plan) designed to propel GE to number 1 or 2 place (goal) in every business segment that it operated in. Execution on the other hand can be defined as the actions taken to getting things done. In GE's case execution will be steps followed for mergers/acquisitions or divestiture. Business press has written extensively about the importance of both strategy and execution in achieving desired business objectives. Perhaps the quote from Thomas Edison says it best - "vision without execution is hallucination". Conversely, it can be said that "execution without vision" is well may be "wishful thinking". Research overwhelmingly point towards the wide gap between strategy and execution. According to a published study, 49% of surveyed executives perceive a gap between their organizations' ability to develop and communicate sound strategies and their ability to implement those strategies. Further, of these respondents, 64% don't have full confidence that their companies will be able to close the gap. Having established the severity and importance of the problem let's talk about the reasons for the strategy-execution gap. The common reasons include: - Lack of clearly defined goals - Lack of consistent measure of success - Lack of ownership - Lack of alignment - Lack of communication - Lack of proper execution - Lack of monitoring There are multiple approaches to solving the problem including organizational development practices, technology enablement etc. In most cases a combination of approaches is required to achieve the desired result. For the purposes of this discussion, I'll focus on technology. Imagine an integrated closed loop technology platform that automates the entire management cycle from defining strategy to assigning ownership to communicating goals to achieving alignment to collaboration to taking actions to monitoring progress and achieving mid course corrections. Besides, for best ROI and lowest TCO such a system should also have characteristics like: Complete - Full functionality - Rich end user access Open - Any data source - Any business application - Any technology stack Integrated - Common metadata - Common security - Common system management From a capabilities perspective the system should provide the following capabilities: Define - Strategy - Objectives - Ownership - KPI's Communicate - Pervasive - Collaborative - Role based - Secure Execute - Integrated - Intuitive - Secure - Ubiquitous Monitor - Multiple styles and formats - Exception based - Push & Pull Having talked about the business problem and outlined the blueprint for a technology solution, let's talk about how Oracle Business Intelligence 11g can help. Oracle Business Intelligence is a comprehensive business intelligence solution for reporting, ad hoc query and analysis, OLAP, dashboards and scorecards. Oracle's best in class BI platform is based on an architecturally integrated technology foundation that provides a unified end user experience and features a Common Enterprise Information Model, with common security, query request generation and optimization, and system management. The BI platform is · Complete - meaning it delivers all modes and styles of BI including reporting, ad hoc query and analysis, OLAP, dashboards and scorecards with a rich end user experience that includes visualization, collaboration, alerts and notifications, search and mobile access. · Open - meaning the BI platform integrates with any data source, ETL tool, business application, application server, security infrastructure, portal technology as well as any ODBC compliant third party analytical tool. The suite accesses data from multiple heterogeneous sources--including popular relational and multidimensional data sources and major ERP and CRM applications from Oracle and SAP. · Integrated - meaning the BI platform is based on an architecturally integrated technology foundation built on an open, standards based service oriented architecture. The platform features a common enterprise information model, common security model and a common configuration, deployment and systems management framework. To summarize, Oracle Business Intelligence is a comprehensive, integrated BI platform that lets you define strategy, identify objectives, assign ownership, define KPI's, collaborate, take action, monitor, report and do course corrections all form a single interface and a single system. The platform's integrated metadata model and task based design ensures that the entire workflow from defining strategy to execution to monitoring is completely integrated delivering end to end visibility, transparency and agility. Click here to learn more about Oracle BI 11g.

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SOA, Governance, and Drugs

Why is IT governance important in service oriented architecture (SOA)? IT Governance provides a framework for making appropriate decisions based on company guidelines and accepted standards. This framework also outlines each stakeholder’s responsibilities and authority when making important architectural or design decisions. Furthermore, this framework of governance defines parameters and constraints that are used to give context and perspective when making decisions. The use of governance as it applies to SOA ensures that specific design principles and patterns are used when developing and maintaining services. When governance is consistently applied systems the following benefits are achieved according to Anne Thomas Manes in 2010. Governance makes sure that services conform to standard interface patterns, common data modeling practices, and promotes the incorporation of existing system functionality by building on top of other available services across a system. Governance defines development standards based on proven design principles and patterns that promote reuse and composition. Governance provides developers a set of proven design principles, standards and practices that promote the reduction in system based component dependencies. By following these guidelines, individual components will be easier to maintain. For me personally, I am a fan of IT governance, and feel that it valuable part of any corporate IT department. However, depending on how it is implemented can really affect the value of using IT governance. Companies need to find a way to ensure that governance does not become extreme in its policies and procedures. I know for me personally, I would really dislike working under a completely totalitarian or laissez-faire version of governance. Developers need to be able to be creative in their designs and too much governance can really impede the design process and prevent the most optimal design from being developed. On the other hand, with no governance enforced, no standards will be followed and accepted design patterns will be ignored. I have personally had to spend a lot of time working on this particular scenario and I have found that the concept of code reuse and composition is almost nonexistent. Based on this, too much time and money is wasted on redeveloping existing aspects of an application that already exist within the system as a whole. I think moving forward we will see a staggered form of IT governance, regardless if it is for SOA or IT in general. Depending on the size of a company and the size of its IT department, I can see IT governance as a layered approach in that the top layer will be defined by enterprise architects that focus on abstract concepts pertaining to high level design, general guidelines, acceptable best practices, and recommended design patterns. The next layer will be defined by solution architects or department managers that further expand on abstracted guidelines defined by the enterprise architects. This layer will contain further definitions as to when various design patterns, coding standards, and best practices are to be applied based on the context of the solutions that are being developed by the department. The final layer will be defined by the system designer or a solutions architect assed to a project in that they will define what design patterns will be used in a solution, naming conventions, as well as outline how a system will function based on the best practices defined by the previous layers. This layered approach allows for IT departments to be flexible in that system designers have creative leeway in designing solutions to meet the needs of the business, but they must operate within the confines of the abstracted IT governance guidelines. A real world example of this can be seen in the United States as it pertains to governance of the people in that the US government defines rules and regulations in the abstract and then the state governments take these guidelines and applies them based on the will of the people in each individual state. Furthermore, the county or city governments are the ones that actually enforce these rules based on how they are interpreted by local community. To further define my example, the United States government defines that marijuana is illegal. Each individual state has the option to determine this regulation as it wishes in that the state of Florida determines that all uses of the drug are illegal, but the state of California legally allows the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes only. Based on these accepted practices each local government enforces these rules in that a police officer will arrest anyone in the state of Florida for having this drug on them if they walk down the street, but in California if a person has a medical prescription for the drug they will not get arrested. REFERENCESThomas Manes, Anne. (2010). Understanding SOA Governance: http://www.soamag.com/I40/0610-2.php

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Event not bubbling in some Browsers when clicked on Flash

- by 166_MMX

Environment: Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8, Flash ActiveX 10.1.53.64, wmode=transparent Just wrote a small test page that you can load in IE and Firefox or any other Browser. <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Event bubbling test</title> </head> <body onclick="alert('body');" style="margin:0;border-width:0;padding:0;background-color:#00FF00;"> <div onclick="alert('div');" style="margin:0;border-width:0;padding:0;background-color:#FF0000;"> <span onclick="alert('span');" style="margin:0;border-width:0;padding:0;background-color:#0000FF;"> <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,0,0" width="159" height="91" id="flashAbout_small" align="absmiddle"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.adobe.com/swf/software/flash/about/flashAbout_info_small.swf"/> <param name="quality" value="high"/> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF"/> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"/> <embed src="http://www.adobe.com/swf/software/flash/about/flashAbout_info_small.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" width="159" height="91" wmode="transparent" name="flashAbout_small" align="absmiddle" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer"/> </object> </span> </div> </body> </html> So clicking any colored shape should produce an alert (except for the green one in IE, not sure why but I hope that's off topic and not related to my issue). Clicking the Flash container in Firefox will work Perfectly fine. You should get alert boxes in this order containing: span, div and body. Flash bubbles the event to the HTML. But this is not happening in IE. So why is Flash in IE not bubbling events to HTML? Edit: As mentioned by Andy E this behavior can also bee seen in Google Chrome which to my knowledge is not using ActiveX to embed the flash movie into the page.

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PHP Associative array sort

- by Mithun

I have an array like one below. Currently it is sorted alphabetically by the OwnerNickName field. Now i want to brig the array entry with OwnerNickName 'My House' as the first entry of the array and rest sorted alphabetically by OwnerNickName. Any idea? Array ( [0318B69D-5DEB-11DF-9D7E-0026B9481364] => Array ( [OwnerNickName] => andy [Rooms] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [Label] => Living Room [RoomKey] => FC795A73-695E-11DF-9D7E-0026B9481364 ) ) ) [286C29DE-A9BE-102D-9C16-00163EEDFCFC] => Array ( [OwnerNickName] => anton [Rooms] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [Label] => KidsRoom [RoomKey] => E79D7991-64DC-11DF-9D7E-0026B9481364 ) [1] => Array ( [Label] => Basement [RoomKey] => CC12C0C4-68AA-11DF-9D7E-0026B9481364 ) [2] => Array ( [Label] => Family Room [RoomKey] => 67A280D4-64D9-11DF-9D7E-0026B9481364 ) ) ) [8BE18F84-AC22-102D-9C16-00163EEDFCFC] => Array ( [OwnerNickName] => mike [Rooms] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [Label] => Family Room [RoomKey] => 1C6AFB39-6835-11DF-9D7E-0026B9481364 ) ) ) [29B455DE-A9BC-102D-9C16-00163EEDFCFC] => Array ( [OwnerNickName] => My House [Rooms] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [Label] => Basement [RoomKey] => 61ECFAB2-6376-11DF-9D7E-0026B9481364 ) [1] => Array ( [Label] => Rec Room [RoomKey] => 52B8B781-6376-11DF-9D7E-0026B9481364 ) [2] => Array ( [Label] => Deck [RoomKey] => FFEB4102-64DE-11DF-9D7E-0026B9481364 ) [3] => Array ( [Label] => My Room2 [RoomKey] => 112473E4-64DF-11DF-9D7E-0026B9481364 ) [4] => Array ( [Label] => Bar Room [RoomKey] => F82C47A8-64DE-11DF-9D7E-0026B9481364 ) ) ) )

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UIIMageView, warning: check_safe_call: could not restore current frame

- by lukya

Hi, I am changing the image in UIImageView based on accelerometer input. The images are stored in an array. The application runs fine for a while and then crashes. warning: check_safe_call: could not restore current frame I am not using "UIImage ImageNamed" method when populating the array. The total size of all images is around 12 Mb. But individual images are very light (<100 kb) and i am using only one image at a time from the array. Just in case there are any autoreleases, I have allocated a NSAutoreleasePool in view did load and am draining it in the didReceiveMemoryWarning method (which does get called 2, 3 times before the app crashes?). Following is the code that creates images array: //create autorelease pool as we are creating many autoreleased objects NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init]; NSMutableArray *finalarr = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithCapacity:9]; NSLog(@"start loading"); for(int y = 0; y < 100; y+=10) { NSMutableArray *arr = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithCapacity:10]; for(int x = 0; x < 10; x++) { NSString *imageName = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"0%d",y + x]; UIImage *img = [[UIImage alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:imageName ofType:@"png"]]; [arr addObject:img]; [imageName release]; [img release]; } [finalarr addObject:arr]; [arr release]; } NSLog(@"done loading"); // Override point for customization after app launch viewController.imagesArray = finalarr; [finalarr release]; //retain the array of images [viewController.imagesArray retain]; //release the aurtorelease pool to free memory taken up by objects enqued for release [pool release]; As the app runs smoothly for a while, which means array creation is definitely not the problem. After this the following method is called from [accelerometer didAccelerate] -(BOOL)setImageForX:(int)x andY:(int)y { [self.imageView setImage:(UIImage*)[(NSArray*)[self.imagesArray objectAtIndex:y] objectAtIndex:x]]; return TRUE; } So the only code being executed is the "UIImageView setImage". But no objects are being created here. Please let me know if the code seems to have any leaks or i am doing something wrong. Thanks, Swapnil

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Silverlight with MVVM Inheritance: ModelView and View matching the Model

- by moonground.de

Hello Stackoverflowers! :) Today I have a special question on Silverlight (4 RC) MVVM and inheritance concepts and looking for a best practice solution... I think that i understand the basic idea and concepts behind MVVM. My Model doesn't know anything about the ViewModel as the ViewModel itself doesn't know about the View. The ViewModel knows the Model and the Views know the ViewModels. Imagine the following basic (example) scenario (I'm trying to keep anything short and simple): My Model contains a ProductBase class with a few basic properties, a SimpleProduct : ProductBase adding a few more Properties and ExtendedProduct : ProductBase adding another properties. According to this Model I have several ViewModels, most essential SimpleProductViewModel : ViewModelBase and ExtendedProductViewModel : ViewModelBase. Last but not least, according Views SimpleProductView and ExtendedProductView. In future, I might add many product types (and matching Views + VMs). 1. How do i know which ViewModel to create when receiving a Model collection? After calling my data provider method, it will finally end up having a List<ProductBase>. It containts, for example, one SimpleProduct and two ExtendedProducts. How can I transform the results to an ObservableCollection<ViewModelBase> having the proper ViewModel types (one SimpleProductViewModel and two ExtendedProductViewModels) in it? I might check for Model type and construct the ViewModel accordingly, i.e. foreach(ProductBase currentProductBase in resultList) if (currentProductBase is SimpleProduct) viewModels.Add( new SimpleProductViewModel((SimpleProduct)currentProductBase)); else if (currentProductBase is ExtendedProduct) viewModels.Add( new ExtendedProductViewModels((ExtendedProduct)currentProductBase)); ... } ...but I consider this very bad practice as this code doesn't follow the object oriented design. The other way round, providing abstract Factory methods would reduce the code to: foreach(ProductBase currentProductBase in resultList) viewModels.Add(currentProductBase.CreateViewModel()) and would be perfectly extensible but since the Model doesn't know the ViewModels, that's not possible. I might bring interfaces into game here, but I haven't seen such approach proven yet. 2. How do i know which View to display when selecting a ViewModel? This is pretty the same problem, but on a higher level. Ended up finally having the desired ObservableCollection<ViewModelBase> collection would require the main view to choose a matching View for the ViewModel. In WPF, there is a DataTemplate concept which can supply a View upon a defined DataType. Unfortunately, this doesn't work in Silverlight and the only replacement I've found was the ResourceSelector of the SLExtensions toolkit which is buggy and not satisfying. Beside that, all problems from Question 1 apply as well. Do you have some hints or even a solution for the problems I describe, which you hopefully can understand from my explanation? Thank you in advance! Thomas

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JAX-WS wsgen and collections of collections: wsgen broken?

- by ayang

I've been playing around with "bottom-up" JAX-WS and have come across something odd when running wsgen. If I have a service class that does something like: @WebService public class Foo { public ArrayList<Bar> getBarList(String baz) { ... } } then running wsgen gets me a FooService_schema1.xsd that has something like this: <xs:complexType name="getBarListResponse"> <xs:sequence> <xs:element name="return" type="tns:bar" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> which seems reasonable. However, if I want a collection of collections like: public BarCollection getBarCollection(String baz) { ... } // BarCollection is just a container for an ArrayList<Bar> then the generated schema ends up with stuff like: <xs:complexType name="barCollection"> <xs:sequence/> </xs:complexType> <xs:complexType name="getBookCollectionsResponse"> <xs:sequence> <xs:element name="return" type="tns:barCollection" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> An empty sequence is not what I had in mind at all. My original approach was to go with: public ArrayList<ArrayList<Bar>> getBarLists(String baz) { ... } but that ends up with a big chain of complexTypes that just wind up with an empty sequence at the end as well: <xs:complexType name="getBarListsResponse"> <xs:sequence> <xs:element name="return" type="tns:arrayList" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> <xs:complexType name="arrayList"> <xs:complexContent> <xs:extension base="tns:abstractList"> <xs:sequence/> </xs:extension> </xs:complexContent> </xs:complexType> <xs:complexType name="abstractList" abstract="true"> <xs:complexContent> <xs:extension base="tns:abstractCollection"> <xs:sequence/> </xs:extension> </xs:complexContent> </xs:complexType> <xs:complexType name="abstractCollection" abstract="true"> <xs:sequence/> </xs:complexType> Am I missing something or is this a known hole in wsgen? JAXB? Andy

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Loop through children and display each, as3

- by VideoDnd

How do I loop through all of my children, and display each? I would like to know the best way to do this. my children and containerfive children, one plays every sec, 1,2,3, etc. var square1:Square1 = new Square1; var square2:Square2 = new Square2; var square3:Square3 = new Square3; var square4:Square4 = new Square4; var square5:Square5 = new Square5; var container:Sprite = new Sprite; addChild(container); container.addChild(square1) container.addChild(square2) container.addChild(square3) container.addChild(square4) container.addChild(square5) my timer var timly:Timer = new Timer(1000, 5); timly.start(); timly.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, onLoop); Note: Tried for loop, numChildren -1, and visibility ERROR 'access of undefined property' //Thomas's idea var timly:Timer = new Timer(1000, 10); timly.start(); timly.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, onLoop, false, 0, true); // var square1:Square1 = new Square1; square1.visible = false container.addChild(square2) var square2:Square2 = new Square2; square2.visible = false container.addChild(square3) var square3:Square3 = new Square3; square3.visible = false container.addChild(square3) var square4:Square4 = new Square4; square4.visible = false container.addChild(square4) var square5:Square5 = new Square5; square5.visible = false container.addChild(square5) var container:Sprite = new Sprite; this.addChild(container); var curCount:Number = 100; // function collectChildren(container:DisplayObjectContainer):Array { var len:int = container.numChildren; var mySquaresArray:Array = []; for (var i:int = 0; i < len; i++) { mySquaresArray.push(container.getChildAt(i).name); } return mySquaresArray; } // function onLoop( e:Event ) { curCount = e.target.currentCount; if( curCount > 1 ) { var previous_square = curCount -2; mySquaresArray[previous_square].visible = false; } var current_square = curCount - 1; mySquaresArray[current_square].visible = true; }

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Mootools 1.2.4 delegation not working in IE8...?

- by michael

Hey there everybody-- So I have a listbox next to a form. When the user clicks an option in the select box, I make a request for the related data, returned in a JSON object, which gets put into the form elements. When the form is saved, the request goes thru and the listbox is rebuilt with the updated data. Since it's being rebuilt I'm trying to use delegation on the listbox's parent div for the onchange code. The trouble I'm having is with IE8 (big shock) not firing the delegated event. I have the following HTML: <div id="listwrapper" class="span-10 append-1 last"> <select id="list" name="list" size="20"> <option value="86">Adrian Franklin</option> <option value="16">Adrian McCorvey</option> <option value="196">Virginia Thomas</option> </select> </div> and the following script to go with it: window.addEvent('domready', function() { var jsonreq = new Request.JSON(); $('listwrapper').addEvent('change:relay(select)', function(e) { alert('this doesn't fire in IE8'); e.stop(); var status= $('statuswrapper').empty().addClass('ajax-loading'); jsonreq.options.url = 'de_getformdata.php'; jsonreq.options.method = 'post'; jsonreq.options.data = {'getlist':'<?php echo $getlist ?>','pkey':$('list').value}; jsonreq.onSuccess = function(rObj, rTxt) { status.removeClass('ajax-loading'); for (key in rObj) { status.set('html','You are currently editing '+rObj['cname']); if ($chk($(key))) $(key).value = rObj[key]; } $('lalsoaccomp-yes').set('checked',(($('naccompkey').value > 0)?'true':'false')); $('lalsoaccomp-no').set('checked',(($('naccompkey').value > 0)?'false':'true')); } jsonreq.send(); }); }); (I took out a bit of unrelated stuff). So this all works as expected in firefox, but IE8 refuses to fire the delegated change event on the select element. If I attach the change function directly to the select, then it works just fine. Am I missing something? Does IE8 just not like the :relay? Sidenote: I'm very new to mootools and javascripting, etc, so if there's something that can be improved code-wise, please let me know too.. Thanks!

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ajaxSubmit options success & error functions aren't fired

- by Thommy Tomka

jQuery 1.7.2 jQuery Validate 1.1.0 jQuery Form 3.18 Wordpress 3.4.2 I am trying to code a contact/ mail form in above environment/ with above jQuery libs. Now I am having a problem with the jQuery Form JS: I have taken the original code from the developers page for ajaxSubmit and only altered the target option to an ID which exists in my HTML source and replaced $ with jQuery in function showRequest. The problem is, that the function namend after success: does not fire. I tried the same with error: and again nothing fired. Only complete: did and the function I placed there alerted the responseText from the receiving script. Does anyone has an idea whats going wrong? Thanks in advance! Thomas jQuery(document).ready(function() { var options = { target: '#mail-status', // target element(s) to be updated with server response beforeSubmit: showRequest, // pre-submit callback success: showResponse, // post-submit callback // other available options: //url: url // override for form's 'action' attribute //type: type // 'get' or 'post', override for form's 'method' attribute //dataType: null // 'xml', 'script', or 'json' (expected server response type) //clearForm: true // clear all form fields after successful submit //resetForm: true // reset the form after successful submit // $.ajax options can be used here too, for example: //timeout: 3000 }; jQuery("#mailform").validate( { submitHandler: function(form) { jQuery(form).ajaxSubmit(options); }, errorPlacement: function(error, element) { }, rules: { author: { minlength: 2, required: true }, email: { required: true, email: true }, comment: { minlength: 2, required: true } }, highlight: function(element) { jQuery(element).addClass("e"); jQuery(element.form).find("label[for=" + element.id + "]").addClass("e"); }, unhighlight: function(element) { jQuery(element).removeClass("e"); jQuery(element.form).find("label[for=" + element.id + "]").removeClass("e"); } }); }); // pre-submit callback function showRequest(formData, jqForm, options) { // formData is an array; here we use $.param to convert it to a string to display it // but the form plugin does this for you automatically when it submits the data var queryString = jQuery.param(formData); // jqForm is a jQuery object encapsulating the form element. To access the // DOM element for the form do this: // var formElement = jqForm[0]; alert('About to submit: \n\n' + queryString); // here we could return false to prevent the form from being submitted; // returning anything other than false will allow the form submit to continue return true; } // post-submit callback function showResponse(responseText, statusText, xhr, $form) { // for normal html responses, the first argument to the success callback // is the XMLHttpRequest object's responseText property // if the ajaxSubmit method was passed an Options Object with the dataType // property set to 'xml' then the first argument to the success callback // is the XMLHttpRequest object's responseXML property // if the ajaxSubmit method was passed an Options Object with the dataType // property set to 'json' then the first argument to the success callback // is the json data object returned by the server alert('status: ' + statusText + '\n\nresponseText: \n' + responseText + '\n\nThe output div should have already been updated with the responseText.'); }

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Layout issue regarding a JQuery smoothDivScroll

- by MichaelMcCabe

Hi all. I have been scratching my head for a while on this one. I dont really play around with HTML formatting that often. I have a smoothDivScroll using JQuery (http://maaki.com/thomas/SmoothDivScroll/) to scroll through dynamically generated images. What I want it for, is to have multiple small images lined up right next to each other, and each image has a section of writting underneath. about 25 images, 140px width each in a 7560px span. I acheived this great by putting a table inside the div, and each image inside a<td>.This works problem i have, is that i need the slider to start from the furthest RIGHT image, and slide automatically left. This is acheived by (if you look at the link above) - startAtElementId: But if I am using a table inside the div, it is taking the TABLE as a element and not the TD... so it doesnt work. I know this because if I change every image to be inside tables (i.e 25 tables), it works... but obviously then the formatting is not how I want. Can anyone think of a way I can use this slider (modifications to the js code or not), with 25 images that NEED to be right next to each other, no gap. I guess this is more of a formatting question, than about the slider. Because I only know ONE way of doing what I want, and thats to have below which will not alow me to set startAtElementId. <div class="scrollableArea"> <table width="7560px" class="index-body"> <tr> <td width="140px"><center><a onclick="__doPostBack('getEarlierDate');" ><img src="../images/olderGraphs.gif" width="140" height="60"></a>Click for more</center></td> <td width="300px"><center><a onclick="__doPostBack('chartClicked25');" ><cewolf:img chartid="verticalbar25" renderer="cewolf" width="300" height="60"/></a><c:out value="${date25}"/></center></td> <td width="300px"><center><a onclick="__doPostBack('chartClicked24');" ><cewolf:img chartid="verticalbar24" renderer="cewolf" width="300" height="60"/></a><c:out value="${date24}"/></center></td> and so on

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Powershell script to change screen Orientation

- by user161964

I wrote a script to change Primary screen orientation to portrait. my screen is 1920X1200 It runs and no error reported. But the screen does not rotated as i expected. The code was modified from Set-ScreenResolution (Andy Schneider) Does anybody can help me take a look? some reference site: 1.set-screenresolution http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/ScriptCenter/2a631d72-206d-4036-a3f2-2e150f297515/ 2.C code for change oridentation (MSDN) Changing Screen Orientation Programmatically http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms812499.aspx my code as below: Function Set-ScreenOrientation { $pinvokeCode = @" using System; using System.Runtime.InteropServices; namespace Resolution { [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)] public struct DEVMODE1 { [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.ByValTStr, SizeConst = 32)] public string dmDeviceName; public short dmSpecVersion; public short dmDriverVersion; public short dmSize; public short dmDriverExtra; public int dmFields; public short dmOrientation; public short dmPaperSize; public short dmPaperLength; public short dmPaperWidth; public short dmScale; public short dmCopies; public short dmDefaultSource; public short dmPrintQuality; public short dmColor; public short dmDuplex; public short dmYResolution; public short dmTTOption; public short dmCollate; [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.ByValTStr, SizeConst = 32)] public string dmFormName; [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] public short dmDisplayOrientation public short dmLogPixels; public short dmBitsPerPel; public int dmPelsWidth; public int dmPelsHeight; public int dmDisplayFlags; public int dmDisplayFrequency; public int dmICMMethod; public int dmICMIntent; public int dmMediaType; public int dmDitherType; public int dmReserved1; public int dmReserved2; public int dmPanningWidth; public int dmPanningHeight; }; class User_32 { [DllImport("user32.dll")] public static extern int EnumDisplaySettings(string deviceName, int modeNum, ref DEVMODE1 devMode); [DllImport("user32.dll")] public static extern int ChangeDisplaySettings(ref DEVMODE1 devMode, int flags); public const int ENUM_CURRENT_SETTINGS = -1; public const int CDS_UPDATEREGISTRY = 0x01; public const int CDS_TEST = 0x02; public const int DISP_CHANGE_SUCCESSFUL = 0; public const int DISP_CHANGE_RESTART = 1; public const int DISP_CHANGE_FAILED = -1; } public class PrmaryScreenOrientation { static public string ChangeOrientation() { DEVMODE1 dm = GetDevMode1(); if (0 != User_32.EnumDisplaySettings(null, User_32.ENUM_CURRENT_SETTINGS, ref dm)) { dm.dmDisplayOrientation = DMDO_90 dm.dmPelsWidth = 1200; dm.dmPelsHeight = 1920; int iRet = User_32.ChangeDisplaySettings(ref dm, User_32.CDS_TEST); if (iRet == User_32.DISP_CHANGE_FAILED) { return "Unable To Process Your Request. Sorry For This Inconvenience."; } else { iRet = User_32.ChangeDisplaySettings(ref dm, User_32.CDS_UPDATEREGISTRY); switch (iRet) { case User_32.DISP_CHANGE_SUCCESSFUL: { return "Success"; } case User_32.DISP_CHANGE_RESTART: { return "You Need To Reboot For The Change To Happen.\n If You Feel Any Problem After Rebooting Your Machine\nThen Try To Change Resolution In Safe Mode."; } default: { return "Failed"; } } } } else { return "Failed To Change."; } } private static DEVMODE1 GetDevMode1() { DEVMODE1 dm = new DEVMODE1(); dm.dmDeviceName = new String(new char[32]); dm.dmFormName = new String(new char[32]); dm.dmSize = (short)Marshal.SizeOf(dm); return dm; } } } "@ Add-Type $pinvokeCode -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue [Resolution.PrmaryScreenOrientation]::ChangeOrientation() }

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Consume WCF Service InProcess using Agatha and WCF

- by REA_ANDREW

I have been looking into this lately for a specific reason. Some integration tests I want to write I want to control the types of instances which are used inside the service layer but I want that control from the test class instance. One of the problems with just referencing the service is that a lot of the time this will by default be done inside a different process. I am using StructureMap as my DI of choice and one of the tools which I am using inline with RhinoMocks is StructureMap.AutoMocking. With StructureMap the main entry point is the ObjectFactory. This will be process specific so if I decide that the I want a certain instance of a type to be used inside the ServiceLayer I cannot configure the ObjectFactory from my test class as that will only apply to the process which it belongs to. This is were I started thinking about two things: Running a WCF in process Being able to share mocked instances across processes A colleague in work pointed me to a project which is for the latter but I thought that it would be a better solution if I could run the WCF Service in process. One of the projects which I use when I think about WCF Services is AGATHA, and the one which I have to used to try and get my head around doing this. Another asset I have is a book called Programming WCF Services by Juval Lowy and if you have not heard of it or read it I would definately recommend it. One of the many topics that is inside this book is the type of configuration you need to communicate with a service in the same process, and it turns out to be quite simple from a config point of view. <system.serviceModel> <services> <service name="Agatha.ServiceLayer.WCF.WcfRequestProcessor"> <endpoint address ="net.pipe://localhost/MyPipe" binding="netNamedPipeBinding" contract="Agatha.Common.WCF.IWcfRequestProcessor"/> </service> </services> <client> <endpoint name="MyEndpoint" address="net.pipe://localhost/MyPipe" binding="netNamedPipeBinding" contract="Agatha.Common.WCF.IWcfRequestProcessor"/> </client> </system.serviceModel> You can see here that I am referencing the Agatha object and contract here, but also that my binding and the address is something called Named Pipes. THis is sort of the “Magic” which makes it happen in the same process. Next I need to open the service prior to calling the methods on a proxy which I also need. My initial attempt at the proxy did not use any Agatha specific coding and one of the pains I found was that you obviously need to give your proxy the known types which the serializer can be aware of. So we need to add to the known types of the proxy programmatically. I came across the following blog post which showed me how easy it was http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/vagif/archive/2009/05/18/how-to-programmatically-define-known-types-in-wcf.aspx. First Pass So with this in mind, and inside a console app this was my first pass at consuming a service in process. First here is the proxy which I made making use of the Agatha IWcfRequestProcessor contract. public class InProcProxy : ClientBase<Agatha.Common.WCF.IWcfRequestProcessor>, Agatha.Common.WCF.IWcfRequestProcessor { public InProcProxy() { } public InProcProxy(string configurationName) : base(configurationName) { } public Agatha.Common.Response[] Process(params Agatha.Common.Request[] requests) { return Channel.Process(requests); } public void ProcessOneWayRequests(params Agatha.Common.OneWayRequest[] requests) { Channel.ProcessOneWayRequests(requests); } } So with the proxy in place I could then use this after opening the service so here is the code which I use inside the console app make the request. static void Main(string[] args) { ComponentRegistration.Register(); ServiceHost serviceHost = new ServiceHost(typeof(Agatha.ServiceLayer.WCF.WcfRequestProcessor)); serviceHost.Open(); Console.WriteLine("Service is running...."); using (var proxy = new InProcProxy()) { foreach (var operation in proxy.Endpoint.Contract.Operations) { foreach (var t in KnownTypeProvider.GetKnownTypes(null)) { operation.KnownTypes.Add(t); } } var request = new GetProductsRequest(); var responses = proxy.Process(new[] { request }); var response = (GetProductsResponse)responses[0]; Console.WriteLine("{0} Products have been retrieved", response.Products.Count); } serviceHost.Close(); Console.WriteLine("Finished"); Console.ReadLine(); } So what I used here is the KnownTypeProvider of Agatha to easily get all the types I need for the service/proxy and add them to the proxy. My Request handler for this was just a test one which always returned 2 products. public class GetProductsHandler : RequestHandler<GetProductsRequest,GetProductsResponse> { public override Agatha.Common.Response Handle(GetProductsRequest request) { return new GetProductsResponse { Products = new List<ProductDto> { new ProductDto{}, new ProductDto{} } }; } } Second Pass Now after I did this I started reading up some more on some resources including more by Davy Brion and others on Agatha. Now it turns out that the work I did above to create a derived class of the ClientBase implementing Agatha.Common.WCF.IWcfRequestProcessor was not necessary due to a nice class which is present inside the Agatha code base, RequestProcessorProxy which takes care of this for you! :-) So disregarding that class I made for the proxy and changing my code to use it I am now left with the following: static void Main(string[] args) { ComponentRegistration.Register(); ServiceHost serviceHost = new ServiceHost(typeof(Agatha.ServiceLayer.WCF.WcfRequestProcessor)); serviceHost.Open(); Console.WriteLine("Service is running...."); using (var proxy = new RequestProcessorProxy()) { var request = new GetProductsRequest(); var responses = proxy.Process(new[] { request }); var response = (GetProductsResponse)responses[0]; Console.WriteLine("{0} Products have been retrieved", response.Products.Count); } serviceHost.Close(); Console.WriteLine("Finished"); Console.ReadLine(); } Cheers for now, Andy References Agatha WCF InProcess Without WCF StructureMap.AutoMocking Cross Process Mocking Agatha Programming WCF Services by Juval Lowy

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AutoMapper MappingFunction from Source Type of NameValueCollection

- by REA_ANDREW

I have had a situation arise today where I need to construct a complex type from a source of a NameValueCollection. A little while back I submitted a patch for the Agatha Project to include REST (JSON and XML) support for the service contract. I realized today that as useful as it is, it did not actually support true REST conformance, as REST should support GET so that you can use JSONP from JavaScript directly meaning you can query cross domain services. My original implementation for POX and JSON used the POST method and this immediately rules out JSONP as from reading, JSONP only works with GET Requests. This then raised another issue. The current operation contract of Agatha and one of its main benefits is that you can supply an array of Request objects in a single request, limiting the about of server requests you need to make. Now, at the present time I am thinking that this will not be the case for the REST imlementation but will yield the benefits of the fact that : The same Request objects can be used for SOAP and RST (POX, JSON) The construct of the JavaScript functions will be simpler and more readable It will enable the use of JSONP for cross domain REST Services The current contract for the Agatha WcfRequestProcessor is at time of writing the following: [ServiceContract] public interface IWcfRequestProcessor { [OperationContract(Name = "ProcessRequests")] [ServiceKnownType("GetKnownTypes", typeof(KnownTypeProvider))] [TransactionFlow(TransactionFlowOption.Allowed)] Response[] Process(params Request[] requests); [OperationContract(Name = "ProcessOneWayRequests", IsOneWay = true)] [ServiceKnownType("GetKnownTypes", typeof(KnownTypeProvider))] void ProcessOneWayRequests(params OneWayRequest[] requests); } My current proposed solution, and at the very early stages of my concept is as follows: [ServiceContract] public interface IWcfRestJsonRequestProcessor { [OperationContract(Name="process")] [ServiceKnownType("GetKnownTypes", typeof(KnownTypeProvider))] [TransactionFlow(TransactionFlowOption.Allowed)] [WebGet(UriTemplate = "process/{name}/{*parameters}", BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.WrappedResponse, ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json)] Response[] Process(string name, NameValueCollection parameters); [OperationContract(Name="processoneway",IsOneWay = true)] [ServiceKnownType("GetKnownTypes", typeof(KnownTypeProvider))] [WebGet(UriTemplate = "process-one-way/{name}/{*parameters}", BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.WrappedResponse, ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json)] void ProcessOneWayRequests(string name, NameValueCollection parameters); } Now this part I have not yet implemented, it is the preliminart step which I have developed which will allow me to take the name of the Request Type and the NameValueCollection and construct the complex type which is that of the Request which I can then supply to a nested instance of the original IWcfRequestProcessor and work as it should normally. To give an example of some of the urls which you I envisage with this method are: http://www.url.com/service.svc/json/process/getweather/?location=london http://www.url.com/service.svc/json/process/getproductsbycategory/?categoryid=1 http://www.url.om/service.svc/json/process/sayhello/?name=andy Another reason why my direction has gone to a single request for the REST implementation is because of restrictions which are imposed by browsers on the length of the url. From what I have read this is on average 2000 characters. I think that this is a very acceptable usage limit in the context of using 1 request, but I do not think this is acceptable for accommodating multiple requests chained together. I would love to be corrected on that one, I really would but unfortunately from what I have read I have come to the conclusion that this is not the case. The mapping function So, as I say this is just the first pass I have made at this, and I am not overly happy with the try catch for detecting types without default constructors. I know there is a better way but for the minute, it escapes me. I would also like to know the correct way for adding mapping functions and not using the anonymous way that I have used. To achieve this I have used recursion which I am sure is what other mapping function use. As you do have to go as deep as the complex type is. public static object RecurseType(NameValueCollection collection, Type type, string prefix) { try { var returnObject = Activator.CreateInstance(type); foreach (var property in type.GetProperties()) { foreach (var key in collection.AllKeys) { if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(prefix) || key.Length > prefix.Length) { var propertyNameToMatch = String.IsNullOrEmpty(prefix) ? key : key.Substring(property.Name.IndexOf(prefix) + prefix.Length + 1); if (property.Name == propertyNameToMatch) { property.SetValue(returnObject, Convert.ChangeType(collection.Get(key), property.PropertyType), null); } else if(property.GetValue(returnObject,null) == null) { property.SetValue(returnObject, RecurseType(collection, property.PropertyType, String.Concat(prefix, property.PropertyType.Name)), null); } } } } return returnObject; } catch (MissingMethodException) { //Quite a blunt way of dealing with Types without default constructor return null; } } Another thing is performance, I have not measured this in anyway, it is as I say the first pass, so I hope this can be the start of a more perfected implementation. I tested this out with a complex type of three levels, there is no intended logical meaning to the properties, they are simply for the purposes of example. You could call this a spiking session, as from here on in, now I know what I am building I would take a more TDD approach. OK, purists, why did I not do this from the start, well I didn’t, this was a brain dump and now I know what I am building I can. The console test and how I used with AutoMapper is as follows: static void Main(string[] args) { var collection = new NameValueCollection(); collection.Add("Name", "Andrew Rea"); collection.Add("Number", "1"); collection.Add("AddressLine1", "123 Street"); collection.Add("AddressNumber", "2"); collection.Add("AddressPostCodeCountry", "United Kingdom"); collection.Add("AddressPostCodeNumber", "3"); AutoMapper.Mapper.CreateMap<NameValueCollection, Person>() .ConvertUsing(x => { return(Person) RecurseType(x, typeof(Person), null); }); var person = AutoMapper.Mapper.Map<NameValueCollection, Person>(collection); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); Console.WriteLine(person.Number); Console.WriteLine(person.Address.Line1); Console.WriteLine(person.Address.Number); Console.WriteLine(person.Address.PostCode.Country); Console.WriteLine(person.Address.PostCode.Number); Console.ReadLine(); } Notice the convention that I am using and that this method requires you do use. Each property is prefixed with the constructed name of its parents combined. This is the convention used by AutoMapper and it makes sense. I can also think of other uses for this including using with ASP.NET MVC ModelBinders for creating a complex type from the QueryString which is itself is a NameValueCollection. Hope this is of some help to people and I would welcome any code reviews you could give me. References: Agatha : http://code.google.com/p/agatha-rrsl/ AutoMapper : http://automapper.codeplex.com/ Cheers for now, Andrew P.S. I will have the proposed solution for a more complete REST implementation for AGATHA very soon.

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Top Tweets SOA Partner Community – March 2012

- by JuergenKress

Send your tweets @soacommunity #soacommunity and follow us at http://twitter.com/soacommunity SOA Community ?SOA Community Newsletter February 2012 wp.me/p10C8u-o0 Marc ?Reading through the #OFM 11.1.1.6 , patchset 5 documentation. What is the best way to upgrade your whole dev…prd street. SOA Community Thanks for the successful and super interesting #sbidays ! Wonderful discussions around the Integration, case management and security tracks Torsten Winterberg Schon den neuen Opitz Technology-Blog gebookmarked? The Cattle Crew bit.ly/yLPwBD wird ab sofort regelmäßig Erkenntnisse posten. OTNArchBeat ? Unit Testing Asynchronous BPEL Processes Using soapUI | @DanielAmadei bit.ly/x9NsS9 Rolando Carrasco ?Video de Human Task en BPM 11g. Por @edwardo040. bit.ly/wki9CA cc @OracleBPM @OracleSOA @soacommunity View video Marcel Mertin SOA Security Hands-On by Dirk Krafzig and Mamoon Yunus at #sbidays is also great! SOA Community Workshop day #sbidays #BPMN2.0 by Volker Stiehl from #SAP great training – now I can model & execute in #bpmsuite #soacommunity Simone Geib ?Just updated our advanced #soasuite #otn page with a number of very interesting @orclateamsoa blog posts: bit.ly/advancedsoasui… OTNArchBeat ? Start Small, Grow Fast: SOA Best Practices article by @biemond, @rluttikhuizen, @demed bit.ly/yem9Zv Steffen Miller ? Nice new features in SOA Suite Business Rules #PS5 Testing rules with scenarios and output validation bit.ly/zj64Q3 @SOACOMMUNITY OTNArchBeat ? Reply SOA Blackbelt training by David Shaffer, April 30th–May 4th 2012 bit.ly/xGdC24 OTNArchBeat ? What have BPM, big data, social tools, and business models got in common? | Andy Mulholland bit.ly/xUkOGf SOA Community ? Live hacking at #sbidays – cheaper shopping, bias cracking, payment systems, secure your SOA! pic.twitter.com/y7YaIdug SOA Community Future #BPM & #ACM solutions can make use of ontology’s, based on #sqarql #sbidays pic.twitter.com/xLb1Z5zs Simone Geib ? @soacommunity: SOA Blackbelt training by David Shaffer, April 30th–May 4th 2012 wp.me/p10C8u-nX Biemond Changing your ADF Connections in Enterprise Manager with PS5: With Patch Set 5 of Fusion Middleware you can fina… bit.ly/zF7Rb1 Marc ? HUGE (!) CPU and Heap improvement on Oracle Fusion Middleware tinyurl.com/762drzp @wlscommunity @soacommunity #OSB #SOA #WLS SOA Community ?Networking @ SOA & BPM Partner Community blogs.oracle.com/soacommunity/e… #soacommunity #otn #opn #oracle SOA Community ?Published the SOA Partner Community newsletter February edition – READ it. Not yet a member? oracle.com/goto/emea/soa #soacommunity #otn #opn AMIS, Oracle & Java Blog by Lucas Jellema: "Book Review: Do More with SOA Integration: Best of Packt (december 2011, various authors)" bit.ly/wq633E Jon petter hjulstad @SOASimone Excellent summary! Lots of new features! Simone Geib ?Do you want to know what’s new in #soasuite #PS5? Go to bit.ly/xBX06f and let me know what you think SOA Community ? Unit Testing Asynchronous BPEL Processes Using soapUI oracle.com/technetwork/ar… #soacommunity #soa #otn #oracle #bpel Retweeted by SOA Community View media Retweeted by SOA Community Eric Elzinga ? Oracle Fusion Middleware Partner Community Forum Malage, The Overview, bit.ly/AA9BKd #ofmforum SOA&Cloud Symposium ? The February issue of the Service Technology Magazine is now published. servicetechmag.com SOA Community ? Oracle SOA Suite 11g Database Growth Management – must read! oracle.com/technetwork/da… #soacommunity #soa #purging demed ? Have you exposed internal processes to mobile devices using #oraclesoa? Interested in an article? DM me! #osb #rest #multichannel #mobile orclateamsoa ? A-Team SOA Blog: Enhanced version of Thread Dump Analyzer (TDA A-Team) ow.ly/1hpk7l SOA Community Reply BPM Suite #PS5 (11.1.1.6) available for download soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/soa… Send us your feedback! #soacommunity #bpmsuite #opn SOA Community ? SOA Suite #PS5 (11.1.1.6) available for download soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/soa… Send us your feedback! #soacommunity #soasuite SOA Community BPM Suite #PS5 1(1.1.1.6) available for download. List of new BPM features blogs.oracle.com/soacommunity/e… #soacommunity #bpm #bpmsuite #opn OracleBlogs BPM in Utilties Industry ow.ly/1hC3fp Retweeted by SOA Community OTNArchBeat ? Demystifying Oracle Enterprise Gateway | Naresh Persaud bit.ly/xtDNe2 OTNArchBeat ? Architect’s Guide to Big Data; Test BPEL Processes Using SoapUI; Development Debate bit.ly/xbDYSo Frank Nimphius ? Finished my book review of "Do More with SOA Integration: Best of Packt ". Here are my review comments: bit.ly/x2k9OZ Lucas Jellema ? That is my one stop-and-go download center for #PS5 : edelivery.oracle.com/EPD/Download/g… Lucas Jellema ? Interesting piece of documentation: Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide – docs.oracle.com/cd/E15586_01/f… source for design time @ run time inspira Lucas Jellema ? Strongly improved support for testing Business Rules at Design Time in #PS5 see docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/u… Lucas Jellema ? SOA Suite 11gR1 PS5: new BPEL Component testing – docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/d… Lucas Jellema ? PS5 available for CEP (Complex Event Processing) – a personal favorite of mine : oracle.com/technetwork/mi… Lucas Jellema ?What’s New in Fusion Developer’s Guide 11gR1 PS5: docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/w… Lucas Jellema ? BPMN Correlation (FMW 11gR1 PS5): docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/d… Lucas Jellema ? Modifying running BPM Process instances (FMW 11gR1 PS5): docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/d… Lucas Jellema ? SOA Suite 11gR1 PS5 – new aggregation pattern: docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/d… routing multiple messages to same instance Melvin van der Kuijl ? Automating Testing of SOA Composite Applications in PS5. docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/d… Cato Aune ? SOA suite PS5 Enterprise Deployment Guide is available in ePub docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/c… . Much better than pdf on Galaxy Note SOA Community ?JDeveloper 11.1.1.6 is available for download bit.ly/wGYrwE #soacommunity SOA Community ? Your first experience #PS5 – let us know @soacommunity – send us your tweets and blog posts! #soacommunity Jon petter hjulstad ? WLS 10.3.6 New features, ex better logging of jdbc use: docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/w… Heidi Buelow ? Get it now! RT @soacommunity: BPM Suite PS5 11.1.1.6 available for download bit.ly/AgagT5 #bpm #soacommunity Jon petter hjulstad ?SOA Suite PS5 EDG contains OSB! docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/c… Jon petter hjulstad ? Testing Oracle Rules from JDeveloper is easier in PS5: docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/u… Biemond® ? What’s New in Oracle Service Bus 11.1.1.6.0 oracle.com/technetwork/mi… Jon petter hjulstad ? Adminguide New and Changed Features for PS5, ex GridLink data sources: docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/c… Retweeted by SOA Community Andreas Koop ? Unbelievable! #OFM Doc Lib growth from 11gPS4->11gPS5 by 1.2G! View media SOA Community ?ODI PS5 is available oracle.com/technetwork/mi… #odi #soacommunity 22 Feb View media SOA Community Service Bus 11g Development Cookbook soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/ser… #osb #soacommunity #ace #opn View media For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: soacommunity,twitter,Oracle,SOA Community,Jürgen Kress,OPN,SOA,BPM

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