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• Ruby CSV in Array

  - by mattrock

  I read a CSV file. This file looks like this 1.00 cm; 2.00cm ; 3.00 cm; ... ; 100 cm 2.00 cm; 4.00 cm; 6.00 cm; ... ; 100 cm 4.00 cm; 8.00 cm; 12.00 cm; ... ; 100cm 8.00 cm; 16.00 cm; 24.00 cm; ... ; 100cm I have already written the following code CSV.foreach("/Users/testUser/Entwicklung/coverrechner/CoverPaperDE.csv", col_sep: ';') do |row| puts row[0] end This produces the following output: 1.00 cm 2.00 cm 4.00 cm 8.00 cm Example: My matrix is constructed 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 I want the following output 1.1 2.1 3.1 4.1 1.2 2.2 3.2 4.2 ... 4.4 How does it work?

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• rbind.zoo doesn't seem create consistent zoo object

  - by a-or-b

  I want to rbind.zoo two zoo object together. When I was testing I came across the following issue(?)... Note: The below is an example, there is clearly no point to it apart from being illustrative. I have an zoo object, call it, 'X'. I want to break it into two parts and then rbind.zoo them together. When I compare it to the original object then all.equal gives differences. It appears that the '$class' attribute differs, but I can't see how or why. Is I make these xts objects then the all.equal works as expected. i.e. ..... X.date <- as.POSIXct(paste("2003-", rep(1:4, 4:1), "-", sample(1:28, 10, replace = TRUE), sep = "")) X <- zoo(matrix(rnorm(24), ncol = 2), X.date) a <- X[c(1:3), ] # first 3 elements b <- X[c(4:6), ] # second 3 elements c <- rbind.zoo(a, b) # rbind into an object of 6 elements d <- X[c(1:6), ] # all 6 elements all.equal(c, d) # are they equal? ~~~~ all.equal gives me the following difference: "Attributes: < Component 3: Attributes: < Length mismatch: comparison on first 1 components "

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• Triangulation & Direct linear transform

  - by srand

  Following Hartley/Zisserman's Multiview Geometery, Algorithm 12: The optimal triangulation method (p318), I got the corresponding image points xhat1 and xhat2 (step 10). In step 11, one needs to compute the 3D point Xhat. One such method is Direct Linear Transform (DLT), mentioned in 12.2 (p312) and 4.1 (p88). The homogenous method (DLT), p312-313, states that it finds a solution as the unit singular vector corresponding to the smallest singular value of A, thus, A = [xhat1(1) * P1(3,:)' - P1(1,:)' ; xhat1(2) * P1(3,:)' - P1(2,:)' ; xhat2(1) * P2(3,:)' - P2(1,:)' ; xhat2(2) * P2(3,:)' - P2(2,:)' ]; [Ua Ea Va] = svd(A); Xhat = Va(:,end); plot3(Xhat(1),Xhat(2),Xhat(3), 'r.'); However, A is a 16x1 matrix, resulting in a Va that is 1x1. What am I doing wrong (and a fix) in getting the 3D point? For what its worth sample data: xhat1 = 1.0e+009 * 4.9973 -0.2024 0.0027 xhat2 = 1.0e+011 * 2.0729 2.6624 0.0098 P1 = 699.6674 0 392.1170 0 0 701.6136 304.0275 0 0 0 1.0000 0 P2 = 1.0e+003 * -0.7845 0.0508 -0.1592 1.8619 -0.1379 0.7338 0.1649 0.6825 -0.0006 0.0001 0.0008 0.0010 A = <- my computation 1.0e+011 * -0.0000 0 0.0500 0 0 -0.0000 -0.0020 0 -1.3369 0.2563 1.5634 2.0729 -1.7170 0.3292 2.0079 2.6624

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• Using LINQ to isolate a particular obect from a list of objects

  - by dezkev

  Hello All, I am trying my hand at making an invaders clone. there are 30 aliens arranged in a 5x 6 matrix on screen. I need to give the bottom most alien the ability to fire a shot. I am using LINQ to group the aliens into 5 groups based on Location.X and then sort the groups descending.I then need to choose one of the groups ( that gives me 5 groups) and select the First alien in the group and use it;s coordinate to fire a shot. My code below ,well ,works , but aliens in ANY row are merrily firing shots- not just the bottom most. Pl look at my code below and tell me whats wrong. (r = an instance of the Random class, all aliens are in a list called invaders). { var query = (from inv in invaders group inv by inv.Location.X into invgroup orderby invgroup.Key descending select invgroup).ToList(); var invfirst = query[r.Next(query.Count)].First(); invaderShots.Add(new Shot( new Point(invfirst.Area.X + invfirst.Area.Width / 2, invfirst.Area.Y + invfirst.Area.Height + 5), displayrect, Shot.Direction.Down)); }

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• Porting Perl to C++ `print "\x{2501}" x 12;`

  - by jippie

  I am porting a program from Perl to C++ as a learning objective. I arrived at a routine that draws a table with commands like the following: Perl: print "\x{2501}" x 12; And it draws 12 times a '?' ("box drawings heavy horizontal"). Now I figured out part of the problem already: Perl: \x{}, \x00 Hexadecimal escape sequence; C++: \unnnn To print a single Unicode character: C++: printf( "\u250f\n" ); But does C++ have a smart equivalent for the 'x' operator or would it come down to a for loop? UPDATE Let me include the full source code I am trying to compile with the proposed solution. The compiler does throw an errors: g++ -Wall -Werror project.cpp -o project project.cpp: In function ‘int main(int, char**)’: project.cpp:38:3: error: ‘string’ is not a member of ‘std’ project.cpp:38:15: error: expected ‘;’ before ‘s’ project.cpp:39:3: error: ‘cout’ is not a member of ‘std’ project.cpp:39:16: error: ‘s’ was not declared in this scope #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdint.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> int main ( int argc, char *argv[] ) { if ( argc != 2 ) { fprintf( stderr , "usage: %s matrix\n", argv[0] ); exit( 2 ); } else { //std::string s(12, "\u250f" ); std::string s(12, "u" ); std::cout << s; } }

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• Parallelize or vectorize all-against-all operation on a large number of matrices?

  - by reve_etrange

  I have approximately 5,000 matrices with the same number of rows and varying numbers of columns (20 x ~200). Each of these matrices must be compared against every other in a dynamic programming algorithm. In this question, I asked how to perform the comparison quickly and was given an excellent answer involving a 2D convolution. Serially, iteratively applying that method, like so list = who('data_matrix_prefix*') H = cell(numel(list),numel(list)); for i=1:numel(list) for j=1:numel(list) if i ~= j eval([ 'H{i,j} = compare(' char(list(i)) ',' char(list(j)) ');']); end end end is fast for small subsets of the data (e.g. for 9 matrices, 9*9 - 9 = 72 calls are made in ~1 s). However, operating on all the data requires almost 25 million calls. I have also tried using deal() to make a cell array composed entirely of the next element in data, so I could use cellfun() in a single loop: # who(), load() and struct2cell() calls place k data matrices in a 1D cell array called data. nextData = cell(k,1); for i=1:k [nextData{:}] = deal(data{i}); H{:,i} = cellfun(@compare,data,nextData,'UniformOutput',false); end Unfortunately, this is not really any faster, because all the time is in compare(). Both of these code examples seem ill-suited for parallelization. I'm having trouble figuring out how to make my variables sliced. compare() is totally vectorized; it uses matrix multiplication and conv2() exclusively (I am under the impression that all of these operations, including the cellfun(), should be multithreaded in MATLAB?). Does anyone see a (explicitly) parallelized solution or better vectorization of the problem?

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• graph and all pairs shortest path in java

  - by Sandra

  I am writing a java program using Flyod-Warshall algorithm “All pairs shortest path”. I have written the following : a0 is the adjacency matrix of my graph, but has infinity instead of 0. vList is the list of vertexes and the cost for each edge is 1. Path[i][j] = k+1 means for going from I to j you first go to k then j int[][] path = new int[size][size]; for(int i = 0; i<path.length;i++) { for(int j = 0; j<path.length; j++) { if(adjM[i][j]==1) path[i][j]=j+1; } } //*************** for (int k = 0; k < vList.size(); k++) for (int i = 0; i < vList.size(); i++) for (int j = 0; j < vList.size(); j++) { if (a0[i][j]>a0[i][k]+ a0[k][j]) path[i][j] = k + 1; a0[i][j] = Math.min(a0[i][j], a0[i][k] + a0[k][j]); } After running this code, in the result a0 is correct, but path is not correct and I don’t know why!. Would you please help me?

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• Problem using find function in Matlab

  - by Peter Etchells

  Hi all, I have two arrays of data that I'm trying to amalgamate. One contains actual latencies from an experiment in the first column (e.g. 0.345, 0.455... never more than 3 decimal places), along with other data from that experiment. The other contains what is effectively a 'look up' list of latencies ranging from 0.001 to 0.500 in 0.001 increments, along with other pieces of data. Both data sets are X-by-Y doubles. What I'm trying to do is something like... for i = 1:length(actual_latency) row = find(predicted_data(:,1) == actual_latency(i) full_set(i,1:4) = [actual_latency(i) other_info(i) predicted_info(row,2)... predicted_info(row,3)]; end ...in order to find the relevant row in predicted_data where the look up latency corresponds to the actual latency. I then use this to created an amalgamated data set, full_set. I figured this would be really simple, but the find function keeps failing by throwing up an empty matrix when looking for an actual latency that I know is in predicted_data(:,1) (as I've double-checked during debugging). Moreover, if I replace find with a for loop to do the same job, I get a similar error. It doesn't appear to be systematic - using different participant data sets throws it up in different places. Furthermore, during debugging mode, if I use find to try and find a hard-coded value of actual_latency, it doesn't always work. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I'm really scratching my head over this, so if anyone has any ideas about what might be going on, I'd be really grateful.

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• Recursion - Ship Battle

  - by rgorrosini

  I'm trying to write a little ship battle game in java. It is 100% academic, I made it to practice recursion, so... I want to use it instead of iteration, even if it's simpler and more efficient in most some cases. Let's get down to business. These are the rules: Ships are 1, 2 or 3 cells wide and are placed horizontally only. Water is represented with 0, non-hit ship cells are 1, hit ship cells are 2 and sunken ships have all it's cells in 3. With those rules set, I'm using the following array for testing: int[][] board = new int[][] { {0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 0}, {0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0}, {0, 3, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 2, 1, 2, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1}, }; It works pretty good so far, and to make it more user-friendly I would like to add a couple of reports. these are the methods I need for them: Given the matrix, return the amount of ships in it. Same as a), but separating them by state (amount of non-hit ships, hit and sunken ones). I will need a hand with those reports, and I would like to get some ideas. Remember it must be done using recursion, I want to understand this, and the only way to go is practice! Thanks a lot for your time and patience :).

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• How do I call Matlab in a script on Windows?

  - by Benjamin Oakes

  I'm working on a project that uses several languages: SQL for querying a database Perl/Ruby for quick-and-dirty processing of the data from the database and some other bookkeeping Matlab for matrix-oriented computations Various statistics languages (SAS/R/SPSS) for processing the Matlab output Each language fits its niche well and we already have a fair amount of code in each. Right now, there's a lot of manual work to run all these steps that would be much better scripted. I've already done this on Linux, and it works relatively well. On Linux: matlab -nosplash -nodesktop -r "command" or echo "command" | matlab -nosplash -nodesktop ...opens Matlab in a "command line" mode. (That is, no windows are created -- it just reads from STDIN, executes, and outputs to STDOUT/STDERR.) My problem is that on Windows (XP and 7), this same code opens up a window and doesn't read from / write to the command line. It just stares me blankly in the face, totally ignoring STDIN and STDOUT. How can I script running Matlab commands on Windows? I basically want something that will do: ruby database_query.rb perl legacy_code.pl ruby other_stuff.rb matlab processing_step_1.m matlab processing_step_2.m # etc, etc. I've found out that Matlab has an -automation flag on Windows to start an "automation server". That sounds like overkill for my purposes, and I'd like something that works on both platforms. What options do I have for automating Matlab in this workflow?

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• How to add "missing" columns in a column group in reporting services?

  - by Gimly

  Hello, I'm trying to create a report that displays for each months of the year the quantity of goods sold. I have a query that returns the list of goods sold for each month, it looks something like this : SELECT Seller.FirstName, Seller.LastName, SellingHistory.Month, SUM(SellingHistory.QuantitySold) FROM SellingHistory JOIN Seller on SellingHistory.SellerId = Seller.SellerId WHERE SellingHistory.Year = @Year GOUP BY Seller.FirstName, Seller.LastName, SellingHistory.Month What I want to do is display a report that has a column for each months + a total column that will display for each Seller the quantity sold in the selected month. Seller Name | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Total What I managed to do is using a matrix and a column group (group on Month) to display the columns for existing data, if I have data from January to March, it will display the 3 first columns and the total. What I would like to do is always display all the columns. I thought about making that by adding the missing months in the SQL request, but I find that a bit weird and I'm sure there must be some "cleanest" solution as this is something that must be quite frequent. Thanks. PS: I'm using SQL Server Express 2008

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• Getting the current item number or index when using will_paginate in rails app

  - by Rich

  I have a rails app that stores movies watched, books read, etc. The index page for each type lists paged collections of all its items, using will_paginate to bring back 50 items per page. When I output the items I want to display a number to indicate what item in the total collection it is. The numbering should be reversed as the collection is displayed with most recent first. This might not relate to will_paginate but rather some other method of calculation. I will be using the same ordering in multiple types so it will need to be reusable. As an example, say I have 51 movies. The first item of the first page should display: Fight Club - Watched: 30th Dec 2010 Whilst the last item on the page should display: The Matrix - Watched: 3rd Jan 2010 The paged collection is available as an instance variable e.g. @movies, and @movies.count will display the number of items in the paged collection. So if we're on page 1, movies.count == 50, whilst on page 2 @movies.count == 1. Using Movie.count would give 51. If the page number and page size can be accessed the number could be calculated so how can they be returned? Though I'm hopeful there is something that already exists to handle this calculation!

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• Boolean comparison of array of strings in Ruby

  - by Kyle Kaitan

  I've got an array in Ruby that essentially represents a square boolean matrix. Dots represent zeroes, while any other character represents ones. Example: irb(main):044:0> g => [".b", "m."] # This grid has two '1' values and two '0' values. I'd like to perform a specified logical operation (say, OR) on this array with another similar array to get a third result. For example, if h is ["q.", "r."], then something akin to g.perform_or(h) should yield a new array ["qb", "r."]. (The choice of r to represent the result of 'm' || 'r' is arbitrary and not relevant; any other non-'.' character can be there.) How might I do this? Edit: I made an error in my example. Apologies!

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• How to reapper the sphere shape of SVG tag code by Raphael description exactly?

  - by TelTel

  I'm trying to figure a Raphael.js shape(sphere) which is based on following SVG tag code. I have succeed in basic similar sphere style by the description : Paper.circle(100, 100, 30).attr({ fill: "r(0.35, 0.25)#FFFFFF-#252525:96-#000000", stroke: "none"}); // radius is 30 But I can't reappear exactly. --- [picture] ** The tag code of sphere ... main part is extracted ** <g id="layer1"> <radialGradient id="path5725_3_" cx="156.0352" cy="657.6802" r="200.0004" gradientTransform="matrix(1.0404 0.7962 0.8145 -1.0643 -531.7884 745.2471)" gradientUnits="userSpaceOnUse"> <stop offset="0" style="stop-color:#FFFFFF"/> <stop offset="1" style="stop-color:#000000"/> </radialGradient> <path id="path5725" fill="url(#path5725_3_)" d="M445.037,229.105c0,113.218-89.543,205-200,205c-110.457, 0-200-91.782-200-205s89.543-205,200-205C355.494, 24.105,445.037,115.887,445.037,229.105z"/> </g> ** ---------------------------------------- ** Here the completed picture of tag code is linked. How to describe(modify) the Raphael.js code to reappear the picture ? Thank you.

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• Populate array from vector

  - by Zag zag..

  Hi, I would like to populate an 2 dimensional array, from a vector. I think the best way to explain myself is to put some examples (with a array of [3,5] length). When vector is: [1, 0] [ [4, 3, 2, 1, 0], [4, 3, 2, 1, 0], [4, 3, 2, 1, 0] ] When vector is: [-1, 0] [ [0, 1, 2, 3, 4], [0, 1, 2, 3, 4], [0, 1, 2, 3, 4] ] When vector is: [-2, 0] [ [0, 0, 1, 1, 2], [0, 0, 1, 1, 2], [0, 0, 1, 1, 2] ] When vector is: [1, 1] [ [2, 2, 2, 1, 0], [1, 1, 1, 1, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0, 0] ] When vector is: [0, 1] [ [2, 2, 2, 2, 2], [1, 1, 1, 1, 1], [0, 0, 0, 0, 0] ] Have you got any ideas, a good library or a plan? Any comments are welcome. Thanks. Note: I consulted Ruby "Matrix" and "Vector" classes, but I don't see any way to use it in my way... Edit: In fact, each value is the number of cells (from the current cell to the last cell) according to the given vector. If we take the example where the vector is [-2, 0], with the value *1* (at array[2, 3]): array = [ [<0>, <0>, <1>, <1>, <2>], [<0>, <0>, <1>, <1>, <2>], [<0>, <0>, <1>, *1*, <2>] ] ... we could think such as: The vector [-2, 0] means that -2 is for cols and 0 is for rows. So if we are in array[2, 3], we can move 1 time on the left (left because 2 is negative) with 2 length (because -2.abs == 2). And we don't move on the top or bottom, because of 0 for rows.

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• Outer product using CBLAS

  - by The Dude

  I am having trouble utilizing CBLAS to perform an Outer Product. My code is as follows: //===SET UP===// double x1[] = {1,2,3,4}; double x2[] = {1,2,3}; int dx1 = 4; int dx2 = 3; double X[dx1 * dx2]; for (int i = 0; i < (dx1*dx2); i++) {X[i] = 0.0;} //===DO THE OUTER PRODUCT===// cblas_dgemm(CblasRowMajor, CblasNoTrans, CblasTrans, dx1, dx2, 1, 1.0, x1, dx1, x2, 1, 0.0, X, dx1); //===PRINT THE RESULTS===// printf("\nMatrix X (%d x %d) = x1 (*) x2 is:\n", dx1, dx2); for (i=0; i<4; i++) { for (j=0; j<3; j++) { printf ("%lf ", X[j+i*3]); } printf ("\n"); } I get: Matrix X (4 x 3) = x1 (*) x2 is: 1.000000 2.000000 3.000000 0.000000 -1.000000 -2.000000 -3.000000 0.000000 7.000000 14.000000 21.000000 0.000000 But the correct answer is found here: https://www.sharcnet.ca/help/index.php/BLAS_and_CBLAS_Usage_and_Examples I have seen: Efficient computation of kronecker products in C But, it doesn't help me because they don't actually say how to utilize dgemm to actually do this... Any help? What am I doing wrong here?

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• 3x3 array = 10 numbers

  - by user1708505

  i have this code #include <math.h> #include <stdio.h> const int n = 3; const int s = 3; int getm(int mat[n][s]); int printm(int mat[n][s]); int main() { int m[n][s]; getm(m); printm(m); return 0; } int getm(int mat[n][s]) { for(int x = 0;x < n;x++) { for (int y = 0;y<s;y++) { scanf("%i ", &mat[x][y]); } } return 0; } int printm(int mat[n][s]) { for(int x = 0;x<n;x++) { for(int y = 0;y<s;y++) { printf("%i ", mat[x][y]); if(y==(s-1)) { printf("\n"); } } } } which shoud ask for 9 numbers to make a 3x3 matrix array, but it actually asks for 10 numbers, printm is working well - printing only 9 numbers. Where is error?

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• faster way to compare rows in a data frame

  - by aguiar

  Consider the data frame below. I want to compare each row with rows below and then take the rows that are equal in more than 3 values. I wrote the code below, but it is very slow if you have a large data frame. How could I do that faster? data <- as.data.frame(matrix(c(10,11,10,13,9,10,11,10,14,9,10,10,8,12,9,10,11,10,13,9,13,13,10,13,9), nrow=5, byrow=T)) rownames(data)<-c("sample_1","sample_2","sample_3","sample_4","sample_5") >data V1 V2 V3 V4 V5 sample_1 10 11 10 13 9 sample_2 10 11 10 14 9 sample_3 10 10 8 12 9 sample_4 10 11 10 13 9 sample_5 13 13 10 13 9 tab <- data.frame(sample = NA, duplicate = NA, matches = NA) dfrow <- 1 for(i in 1:nrow(data)) { sample <- data[i, ] for(j in (i+1):nrow(data)) if(i+1 <= nrow(data)) { matches <- 0 for(V in 1:ncol(data)) { if(data[j,V] == sample[,V]) { matches <- matches + 1 } } if(matches > 3) { duplicate <- data[j, ] pair <- cbind(rownames(sample), rownames(duplicate), matches) tab[dfrow, ] <- pair dfrow <- dfrow + 1 } } } >tab sample duplicate matches 1 sample_1 sample_2 4 2 sample_1 sample_4 5 3 sample_2 sample_4 4

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• UserControlArray in Specific ButtonControlArray in C#

  - by Phanindar

  I am new to C#.I have been thinking of adding a ButtonControlArray where i can store each button control.Here is part of my code.I am creating a 6*6 array of button Control. ButtonControl buttonControl; ButtonControl[,] arrayButtons = new ButtonControl[6,6]; public void createGrid() { l = 0; for (int i = 0; i < numberOfButtons; i++) { for (int k = 0; k < numberOfButtons; k++) { buttonControl = new ButtonControl(); buttonControl.Location = new Point(l,j); j += 55; arrayButtons[i, k] = buttonControl; //After the above statement if i print Console.WriteLine(""+arrayButtons[i,k]); i am getting only my projectname.buttoncontrol myGridControl.Controls.Add(buttonControl); } l += 55; j = 10; } } I want to access each variable in arrayButtons[][]..like in a 3*3 matrix..if i want 2nd row 1 column element..then i get something like arrayname[2][1]..same way if i want 2nd button in 2nd row how can i get..i tried doing one way but i couldnt figure it out...Can you help me out with this..

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• Populating a color array with every 8th pixel in an image. C#

  - by Piper

  I have an image that is 512x280 pixels. I want to populate a 64x35 array with every 8th pixel in the matrix. Here is what I have right now: Color[,] imgArray = new Color[b.Width, b.Height]; for (int y = 0; y < 35; y++) { for (int x = 0; x < 64; x++) { imgArray[x, y] = b.GetPixel(x, y); } } But that will get just the top corner of the image. How would I change the loop so it grabs every 8th pixel to fill the array with? edit: I think I may have gotten it. Can someone read this and assure me that it is correct? Color[,] imgArray = new Color[64, 35]; for (int y = 0; y < 280; y+=8) { for (int x = 0; x < 512; x+=8) { imgArray[x, y] = b.GetPixel(x, y); } }

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• Calling a constructor from method within the same class

  - by Nathan

  I'm new to java and I'm learning about creating object classes. One of my homework assignment requires that I call the constructor at least once within a method of the same object class. I'm getting an error that says The method DoubleMatrix(double[][]) is undefined for the type DoubleMatrix Here's my constructor: public DoubleMatrix(double[][] tempArray) { // Declaration int flag = 0; int cnt; // Statement // check to see if doubArray isn't null and has more than 0 rows if(tempArray == null || tempArray.length < 0) { flag++; } // check to see if each row has the same length if(flag == 0) { for(cnt = 0; cnt <= tempArray.length - 1 || flag != 1; cnt++) { if(tempArray[cnt + 1].length != tempArray[0].length) { flag++; } } } else if(flag == 1) { makeDoubMatrix(1, 1);// call makeDoubMatrix method } }// end constructor 2 Here's the method where I try and call the constructor: public double[][] addMatrix(double[][] tempDoub) { // Declaration double[][] newMatrix; int rCnt, cCnt; //Statement // checking to see if both are of same dimension if(doubMatrix.length == tempDoub.length && doubMatrix[0].length == tempDoub[0].length) { newMatrix = new double[doubMatrix.length][doubMatrix[0].length]; // for loop to add matrix to a new one for(rCnt = 0; rCnt <= doubMatrix.length; rCnt++) { for(cCnt = 0; cCnt <= doubMatrix.length; cCnt++) { newMatrix[rCnt][cCnt] = doubMatrix[rCnt][cCnt] + tempDoub[rCnt][cCnt]; } } } else { newMatrix = new double[0][0]; DoubleMatrix(newMatrix) } return newMatrix; }// end addMatrix method Can someone point me to the right direction and explain why I'm getting an error?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 06, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 06, 2010New ProjectsAgr.CQRS: Agr.CQRS is a C# framework for DDD applications that use the Command Query Responsibility Segregation pattern (CQRS) and Event Sourcing. BigDays 2010: Big>Days 2010BizTalk - Controlled Admin: Hi .NET folks, I am planning to start project on a Controlled BizTalk Admin tool. This tool will be useful for the organizations which have "Sh...Blacklist of Providers: Blacklist of Providers - the application for department of warehouse logistics (warehouse) at firms.Career Vector: A job board software.Chargify Demo: This is a sample website for ChargifyConceptual: Concept description and animationEric Hexter: My publicly available source code and examplesFluentNHibernate.Search: A Fluent NHibernate.Search mapping interface for NHibernate provider implementation of Lucene.NET.FreelancePlanner: FreelancePlanner is a project tracking tool for freelance translators.HTMLx - JavaScript on the Server for .NET: HTMLx is a set of libraries based on ASP.NET engine to provide JavaScript programmability on the server side. It allows Web developers to use JavaS...IronMSBuild: IronMSBuild is a custom MSBuild Task, which allows you to execute IronRuby scripts. // have to provide some examples LINQ To Blippr: LINQ to Blippr is an open source LINQ Provider for the micro-reviewing service Blippr. 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• How about a new platform for your next API&hellip; a CMS?

  - by Elton Stoneman

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman/archive/2014/05/22/how-about-a-new-platform-for-your-next-apihellip-a.aspxSay what? I’m seeing a type of API emerge which serves static or long-lived resources, which are mostly read-only and have a controlled process to update the data that gets served. Think of something like an app configuration API, where you want a central location for changeable settings. You could use this server side to store database connection strings and keep all your instances in sync, or it could be used client side to push changes out to all users (and potentially driving A/B or MVT testing). That’s a good candidate for a RESTful API which makes proper use of HTTP expiration and validation caching to minimise traffic, but really you want a front end UI where you can edit the current config that the API returns and publish your changes. Sound like a Content Mangement System would be a good fit? I’ve been looking at that and it’s a great fit for this scenario. You get a lot of what you need out of the box, the amount of custom code you need to write is minimal, and you get a whole lot of extra stuff from using CMS which is very useful, but probably not something you’d build if you had to put together a quick UI over your API content (like a publish workflow, fine-grained security and an audit trail). You typically use a CMS for HTML resources, but it’s simple to expose JSON instead – or to do content negotiation to support both, so you can open a resource in a browser and see a nice visual representation, or request it with: Accept=application/json and get the same content rendered as JSON for the app to use. Enter Umbraco Umbraco is an open source .NET CMS that’s been around for a while. It has very good adoption, a lively community and a good release cycle. It’s easy to use, has all the functionality you need for a CMS-driven API, and it’s scalable (although you won’t necessarily put much scale on the CMS layer). In the rest of this post, I’ll build out a simple app config API using Umbraco. We’ll define the structure of the configuration resource by creating a new Document Type and setting custom properties; then we’ll build a very simple Razor template to return configuration documents as JSON; then create a resource and see how it looks. And we’ll look at how you could build this into a wider solution. If you want to try this for yourself, it’s ultra easy – there’s an Umbraco image in the Azure Website gallery, so all you need to to is create a new Website, select Umbraco from the image and complete the installation. It will create a SQL Azure website to store all the content, as well as a Website instance for editing and accessing content. They’re standard Azure resources, so you can scale them as you need. The default install creates a starter site for some HTML content, which you can use to learn your way around (or just delete). 1. Create Configuration Document Type In Umbraco you manage content by creating and modifying documents, and every document has a known type, defining what properties it holds. We’ll create a new Document Type to describe some basic config settings. In the Settings section from the left navigation (spanner icon), expand Document Types and Master, hit the ellipsis and select to create a new Document Type: This will base your new type off the Master type, which gives you some existing properties that we’ll use – like the Page Title which will be the resource URL. In the Generic Properties tab for the new Document Type, you set the properties you’ll be able to edit and return for the resource: Here I’ve added a text string where I’ll set a default cache lifespan, an image which I can use for a banner display, and a date which could show the user when the next release is due. This is the sort of thing that sits nicely in an app config API. It’s likely to change during the life of the product, but not very often, so it’s good to have a centralised place where you can make and publish changes easily and safely. It also enables A/B and MVT testing, as you can change the response each client gets based on your set logic, and their apps will behave differently without needing a release. 2. Define the response template Now we’ve defined the structure of the resource (as a document), in Umbraco we can define a C# Razor template to say how that resource gets rendered to the client. If you only want to provide JSON, it’s easy to render the content of the document by building each property in the response (Umbraco uses dynamic objects so you can specify document properties as object properties), or you can support content negotiation with very little effort. Here’s a template to render the document as HTML or JSON depending on the Accept header, using JSON.NET for the API rendering: @inherits Umbraco.Web.Mvc.UmbracoTemplatePage @using Newtonsoft.Json @{ Layout = null; } @if(UmbracoContext.HttpContext.Request.Headers["accept"] != null &amp;&amp; UmbracoContext.HttpContext.Request.Headers["accept"] == "application/json") { Response.ContentType = "application/json"; @Html.Raw(JsonConvert.SerializeObject(new { cacheLifespan = CurrentPage.cacheLifespan, bannerImageUrl = CurrentPage.bannerImage, nextReleaseDate = CurrentPage.nextReleaseDate })) } else { <h1>App configuration</h1> <p>Cache lifespan: <b>@CurrentPage.cacheLifespan</b></p> <p>Banner Image: </p> <img src="@CurrentPage.bannerImage"> <p>Next Release Date: <b>@CurrentPage.nextReleaseDate</b></p> } That’s a rough-and ready example of what you can do. You could make it completely generic and just render all the document’s properties as JSON, but having a specific template for each resource gives you control over what gets sent out. And the templates are evaluated at run-time, so if you need to change the output – or extend it, say to add caching response headers – you just edit the template and save, and the next client request gets rendered from the new template. No code to build and ship. 3. Create the content With your document type created, in  the Content pane you can create a new instance of that document, where Umbraco gives you a nice UI to input values for the properties we set up on the Document Type: Here I’ve set the cache lifespan to an xs:duration value, uploaded an image for the banner and specified a release date. Each property gets the appropriate input control – text box, file upload and date picker. At the top of the page is the name of the resource – myapp in this example. That specifies the URL for the resource, so if I had a DNS entry pointing to my Umbraco instance, I could access the config with a URL like http://static.x.y.z.com/config/myapp. The setup is all done now, so when we publish this resource it’ll be available to access.  4. Access the resource Now if you open  that URL in the browser, you’ll see the HTML version rendered: - complete with the  image and formatted date. Umbraco lets you save changes and preview them before publishing, so the HTML view could be a good way of showing editors their changes in a usable view, before they confirm them. If you browse the same URL from a REST client, specifying the Accept=application/json request header, you get this response:   That’s the exact same resource, with a managed UI to publish it, being accessed as HTML or JSON with a tiny amount of effort. 5. The wider landscape If you have fairy stable content to expose as an API, I think  this approach is really worth considering. Umbraco scales very nicely, but in a typical solution you probably wouldn’t need it to. When you have additional requirements, like logging API access requests - but doing it out-of-band so clients aren’t impacted, you can put a very thin API layer on top of Umbraco, and cache the CMS responses in your API layer:   Here the API does a passthrough to CMS, so the CMS still controls the content, but it caches the response. If the response is cached for 1 minute, then Umbraco only needs to handle 1 request per minute (multiplied by the number of API instances), so if you need to support 1000s of request per second, you’re scaling a thin, simple API layer rather than having to scale the more complex CMS infrastructure (including the database). This diagram also shows an approach to logging, by asynchronously publishing a message to a queue (Redis in this case), which can be picked up later and persisted by a different process. Does it work? Beautifully. Using Azure, I spiked the solution above (including the Redis logging framework which I’ll blog about later) in half a day. That included setting up different roles in Umbraco to demonstrate a managed workflow for publishing changes, and a couple of document types representing different resources. Is it maintainable? We have three moving parts, which are all managed resources in Azure –  an Azure Website for Umbraco which may need a couple of instances for HA (or may not, depending on how long the content can be cached), a message queue (Redis is in preview in Azure, but you can easily use Service Bus Queues if performance is less of a concern), and the Web Role for the API. Two of the components are off-the-shelf, from open source projects, and the only custom code is the API which is very simple. Does it scale? Pretty nicely. With a single Umbraco instance running as an Azure Website, and with 4x instances for my API layer (Standard sized Web Roles), I got just under 4,000 requests per second served reliably, with a Worker Role in the background saving the access logs. So we had a nice UI to publish app config changes, with a friendly Web preview and a publishing workflow, capable of supporting 14 million requests in an hour, with less than a day’s effort. Worth considering if you’re publishing long-lived resources through your API.

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• Fitting it together, database, reporting, applications in C#

  - by alvonellos

  Introduction Preamble I was hesitant to post this, since it's an application whose intricate details are defined elsewhere, and answers may not be helpful to others. Within the past few weeks (I was actually going to write a blog post about this after I finished) I've discovered that the barrier I'm encountering is one that's actually quite common for newer developers. This question is not so much about a specific thing as it is about piecing those things together. I've searched the internet far and wide, and found many tutorials on how to create applications that are kind of similar to what I'm looking for. I've also looked at hiring another, more experienced, developer to help me along, but all I've gotten are unqualified candidates that don't have the experience necessary and won't take care of the client or project like I will. I'd rather have the project never transpire than to release a solution that is half-baked. I've asked professors at my school, but they've not turned up answers to my question. I'm an experienced developer, and I've written many applications that are -- very abstractly -- close to what I'm doing, but my experiences from those applications aren't giving me enough leverage to solve this particular problem. I just hope that posting this article isn't a mistake for me to write. Project Description I have a project I'm working on for a client that is a rewrite of an application, originally written in Foxpro 2.6 by someone before me, that performs some analysis (which, sadly, I'm not allowed to disclose as per of my employment contract) on financial data. One day, after a long talk between the client and I -- where he intimately described his frustrations with all the bugs I've been hacking out of this code for 6 months now -- he told me to just rewrite it and gave me a month to write a good 1/8 of this 65k LOC Foxpro monstrosity. this 65k line of code foxpro monstrosity. It'll take me a good 3 - 6 months to rewrite this software (I know things the original programmer did not, like inheritance) going as I am right now, but I'm quickly discovering that I'm going to need to use databases. Prior to this contract I didn't even know about foxpro, and so I've had to learn foxpro on the fly, write procedures and make modifications to the database. I've actually come to like it, and this project would be rewritten in Foxpro if it were still a supported language, because over the past few months, I've come to like the features of Foxpro that make it so easy to develop data-driven applications. I once perfomed an experiment, comparing C# to Foxpro. What took me 45 minutes in C# took me two in Foxpro, and I knew C# prior to Foxpro. I was hoping to leverage the power of C#, but it intimidates me that in foxpro, you can have one line of code and be using a database. Prior to this, I have never written any serious database development from scratch. All the applications that I've written are in a different league. They are either completely data-naive or data-naive enough that I can get away with not using a database through serialization or by designing algorithms that work with the data in a manner that is stateless, so there is no need to worry about databases. I've come to realize, very quickly, that serialization and my efficacy with data structures has been my crutch all these years that's prevented me from adventuring into databases, and has consequently hindered my success in real-world programming. Sure, I've written some database stuff in Perl and Python, and I've done forms and worked with relational databases and tables, I'm a wizard in Access and Excel (seriously) and can do just about anything, but it just feels unnatural writing SQL code in another language... I don't mind writing SQL, and I don't It's that bridge between the database and the program code that drives me absolutely bonkers. I hope I'm not the only one to think this, but it bothers me that I have to create statements like the following string sSql = "SELECT * from tablename" When there's really no reason for that kind of unchecked language binding between two languages and two API's. Don't get my wrong, SQL is great, but I don't like the idea that, when executing commands on a SQL database, that one must intermix database and application software, and there's no database independence, which means that different versions of different databases can break code. This isn't very nice. The nicest thing about Foxpro is the cohesiveness between programming language and database. It's so easy, and Foxpro makes it easy, because the tool just fits the task. I can see why so many developers have created a career with this language, because it lowered the barrier of entry to data-driven applications that so many businesses need. It was wonderful. For my purposes today, with the demands and need for community support, extensibility, and language features, Foxpro isn't a solution that I feel would be the right tool for the job. I'm also worried about working too heavy with the database, because I've seen data-driven .NET applications have issues with database caches, running out of memory, and objects in the database not being collected. (Memory leaks) And OH the queries. Which one, how, and why? There are a plethora of different ways that a database can be setup, I think I counted 5 or 6 different kinds of database applications alone that I can chose from. That is a great mountain for me to climb when I don't even know where to begin when it comes to writing data-driven applications. The problem isn't that I don't know SQL or that I don't know C#. I know both and have worked with both extensively. It's making them work together that's the problem, and it's something I've never done in C# before. Reports The client likes paper. The data needs to be printed out in a format that is extensible, layered, and easy to use. I have never done reporting before, and so this is a bit of a problem. From the data source comes crystal reports, and so there's a dependency on the database, from what I understand. Code reuse A large part of the design decision that I've gone through so far is to break the task of writing a piece of this software into routines and modular DLL's and so forth such that much of the code can be reused. For example, when I setup this database, I want to be able to reuse the same database code over and over again. I also want to make sure that when the day comes that another developer is here, that he/she will be able to pick up just where I left off. The quicker I develop these applications, the better off I am. Tasks & Goals In my project, I need to write routines that apply algorithms and look for predefined patterns in financial data. Additionally, I need to simulate trading based on predefined algorithms and data. Then I need to prepare reports on that data. Additionally, I need to have a way to change the code base for this application quickly and effectively, without hacking together some band-aid solution for a problem that really needs a trauma ward. Special Considerations The solution must be fast, run quickly on existing hardware, and not be too much of a pain to maintain and write. I understand that anything I write I'm married to -- I'm responsible for the things that I write because my reputation and livelihood is dependent on it. Do I really need a database? What about performance? Performance was such a big issue that I hand wrote a data structure that is capable of performing 2 billion operations, using a total of 4 gigs of memory in under 1/4 of a second using the standard core two duo processor. I could not find a similar, pre-written data structure in C# to perform this task. What setup do I use in terms of database? What about reporting? I'd prefer to have PDF's generated, but I'd like to be able to visually sketch those reports and then just have a ReportFactory of some sort, that when I pass some variables in, it just does that data. About Me I'm a lone developer for a small business in this area. This is the first time I've done this and I've never had the breadth and depth of my knowledge tested. I'm incredibly frustrated with this project because I feel incredibly overwhelmed with the task at hand. I'm looking for that entry level point where I can draw a line and say "this is what I need to do" Conclusion I may have not been clear enough on my post. I'm still new to this whole thing, and I've been doing my best to contribute back to the community that I've leached so much knowledge from. I'd be glad to edit my post and add more information if possible. I'm looking for a big-picture solution or design process that helps me get off the ground in this world of data-driven applications, because I have a feeling that it's going to be concentric to my entire career as a programmer for some time. Specifically, if you didn't get it from the rest of the post (I may not have been clear enough) I really need some guidance as to where to go in terms of the design decisions for this project. Some things that'll be useful will be a pro/con list for the different kinds of database projects available in VS2010. I've tried, but generating that list has been as hard as solving the problem itself... If you could walk a developer writing a data-driven application for the first time in C#, how would you do that? Where would you point them to?

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• NRF Online Merchandising Workshop: Where Online Retailers Are Focusing for Holiday and Beyond

  - by Rose Spicer-Oracle

  0 0 1 1204 6863 Oracle Corporation 57 16 8051 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Last month we attended the NRF Online Merchandising Workshop in LA, and it was a great opportunity to catch up with our customers, meet new retailers, and hear some great presentations from VF Corporation, Zazzle, Julep Beauty, Backcountry, eBags and more. The one-on-one conversations with Merchants and the keynote presentations carry the same themes across companies of all sizes and across verticals. With only 125 days left (and counting) until Black Friday, these conversations provided some great insight in to what’s top of mind for retailers during the most stressful time of their year, and a sneak peek in to what they will deliver this holiday season.  Some of the most popular topics were: When to start promoting for holiday: seems like a funny conversation to have in July, but a number of retailers said they already had their holiday shopping gift guides live on their site, and it was attracting a significant portion of their onsite traffic. When it comes to timing, most retailers were questioning when to begin their holiday promotions -- carefully balancing when to release pricing and specials, and knowing that customers are holding out for last-minute deals and price drops. Many retailers noted the frustrations around transparent pricing by Amazon and a few other mega-retailers last year, publishing their “lowest prices of the season” as early as October – ensuring shoppers that those prices were the best they could get all season long. Many retailers felt their hands were forced to drop prices. Others kept their set pricing with negative customer reaction, causing some to miss their holiday goals. The pressure is on, and most retailers identified November 1 as their target start date for the holiday promotions blitz. Some are even waiting for the big guys to release their “lowest prices of the season” guides and will then follow suit.      Attribution is tough – and a huge focus: understanding the path to conversion is a tough nut to crack, especially in the new omnichannel world where consumers use multiple touchpoints to make a single purchase, and internal management wants to know hard data. This has lead many retailers to invest in attribution; carefully tracking their online marketing efforts to determine what gets “credit” for the sale, instead of giving credit to the “last click.” Retailers noted that it is very difficult to determine the numbers when online and offline worlds collide – like when a shopper uses digital channels for research and then makes a purchase in a store. As one of the presenters from The North Face mentioned in her keynote, a key to enabling better customer service and satisfaction when it comes to converged online and offline sales is training the in-store staff, and creating a culture where it eventually “doesn’t matter what group gets the credit” if they all add to the sale. No doubt, the area of attribution will be a big area of retail investment in the coming years.      How to plan for the converged world: planning to ensure inventory gets where it needs to be was another concern. In conversations with retailers, we advised them to analyze customer patterns: where shoppers purchase items, where the items were sourced from and even where items are returned. This analysis is very valuable in determining inventory plans. From there, retailers can more accurately plan and allocate inventory to support both the online and offline customer behavior. As we head into the holiday season, the need for accurate enterprise-wide inventory visibility, and providing that information to associates, is even more critical to the brand-wide customer experience.       Improving the search / navigation / usability of the site(s): Aside from some of the big ideas and standard holiday pricing pressure, most conversations we had centered around continuing to improve the basics of the site. Reinvesting in search and navigation came up time and time again (FitForCommerce blogged about what a big topic it was at the event as well). Obviously getting shoppers on their path quickly and allowing them to find what they need fast is critical, but it was definitely interesting to hear just how much effort is still going in to honing the search and navigation experience. Adding new elements to search and navigation like typeahed, inventive navigation refinements, and new navigation categories like gift guides, specialized boutiques and flash sales were top of mind, in addition to searchandising and making search-driven product recommendations. (Oracle can help!)       Reducing cart abandonment: always a hot topic that is top of mind for every online retailer. Getting shoppers to the cart is often less then half the battle; getting them to click “buy” and complete the transaction is much more difficult. While retailers carefully study the checkout process and where shoppers tend to bounce, they know that how they design their checkout page is critical. We’re all online shoppers in our personal lives and we know how frustrating it can be when total prices are not transparent (i.e. shipping, processing, taxes is not included until the very last possible screen before clicking that buy button). Online retailers are struggling with where in the checkout process to surface the total price to be charged to reduce cart abandonment, while not showing the total figure too early in the process that it keeps shoppers from getting to checkout altogether. Recent research shows that providing total pricing prior to the checkout process dramatically reduces cart abandonment – as it serves as a filter to those shopping within a specific price band. Much of the cart abandonment discussion leads us to…       The free shipping / free returns question: it’s no secret that because of Amazon and programs like Prime, consumers expect free shipping, much to the chagrin of the smaller retailer. The reality is that if you’re not a mega-retailer, shipping is an expensive part of doing business that doesn’t allow most retailers to keep their prices low and offer free shipping. This has many retailers venturing out on the “free returns” path, especially in apparel. A number of retailers we spoke with are testing a flat rate shipping fee with free returns to see if they can crack the price threshold where shoppers are willing to pay for shipping with an added service. But, free shipping remains king.      Social ads and retargeting: they are working, but do they turn off consumers? That’s the big question. Every retailer we spoke with during a roundtable on the topic said that social ads and retargeting (where that pair of boots you’re been eyeing on a site magically follows you around the Internet) work and are meeting campaign goals. The larger question many retailers are asking is if this type of tactic is turning off a large number of shoppers, even if these campaigns are meeting their early goals. Retailers also mentioned that Facebook ads are working very well for them, especially when it comes to new customer acquisition, serving as a complimentary a channel to SEO when it comes to engaging new customers. While there are always new things to experiment with in retail, standard challenges are top of mind as retailers scramble to get ready for holiday. It will undoubtedly be another record-breaking online shopping season, but as retailers get more and more advanced with each Black Friday, expect some exciting things. This excitement needs to be backed by sound solutions and optimized operations. Then again, consumers are expecting more than ever, so I don’t doubt that retailers are already thinking about the possibilities of holiday 2015… and beyond. Customers who read this article, also found value in the following stories: Personalization for Retail: http://blogs.oracle.com/retail/entry/personalization_for_retailShop Direct User Experience Focus Drives Sales:https://blogs.oracle.com/retail/entry/shop_direct_user_experience_focusMaking Waves: Australian Online Retailer SurfStitch: https://blogs.oracle.com/oracleretail/entry/surf_stitchWhat’s new in Oracle Commerce v11.1 for RetailWhat the Content+Commerce Equation is Missing

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