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• T-4 Templates for ASP.NET Web Form Databound Control Friendly Logical Layers

  - by joycsharp

  I just released an open source project at codeplex, which includes a set of T-4 templates to enable you to build logical layers (i.e. DAL/BLL) with just few clicks! The logical layers implemented here are  based on Entity Framework 4.0, ASP.NET Web Form Data Bound control friendly and fully unit testable. In this open source project you will get Entity Framework 4.0 based T-4 templates for following types of logical layers: Data Access Layer: Entity Framework 4.0 provides excellent ORM data access layer. It also includes support for T-4 templates, as built-in code generation strategy in Visual Studio 2010, where we can customize default structure of data access layer based on Entity Framework. default structure of data access layer has been enhanced to get support for mock testing in Entity Framework 4.0 object model. Business Logic Layer: ASP.NET web form based data bound control friendly business logic layer, which will enable you few clicks to build data bound web applications on top of ASP.NET Web Form and Entity Framework 4.0 quickly with great support of mock testing. Download it to make your web development productive. Enjoy!

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• Desktop Fun: Beaches Theme Wallpapers

  - by Asian Angel

  Is your vacation still a few weeks or months away? Make the waiting a little easier by adding some of that vacation scenery to your desktop with our Beaches Theme Wallpapers collection. Note: Click on the picture to see the full-size image—these wallpapers vary in size so you may need to crop, stretch, or place them on a colored background in order to best match them to your screen’s resolution.                       For more fun wallpapers be certain to visit our new Desktop Fun section. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Windows 7 Welcome Screen Taking Forever? Here’s the Fix (Maybe)Desktop Fun: Starship Theme WallpapersDesktop Fun: Underwater Theme WallpapersDesktop Fun: Forest Theme WallpapersDesktop Fun: Fantasy Theme Wallpapers TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Run Command Missing in Windows 7? Share High Res Photos using Divvyshot Draw Online using Harmony How to Browse Privately in Firefox Kill Processes Quickly with Process Assassin Need to Come Up with a Good Name? Try Wordoid

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

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

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

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• Java Spotlight Episode 84: Anil Gaur on JavaEE 7

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Tweet Interview with Anil Gaur, VP of Java Platform for Enterprise Edition and GlassFish Server, on JavaEE 7. Joining us this week on the Java All Star Developer Panel are Dalibor Topic, Java Free and Open Source Software Ambassador and Arun Gupta, Java EE Guy. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link:  Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News Tori Wieldt - Judges Selected for Duke's Choice Awards Donald Smith - #OpenJDK interview in Java Magazine Henrik Ståhl - Java 7 adoption at 23% JavaOne Kicks Off with Sunday Keynotes at Masonic Auditorium Jersey 2.0 M4 JSF 2.2 Latest Snapshot NetBeans IDE 7.2 - Deploy to Cloud Events May 30, OTN Java Developer Day, Redwood Shores June 11-14, Cloud Computing Expo, New York City June 12, Boulder JUG June 13, Denver JUG June 13, Eclipse Juno DemoCamp, Redwoood Shore June 13, JUG Münster June 14, Java Klassentreffen, Vienna, Austria June 18-20, QCon, New York City June 26-28, Jazoon, Zurich, Switzerland July 5, Java Forum, Stuttgart, Germany July 30-August 1, JVM Language Summit, Santa Clara Feature InterviewAnil Gaur is the Vice President of Java Platform, Enterprise Edition, and GlassFish Server at Oracle in the Fusion Middleware Group. Is responsible for creation of Java EE Specifications, Reference Implementation, and Compatibility Test Suites. Leading the evolution on Java EE into Cloud and PaaS environment through the Java EE 7 standard. Prior to that, managed the delivery of Java EE 6 Platform and SDK which quickly gained momentum in enterprise application development and deployments. In this episode we talk about GlassFish 3.1 release. Mail Bag What’s Cool RFR (L): Adding core file parsing on Mac OS X to SA Sergio Del Valle @swdelvalle is the 1,000 @JavaSpotlight twitter follower

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• DRM Tallyrand - The New User Interface

  - by russ.bishop

  I received word recently that the Tallyrand (11.1.2.0) build is out of our hands. I'm not sure when it will hit eDelivery, but if it hasn't already it should happen soon. For this post, I want to really quickly show the new user interface. The login screen: When you login, you are browsing versions and hierarchies. Note that Unicode is fully supported: The UI attempts to provide context-sensitive links where possible; notice here that an unloaded version is selected, so the UI shows a link. Clicking the link automatically brings up this Load Version dialog. This same thing applies elsewhere in the UI when you attempt to perform an action with an unloaded version: Here is browsing a hierarchy, with the property grid and context menu displayed (though you can hide the property grid anytime you like to provide more room): Worried about drag and drop? Don't! We support it even though this is a browser app. Also notice the Relationships feature on the right displaying a node's ancestors: Where possible, we try to present the available options, rather than just throwing up an "OK/Cancel" dialog (which most users never read anyway): Context-sensitive shortcuts automatically fill-in the context based on the currently selected node. For example, if you want to run a query using the selected node as the root, you can just click that query in the Shortcuts tab. In this screenshot, clicking Model After would model the selected node: This is just for starters. There is much more to cover, on both the client and server. For example, all communication channels are now configurable (no more DCOM). You can pick the ports, the encoding (binary or XML), and the transport mechanism (TCP, TCP over SSL, or SOAP over HTTP). All the relevant WS-* standards are also supported, eg: WS-Security, etc. Plus new features (besides the web client and unicode support). I hope to cover as much of these things as I can in the coming months. If you have specific requests, comment on this post and I'll try to cover them.

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• When Do OS Questions Belong on Hardware Service Requests?

  - by Get Proactive Customer Adoption Team

  Untitled Document My Oracle Support—Logging an Operating System Service Request One of the concerns we hear from our customers with Premier Support for Systems is that they have difficulty logging a Service Request (SR) for an operating system issue. Because Premier Support for Systems includes support for the hardware and the associated operating system, you log any operating system issues through a hardware Service Request. To create a hardware Service Request, you enter the information into the Hardware tab of the Create Service Request screen, but to ensure that the hardware Service Request you enter is recognized and routed appropriately for an operating system issue, you need to change the product from your specific hardware to the operating system that the hardware is running. The example below shows you how to create a Service Request for the operating system when the support level is Premier Support for Systems. The key to success is remembering that the operating system coverage is part of the hardware support. To begin, from anywhere within My Oracle Support, click on the Create SR button as you would to log any SR: Enter your Problem Summary and the Problem Description Next, click on the Hardware tab. Enter the System Serial Number (in this case “12345”) and click on Validate Serial Number: Notice that the product name for the hardware indicates “Sunfire T2000 Server” with an option for a drop down List of Values. Click on the product drop down and choose the correct operating system from the list. In this case I have chosen “OpenSolaris Operating System” Next, you will need to enter the correct operating system version: At this point, you may proceed to complete and submit the Service Request. If your company has Premier Support for Systems, just remember that your operating system has coverage under the hardware it runs on, so start with a Hardware tab on the Service Request screen and change the product related information to reflect the operating system you need help with. Following these simple steps will ensure that the system assigns your Service Request to the right support team for an operating system issue and the support engineer can quickly begin working your issue.

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• SQL SERVER – Demo Script – Keeping CPU Busy

  - by pinaldave

  Recently face very interesting situation, during presentations at event, I was asked very famous questions: “My CPU is very high all the time, how can I reduce it?” This is very interesting question and there are many answers and a single blog post is not good enough to justify this subject. I presented few situation to the person who asked the question. The member of the audience who asked question came to me afterwords and asked me few detailed questions. To answer him, I quickly wrote query which simulate high CPU. Here is the script which I wrote which increased CPU from 10% to 80%. I was wondering if there is any similar script which can simulate high CPU usage. If you have share with me and I will publish with due credit. Here is my script for the same: USE AdventureWorks GO DECLARE @Flag INT SET @Flag = 1 WHILE(@Flag < 1000) BEGIN ALTER INDEX [PK_SalesOrderDetail_SalesOrderID_SalesOrderDetailID] ON [Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] REBUILD SET @Flag = @Flag + 1 END GO   Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Free CodeSmith License!

  - by Randy Walker

  The catch?  Attend the Ozarks .Net User Group meeting on April 1st. Here’s a list of the other prizes for the event GRAND PRIZE 1 - iPad (Wi-Fi 16GB) THIRD PARTY COMPONENTS 6 - Telerik Premium Collection 5 - Infragistics NetAdvantage for .NET 1 - Nevron Chart for .NET Lite DevExpress Xceed PRODUCTIVITY 2 - CodeRush with Refactor! Pro 2 - ReSharper CodeSmith GAMES 3 - Halo3 ODST (XBox 360) 3 - Forza Motorsport (Xbox 360) OTHER SOFTWARE 3 - Windows 7 Ultimate 2 - Microsoft Office Standard 2007 HARDWARE 2 - Microsoft Arc Mouse BOOKS 12 - OReilly eBooks 12 - Microsoft Press books 5 - Apress books 3 - Addison-Wesley books 2 - Manning books 2 - Sams books The Info: "Be a Professional Developer and Write Clean Code!" by Claudio Lassala on April 1, 2010 PRESENTATION TOPIC "Be a Professional Developer and Write Clean Code!" - by Claudio Lassala Poorly written code can be created quickly, but it comes at a cost of high maintenance. Most of the time, code can be improved easily by following some simple practices. Professional developers should know these practices and tools and apply it to their work every day. This session will cover the importance of writing clean code, the kind of attitude all developers should have towards the code they produce, as well as the practices and tools that can be used to aid you in becoming a better developer. BIOGRAPHY Claudio Lassala is a Senior Developer at EPS Software Corp. He has presented several lectures at Microsoft events such as PDC Brazil and various other Microsoft seminars, as well as several conferences and user groups across North America and Brazil. He is a multiple winner of the Microsoft MVP Award since 2001 (for Visual FoxPro in 2001-2002, and for C# ever since), an INETA speaker, and also holds the MCSD for .NET certification. He has articles published on several magazines, such as MSDN Brazil Magazine, CoDe Magazine, UTMag, Developers Magazine, and FoxPro Advisor. More detailed information regarding his presentations and articles can be found in his MVP Profile. You can also read more about Claudio on his blog or on Twitter Schedule 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM Social Networking 6:30 PM - 7:00 PM  Prizes 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM Presentation:  "Be a Professional Developer and Write Clean Code!" by Claudio Lassala 8:30 PM - 9:00 PM Wrap-Up

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• Book Review - Programming Windows Azure by Siriram Krishnan

  - by BuckWoody

  As part of my professional development, I’ve created a list of books to read throughout the year, starting in June of 2011. This a review of the first one, called Programming Windows Azure by Siriram Krishnan. You can find my entire list of books I’m reading for my career here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/06/07/head-in-the-clouds-eyes-on-the-books.aspx  Why I Chose This Book: As part of my learning style, I try to read multiple books about a single subject. I’ve found that at least 3 books are necessary to get the right amount of information to me. This is a “technical” work, meaning that it deals with technology and not business, writing or other facets of my career. I’ll have a mix of all of those as I read along. I chose this work in addition to others I’ve read since it covers everything from an introduction to more advanced topics in a single book. It also has some practical examples of actually working with the product, particularly on storage. Although it’s dated, many examples normally translate. I also saw that it had pretty good reviews. What I learned: I learned a great deal about storage, and many useful code snippets. I do think that there could have been more of a focus on the application fabric - but of course that wasn’t as mature a feature when this book was written. I learned some great architecture examples, and in one section I learned more about encryption. In that example, however, I would rather have seen the examples go the other way - the book focused on moving data from on-premise to Azure storage in an encrypted fashion. Using the Application Fabric I would rather see sensitive data left in a hybrid fashion on premise, and connect to for the Azure application. Even so, the examples were very useful. If you’re looking for a good “starter” Azure book, this is a good choice. I also recommend the last chapter as a quick read for a DBA, or Database Administrator. It’s not very long, but useful. Note that the limits described are incorrect - which is one of the dangers of reading a book about any cloud offering. The services offered are updated so quickly that the information is in constant danger of being “stale”. Even so, I found this a useful book, which I believe will help me work with Azure better. Raw Notes: I take notes as I read, calling that process “reading with a pencil”. I find that when I do that I pay attention better, and record some things that I need to know later. I’ll take these notes, categorize them into a OneNote notebook that I synchronize in my Live.com account, and that way I can search them from anywhere. I can even read them on the web, since the Live.com has a OneNote program built in. Note that these are the raw notes, so they might not make a lot of sense out of context - I include them here so you can watch my though process. Programming Windows Azure by Siriram Krishnan: Learning about how to select applications suitable for Distributed Technology. Application Fabric gets the least attention; probably because it was newer at the time. Very clear (Chapter One) Good foundation Background and history, but not too much I normally arrange my descriptions differently, starting with the use-cases and moving to physicality, but this difference helps me. Interesting that I am reading this using Safari Books Online, which uses many of these concepts. Taught me some new aspects of a Hypervisor – very low-level information about the Azure Fabric (not to be confused with the Application Fabric feature) (Chapter Two) Good detail of what is included in the SDK. Even more is available now. CS = Cloud Service (Chapter 3) Place Storage info in the configuration file, since it can be streamed in-line with a running app. Ditto for logging, and keep separated configs for staging and testing. Easy-switch in and switch out.  (Chapter 4) There are two Runtime API’s, one of external and one for internal. Realizing how powerful this paradigm really is. Some places seem light, and to drop off but perhaps that’s best. Managing API is not charged, which is nice. I don’t often think about the price, until it comes to an actual deployment (Chapter 5) Csmanage is something I want to dig into deeper. API requires package moves to Blob storage first, so it needs a URL. Csmanage equivalent can be written in Unix scripting using openssl. Upgrades are possible, and you use the upgradeDomainCount attribute in the Service-Definition.csdef file  Always use a low-privileged account to test on the dev fabric, since Windows Azure runs in partial trust. Full trust is available, but can be dangerous and must be well-thought out. (Chapter 6) Learned how to run full CMD commands in a web window – not that you would ever do that, but it was an interesting view into those links. This leads to a discussion on hosting other runtimes (such as Java or PHP) in Windows Azure. I got an expanded view on this process, although this is where the book shows its age a little. Books can be a problem for Cloud Computing for this reason – things just change too quickly. Windows Azure storage is not eventually consistent – it is instantly consistent with multi-phase commit. Plumbing for this is internal, not required to code that. (Chapter 7) REST API makes the service interoperable, hybrid, and consistent across code architectures. Nicely done. Use affinity groups to keep data and code together. Side note: e-book readers need a common “notes” feature. There’s a decent quick description of REST in this chapter. Learned about CloudDrive code – PowerShell sample that mounts Blob storage as a local provider. Works against Dev fabric by default, can be switched to Account. Good treatment in the storage chapters on the differences between using Dev storage and Azure storage. These can be mitigated. No, blobs are not of any size or number. Not a good statement (Chapter 8) Blob storage is probably Azure’s closest play to Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas). Blob change operations must be authenticated, even when public. Chapters on storage are pretty in-depth. Queue Messages are base-64 encoded (Chapter 9) The visibility timeout ensures processing of message in a disconnected system. Order is not guaranteed for a message, so if you need that set an increasing number in the queue mechanism. While Queues are accessible via REST, they are not public and are secured by default. Interesting – the header for a queue request includes an estimated count. This can be useful to create more worker roles in a dynamic system. Each Entity (row) in the Azure Table service is atomic – all or nothing. (Chapter 10) An entity can have up to 255 Properties  Use “ID” for the class to indicate the key value, or use the [DataServiceKey] Attribute.  LINQ makes working with the Azure Table Service much easier, although Interop is certainly possible. Good description on the process of selecting the Partition and Row Key.  When checking for continuation tokens for pagination, include logic that falls out of the check in case you are at the last page.  On deleting a storage object, it is instantly unavailable, however a background process is dispatched to perform the physical deletion. So if you want to re-create a storage object with the same name, add retry logic into the code. Interesting approach to deleting an index entity without having to read it first – create a local entity with the same keys and apply it to the Azure system regardless of change-state.  Although the “Indexes” description is a little vague, it’s interesting to see a Folding and Stemming discussion a-la the Porter Stemming Algorithm. (Chapter 11)  Presents a better discussion of indexes (at least inverted indexes) later in the chapter. Great treatment for DBA’s in Chapter 11. We need to work on getting secondary indexes in Table storage. There is a limited form of transactions called “Entity Group Transactions” that, although they have conditions, makes a transactional system more possible. Concurrency also becomes an issue, but is handled well if you’re using Data Services in .NET. It watches the Etag and allows you to take action appropriately. I do not recommend using Azure as a location for secure backups. In fact, I would rather have seen the examples in (Chapter 12) go the other way, showing how data could be brought back to a local store as a DR or HA strategy. Good information on cryptography and so on even so. Chapter seems out of place, and should be combined with the Blob chapter.  (Chapter 13) on SQL Azure is dated, although the base concepts are OK.  Nice example of simple ADO.NET access to a SQL Azure (or any SQL Server Really) database.  

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• links for 2010-04-13

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Frederic Michiar: Manage a flexible and elastic Data Center with Oracle VM Manager Frederic Michiar shares a list of Oracle VM resources. (tags: otn oracle virtualization) Mona Rakibe: BAM Data Control in multiple ADF Faces Components "When two or more ADF Faces components must display the same data, and are bound to the same Oracle BAM data control definition, we have to make sure that we wrap each ADF Faces component in an ADF task flow, and set the Data Control Scope to isolated. " Mona Rakibe shows you how. (tags: oracle otn soa bam adf) Martin Widlake: Performance Tipping Points Martin Widlake offers "a nice example of a performance tipping point. This is where Everything is OK until you reach a point where it all quickly cascades to Not OK." (tags: oracle otn database architecture performance) Steve Chan: EBS Techstack Sessions at OAUG/Collaborate 2010 Steve Chan shares a list of Collaborate 2010 sessions featuring Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Technology Group staffers. (tags: oracle otn collaborate2010 ebs) @ORACLENERD: Developing in APEX Oracle ACE Chet Justice counts the ways... (tags: otn oracle oracleace apex) @bex: Almost Time For IOUG Collaborate 2010 Oracle ACE Director Bex Huff shares details on his Collaborate 2010 presentation, "The Top 10 Things Oracle UCM Customers Need To Know About WebLogic:" (tags: oracle otn oracleace collaborate2010 weblogic ucm enterprise2.0)

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• TFS Build 2010: BuildNumber and DropLocation

  - by javarg

  Automatic Builds for Application Release is a current practice in every major development factory nowadays. Using Team Foundation Server Build 2010 to accomplish this offers many opportunities to improve quality of your releases. The following approach allow us to generate build drop folders including the BuildNumber and the Changeset or Label provided. Using this procedure we can quickly identify the generated binaries in the Drop Server with the corresponding Version. Branch the DefaultTemplate.xaml and renamed it with CustomDefaultTemplate.xaml Open it for edit (check out) Go to the Set Drop Location Activity and edit the DropLocation property. Write the following expression: BuildDetail.DropLocationRoot + "\" + BuildDetail.BuildDefinition.Name + "\" + If(String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(GetVersion), BuildDetail.SourceGetVersion, GetVersion) + "_" + BuildDetail.BuildNumber Check in the branched template. Now create a build definition named TestBuildForDev using the new template. The previous expression sets the DropLocation with the following format: (ChangesetNumber|LabelName)_BuildName_BuildNumber The first part of the folder name will be the changeset number or the label name (if triggered using labels). Folder names will be generated as following: C1850_TestBuildForDev_20111117.1 (changesets start with letter C) LLabelname_TestBuildForDev_20111117.1 (labels start with letter L) Try launching a build from a Changeset and from a Label. You can specify a Label in the GetVersion parameter in the Queue new Build Wizard, going to the Parameters tab (for labels add the “L” prefix):

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• How can I use Windows Workflow for validation of a Silverlight application?

  - by Josh C.

  I want to use Windows Workflow to provide a validation service. The validation that will be provided may have multiple tiers with chaining and redirecting to other stages of validation. The application that will generate the data for validation is a Silverlight app. I imagine the validation will take longer than the blink of an eye, so I don't want to tie the user up. Instead, I would like the user to submit the current data for validation. If the validation happens quickly, the service will perform an asynchronous callback to the app. The viewmodel that made the call would receive the validation output and post into the view. If the validation takes a long time, the user can move forward in the Silverlight app, disregarding the potential output of the validation. The viewmodel that made the call would be gone. I expect there would be another viewmodel that would contain the current validation output in its model. The validation value would change causing the user to get a notification in smaller notifcation area. I can see how the current view's viewmodel would call the validation through the viewmodel that is containing the validation output, but I am concerned that the service call will timeout. Also, I think the user may have already changed the values from the original validation, invalidating the feedback. I am sure asynchronous validation is a problem solved many times over, I am looking to glean from your experience in solving this kind of problem. Is this the right approach to the problem, or is there a better way to approach this?

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• Software Engineering Practices &ndash; Different Projects should have different maturity levels

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve had a lot of discussions at the office lately about the drastically different sets of software engineering practices used on our various projects, if what we are doing is appropriate, and what factors should you be considering when determining what practices are most appropriate in a given context. I wanted to write up my thoughts in a little more detail on this subject, so here we go: If you compare any two software projects (specifically comparing their codebases) you’ll often see very different levels of maturity in the software engineering practices employed. By software engineering practices, I’m specifically referring to the quality of the code and the amount of technical debt present in the project. Things such as Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Behavior Driven Development, proper adherence to the SOLID principles, etc. are all practices that you would expect at the mature end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum would be the quick-and-dirty solutions that are done using something like an Access Database, Excel Spreadsheet, or maybe some quick “drag-and-drop coding”. For this blog post I’m going to refer to this as the Software Engineering Maturity Spectrum (SEMS). I believe there is a time and a place for projects at every part of that SEMS. The risks and costs associated with under-engineering solutions have been written about a million times over so I won’t bother going into them again here, but there are also (unnecessary) costs with over-engineering a solution. Sometimes putting multiple layers, and IoC containers, and abstracting out the persistence, etc is complete overkill if a one-time use Access database could solve the problem perfectly well. A lot of software developers I talk to seem to automatically jump to the very right-hand side of this SEMS in everything they do. A common rationalization I hear is that it may seem like a small trivial application today, but these things always grow and stick around for many years, then you’re stuck maintaining a big ball of mud. I think this is a cop-out. Sure you can’t always anticipate how an application will be used or grow over its lifetime (can you ever??), but that doesn’t mean you can’t manage it and evolve the underlying software architecture as necessary (even if that means having to toss the code out and re-write it at some point…maybe even multiple times). My thoughts are that we should be making a conscious decision around the start of each project approximately where on the SEMS we want the project to exist. I believe this decision should be based on 3 factors: 1. Importance - How important to the business is this application? What is the impact if the application were to suddenly stop working? 2. Complexity - How complex is the application functionality? 3. Life-Expectancy - How long is this application expected to be in use? Is this a one-time use application, does it fill a short-term need, or is it more strategic and is expected to be in-use for many years to come? Of course this isn’t an exact science. You can’t say that Project X should be at the 73% mark on the SEMS and expect that to be helpful. My point is not that you need to precisely figure out what point on the SEMS the project should be at then translate that into some prescriptive set of practices and techniques you should be using. Rather my point is that we need to be aware that there is a spectrum, and that not everything is going to be (or should be) at the edges of that spectrum, indeed a large number of projects should probably fall somewhere within the middle; and different projects should adopt a different level of software engineering practices and maturity levels based on the needs of that project. To give an example of this way of thinking from my day job: Every couple of years my company plans and hosts a large event where ~400 of our customers all fly in to one location for a multi-day event with various activities. We have some staff whose job it is to organize the logistics of this event, which includes tracking which flights everybody is booked on, arranging for transportation to/from airports, arranging for hotel rooms, name tags, etc The last time we arranged this event all these various pieces of data were tracked in separate spreadsheets and reconciliation and cross-referencing of all the data was literally done by hand using printed copies of the spreadsheets and several people sitting around a table going down each list row by row. Obviously there is some room for improvement in how we are using software to manage the event’s logistics. The next time this event occurs we plan to provide the event planning staff with a more intelligent tool (either an Excel spreadsheet or probably an Access database) that can track all the information in one location and make sure that the various pieces of data are properly linked together (so for example if a person cancels you only need to delete them from one place, and not a dozen separate lists). This solution would fall at or near the very left end of the SEMS meaning that we will just quickly create something with very little attention paid to using mature software engineering practices. If we examine this project against the 3 criteria I listed above for determining it’s place within the SEMS we can see why: Importance – If this application were to stop working the business doesn’t grind to a halt, revenue doesn’t stop, and in fact our customers wouldn’t even notice since it isn’t a customer facing application. The impact would simply be more work for our event planning staff as they revert back to the previous way of doing things (assuming we don’t have any data loss). Complexity – The use cases for this project are pretty straightforward. It simply needs to manage several lists of data, and link them together appropriately. Precisely the task that access (and/or Excel) can do with minimal custom development required. Life-Expectancy – For this specific project we’re only planning to create something to be used for the one event (we only hold these events every 2 years). If it works well this may change (see below). Let’s assume we hack something out quickly and it works great when we plan the next event. We may decide that we want to make some tweaks to the tool and adopt it for planning all future events of this nature. In that case we should examine where the current application is on the SEMS, and make a conscious decision whether something needs to be done to move it further to the right based on the new objectives and goals for this application. This may mean scrapping the access database and re-writing it as an actual web or windows application. In this case, the life-expectancy changed, but let’s assume the importance and complexity didn’t change all that much. We can still probably get away with not adopting a lot of the so-called “best practices”. For example, we can probably still use some of the RAD tooling available and might have an Autonomous View style design that connects directly to the database and binds to typed datasets (we might even choose to simply leave it as an access database and continue using it; this is a decision that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis). At Anvil Digital we have aspirations to become a primarily product-based company. So let’s say we use this tool to plan a handful of events internally, and everybody loves it. Maybe a couple years down the road we decide we want to package the tool up and sell it as a product to some of our customers. In this case the project objectives/goals change quite drastically. Now the tool becomes a source of revenue, and the impact of it suddenly stopping working is significantly less acceptable. Also as we hold focus groups, and gather feedback from customers and potential customers there’s a pretty good chance the feature-set and complexity will have to grow considerably from when we were using it only internally for planning a small handful of events for one company. In this fictional scenario I would expect the target on the SEMS to jump to the far right. Depending on how we implemented the previous release we may be able to refactor and evolve the existing codebase to introduce a more layered architecture, a robust set of automated tests, introduce a proper ORM and IoC container, etc. More likely in this example the jump along the SEMS would be so large we’d probably end up scrapping the current code and re-writing. Although, if it was a slow phased roll-out to only a handful of customers, where we collected feedback, made some tweaks, and then rolled out to a couple more customers, we may be able to slowly refactor and evolve the code over time rather than tossing it out and starting from scratch. The key point I’m trying to get across is not that you should be throwing out your code and starting from scratch all the time. But rather that you should be aware of when and how the context and objectives around a project changes and periodically re-assess where the project currently falls on the SEMS and whether that needs to be adjusted based on changing needs. Note: There is also the idea of “spectrum decay”. Since our industry is rapidly evolving, what we currently accept as mature software engineering practices (the right end of the SEMS) probably won’t be the same 3 years from now. If you have a project that you were to assess at somewhere around the 80% mark on the SEMS today, but don’t touch the code for 3 years and come back and re-assess its position, it will almost certainly have changed since the right end of the SEMS will have moved farther out (maybe the project is now only around 60% due to decay). Developer Skills Another important aspect to this whole discussion is around the skill sets of your architects and lead developers. When talking about the progression of a developers skills from junior->intermediate->senior->… they generally start by only being able to write code that belongs on the left side of the SEMS and as they gain more knowledge and skill they become capable of working at a higher and higher level along the SEMS. We all realize that the learning never stops, but eventually you’ll get to the point where you can comfortably develop at the right-end of the SEMS (the exact practices and techniques that translates to is constantly changing, but that’s not the point here). A critical skill that I’d love to see more evidence of in our industry is the most senior guys not only being able to work at the right-end of the SEMS, but more importantly be able to consciously work at any point along the SEMS as project needs dictate. An even more valuable skill would be if you could make the conscious decision to move a projects code further right on the SEMS (based on changing needs) and do so in an incremental manner without having to start from scratch. An exercise that I’m planning to go through with all of our projects here at Anvil in the near future is to map out where I believe each project currently falls within this SEMS, where I believe the project *should* be on the SEMS based on the business needs, and for those that don’t match up (i.e. most of them) come up with a plan to improve the situation.

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• Big Data for Retail

  - by David Dorf

  Right up there with mobile, social, and cloud is the term "big data," which seems to be popping up lots in the press these days.  Companies like Google, Yahoo, and Facebook have popularized a new class of data technologies meant to solve the problem of processing large amounts of data quickly.  I first mentioned this in a posting back in March 2009.  Put simply, big data implies datasets so large they can't normally be processed using a standard transactional database.  The term "noSQL" is often used in this context as well. Actually, using parallel processing within the Oracle database combined with Exadata can achieve impressive results.  Look for more from Oracle at OpenWorld as hinted by Jean-Pierre Dijcks. McKinsey recently released a report on big data in which retail was specifically mentioned as an industry that can benefit from the new technologies.  I won't rehash that report because my friend Rama already did such a good job in his posting, Impact of "Big Data" on Retail. The presentation below does a pretty good job of framing the problem, although it doesn't really get into the available technologies (e.g. Exadata, Hadoop, Cassandra, etc.) and isn't retail specific. Determine the Right Analytic Database: A Survey of New Data Technologies So when a retailer asks me about big data, here's what I say:  Big data refers to a set of technologies for processing large volumes of structured and unstructured data.  Imagine collecting everything uttered by your customers on Facebook and Twitter and combining it with all the data you can find about the products you sell (e.g. reviews, images, demonstration videos), including competitive data.  Assuming you could process all that data, you could then personalize offers to specific customers based on their tastes, ensure prices are competitive, and implement better local assortments.  It's really not that far off.

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• Accessing and Updating Data in ASP.NET: Filtering Data Using a CheckBoxList

  Filtering Database Data with Parameters, an earlier installment in this article series, showed how to filter the data returned by ASP.NET's data source controls. In a nutshell, the data source controls can include parameterized queries whose parameter values are defined via parameter controls. For example, the SqlDataSource can include a parameterized SelectCommand, such as: SELECT * FROM Books WHERE Price > @Price. Here, @Price is a parameter; the value for a parameter can be defined declaratively using a parameter control. ASP.NET offers a variety of parameter controls, including ones that use hard-coded values, ones that retrieve values from the querystring, and ones that retrieve values from session, and others. Perhaps the most useful parameter control is the ControlParameter, which retrieves its value from a Web control on the page. Using the ControlParameter we can filter the data returned by the data source control based on the end user's input. While the ControlParameter works well with most types of Web controls, it does not work as expected with the CheckBoxList control. The ControlParameter is designed to retrieve a single property value from the specified Web control, but the CheckBoxList control does not have a property that returns all of the values of its selected items in a form that the CheckBoxList control can use. Moreover, if you are using the selected CheckBoxList items to query a database you'll quickly find that SQL does not offer out of the box functionality for filtering results based on a user-supplied list of filter criteria. The good news is that with a little bit of effort it is possible to filter data based on the end user's selections in a CheckBoxList control. This article starts with a look at how to get SQL to filter data based on a user-supplied, comma-delimited list of values. Next, it shows how to programmatically construct a comma-delimited list that represents the selected CheckBoxList values and pass that list into the SQL query. Finally, we'll explore creating a custom parameter control to handle this logic declaratively. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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• Finetuning movement based on gradual rotation towards a target

  - by A.B.

  I have an object which moves towards a target destination by gradually adjusting its facing while moving forwards. If the target destination is in a "blind spot", then the object is incapable of reaching it. This problem is ilustrated in the picture below. When the arrow is ordered to move to point A, it will only end up circling around it (following the red circle) because it is not able to adjust its rotation quickly enough. I'm interested in a solution where the movement speed is multiplied by a number from 0.1 to 1 in proportion to necessity. The problem is, how do I calculate whether it is necessary in the first place? How do I calculate an appropriate multiplier that is neither too small nor too large? void moveToPoint(sf::Vector2f destination) { if (destination == position) return; auto movement_distance = distanceBetweenPoints(position, destination); desired_rotation = angleBetweenPoints(position, destination); /// Check whether rotation should be adjusted if (rotation != desired_rotation) { /// Check whether the object can achieve the desired rotation within the next adjustment of its rotation if (Radian::isWithinDistance(rotation, desired_rotation, rotation_speed)) { rotation = desired_rotation; } else { /// Determine whether to increment or decrement rotation in order to achieve desired rotation if (Radian::convert(desired_rotation - rotation) > 0) { /// Increment rotation rotation += rotation_speed; } else { /// Decrement rotation rotation -= rotation_speed; } } } if (movement_distance < movement_speed) { position = destination; } else { position.x = position.x + movement_speed*cos(rotation); position.y = position.y + movement_speed*sin(rotation); } updateGraphics(); }

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• Friday Fun: Play MineSweeper in Google Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you addicted to MineSweeper and love to play it when taking a break from work? Now you can add that mine sweeping goodness to Google Chrome with the Chrome MineSweeper extension. Find Those Mines! Once the extension has been installed simply click on the “Toolbar Button” to access the game (opens in a new tab). The “emoticons” at the top of the tab window indicate the difficulty level of game play available. Sometimes you can make quick progress in a short time with this game… Only to lose moments later. So you do have to plan your strategy out carefully. You will be surprised (or perhaps alarmed?) at just how quickly you get addicted to playing “just one more round”! Want a bigger challenge? Click on the “middle emoticon” to access a tougher level. The ultimate level…how much mine sweeping punishment are you up for?   Conclusion If you are a MineSweeper fan then this will be a perfect addition to your browser. For those who are new to this game then you have a lot of fun just waiting for you. Links Download the Chrome MineSweeper extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Make Google Chrome Your Default BrowserPlay a New Random Game Each Day in ChromeEnable Vista Black Style Theme for Google Chrome in XPIncrease Google Chrome’s Omnibox Popup Suggestion Count With an Undocumented SwitchFriday Fun: Play 3D Rally Racing in Google Chrome TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver Optimize your computer the Microsoft way Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data Geek Parents – Did you try Parental Controls in Windows 7? Change DNS servers on the fly with DNS Jumper Live PDF Searches PDF Files and Ebooks

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• To the world, with love

  - by kaleidoscope

  kaleidoscope 1817, lit. "observer of beautiful forms," coined by its inventor, Sir David Brewster (1781-1868), from Gk. kalos "beautiful" + eidos "shape" (see -oid) + -scope, on model of telescope, etc. Figurative meaning "constantly changing pattern" is first attested 1819 in Lord Byron, whose publisher had sent him one. Let’s start by setting some context here. “We” are not a single blogger but a bunch of like minded people who will be contributing to this blog. We belong to a team led by some folks possessed by innovation, and this has rubbed on us in a good way. How it started It all started with initiative from Girish, A. A big thank you, goes to him. To get it straight from the horse’ mouth: What is it? - Everybody (as per the published schedule) post a small write-up (not more than say 5/6 lines) regarding any Azure related concept. - We shall consolidate all these mails (which would be 5/week) and quickly discuss/brain storm about it, end of the week i.e. on Fridays. What’s the benefit? - This should make our basic Azure concepts rock-solid. - As part of this exercise, we will have a very good collection of Azure FAQs. As the team grew stronger, so did the contributions and after almost 3 months of regular contributions and weekly discussions we thought of sharing the content with the world at large. Afterall we are IT folks and the big I in IT is there for a reason. :) The road ahead We will post the entire collection as time permits. Tagged by contributor. Going forward each contributor will post individually adding his/her specific tag. Get blogging!!

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• SQL SERVER – Find Details for Statistics of Whole Database – DMV – T-SQL Script

  - by pinaldave

  I was recently asked is there a single script which can provide all the necessary details about statistics for any database. This question made me write following script. I was initially planning to use sp_helpstats command but I remembered that this is marked to be deprecated in future. Again, using DMV is the right thing to do moving forward. I quickly wrote following script which gives a lot more information than sp_helpstats. USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT DISTINCT OBJECT_NAME(s.[object_id]) AS TableName, c.name AS ColumnName, s.name AS StatName, s.auto_created, s.user_created, s.no_recompute, s.[object_id], s.stats_id, sc.stats_column_id, sc.column_id, STATS_DATE(s.[object_id], s.stats_id) AS LastUpdated FROM sys.stats s JOIN sys.stats_columns sc ON sc.[object_id] = s.[object_id] AND sc.stats_id = s.stats_id JOIN sys.columns c ON c.[object_id] = sc.[object_id] AND c.column_id = sc.column_id JOIN sys.partitions par ON par.[object_id] = s.[object_id] JOIN sys.objects obj ON par.[object_id] = obj.[object_id] WHERE OBJECTPROPERTY(s.OBJECT_ID,'IsUserTable') = 1 AND (s.auto_created = 1 OR s.user_created = 1); If you have better script to retrieve information about statistics, please share here and I will publish it with due credit. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL DMV, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: SQL Statistics, Statistics

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• Aging vs. Coding Skills

  - by Renan Malke Stigliani

  A little background, since it can be part of my point fo view. I'm a C#/Java programmer with age of 23, coding since my 18's. I started studying C and working with Cobol, and after 1 year I quickly moved to C#/Java Web Development, and have worked with it in about 3/4 companies. (I've just moved again) In my (brief) professional career I encountered some older programmers, all the times it was very hard to work with them, since I was way better programmer than they. And it is not about just the language skills, some of them had seriously problems understanding basic logic. Now I wonder how theese programmer get jobs on the market since (I imagine) they have more expenses, and thus have to make more money, and are really counter-productives. In theese examples, others project member have to constantly keep stoping for helping them out. All the times, they eventually quit... So I wonder... May the aging process slow down the learning rate and logic thinking? Does the programmer has to, or at least should, move to a management area before getting old? Please, my intention is not to be disrespectful with older persons. I am fully aware that this is NOT the case of all older programmers, I often see around very good old programmers on the net, I just never met them for close.

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• On contract work, obligations to said contract, and looking out for yourself…

  - by jlnorsworthy

  Without boring you all with details, my last two contract assignments were cut short; I was given 3 days notice on one, and 4 weeks notice on the other. Neither of these were due to performance – they both basically came down budget issues. On my second contract, I got the feeling that I may not have been a great place to stay for the duration of my contract. Because of money/time spent getting me in the door, and the possible negative effect of my employer/recruiter, I decided to stay at least for a few months (and start looking several weeks before the end of my supposedly “extendable” contract). These experiences have left me a little wary of contract work. It seems that if I land a bad contract, that my recruiter would take a hit (reputation or otherwise) if I quickly found another job. But on the other hand, the client company won’t think twice of ending the contract early for any reason. I know that the counter argument to this is “maybe your recruiter shouldn’t have put you into a crappy assignment”… either way, it seems that since I am relying on him to provide me with work, that I should try to not damage his reputation with client companies. I’m basically brand new to contracting (these were my first two contracts) so these concerns are new to me. TLDR: Is contract work, by its very nature, largely unstable? Am I worried too much about my recruiter? Should I be quicker to start looking for a new job even after just weeks at a new company (when the environment seems unstable)? If so, do I look through my recruiter or just find another position by any means necessary?

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• Remapping keyboard to get extra cursor keys - but why stick to VIM standard hjkl

  - by Carlo V. Dango

  Inspired from VIM I recently remapped my keyboard layout to get extra keys for cursor movement. Being fluent in both QWERTY and DVORAK, it came quite natural to me to remap the DF and JK keys rather than the VIM standard hjkl keys. Here is my reasoning It enables me to quickly identify cursor keys since F and J are physically marked on my keyboard I'm using two hands for movement rather than one. I guess from DVORAK I learned to appreciate shifting between hands rather than using primarily one hand. It maps well with the Kinesis keyboard mapping http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/advantage.htm that I use occasionally. I feel I'm using my strongest fingers. I don't have to stretch my right index finger to read H as I would using the VIM layout. However, since I am still doing green field explorations on the cursor key remapping, I'd like others to share their experiences and/or criticize my suggested mapping. PS. If you want to toy around with my remapping using Autohotkey here is my script ; extra cursor keys. !d:: Send {Left} <^>!d:: Send {Left} !f:: Send {Right} <^>!f:: Send {Right} !j:: Send {Up} <^>!j:: Send {Up} !k:: Send {Down} <^>!k:: Send {Down} The question Is this mapping sane or is the VIM mapping superior?

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• St. Louis Day of .NET 2011

  - by Scott Spradlin

  The St. Louis .NET User Group is proud to announce that the St. Louis Day of .NET 2011 developers conference is officially open for registration. The fee for the two-day event remains the same as last year at $200.00 per attendee. However, if you register now through July 1, you will qualify for an “early bird” discount of $75.00, making the total cost only $125.00 per attendee. Act quickly to take advantage of this discount! (Invoicing is available for groups of 5 or more.) There are already 33 confirmed speakers and 51 confirmed sessions, with more being added each week. You can find biographies of the speakers, as well as abstracts of the scheduled sessions, on our conference web site. A full agenda will be provided soon and a mobile session builder is being constructed. The event will once again be held in the Ameristar Casino & Resort this year. Hotel rooms are available on-site, as they have been the prior two years. Friday night will we will host our annual attendee social networking night, where you can grab a bite to eat and talk with speakers and sponsors in a relaxed atmosphere. This will be held in the nightclub area of the Ameristar and is exclusively available to the attendees at no additional charge. A large part of the success of this event is due to the ongoing support of our great sponsors. If your organization would be interested in a sponsorship opportunity, details are available on the web site, or you can email [email protected]. Thanks to the current sponsors who have already stepped forward for this year’s event! Register today! You are encouraged to tweet, blog, or otherwise help spread the word! http://www.StLouisDayOfDotNet.com

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• Microsoft Channel 9 Interviews Mei Liang to Introduce Sample Browser Extension for Visual Studio 2012 and 2010

  - by Jialiang

  This morning, Microsoft Channel 9 interviewed Mei Liang - Group Manager of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - to introduce the newest Sample Browser extension for Visual Studio 2012 &2010.   This extension provides a way for developers to search and download more than 4500 code samples from within Visual Studio, including over 700 Windows 8 samples and more than 1000 All-In-One Code Framework customer-driven code samples. Mei shows us not only the extension, but also the standalone version of the Sample Browser.   http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Visual-Studio-Toolbox/Sample-Browser-Visual-Studio-Extension   Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, working in close partnership with the Visual Studio product team and MSDN Samples Gallery, developed the Sample Browser extension for both Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2010.  As an effort to evolve the code sample use experience and improve developers' productivity, the Sample Browser allows programmers to search, download and open over 4500 code samples from within Visual Studio with just a few simple clicks.  If no existing code sample can meet the needs, developers can even request a code sample easily from Microsoft thanks to the free “Sample Request Service” offered by Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework.  Through innovations, the teams hope to put the power of tens of thousands of code samples at developers’ fingertips. In short 3 months, the Sample Browser Visual Studio Extension has been installed by 100K global users.  It is also selected as one of the six most highly regarded and commonly used tools for Visual Studio that will make your programming experience feel like never before.   Got to love the All-In-One Code Framework team! You guys know this is THE go to source for code samples. Get this extension and you'll never need to leave VS2012 (well except for bathroom trips, but that's TMI anyway... ;) Read More... From: Greg Duncan (Author of CoolThingOfTheDay) 9/6/2011 12:00 AM The one software design pattern that I have used in just about every application I’ve written is “cut-and-paste,” so the new “Sample Browser” – read sample as a noun not an adjective – is a great boon to my productivity. Read More... From: Jim O'Neil (Microsoft Developer Evangelist) 9/28/2011 12:00 AM Install: http://aka.ms/samplebrowservsx Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework also offers the standalone version of Sample Browser.   The standalone version is particularly useful to Visual Studio Express edition or Visual Studio 2008 users, who cannot install the Sample Browser Visual Studio extension.   From Grassroots’ Passion for Developers to the Innovation of Sample Browser This Sample Browser has come a very long way improving the code sample use experience.  The history can be traced back to a grass-root innovation three years ago.   In early 2009, a few MSDN forum support engineers observed that lots of developers were struggling to work in Visual Studio without adequate code samples. Programming tasks seem harder than they should be when you only read through the documentation.  Just a couple of lines of sample code could answer a lot of questions.   They had a brilliant idea: What if we produce code samples based on developers’ frequently asked programming tasks in forums, social networks and support incidents, and then aggregate all our sample code in a one-stop library to benefit developers?  And what if developers can request code samples directly from Microsoft, free of charge?  This small group of grassroots at Microsoft devoted their nights and weekends to prototyping such a customer-driven code sample library.  This simple idea eventually turned into “Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework”, aka. OneCode.  With the support from more and more passionate developers at Microsoft and the leaders in the Community and Online Support team and Microsoft Commercial Technical Services (CTS), the idea has become a continually growing library with over 1000 customer-driven code samples covering almost all Microsoft development technologies.  These code samples originated from developers’ common pains and needs should be able to help many developers.  However, if developers cannot easily discover the code samples, the effort would still be in vain.  So in early 2010, the team started the idea of Sample Browser to ease the discovery and access of these samples.  In just two months, the first version of Sample Browser was finished and released by a passionate developer.  It was a very simple application, only supporting the basic sample offline search.  Users had to download the whole 100MB sample package containing all samples first, and run the Sample Browser to search locally.   Though developers could not search and download samples on-demand, this simple application laid a solid foundation for the team’s continuous innovations of Sample Browsing experience. In 2011, MSDN Samples Gallery had a big refresh.  The online sample experience was brought to a new level thanks to its PM Steven Wilssens and the gallery team’s effort.  Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework Team saw the opportunity to realize the “on-demand” sample search and download feature with the new gallery.  The two teams formed a strong partnership to upload all the customer-driven code samples to MSDN Samples Gallery, and released the new version of Sample Browser to support “on-demand” sample downloading in April, 2011.  Mei Liang, the Group Manager of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, was interviewed by Channel 9 to demo the Sample Browser.  Customers love the effort and the innovation!!  This can be clearly seen from the user comments in the publishing page.   It was very encouraging to the team of All-In-One Code Framework. The team continues innovating and evolving the Sample Browser.  They found the Visual Studio product team this time, and integrated the Sample Browsing experience into the latest Visual Studio 2012.  The newly released Sample Browser Visual Studio extension makes good use of Visual Studio 2012 IDE such as the new Quick Launch bar, the code editor, the toolbar and menus to offer easy access to thousands of code samples from within the development environment.   The Visual Studio Senior Program Manager Lead - Anthony Cangialosi, the Program Manager - Murali Krishna Hosabettu Kamalesha, the MSDN Samples Gallery PM – Steven Wilssens, and the Visual Studio Senior Escalation Engineer - Ed Dore shared lots of insightful suggestions with the team.  Thanks to the brilliant cross-group collaboration inside Microsoft, tens of new features including “Local Language Support” and “Favorite Samples”, as well as a face-lifted user interface, were added to further enhance the user experience. Since the new Sample Browser Visual Studio extension was released, it has received over 100 thousand downloads and five-star ratings.  A customer told the team that he officially falls in LOVE with Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework.   The Sample Browser Innovation for Developers Never Stops! The teams would never stop improving the Sample Browser for developers’ easier lives.   The Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, Visual Studio and MSDN Samples Gallery teams are working closely to develop the next version of Sample Browser.  Here are the key functions in development or in discussion.  We hope to learn your feedback of the effort.  You can submit your suggestions to the official Visual Studio UserVoice site.  We look forward to hearing from you! 1) Offline Sample Search This is one of the top feature requests that we have received for Sample Browser.   The Sample Browser will support the offline search mode so that developers can search downloaded code samples when they do not have internet access.  This is particularly useful to developers in Enterprises with strict proxy settings. 2) Code Snippet Support and Visual Studio Editor Integration Today, the Sample Browser supports downloading and opening sample project.   However, when developers are searching for code samples, a better user experience would be to see the code snippets in the search result first.  Developers can quickly decide if the code snippet is relevant.   They can also drag and drop the code snippet into the Visual Studio Editor to solve some simple programming tasks.  If developers want to learn more about the sample, they can then choose to download the sample project and open it in Visual Studio. 3) Enterprise Sample Sharing and Searching Large enterprises have many code samples for their own internal tools and APIs that are not appropriate to be shared publicly in MSDN Samples Gallery.   In that case, today’s Sample Browser and MSDN Samples Gallery cannot help these Enterprise developers.  The idea is to create a Code Sample Repository in TFS, and provide an additional Visual Studio extension for Enterprise developers to quickly share code samples to TFS.  The Sample Browser can be configured to connect to the TFS Code Sample Repository to search for and download code samples.  This would potentially enable the Enterprise developers to be more productive. 4) Windows Store Sample Browser With the upcoming release of Windows RT and Microsoft Surface, developers are facing a completely new world of application platform.   Not like laptop, people would often use Microsoft Surface in commute and in travel.  Internet may not be available.  Today’s Visual Studio cannot be installed and run on Windows RT, however, our enthusiastic developers would hope to spend every minute on code.  They love code!   The idea is to create a Windows Store version of Sample Browser. Search and download samples from the online Samples Gallery when the user has internet access. Browse the sample code files and learn the sample documentation of downloaded samples with or without internet access.   In addition to the "browse” function, the Sample Browser could further support “bookmark”, “learning notes”, “code review”, and “quick social sharing". Make full use of the new touch and Windows Store App UI to give developers a new “relaxing” code browsing and learning experience, anytime, anywhere. With Windows Store Sample Browser, developers can enjoy A new relaxing and enjoyable experience for developers to learn code samples You do not have to sit in front of desk and formally open Visual Studio to read code samples.  Many developers get sub-health due to staying in front of desk for a very long time.  With Windows RT, Microsoft Surface and this Windows Store Sample Browser combining with the online MSDN Samples Gallery, developers can sit in a sofa, relaxingly hold the tablet and enjoy to learn their beloved sample code with detailed documentation. Anytime, anywhere Whether you have internet access or not, whether you are at home, in office, or in commute/airplane, developers can always easily access and browse the sample code. Lightweight and fast Particularly for learning a small sample project, the Windows Store Sample Browser would be more lightweight and faster to open and browse the sample code. Please submit your feedback and suggestion to Visual Studio UserVoice.  We look forward to hearing from you and deliver a better and better sample use experience.  Happy Coding!   Special Thanks to People working behind the latest release of Sample Browser Visual Studio Extension and the great partnerships!

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• SQL SERVER – Get File Statistics Using fn_virtualfilestats

  - by pinaldave

  Quite often when I am staring at my SSMS I wonder what is going on under the hood in my SQL Server. I often want to know which database is very busy and which database is bit slow because of IO issue. Sometime, I think at the file level as well. I want to know which MDF or NDF is busiest and doing most of the work. Following query gets the same results very quickly. SELECT DB_NAME(vfs.DbId) DatabaseName, mf.name, mf.physical_name, vfs.BytesRead, vfs.BytesWritten, vfs.IoStallMS, vfs.IoStallReadMS, vfs.IoStallWriteMS, vfs.NumberReads, vfs.NumberWrites, (Size*8)/1024 Size_MB FROM ::fn_virtualfilestats(NULL,NULL) vfs INNER JOIN sys.master_files mf ON mf.database_id = vfs.DbId AND mf.FILE_ID = vfs.FileId GO When you run above query you will get many valuable information like what is the size of the file as well how many times the reads and writes are done for each file. It also displays the read/write data in bytes. Due to IO if there has been any stall (delay) in read or write, you can know that as well. I keep this handy but have not shared on blog earlier. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL View, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Statistics

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