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  • Silverlight Cream for November 17, 2011 -- #1168

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Colin Eberhardt, Lazar Nikolov, WindowsPhoneGeek, Jesse Liberty, Peter Kuhn, Derik Whittaker, Chris Koenig, and Jeff Blankenburg(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Facebook Graph API and Silverlight Part 2 – Publishing data" Lazar Nikolov WP7: "Suppressing Zoom and Scroll interactions in the Windows Phone 7 WebBrowser Control" Colin Eberhardt Metro/WinRT/W8: "Tip/Trick when working with the Application Bar in WinRT/Metro (C#)" Derik Whittaker Shoutouts: Michael Palermo's latest Desert Mountain Developers is up Michael Washington's latest Visual Studio #LightSwitch Daily is up Pete Brown announced the completion of his book: It’s a wrap! I’ve completed writing Silverlight 5 in Action From SilverlightCream.com: Suppressing Zoom and Scroll interactions in the Windows Phone 7 WebBrowser Control Colin Eberhardt's latest post is all about a helper class he wrote to suppress scrolling and pinch zoom of the WP7 browser control, which you might want to do if the browser is placed inside another control. Facebook Graph API and Silverlight Part 2 – Publishing data In this part 2 of his Facebook and Silverlight series, Lazar Nikolov shows how to post data to your profile or your friends' profiles Localizing a Windows Phone app Step by Step WindowsPhoneGeek's latest post is on Localizing a WP7 app .. another great tutorial with plenty of discussion, pictures, and a project to load up and follow Background Audio Part II: Copying Audio Files To Isolated Storage Continuing his WP7 series, Jesse Liberty has Part 2 of a mini-series on Background Audio up... in this episode he's using local audio and to do so, it must be in ISO Silverlight: Bugs in the multicast client In a Q/A session, Peter Kuhn was presented a nasty bug in the multicast client that he has verified exists in not only Silverlight 4 but also Silverlight 5 Beta, including a link to his entry on Connect. Tip/Trick when working with the Application Bar in WinRT/Metro (C#) Derik Whittaker offers up some good information about the Metro Application Bar and how to keep it where you want it New! Windows Phone Starter Kit for Podcasts Chris Koenig announced the release of a new starter kit for WP7... a starter kit for podcasts. Check out the links on Chris' site and the other two starter kits that are available 31 Days of Mango | Day #4: Compass Jeff Blankenburg continues with Day 4 of his Mango series with this post on the Compass and a cool app to demonstrate it 31 Days of Mango | Day #5: Gyroscope In Day 5, Jeff Blankenburg is talking about and discussing the gyroscope, of course if you have a phone as old as mine, you won't have a gyroscope and it's not on the emulator Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Desktop Fun: Google Themed Icon Packs

    - by Asian Angel
    Are you an avid user of Google’s online services, but the icons for your desktop and app launcher shortcuts leave something to be desired? Now you can make those shortcuts shine with style using our Google Themed Icon Packs collection. Note: To customize the icon setup on your Windows 7 & Vista systems see our article here. Using Windows XP? We have you covered here. Sneak Preview For this week’s sneak preview we set up a Google Chrome themed desktop using the Simply Google Icon Collection shown below. Note: Original full-size wallpaper can be found here. We used Chromium to create a set of app shortcuts for various Google services on our desktop. Anyone who has done the same knows that the original icons do not look very good, so these icon packs can make those shortcuts look spectacular. Once the new icons were arranged for our desktop app shortcuts, we then pinned them to our Taskbar. Those are definitely looking nice! The Icon Packs Simply Google Icon Collection *.ico and .png format Download Google icons *.ico and .png format Download Tango Google Icon Set Vol. 1 *.png and .svg format Download Google Tango Icon Set Vol. 2 *.png and .svg format Download New Google Product Icons *.ico, .png, and .gif format Note: This icon pack contains 657 icons of various sizes. The best selection of individual icon types in the same size (i.e. 48, 128, etc.) from this pack is a mixture of .png and .gif formats. Download New google docs icons *.png format only Download Google Docs pack Icons *.ico, .png, and .gif format Download GCal *.png format only (original favicon .ico file included) Download Google Earth Icon Color Pack *.png format only Download Google Earth Dock Icons *.ico, .png, and .icns format Download Gtalk Color Icons *.png format only Download Google Buzz Icons *.png format only Download Google Chrome icon pack *.png format only Download Google Chrome X *.ico, .png, and .icns format Download Google Chrome icon pack *.png format only Download Wanting more great icon sets to look through? Be certain to visit our Desktop Fun section for more icon goodness! Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 How to Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC Enjoy Old School Style Video Game Fun with Chicken Invaders Hide the Twitter “Litter” in Twitter’s Sidebar Area (Chrome and Iron) Public Domain Day: Reflections on Copyright and the Importance of Public Domain Angry Birds Coming to PS3 and PSP This Week I Hate Mondays Wallpaper for That First Day Back at Work Tune Pop Enhances Android Music Notifications

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  • Silverlight Cream for November 22, 2011 -- #1172

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: XAMLGeek, WindowsPhoneGeek, Nigel Sampson, Jesse Liberty, Sumit Dutta(-2-), Dave Bost, Jared Bienz, Joost van Schaik, and Michael Crump. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 7 of 10)" Michael Crump WP7: "Using MVVMLight, ItemsControl, Blend and behaviors to make a ‘heads up compass’" Joost van Schaik Metro/WinRT/W8: "“Badevand” for Windows 8" XAMLGeek Shoutouts: Michael Palermo's latest Desert Mountain Developers is up Michael Washington's latest Visual Studio #LightSwitch Daily is up From SilverlightCream.com:“Badevand” for Windows 8XAMLGeek posted a Metro app that shows water and air temperature and rain level for 5 beaches in Copenhagen, Denmark... no source, but good to see people posting appsGetting Started with Windows Phone RemindersWindowsPhoneGeek digs into Reminders in this WP7.1 post... the code you need, description, and a project to downloadHelp my app has been revoked!Nigel Sampson had a surprise when his latest app was revoked on his device, and then another... read what the solution wasA Dozen Windows Phone Videos… And CountingJesse Liberty posted his 12th WP7.1 video on Channel 9 - all about Reminders in MangoPart 23 - Windows Phone 7 - Detect Operator and Network InformationSumit Dutta has 2 more parts to his WP7 quest up... this part 23 is about getting mobile operator information and hot to get network capabilities using Microsoft.Phone.Net.DeviceNetworkInformationPart 24 - Windows Phone 7 - Microphone RepeaterIn part 24, Sumit Dutta uses the Microsoft.Xna.Framework Microphone class to record and play back voice.31 Days of Mango | Day #13: Marketplace Test KitDave Bost is at the helm of Jeff Blankenburg's Day 13 in his 31 day quest, discussing the Marketplace Test Kit and showing how to use it to determine if your app is ready for certification31 Days of Mango | Day #12; Beta DistributionJeff Blankenburg's Day 12 is written by guest author Jared Bienz, and shows how to submit an application for Beta testingUsing MVVMLight, ItemsControl, Blend and behaviors to make a ‘heads up compass’Joost van Schaik has a tutorial up showing how to make a WP7 Compass app using MVVMLight, Expression Blend, and then shows his thoughts on using the ItemsControl and Behaviors... code, descriptions and a project to download.... and I think I got your name right for the first time, Joost :)10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 7 of 10)Michael Crump put out part 7 of his Silverlight 5 series at SilverlightShow... this is actually part 2 of OS Integration with Silverlight covering, among other things, 64-bit browser support and Power AwarenessStay in the 'Light!Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCreamJoin me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User GroupTechnorati Tags:Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows PhoneMIX10

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  • Microsft Lync mobile bientôt disponible sur Windows Phone, Android, iOS et BlackBerry

    Microsft Lync mobile bientôt disponible sur Windows Phone Android, iOS et BlackBerry Lync , L'outil de communication professionnel de Microsoft sera bientôt disponible sur plusieurs plateformes mobiles différentes. La division australienne de la firme a annoncé dans un message sur Twitter, que des applications mobiles Lync pour Windows Phone, Android, iOS et BalckBerry seront publiées dans les quatre semaines à venir. [IMG]http://rdonfack.developpez.com/images/LyncMobile.PNG[/IMG] Anciennement connu sous le nom d'Office Communication server 2007 R2, Microsoft Lync 2010 est une solution de communication qui unifie les conférences par voix, messageries instant...

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  • What is the technical reason that so many social media sites don't allow you to edit your text?

    - by Edward Tanguay
    A common complaint I hear about Facebook, Twitter, Ning and other social sites is that once a comment or post is made, it can't be edited. I think this goes against one of the key goals of user experience: giving the user agency, or the ability to control what he does in the software. Even on Stackexchange sites, you can only edit the comments for a certain amount of time. Is the inability for so many web apps to not allow users to edit their writing a technical shortcoming or a "feature by design"?

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  • Determining distribution of NULL values

    - by AaronBertrand
    Today on the twitter hash tag #sqlhelp, @leenux_tux asked: How can I figure out the percentage of fields that don't have data ? After further clarification, it turns out he is after what proportion of columns are NULL. Some folks suggested using a data profiling task in SSIS . There may be some validity to that, but I'm still a fan of sticking to T-SQL when I can, so here is how I would approach it: Create a #temp table or @table variable to store the results. Create a cursor that loops through all...(read more)

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  • Silverlight Cream for May 12, 2010 -- #860

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Miroslav Miroslavov(-2-), Mike Snow(-2-, -3-), Paul Sheriff, Fadi Abdelqader, Jeremy Likness, Marlon Grech, and Victor Gaudioso. Shoutouts: Andy Beaulieu has a cool WP7 game up and is looking for opinions/comments: Droppy Pop: A Windows Phone 7 Game Karl Shifflett has code and video tutorials up for the app he wrote for the WPF LOB tour he just did: Stuff – WPF Line of Business Using MVVM Video Tutorial From SilverlightCream.com: Flipping panels I had missed this 3rd part of the CompleteIT explanation. In this post Miroslav Miroslavov describes the page flipping they're doing. Great explanation and all the code included. Flying objects against you The 4th part of the CompleteIT explanation is blogged by Miroslav Miroslavov where he is discussing the screen elements 'flying toward' the user. Silverlight Tip of the Day #17 – Double Click Mike Snow's Tip of the Day 17 is showing how to implement mouse double-clicks either for an individual control or for an entire app. Silverlight Tip of the Day #18 – Elastic Scrolling In Mike Snow's Tip of the Day 18, he's talking about and showing some 'elastic' scrolling in his image viewer application. He's asking for opinions and suggestions. Silverlight Tip of the Day #19 – Using Bing Maps in Silverlight Mike Snow's Tips are getting more elaborate :) ... Number 19 is about using the BingMap control in your Silverlight app. Control to Control Binding in WPF/Silverlight Paul Sheriff demonstrates control to control binding... saving a bunch of code behind in the process. Project included. Your First Step to the Silverlight Voice/Video Chatting Client/Server Fadi Abdelqader has a post up at CodeProject using the WebCam and Mic features of Silverlight 4 to setup a voice & video chatting app. MVVM Coding by Convention (Convention over Configuration) Jeremy Likness discusses Convention over Configuration and gives up some good MVVM nuggets along the way... check out his nice long post and grab the source for the project too... and also check out the external links he has in there. MEFedMVVM changes >> from cool to cooler Marlon Grech has refactored MEFedMVVM, and in addition is working with other MVVM framework folks to use some of the same MEF techniques in theirs... code on CodePlex New Silverlight Video Tutorial: How to Create a Silverlight Paging System to Load new Pages In Victor Gaudioso's latest video tutorial he builds a ContentHolder UserControl that will load any page on demand into your MainPage.xaml Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Oracle's CFO Summit: Live Updates Tomorrow

    - by Aaron Lazenby
    Leaving tonight for Oracle's CFO Summit in Atlanta, GA. Will be sending live tweets out over @OracleProfit with updates of the proceedings. Economist Martin Neil Baily will be presenting information about the state of the economy, as will prominent Oracle executives and members of the financial services sector. Should be an informative day--look for updates here and on Twitter

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  • Accenture Foundation Platform for Oracle

    - by Michelle Kimihira
    Accenture Foundation Platform for Oracle (AFPO) helps clients accelerate deployments on Oracle Fusion Middleware. Version 5 is the latest version and added exciting new capabilities including: integration with Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) Mobile and Oracle WebCenter. For more information, visit Accenture's Website. Additional Information Product Information on Oracle.com: Oracle Fusion Middleware Follow us on Twitter and Facebook Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter

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  • SQL University: What and why of database refactoring

    - by Mladen Prajdic
    This is a post for a great idea called SQL University started by Jorge Segarra also famously known as SqlChicken on Twitter. It’s a collection of blog posts on different database related topics contributed by several smart people all over the world. So this week is mine and we’ll be talking about database testing and refactoring. In 3 posts we’ll cover: SQLU part 1 - What and why of database testing SQLU part 2 - What and why of database refactoring SQLU part 3 - Tools of the trade This is a second part of the series and in it we’ll take a look at what database refactoring is and why do it. Why refactor a database To know why refactor we first have to know what refactoring actually is. Code refactoring is a process where we change module internals in a way that does not change that module’s input/output behavior. For successful refactoring there is one crucial thing we absolutely must have: Tests. Automated unit tests are the only guarantee we have that we haven’t broken the input/output behavior before refactoring. If you haven’t go back ad read my post on the matter. Then start writing them. Next thing you need is a code module. Those are views, UDFs and stored procedures. By having direct table access we can kiss fast and sweet refactoring good bye. One more point to have a database abstraction layer. And no, ORM’s don’t fall into that category. But also know that refactoring is NOT adding new functionality to your code. Many have fallen into this trap. Don’t be one of them and resist the lure of the dark side. And it’s a strong lure. We developers in general love to add new stuff to our code, but hate fixing our own mistakes or changing existing code for no apparent reason. To be a good refactorer one needs discipline and focus. Now we know that refactoring is all about changing inner workings of existing code. This can be due to performance optimizations, changing internal code workflows or some other reason. This is a typical black box scenario to the outside world. If we upgrade the car engine it still has to drive on the road (preferably faster) and not fly (no matter how cool that would be). Also be aware that white box tests will break when we refactor. What to refactor in a database Refactoring databases doesn’t happen that often but when it does it can include a lot of stuff. Let us look at a few common cases. Adding or removing database schema objects Adding, removing or changing table columns in any way, adding constraints, keys, etc… All of these can be counted as internal changes not visible to the data consumer. But each of these carries a potential input/output behavior change. Dropping a column can result in views not working anymore or stored procedure logic crashing. Adding a unique constraint shows duplicated data that shouldn’t exist. Foreign keys break a truncate table command executed from an application that runs once a month. All these scenarios are very real and can happen. With the proper database abstraction layer fully covered with black box tests we can make sure something like that does not happen (hopefully at all). Changing physical structures Physical structures include heaps, indexes and partitions. We can pretty much add or remove those without changing the data returned by the database. But the performance can be affected. So here we use our performance tests. We do have them, right? Just by adding a single index we can achieve orders of magnitude performance improvement. Won’t that make users happy? But what if that index causes our write operations to crawl to a stop. again we have to test this. There are a lot of things to think about and have tests for. Without tests we can’t do successful refactoring! Fixing bad code We all have some bad code in our systems. We usually refer to that code as code smell as they violate good coding practices. Examples of such code smells are SQL injection, use of SELECT *, scalar UDFs or cursors, etc… Each of those is huge code smell and can result in major code changes. Take SELECT * from example. If we remove a column from a table the client using that SELECT * statement won’t have a clue about that until it runs. Then it will gracefully crash and burn. Not to mention the widely unknown SELECT * view refresh problem that Tomas LaRock (@SQLRockstar on Twitter) and Colin Stasiuk (@BenchmarkIT on Twitter) talk about in detail. Go read about it, it’s informative. Refactoring this includes replacing the * with column names and most likely change to application using the database. Breaking apart huge stored procedures Have you ever seen seen a stored procedure that was 2000 lines long? I have. It’s not pretty. It hurts the eyes and sucks the will to live the next 10 minutes. They are a maintenance nightmare and turn into things no one dares to touch. I’m willing to bet that 100% of time they don’t have a single test on them. Large stored procedures (and functions) are a clear sign that they contain business logic. General opinion on good database coding practices says that business logic has no business in the database. That’s the applications part. Refactoring such behemoths requires writing lots of edge case tests for the stored procedure input/output behavior and then start to refactor it. First we split the logic inside into smaller parts like new stored procedures and UDFs. Those then get called from the master stored procedure. Once we’ve successfully modularized the database code it’s best to transfer that logic into the applications consuming it. This only leaves the stored procedure with common data manipulation logic. Of course this isn’t always possible so having a plethora of performance and behavior unit tests is absolutely necessary to confirm we’ve actually improved the codebase in some way.   Refactoring is not a popular chore amongst developers or managers. The former don’t like fixing old code, the latter can’t see the financial benefit. Remember how we talked about being lousy at estimating future costs in the previous post? But there comes a time when it must be done. Hopefully I’ve given you some ideas how to get started. In the last post of the series we’ll take a look at the tools to use and an example of testing and refactoring.

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  • Recap - SQL Saturday 151 in Orlando

    - by KKline
    It's always a feel-good experience for me to return to SQL Saturday in Orlando, the place where SQL Saturdays were started by Andy Warren ( Twitter | Blog ). On this trip, I delivered a full-day, pre-conference seminar on Troubleshooting and Performance Tuning SQL Server. I also delivered a session on SQL Server Internals and Architecture to a totally packed house. For those of you who emailed me directly, here's the link for the special SQL Sentry offer . I got to attend the extended events session...(read more)

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  • Some new free tools enter the SQL marketplace

    - by AaronBertrand
    A while back, I started collecting links for free SQL Server resources available to everyone in the community. I created a blog post called " Useful, free resources for SQL Server " to serve as a launching point for the links I'd been collecting. I'm in the process of going back and updating that post, but in the meantime, I wanted to highlight a couple of big events that happened in the past week. Atlantis Interactive Last week Matt Whitfield ( blog | twitter ) announced that his company's commercial...(read more)

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  • An XEvent a Day (28 of 31) – Tracking Page Compression Operations

    - by Jonathan Kehayias
    The Database Compression feature in SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition can provide some significant reductions in storage requirements for SQL Server databases, and in the right implementations and scenarios performance improvements as well.  There isn’t really a whole lot of information about the operations of database compression that is documented as being available in the DMV’s or SQL Trace.  Paul Randal pointed out on Twitter today that sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats() provides...(read more)

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  • How do I configure Ubuntu's web applications? [closed]

    - by Igor Zinov'yev
    Ubuntu 12.10 has introduced among other things web applications that add launcher widgets to show, for example, unread Gmail message counts, twitter tweets, etc. While sites that support those widgets show notifications offering to install them, I can't seem to find how to configure them. I'm particularly interested in configuring Google mail desktop notification widget to only display unread counts for my inbox, and dismiss all other labels.

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  • Silverlight Cream for December 08, 2010 -- #1005

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Peter Kuhn, David Anson, Jesse Liberty, Mike Taulty(-2-, -3-), Kunal Chowdhury, Jeremy Likness, Martin Krüger, Beth Massi(-2-, -3-)/ Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Rebuilding the PDC 2010 Silverlight Application (Part 1)" Mike Taulty WP7: "WP7: Glossy text block custom control" Martin Krüger Lightswitch: "How to Create a Screen with Multiple Search Parameters in LightSwitch" Beth Massi From SilverlightCream.com: Requirements of and pitfalls in Windows Phone 7 serialization Peter Kuhn discusses Data Contract Serializer issuses on WP7 and how to work around them. Managed implementation of CRC32 and MD5 algorithms updated; new release of ComputeFileHashes for Silverlight, WPF, and the command-line! David Anson ties up some loose ends from a prior post on hash functions, and updates his CRC32 and MD5 algorithms. Windows Phone From Scratch #9 – Visual State Jesse Liberty's latest Windows Phone from Scratch tutorial up... and is on the Visual State... he extends a Button and codes up the State Transitions. Rebuilding the PDC 2010 Silverlight Application (Part 1) Mike Taulty has taken the time to rebuild the PDC2010 Silverlight App that folks wanted the source for... and he's taking multiple posts to explain the heck out of it. This first one is mostly infrastructure. Rebuilding the PDC 2010 Silverlight Application (Part 2) In the 2nd post of the series, Mike Taulty is handling the In/Out of Browser business because he eventually is going to be going OOB. Rebuilding the PDC 2010 Silverlight Application (Part 3) Part 3 finds Mike Taulty delving into WCF Data Services and getting some data on the screen. Paginating Records in Silverlight DataGrid using PagedCollectionView Kunal Chowdhury continues with his investigation of the PagedCollectionView with this post on Pagination of your data. Old School Silverlight Effects If you haven't seen Jeremy Likness' 'Old School' Effects page yet, go just for the entertainment... you'll find yourself hanging around for the code :) WP7: Glossy text block custom control Martin Krüger's latest post is a very cool custom control for WP7 that displays Glossy text... it ain't Metro, but it looks pretty nice... some of it almost like etched text. How to Create a Screen with Multiple Search Parameters in LightSwitch Looks like Beth Massi got a few Lightswitch posts in while I wasn't looking. First up is this one on a multiple-parameter search screen. Adding Static Images and Logos to LightSwitch Applications In the 2nd post, Beth Massi shows how to add your own static images and logos to Lightswitch apps... in response to reader questions. Getting the Most out of LightSwitch Summary Properties In her latest post, Beth Massi explains what Summary Properties are in Lightswitch and how to use them to get the best results for your users. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Does tempdb Get Recreated From model at Startup?

    - by Jonathan Kehayias
    In my last post Does the tempdb Log file get Zero Initialized at Startup? I questioned whether or not tempdb is actually created from the model database or not at startup.  There is actually an easy way to prove that this statement, at least internally to the tempdb database is in fact TRUE.  Many thanks go out to Bob Ward (Blog | Twitter) for pointing this out after trading emails with him. To validate that tempdb is actually copied at startup from the model database, all that is necessary...(read more)

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  • Tagged: 5 things SQL Server should drop

    - by AaronBertrand
    I was tagged by Paul Randal ( blog | twitter ) last night in his latest blog post, entitled, " What 5 things should SQL Server get rid of? " His top 5 pretty much coincide with my top 5, so I'll have to dig a little deeper. In no particular order: Syntax inconsistencies This isn't really a specific thing that Microsoft should get rid of, but rather an attitude and overall approach to SQL Server's long-term development. Every time they add a feature or option to SQL Server, it seems to be implemented...(read more)

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  • Thoughts on Build 2013

    - by D'Arcy Lussier
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/dlussier/archive/2013/06/30/153294.aspxAnd so another Build conference has come to an end. Below are my thoughts/perspectives on various aspects of the event. I’ll do a separate blog post on my thoughts of the Build message for developers. The Good Moscone center was a great venue for Build! Easy to get around, easy to get to, and well maintained, it was a very comfortable conference venue. Yeah, the free swag was nice. Build has built up an expectation that attendees will always get something; it’ll be interesting to see how Microsoft maintains this expectation over the next few Build events. I still maintain that free swag should never be the main reason one attends an event, and for me this was definitely just an added bonus. I’m planning on trying to use the Surface as a dedicated 2nd device at work for meetings, I’ll share my experiences over the next few months. The hackathon event was a great idea, although personally I couldn’t justify spending the money on a conference registration just to spend the entire conference coding. Still, the apps that were created were really great and there was a lot of passion and excitement around the hackathon. I wonder if they couldn’t have had the hackathon on the Monday/Tuesday for those that wanted to participate so they didn’t miss any of the actual conference over Wed/Thurs. San Francisco was a great city to host Build. Getting from hotels to the conference center was very easy (well especially for me, I was only 3 blocks away) and the city itself felt very safe. However, if I never have to fly into SFO again I’ll be alright with that! Delays going into and out of SFO and both apparently were due to the airport itself. The Bad Build is one of those oddities on the conference landscape where people will pay to commit to attending an event without knowing anything about the sessions. We got our list of conference sessions when we registered on Tuesday, not before. And even then, we only got titles and not descriptions (those were eventually made available via the conference’s mobile application). I get it…they’re going to make announcements and they don’t want to give anything away through the session titles. But honestly, there wasn’t anything in the session titles that I would have considered a surprise. Breakfasts were brutal. High-carb pastries, donuts, and muffins with fruit and hard boiled eggs does not a conference breakfast make. I can’t believe that the difference between a continental breakfast per person and a hot breakfast buffet would have been a huge impact to a conference fee that was already around $2000. The vendor area was anemic. I don’t know why Microsoft forces the vendors into cookie-cutter booth areas (this year they were all made of plywood material). WPC, TechEd – booth areas there allow the vendors to be creative with their displays. Not so much for Build. Really odd was the lack of Microsoft’s own representation around Bing. In the day 1 keynote Microsoft made a big deal about Bing as an API. Yet there was nobody in the vendor area set up to provide more information or have discussions with about the Bing API. The Ugly Our name badges were NFC enabled. The purpose of this, beyond the vendors being able to scan your info, wasn’t really made clear. An attendee I talked to showed how you could get a reader app on your phone so you can scan other members cards and collect their contact info – which is a kewl idea; business cards are so 1990’s. But I was *shocked* at the amount of information that was on our name badges! Here’s what’s displayed on our name badge: - Name - Company - Twitter Handle I’m ok with that. But here’s what actually gets read: - Name - Company - Address Used for Registration - Phone Number Used for Registration So sharing that info with another attendee, they get way more of my info than just how to find me on Twitter! Microsoft, you need to fix this for the future. If vendors want to collect information on attendees, they should be able to collect an ID from the badge, then get a report with corresponding records afterwards. My personal information should not be so readily available, and without my knowledge! Final Verdict Maybe its my older age, maybe its where I’m at in life with family, maybe its where I’m at in my career, but when I consider whether a conference experience was valuable I get to the core reason I attend: opportunities to learn, opportunities to network, opportunities to engage with Microsoft. Opportunities to Learn:  Sessions I attended were generally OK, with some really stand out ones on Day 2. I would love to see Microsoft adopt the Dojo format for a portion of their sessions. Hands On Labs are dull, lecture style sessions are great for information sharing. But a guided hands-on coding session (Read: Dojo) provides the best of both worlds. Being that all content is publically available online to everyone (Build attendee or not), the value of attending the conference sessions is decreased. The value though is in the discussions that take part in person afterwards, which leads to… Opportunities to Network: I enjoyed getting together with old friends and connecting with Twitter friends in person for the first time. I also had an opportunity to meet total strangers. So from a networking perspective, Build was fantastic! I still think it would have been great to have an area for ad-hoc discussions – where speakers could announce they’d be available for more questions after their sessions, or attendees who wanted to discuss more in depth on a topic with other attendees could arrange space. Some people have no problems being outgoing and making these things happen, but others are not and a structured model is more attractive. Opportunities to Engage with Microsoft: Hit and miss on this one. Outside of the vendor area, unless you cornered or reached out to a speaker, there wasn’t any defined way to connect with blue badges. And as I mentioned above, Microsoft didn’t have full representation in the vendor area (no Bing). All in all, Build was a fun party where I was informed about some new stuff and got some free swag. Was it worth the time away from home and the hit to my PD budget? I’d say Somewhat. Build is a great informational conference, but I wouldn’t call it a learning conference. Considering that TechEd seems to be moving to more of an IT Pro focus, independent developer conferences seem to be the best value for those looking to learn and not just be informed. With the rapid development cycle Microsoft is embracing, we’re already seeing Build happening twice within a 12 month period. If that continues, the value of attending Build in person starts to diminish – especially with so much content available online. If Microsoft wants Build to be a must-attend event in the future, they need to start incorporating aspects of Tech Ed, past PDCs, and other conferences so those that want to leave with more than free swag have something to attract them.

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  • Don't even believe SSMS when you think it's telling the truth

    - by fatherjack
    LiveJournal Tags: how To,ssms,tips and tricks,tsqlThis is in follow up to my last post How to make sure you see the truth in Management Studio which explained that the time that you see at the bottom of a Management Studio window cannot be believed to represent the time it takes for a query to execute as it also includes the time taken for SSMS to receive and format the data grid. Now, very soon after that went live I received a comment from Dave Ballantyne (Blog | Twitter) mentioning that having...(read more)

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  • Some new free tools enter the SQL marketplace

    - by AaronBertrand
    A while back, I started collecting links for free SQL Server resources available to everyone in the community. I created a blog post called " Useful, free resources for SQL Server " to serve as a launching point for the links I'd been collecting. I'm in the process of going back and updating that post, but in the meantime, I wanted to highlight a couple of big events that happened in the past week. Atlantis Interactive Last week Matt Whitfield ( blog | twitter ) announced that his company's commercial...(read more)

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  • Oracle University Nuovi corsi (Week 14)

    - by swalker
    Oracle University ha recentemente rilasciato i seguenti nuovi corsi in inglese: Database Oracle Data Modeling and Relational Database Design (4 days) Fusion Middleware Oracle Directory Services 11g: Administration (5 days) Oracle Unified Directory 11g: Services Deployment Essentials (2 days) Oracle GoldenGate 11g Management Pack: Overview (1 day) Business Intelligence & Datawarehousing Oracle Database 11g: Data Mining Techniques (2 days) Oracle Solaris Oracle Solaris 10 System Administration for HP-UX Administrators (5 days) E-Business Suite R12.x Oracle Time and Labor Fundamentals Per ulteriori informazioni e per conoscere le date dei corsi, contattate il vostro Oracle University team locale. Rimanete in contatto con Oracle University: LinkedIn OracleMix Twitter Facebook Google+

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  • AJI Report #15&ndash;Zac Harlan Talks About Iowa Code Camp

    - by Jeff Julian
    We sit down with Zac Harlen and talk about Iowa Code Camp, what makes up a Code Camp, and how to start your own Code Camp. Zac has been a part of the leadership team for a few years for Iowa Code Camp and is the Development Manager for JP Cycles. We also get into what it takes to speak at a Code Camp if you are interested in growing beyond the user group as a speaker. Listen to the Show Site: LinkedIn Profile Blog: Zac Harlan Twitter: @ZacHarlan

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  • AJI Report #17 | Javier Lozano on Cloud Development and ASP.NET

    - by Jeff Julian
    Javier Lozano opens up the conversation with John and Jeff about the importance of web applications in the cloud and we walk through some options for enterprise developers to consume today. Javier has been an ASP.NET MVP and ASP.NET Insider for years and is a great resource in the Midwest when it comes to ASP.NET. Javier is one of organizers of the ASP.NET conference, aspConf. Listen to the Show Site: http://lozanotek.com Conference: aspConf Twitter: @jglozano

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