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• Is Agile the new micromanagement?

  - by Smith James

  Hi, This question has been cooking in my head for a while so I wanted to ask those who are following agile/scrum practices in their development environments. My company has finally ventured into incorporating agile practices and has started out with a team of 4 developers in an agile group on a trial basis. It has been 4 months with 3 iterations and they continue to do it without going fully agile for the rest of us. This is due to the fact that management's trust to meet business requirements with a quite a bit of ad hoc type request from high above. Recently, I talked to the developers who are part of this initiative; they tell me that it's not fun. They are not allowed to talk to other developers by their Scrum master and are not allowed to take any phone calls in the work area (which maybe fine to an extent). For example, if I want to talk to my friend for kicks who is in the agile team, I am not allowed without the approval of the Scrum master; who is sitting right next to the agile team. The idea of all this or the agile is to provide a complete vacuum for agile developers from any interruptions and to have them put in good 6+ productive hours. Well, guys, I am no agile guru but what I have read Yahoo agile rollout document and similar for other organizations, it gives me a feeling that agile is not cheap. It require resources and budget to instill agile into the teams and correct issue as they arrive to put them back on track. For starters, it requires training for developers and coaching for managers and etc, etc... The current Scrum master was a manager who took a couple days agile training class paid by the management is now leading this agile team. I have also heard in the meeting that agile manifesto doesn't dictate that agile is not set in stones and is customized differently for each company. Well, it all sounds good and reason. In conclusion, I always thought the agile was supposed to bring harmony in the development teams which results in happy developers. However, I am getting a very opposite feeling when talking to the developers in the agile team. They are unhappy that they cannot talk anything but work, sitting quietly all day just working, and they feel it's just another way for management to make them work more. Tell me please, if this is one of the examples of good practices used for the purpose of selfish advantage for more dollars? Or maybe, it's just us the developers like me and this agile team feels that they don't like to work in an environment where they only breathe work because they are at work. Thanks. Edit: It's a company in healthcare domain that has offices across US, but we're in Texas. It definitely feels like a cowboy style agile which makes me really not wanting to go for agile at all, esp at my current company. All of it has to do with the management being completely cheap. Cutting out expensive coffee for cheaper version, emphasis on savings and being productive while staying as lean as possible. My feeling is that someone in the management behind the door threw out this idea, that agile makes you produce more so we can show our bosses we're producing more with the same headcount. Or, maybe, it will allow us to reduce headcount if that's the case. EDITED: They are having their 5 min daily meeting. But not allowed to chat or talk with someone outside of their team. All focus is on work.

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• What makes them click ?

  - by Piet

  The other day (well, actually some weeks ago while relaxing at the beach in Kos) I read ‘Neuro Web Design - What makes them click?’ by Susan Weinschenk. (http://neurowebbook.com) The book is a fast and easy read (no unnecessary filler) and a good introduction on how your site’s visitors can be steered in the direction you want them to go. The Obvious The book handles some of the more known/proven techniques, like for example that ratings/testimonials of other people can help sell your product or service. Another well known technique it talks about is inducing a sense of scarcity/urgency in the visitor. Only 2 seats left! Buy now and get 33% off! It’s not because these are known techniques that they stop working. Luckily 2/3rd of the book handles less obvious techniques, otherwise it wouldn’t be worth buying. The Not So Obvious A less known influencing technique is reciprocity. And then I’m not talking about swapping links with another website, but the fact that someone is more likely to do something for you after you did something for them first. The book cites some studies (I always love the facts and figures) and gives some actual examples of how to implement this in your site’s design, which is less obvious when you think about it. Want to know more ? Buy the book! Other interesting sources For a more general introduction to the same principles, I’d suggest ‘Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion’. ‘Yes!…’ cites some of the same studies (it seems there’s a rather limited pool of studies covering this subject), but of course doesn’t show how to implement these techniques in your site’s design. I read ‘Yes!…’ last year, making ‘Neuro Web Design’ just a little bit less interesting. !!!Always make sure you’re able to measure your changes. If you haven’t yet, check out the advanced segmentation in Google Analytics (don’t be afraid because it says ‘beta’, it works just fine) and Google Website Optimizer. Worth Buying? Can I recommend it ? Sure, why not. I think it can be useful for anyone who ever had to think about the design or content of a site. You don’t have to be a marketing guy to want a site you’re involved with to be successful. The content/filler ratio is excellent too: you don’t need to wade through dozens of pages to filter out the interesting bits. (unlike ‘The Design of Sites’, which contains too much useless info and because it’s in dead-tree format, you can’t google it) If you like it, you might also check out ‘Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion’. Tip for people living in Europe: check Amazon UK for your book buying needs. Because of the low UK Pound exchange rate, it’s usually considerably cheaper and faster to get a book delivered to your doorstep by Amazon UK compared to having to order it at the local book store or web-shop.

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• ASP.NET MVC for the php/asp noob

  - by dotjosh

  I was talking to a friend today, who's foremost a php developer, about his thoughts on Umbraco and he said "Well they're apparently working feverishly on the new version of Umbraco, which will be MVC... which i still don't know what that means, but I know you like it." I ended up giving him a ground up explanation of ASP.NET MVC, so I'm posting this so he can link this to his friends and for anyone else who finds it useful.  The whole goal was to be as simple as possible, not being focused on proper syntax. Model-View-Controller (or MVC) is just a pattern that is used for handling UI interaction with your backend.  In a typical web app, you can imagine the *M*odel as your database model, the *V*iew as your HTML page, and the *C*ontroller as the class inbetween.  MVC handles your web request different than your typical php/asp app.In your php/asp app, your url maps directly to a php/asp file that contains html, mixed with database access code and redirects.In an MVC app, your url route is mapped to a method on a class (the controller).  The body of this method can do some database access and THEN decide which *V*iew (html/aspx page) should be displayed;  putting the controller in charge and not the view... a clear seperation of concerns that provides better reusibility and generally promotes cleaner code. Mysite.com, a quick example:Let's say you hit the following url in your application: http://www.mysite.com/Product/ShowItem?Id=4 To avoid tedious configuration, MVC uses a lot of conventions by default. For instance, the above url in your app would automatically make MVC search for a .net class with the name "Product" and a method named "ShowItem" based on the pattern of the url.  So if you name things properly, your method would automatically be called when you entered the above url.  Additionally, it would automatically map/hydrate the "int id" parameter that was in your querystring, matched by name.Product.cspublic class Product : Controller{    public ViewResult ShowItem(int id)    {        return View();    }} From this point you can write the code in the body of this method to do some database access and then pass a "bag" (also known as the ViewData) of data to your chosen *V*iew (html page) to use for display.  The view(html) ONLY needs to be worried about displaying the flattened data that it's been given in the best way it can;  this allows the view to be reused throughout your application as *just* a view, and not be coupled to HOW the data for that view get's loaded.. Product.cspublic class Product : Controller{    public ViewResult ShowItem(int id)    {        var database = new Database();        var item = database.GetItem(id);        ViewData["TheItem"] = item;        return View();    }} Again by convention, since the class' method name is "ShowItem", it'll search for a view named "ShowItem.aspx" by default, and pass the ViewData bag to it to use. ShowItem.aspx<html>     <body>      <%        var item =(Item)ViewData["TheItem"]       %>       <h1><%= item.FullProductName %></h1>     </body></html> BUT WAIT! WHY DOES MICROSOFT HAVE TO DO THINGS SO DIFFERENTLY!?They aren't... here are some other frameworks you may have heard of that use the same pattern in a their own way: Ruby On Rails Grails Spring MVC Struts Django    

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• Oracle WebCenter - Well Connected

  - by Brian Dirking

  800x600 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} An good post from Dan Elam on the state of the ECM industry (http://www.aiim.org/community/blogs/community/ECM-Vendors-go-to-War) . For those of you who don’t know Dan, he is one of the major forces in the content management industry. He founded eVisory and IMERGE Consulting, he is an AIIM Fellow and a former US Technical Expert to the International Standards Organization (ISO), and has been a driving force behind EmTag, AIIM’s Emerging Technologies Group. His post is interesting – it starts out talking about our Moveoff Documentum campaign, but then it becomes a much deeper insight into the ECM industry. Dan points out that Oracle has been making quiet strides in the ECM industry. In fact, analysts share this view Oracle, pointing out Oracle is growing greater than 20% annually while many of the big vendors are shrinking. And as Dan points out, this cements Oracle as one of the big five in the ECM space – the same week that Autonomy was removed from the Gartner Magic Quadrant for ECM. One of the key things points out is that Oracle WebCenter is well connected. WebCenter has out-of-the-box connections to key enterprise applications such as E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel and JD Edwards. Those out-of-the-box integrations make it easy for organizations to drive content right into the places where it is needed, in the midst of business processes. At the same time, WebCenter provides composite interface capabilities to bring together two or more of these enterprise applications onto the same screen. Combine that with the capabilities of Oracle Social Network, you start to see how Oracle is providing a full platform for user engagement. But beyond those connections, WebCenter can also connect to other content management systems. It can index and search those systems from a single point of search, bringing back results in a single combined hitlist. WebCenter can also extend records management capabilities into Documentum, SharePoint, and email archiving systems. From a single console, records managers can define a series, set a retention schedule, and place holds – without having to go to each system to make these updates. Dan points out that there are some new competitive dynamics – to be sure. And it is interesting when a system can interact with another system, enforce dispositions and holds, and enable users to search and retrieve content. Oracle WebCenter is providing the infrastructure to build on, and the interfaces to drive user engagement. It’s an interesting time.

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• Book Reviews: Art of Community and Eyetracking Web Usability

  - by ultan o'broin

  Holidays time offers a chance to catch up on some user experience and user assistance related material. So, two short book reviews (which I considered using my new Tumblr blog for. More about that another time) coming up. The Art of Community by Jono Bacon Excellent starting point for anyone wanting to get going in the community software (FLOSS, for example) space or understand how to set up, manage, and leverage the collective intelligence of communities for whatever ends. The book is a little too long in my opinion, and of course, usage of what Jono is recommending needs to be nuanced and adapted for enterprise applications space (hardly surprising there is a lot about Ubuntu, Lug Radio, and so on given Jono's interests). Shame there wasn't more information on international, non-English community considerations too. Still, some great ideas and insight into setting up and managing communities that I will leverage (watch out for the results on this blog, later in 2011). One section, on collaborative writing really jumped out. It reinforced the whole idea that to successful community initiatives are based on instigators knowing what makes the community tick in the first place. How about this for insight into user profiles for people who write community user assistance (OK then, "doc") and what tools they might use (in this case, we're talking about Jokosher): "Most people who write documentation for open source software projects would fall into the category of power user. They are technology enthusiasts who are not interested in the super-technical avenues of programming, but want to help out. Many of these people have good writing skills and a good knowledge of using the software, so the documentation fit is natural. With Jokosher we wanted to acknowledge this profile of user. As such, instead of focussing on complex text processing tools, we encouraged our documentation contributors to use a wiki." The book is available for free here, and well as being available from usual sources. Eyetracking Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen and Kara Prentice Another fine book by established experts. I have some field experience of eyetracking studies myself --in the user assistance for enterprise applications space--though Jakob and Kara concentrate on websites for their research here. I would caution how much about websites transfers easily to the applications space, especially enterprise applications, as claimed in the book too. However, Jakob and Kara do make the case very well that understanding design goals (for example, productivity improvement in the case of applications) and the context of the software use is critical. Executing a study using eyetracking technology requires that you know what you want to test, can set up realistic tasks for testing by representative testers, and then analyze the results. Be precise, as lots of data will be generated (I think the authors underplay the effort in analyzing data too). What I found disappointing was the lack of emphasis on eyetracking as only part of the usability solution. It's really for fine-tuning designs in my opinion, and should be used after other design reviews. I also wasn't that crazy about the level of disengagement between the qualitative and quantitative side of this kind of testing that the book indicated. I think it is useful to have testers verbalize their thoughts and for test engineers to prompt, intervene, or guide as necessary. More on cultural or international aspects to usability testing might have been included too (websites are available to everyone). To conclude, I enjoyed the book, took on board some key takeaways about methodologies and found the recommendations sensible and easy to follow (for example about Forms layouts). Applying enterprise applications requirements such as those relating to user profiles, design goals, and overall context of use in conjunction with what's in this book would be the way to go here. It also made me think of how interesting it would be to compare eyetracking findings between website and enterprise applications usage.

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• Silverlight Cream for March 21, 2010 -- #816

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, John Papa(-2-, -3-, -4-), Jonas Follesø, David Anson, Scott Guthrie, Andrej Tozon, Bill Reiss(-2-), Pete Blois, and Lee. Shoutouts: Frank LaVigne has a Mix10 Session Downloader for us all to use... thanks Frank! Read what Ward Bell has to say about MVVM, Josh Smith’s Way ... it's all good. Robby Ingebretsen posts on his 10 Favorite Open Source Fonts You Can Embed in WPF or Silverlight Mike Harsh posted Slides and Demos from my MIX10 Session . The download link at Drop.io is down for maintenance until Sunday evening, March 21. From SilverlightCream.com: Blend 4: TreeView SelectedItemChanged using MVVM Michael Washington has a post up about doing SelectedItemChanged on a TreeView with MVVM, oh and he's starting out in Blend 4... Silverlight TV 14: Developing for Windows Phone 7 with Silverlight John Papa hit Silverlight TV pretty hard at the beginning of MIX10. This first one is with Mike Harsh talking about WP7. (Hi Mike ... wondered where you'd run off to!), and you can go to the shoutout section to get Mike's session material from MIX as well. Silverlight TV 15: Announcing Silverlight 4 RC at MIX 10 In this next Silverlight TV(15), John Papa and Adam Kinney discuss Silverlight 4RC ... thank goodness it's out, we can all let go of the breath we've been holding in :) Silverlight TV 16: Tim Heuer and Jesse Liberty Talk about Silverlight 4 RC at MIX 10 Silverlight TV 16 has John Papa sharing the spotlight with Jesse Liberty and Tim Heuer ... geez... can you find 3 more kowledgable Silverlight folks to listen to? No? then go listen to this :) Silverlight TV 17: Build a Twitter Client for Windows Phone 7 with Silverlight The latest Silverlight TV has John Papa bringing Mike Harsh back to produce a Twitter Client for WP7. Simulating multitouch on the Windows Phone 7 Emulator Jonas Follesø has a great post up about simulating multi-touch on WP7 using multiple mice ... yeah, you read that right :) Using IValueConverter to create a grouped list of items simply and flexibly David Anson demonstrates grouping items in a ListBox using IValueConverter. I think I can pretty well guarantee I would NOT have thought of doing this.. :) Building a Windows Phone 7 Twitter Application using Silverlight In the MIX10 first-day keynote, Scott Guthrie did File->New Project and built a WP7 Twitter app. He has that up as a tutorial with all sorts of external links including one to the keynote itself. Named and optional parameters in Silverlight 4 Andrej Tozon delves into the optional parameters that are now available to Silverlight developers... pretty cool stuff. Space Rocks game step 4: Inheriting from Sprite Bill Reiss continues with his game development series with this one on inheriting from the Sprite class and centering objects Space Rocks game step 5: Rotating the ship Bill Reiss's episode 5 is on rotating the ship you setup in episode 4. Don't worry about the transforms, Bill gives it all to us :) Labyrinth Sample for Windows Phone Wow... check out the sample Pete Blois did for the Phone... Silverlight coolness :) PathListBox in SL4 – firstlook Lee has a post up on the PathListBox. I think this is going to catch on quick... it's just too cool not to! 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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• Is Agile the new micromanagement?

  - by Smith James

  This question has been cooking in my head for a while so I wanted to ask those who are following agile/scrum practices in their development environments. My company has finally ventured into incorporating agile practices and has started out with a team of 4 developers in an agile group on a trial basis. It has been 4 months with 3 iterations and they continue to do it without going fully agile for the rest of us. This is due to the fact that management's trust to meet business requirements with a quite a bit of ad hoc type request from high above. Recently, I talked to the developers who are part of this initiative; they tell me that it's not fun. They are not allowed to talk to other developers by their Scrum master and are not allowed to take any phone calls in the work area (which maybe fine to an extent). For example, if I want to talk to my friend for kicks who is in the agile team, I am not allowed without the approval of the Scrum master; who is sitting right next to the agile team. The idea of all this or the agile is to provide a complete vacuum for agile developers from any interruptions and to have them put in good 6+ productive hours. Well, guys, I am no agile guru but what I have read Yahoo agile rollout document and similar for other organizations, it gives me a feeling that agile is not cheap. It require resources and budget to instill agile into the teams and correct issue as they arrive to put them back on track. For starters, it requires training for developers and coaching for managers and etc, etc... The current Scrum master was a manager who took a couple days agile training class paid by the management is now leading this agile team. I have also heard in the meeting that agile manifesto doesn't dictate that agile is not set in stones and is customized differently for each company. Well, it all sounds good and reason. In conclusion, I always thought the agile was supposed to bring harmony in the development teams which results in happy developers. However, I am getting a very opposite feeling when talking to the developers in the agile team. They are unhappy that they cannot talk anything but work, sitting quietly all day just working, and they feel it's just another way for management to make them work more. Tell me please, if this is one of the examples of good practices used for the purpose of selfish advantage for more dollars? Or maybe, it's just us the developers like me and this agile team feels that they don't like to work in an environment where they only breathe work because they are at work. Thanks. Edit: It's a company in healthcare domain that has offices across US. It definitely feels like a cowboy style agile which makes me really not wanting to go for agile at all, esp at my current company. All of it has to do with the management being completely cheap. Cutting out expensive coffee for cheaper version, emphasis on savings and being productive while staying as lean as possible. My feeling is that someone in the management behind the door threw out this idea, that agile makes you produce more so we can show our bosses we're producing more with the same headcount. Or, maybe, it will allow us to reduce headcount if that's the case. EDITED: They are having their 5 min daily meeting. But not allowed to chat or talk with someone outside of their team. All focus is on work.

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• You Are Hiring But Do Candidate&rsquo;s Want to Work For You

  - by david.talamelli

  So here you are – it has happened, you are now interviewing for that position that you have either applied for or maybe were called about. Whether you are an “active” candidate looking for a job or a “passive” candidate who was contacted about the opportunity, it doesn’t matter now. Regardless of the circumstances of how you got to the interview stage, how you and your new potential manager connect with each other at interview will play a part in whether you are successful in landing that job. The best manager/employee relationships I think tend to be the ones where both the manager and employee have a common goal that they are both working towards and they work together in unison to achieve these goals. Candidates – when you are interviewing for a role, remember that an interview is a two way process. An interview shouldn’t be just a case of a company interviewing you to see if you are a good fit for a certain role. Don’t forget in an interview process it is equally important that you take the opportunity to similarly interview the company to see if that role/company are the right place for you to move to as the next step in your career. I think an interview should not only be a chance for a Hiring Manager to get to better know a candidate and asses his capability and cultural fit for a team/company but it should also be a chance for the candidate to similarly assess a company or manager about whether they are someone that they want to work with. Managers – I know Recruiters have been talking about the “war for talent” since before many of you were managers, but there is no denying it – it exists. You are not only competing with other companies for talented individuals but you are also competing with the existing companies that those talented individuals are working at. Companies are not going to let the people they have identified as superstars resign without a fight (this is the classic Counter Offer scenario which may be another blog post in itself). So how do we get these great people – their current employer will do all they can to keep them, everyone else wants them – does this mean all hope is lost? No, absolutely not. The same reasons that have always existed on why candidates are interested in other opportunities is still there: it could be that someone is looking for career advancement, or they want the chance to work with new technology or maybe you have an opportunity that is exactly what that person is looking to do. As a Hiring Manager don’t just conduct your interviews in question/answer mode. You should talk to that individual to work out what it is they are looking for and you can then relate how your role addresses that. It is potentially going to be the two of you working together so you two are the ones who have to be most comfortable with each other. Don’t oversell the role – set realistic expectations of what that candidate can expect working in your team – give them the good, the bad and the ugly so they can make an informed decision. Manager’s think back to when you last were looking for a job and put yourself in the candidate’s shoes. When you were looking for a job, what was it that you wanted to know about Oracle, or what was it that you wanted more information about. There are some great Business Leaders that work here at Oracle – if you are one of them it is likely that you already are doing all these things anyway. The good news for you is that you are also likely raising yourself head and shoulders above what many interviewers do – that in itself gives you a competitive advantage in this ‘war for talent’ but as a great Business Leader you already know that

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• Changing the action of a hyperlink in a Silverlight RichTextArea

  - by Marc Schluper

  The title of this post could also have been "Move over Hyperlink, here comes Actionlink" or "Creating interactive text in Silverlight." But alas, there can be only one. Hyperlinks are very useful. However, they are also limited because their action is fixed: browse to a URL. This may have been adequate at the start of the Internet, but nowadays, in web applications, the one thing we do not want to happen is a complete change of context. In applications we typically like a hyperlink selection to initiate an action that updates a part of the screen. For instance, if my application has a map displayed with some text next to it, the map would react to a selection of a hyperlink in the text, e.g. by zooming in on a location and displaying additional locational information in a popup. In this way, the text becomes interactive text. It is quite common that one company creates and maintains websites for many client companies. To keep maintenance cost low, it is important that the content of these websites can be updated by the client companies themselves, without the need to involve a software engineer. To accommodate this scenario, we want the author of the interactive text to configure all hyperlinks (without writing any code). In a Silverlight RichTextArea, the default action of a Hyperlink is the same as a traditional hyperlink, but it can be changed: if the Command property has a value then upon a click event this command is called with the value of the CommandParameter as parameter. How can we let the author of the text specify a command for each hyperlink in the text, and how can we let an application react properly to a hyperlink selection event? We are talking about any command here. Obviously, the application would recognize only a specific set of commands, with well defined parameters, but the approach we take here is generic in the sense that it pertains to the RichTextArea and any command. So what do we require? We wish that: As a text author, I can configure the action of a hyperlink in a (rich) text without writing code; As a text author, I can persist the action of a hyperlink with the text; As a reader of persisted text, I can click a hyperlink and the configured action will happen; As an application developer, I can configure a control to use my application specific commands. In an excellent introduction to the RichTextArea, John Papa shows (among other things) how to persist a text created using this control. To meet our requirements, we can create a subclass of RichTextArea that uses John's code and allows plugging in two command specific components: one to prompt for a command definition, and one to execute the command. Since both of these plugins are application specific, our RichTextArea subclass should not assume anything about them except their interface. public interface IDefineCommand { void Prompt(string content, // the link content Action<string, object> callback); // the method called to convey the link definition } public interface IPerformCommand : ICommand {} The IDefineCommand plugin receives the content of the link (the text visible to the reader) and displays some kind of control that allows the author to define the link. When that's done, this (possibly changed) content string is conveyed back to the RichTextArea, together with an object that defines the command to execute when the link is clicked by the reader of the published text. The IPerformCommand plugin simply implements System.Windows.Input.ICommand. Let's use MEF to load the proper plugins. In the example solution there is a project that contains rudimentary implementations of these. The IDefineCommand plugin simply prompts for a command string (cf. a command line or query string), and the IPerformCommand plugin displays a MessageBox showing this command string. An actual application using this extended RichTextArea would have its own set of commands, each having their own parameters, and hence would provide more user friendly application specific plugins. Nonetheless, in any case a command can be persisted as a string and hence the two interfaces defined above suffice. For a Visual Studio 2010 solution, see my article on The Code Project.

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• Read Mobi eBooks on Kindle for PC

  - by Matthew Guay

  Do you use your PC as a eBook reader?  Kindle for PC makes it easy to read thousands of books from the Kindle Store on your computer. What you may not know is that is also works with .mobi format too, so you can increase the amount of books you can read. Amazon has jumpstarted the eBook market with their popular Kindle device.  Last fall Amazon unveiled Kindle for PC, and we reviewed how you can Read Kindle Books On Your Computer with Kindle for PC.  Whether or not you own a Kindle or other eBook reader, this is a great way to take advantage of the thousands of eBooks available from the Kindle Store today. It supports azw, prc, and tpz format, which are sold from the Kindle store, but it also supports Mobipocket (.mobi) eBooks that are not DRM protected.  Here’s how you can add them to Kindle for PC so you can easily read them on your PC Getting Started: First, make sure you have Kindle for PC (link below) installed on your computer. Sign in with your Amazon account when you first run it. Kindle for PC lets you easily read eBooks downloaded from the Kindle Store, but it doesn’t have any way to add other eBooks directly from the program. To add eBooks, you can sometimes download and double-click on the books, and they will open in Kindle for PC and be automatically added to the library.  However, this does not always seem to work. So instead, browse to your Documents folder (simply click on the Documents link on your Start menu), and double-click on the My Kindle Content folder. This folder contains all the Kindle books you have downloaded.  If you have other eBooks you would like to add to Kindle for PC, simply drag-and-drop or copy and paste them into this folder.  Here we have a .mobi formatted book downloaded from the Gutenberg Project that we’re dragging into the folder. Now, close and reopen Kindle for PC.  It should now show your new eBook right beside the eBooks you have downloaded from the Kindle Store. These eBooks work just the same as the ones downloaded from the Kindle store, and you can change font size and add bookmarks just as with other eBooks. The eBooks downloaded this way may show up with either a Amazon logo or a mobile device icon.  You should only see the mobile device icon on .mobi files formatted for mobile devices; other ones should show up with the Amazon logo.  In this screen, Pilgrim’s Progress is a standard .mobi book, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a mobipocket book, and the others are downloaded from the Kindle Store. Conclusion This is a great way to read eBooks from across the internet on Kindle for PC.  Wikipedia’s Kindle page has a list of websites that offer eBooks formatted for the Kindle, so be sure to check it out for more books. Links Download Kindle for PC List of websites that offer eBooks that will work on Kindle – via Wikipedia Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Read Kindle Books On Your Computer with Kindle for PCInstall Adobe PDF Reader on Ubuntu EdgyHow to Access your Box.Net Account from Ubuntu the Easy Way TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users Get News Quick and Precise With Newser Scan for Viruses in Ubuntu using ClamAV Replace Your Windows Task Manager With System Explorer Create Talking Photos using Fotobabble

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• Your Job Search Should be More Than Just a New Year's Resolution

  - by david.talamelli

  I love the beginning of a new year, it is a great chance to refocus and either re-evaluate goals you are working to or even set new ones. I don't have any statistics to measure this but I am sure that one of the more popular new year's resolutions in the general workforce is to either get a new job or work to further develop one's career. I think this is a good idea, in today's competitive work force people should have a plan of what they want to do, what role they are after and how to get there. One common mistake I think many people make though is that a career plan shouldn't be a once a year thought. When people finish with the holiday season with their new year's resolution to find a new job fresh in their mind, you can see the enthusiasm and motivation a person has to make something happen. Emails are sent, calls are made, applications are made, networking is happening, etc..... Finding the right role that you are after however can be difficult, while it would be great if that dream role was available just at the time you happened to be looking for it - in reality this is not always the case. Job Seekers need to keep reminding themselves that while sometimes that dream job they are after is available at the same time they are looking, that also a Job search can be a difficult and long process. Many people who set out with the best of intentions in January to find a new job can soon lose interest in a job search if they do not immediately find a role. Just like the Christmas decorations are put away and the photos from New Year's are stored away - a Job Seeker's motivation may slowly decrease until that person finds themselves 12 months later in the same situation in same role and looking for that new opportunity again. Rather than just "going for it" and looking for a role in the month of January, a person's job search or career plan should be an ongoing activity and thought process that is constantly updated and evaluated over the course of the year. It can be hard to stay motivated over an extended period of time, especially when you are newly motivated and ready for that new role and the results are not immediate. Rather than letting your job search fall down the priority list and into the "too hard basket" a few ideas that may keep your enthusiasm fresh Update your resume every 6 months, even if you are not looking for a job - it is easy to forget what you have accomplished if you don't keep your details updated. Also it is good to be prepared and have a resume ready to go in case you do get an unexpected phone call for that 'dream job' you have been hoping for. Work out what you want out of your next role before you begin your job search - rather than aimlessly searching job ads or talking to people - think of the organisations or type of role you would like before you search. If you know what you are looking for it will be much easier to work out how to get there than if you do not know what you want. Don't expect immediate results once you decide to look for another job, things don't always fall into place. Timing and delivery can be important pieces of being selected for a role, companies don't hire every role in January. Have an open mind - people you meet or talk to may not result in immediate results for your job search but every connection may help you get a bit closer to what you are after . These actions will not guarantee a positive result, but in today's competitive work force every little of extra preparation and planning helps. All the best for 2011 and I hope your career plan whatever it may be is a success.

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• Silverlight Cream for December 12, 2010 -- #1008

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, Samuel Jack, Alfred Astort(-2-), Nokola(-2-), Avi Pilosof, Chris Klug, Pete Brown, Laurent Bugnion(-2-), and Jaime Rodriguez(-2-, -3-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Sharing resources and styles between projects in Silverlight" Chris Klug WP7: "Windows Phone Application Performance at Silverlight Firestarter" Jaime Rodriguez Training: "Silverlight View Model (MVVM) - A Play In One Act" Michael Washington Shoutouts: Koen Zwikstra announced the availability of the first Silverlight Spy 4 Preview 1 Gavin Wignall announced the Launch of Festive game built with Silverlight 4, hosted on Azure ... free to play. From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight View Model (MVVM) - A Play In One Act Michael Washington has an interesting take on writing a blog post with this 'play' version of Silverlight View Models and Expression Blend with a heaping dose of Behaviors added in for flavoring. Build a Windows Phone Game in 3 days – Day 1 Samuel Jack is attempting to build a WP7 game in 3 days including downloading the tools and an XNA book... interesting to see where he's headed wth this venture. 4 of 10 - Make sure your finger can hit the target and text is legible Continuing with a series of tips from the folks reviewing apps for the marketplace via Alfred Astort is this number 4 -- touch target size and legible text. 5 of 10 - Give feedback on touch and progress within your UI Alfred Astort's number 5 is also up, and continues the touch discussion with this tip about giving the user feedback on their touch. Fantasia Painter Released for Windows Phone 7 + Tips Nokola took the release of his Fantasia Painter on WP& as an opportunity not only to blog about the fact that we can go buy it, but has a blog full of hints and tips that he gathered while working on it. Games for Windows Phone 7 Resources: Reducing Load Times, RPG Kit; Other Nokola also blogged about the release of the new games education pack, and gives up the cursor he uses in his videos after being asked... The simplest way to do design-time ViewModels with MVVM and Blend. Avi Pilosof attacks the design-time ViewModel issue in Blend with a 'no code' solution. Sharing resources and styles between projects in Silverlight Chris Klug is talking about sharing resources and styles across a large Silverlight project... near and dear to my heart at this moment. Dynamically Generating Controls in WPF and Silverlight Pete Brown has a post up that's generated some interest... creating controls at runtime... and he's demonstrating several different ways for both Silverlight and WPF #twitter for Windows Phone 7 protips (#wp7) Laurent Bugnion was posting these great tips for Twitter for WP7 and rolled all 16 of them up into a blog post... check them and the app out... Increasing touch surface (#wp7dev) Laurent Bugnion's most current post should be of great interest to WP7 devs... providing more touch surface for your user's fat fingers, err, I mean their fat fingerings :) ... great information and samples ... and interesting it is a fail point as listed by Alfred Astort above. Windows Phone Application Performance at Silverlight Firestarter This material from Jaime Rodriguez actually hit prior to his Firestarter presentation, but should be required reading for anyone doing a WP7 app... great Performance tips from the trenches... slide deck, cheat-sheet, and code. UpdateSourceTrigger on Windows Phone data bindings Another post from Jaime Rodriguez actually went through a couple revisions already.. how about a WP7 TextBox that fires notifications to the ViewModel when the text changes? ... would you like a behavior with that? Details on the Push Notification app limits Jaime Rodriguez has yet another required reading post up on Push Notification limits ... what it really entails and how you can be a good WP7 citizen by the way you program your app. 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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• Guest (and occasional co-host) on Jesse Liberty's Yet Another Podcast

  - by Jon Galloway

  I was a recent guest on Jesse Liberty's Yet Another Podcast talking about the latest Visual Studio, ASP.NET and Azure releases. Download / Listen: Yet Another Podcast #75–Jon Galloway on ASP.NET/ MVC/ Azure Co-hosted shows: Jesse's been inviting me to co-host shows and I told him I'd show up when I was available. It's a nice change to be a drive-by co-host on a show (compared with the work that goes into organizing / editing / typing show notes for Herding Code shows). My main focus is on Herding Code, but it's nice to pop in and talk to Jesse's excellent guests when it works out. Some shows I've co-hosted over the past year: Yet Another Podcast #76–Glenn Block on Node.js & Technology in China Yet Another Podcast  #73 - Adam Kinney on developing for Windows 8 with HTML5 Yet Another Podcast #64 - John Papa & Javascript Yet Another Podcast #60 - Steve Sanderson and John Papa on Knockout.js Yet Another Podcast #54–Damian Edwards on ASP.NET Yet Another Podcast #53–Scott Hanselman on Blogging Yet Another Podcast #52–Peter Torr on Windows Phone Multitasking Yet Another Podcast #51–Shawn Wildermuth: //build, Xaml Programming & Beyond And some more on the way that haven't been released yet. Some of these I'm pretty quiet, on others I get wacky and hassle the guests because, hey, not my podcast so not my problem. Show notes from the ASP.NET / MVC / Azure show: What was just released Visual Studio 2012 Web Developer features ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms Strongly Typed data controls Data access via command methods Similar Binding syntax to ASP.NET MVC Some context: Damian Edwards and WebFormsMVP Two questions from Jesse: Q: Are you making this harder or more complicated for Web Forms developers? Short answer: Nothing's removed, it's just a new option History of SqlDataSource, ObjectDataSource Q: If I'm using some MVC patterns, why not just move to MVC? Short answer: This works really well in hybrid applications, doesn't require a rewrite Allows sharing models, validation, other code between Web Forms and MVC ASP.NET MVC Adaptive Rendering (oh, also, this is in Web Forms 4.5 as well) Display Modes Mobile project template using jQuery Mobile OAuth login to allow Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc. login Jon (and friends') MVC 4 book on the way: Professional ASP.NET MVC 4 Windows 8 development Jesse and Jon announce they're working on a new book: Pro Windows 8 Development with XAML and C# Jon and Jesse agree that it's nice to be able to write Windows 8 applications using the same skills they picked up for Silverlight, WPF, and Windows Phone development. Compare / contrast ASP.NET MVC and Windows 8 development Q: Does ASP.NET and HTML5 development overlap? Jon thinks they overlap in the MVC world because you're writing HTML views without controls Jon describes how his web development career moved from a preoccupation with server code to a focus on user interaction, which occurs in the browser Jon mentions his NDC Oslo presentation on Learning To Love HTML as Beautiful Code Q: How do you apply C# / XAML or HTML5 skills to Windows 8 development? Q: If I'm a XAML programmer, what's the learning curve on getting up to speed on ASP.NET MVC? Jon describes the difference in application lifecycle and state management Jon says it's nice that web development is really interactive compared to application development Q: Can you learn MVC by reading a book? Or is it a lot bigger than that? What is Azure, and why would I use it? Jon describes the traditional Azure platform mode and how Azure Web Sites fits in Q: Why wouldn't Jesse host his blog on Azure Web Sites? Domain names on Azure Web Sites File hosting options Q: Is Azure just another host? How is it different from any of the other shared hosting options? A: Azure gives you the ability to scale up or down whenever you want A: Other services are available if or when you want them

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• Silverlight Cream for February 10, 2011 -- #1045

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Mark Monster, Jaime Rodriguez, Mark Hopkins, WindowsPhoneGeek, David Anson, Jesse Liberty, Jeremy Likness, Martin Krüger(-2-), Beth Massi, Joost van Schaik, Laurent Bugnion, and Arik Poznanski. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Parsing the Visual Tree with LINQ" Jeremy Likness WP7: "Silverlight-ready PNG encoder implementation shows one way to use .NET IEnumerables effectively" David Anson Lightswitch: "How to Send Automated Appointments from a LightSwitch Application" Beth Massi Shoutouts: Be sure to visit SilverlightShow... check out their top hits last week: SilverlightShow for Jan 31- Feb 06, 2011 Jaime Rodriguez has a post up that all the WP7 folks will be interested in: FAQ about copy paste functionality in upcoming release From SilverlightCream.com: Make use of WCF FaultContracts in Silverlight clients Mark Monster takes a shot at answering “The remote server returned an error: NotFound” while connecting to a WCF Service problem we all see. Communication between HTML in WebBrowser and Silverlight app Jaime Rodriguez responds to questions he received about communication between HTML and SIlverlight with this post about the bi-directional communication between the control and HTML. WP7 - Real Apps, Real Code Mark Hopkins has a post up about some WP7 starter kits that you can get all the source for and actually download the app from the Marketplace first to see if it interests you! WP7 AboutPrompt in depth WindowsPhoneGeek has this cool post up about the AboutPrompt from the Coding4Fun toolkit in detail... great diagrams showing where all the elements are and code examples with images. Silverlight-ready PNG encoder implementation shows one way to use .NET IEnumerables effectively David Anson describes why he took it upon himself to write his own png encoder for Silverlight... and we all thank him for doing so and providing us with the code! Navigation 101–Cancelling Navigation Jesse Liberty's latest WP7 From Scratch episode is up (number 32), and he's talking about Navigation and how to cancel it if you need to. Parsing the Visual Tree with LINQ Jeremy Likness demonstrates using LINQ to rat out information in the visual tree of your XAML. To Quote Jeremy: "you can easily check for intersections between elements and find any type of element no matter how deep within the tree it is". SpriteAnimationBehavior Martin Krüger has a couple more fun things in the Expression Gallery that I haven't discussed. First up is a behavior that animates up to 999 images and lets you control the FramesPerSecond... great demo on the ExpressionGallery to play with. Second alternative: Storyboard should not start before the Silverlight application is loaded Martin Krüger's latest is a way to programmatically wait for the Loaded event so that you know you can let your animations fly. How to Send Automated Appointments from a LightSwitch Application Beth Massi's latest Lightswitch post follows up her Outlook automation one with sending appointments using the standard iCalendar format... all the code included of course. The case for the Bindable Application Bar for Windows Phone 7 Joost van Schaik posts about a bindable Application Bar for your WP7 apps... grab the code and don't leave home without it :) MVVM Light V4 preview (BL0014) release notes Laurent Bugnion posted an update to MVVMLight to Codeplex a couple days ago. This is an early preview of what he plans on having in version 4, so check out the post for what's new and fun. Search Digg on Windows Phone 7 Arik Poznanski followed up his RSS post from last week with this one on searching Digg on WP7... and he's discussing and providing a utility class for doing it. 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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• How To Delete Built-in Windows 7 Power Plans (and Why You Probably Shouldn’t)

  - by The Geek

  Do you actually use the Windows 7 power management features? If so, have you ever wanted to just delete one of the built-in power plans? Here’s how you can do so, and why you probably should leave it alone. Just in case you’re new to the party, we’re talking about the power plans that you see when you click on the battery/plug icon in the system tray. The problem is that one of the built-in plans always shows up there, even if you only use custom plans. When you go to “More power options” on the menu there, you’ll be taken to a list of them, but you’ll be unable to get rid of any of the built-in ones, even if you have your own. You can actually delete the power plans, but it will probably cause problems, so we highly recommend against it. If you still want to proceed, keep reading. Delete Built-in Power Plans in Windows 7 Open up an Administrator mod command prompt by right-clicking on the command prompt and choosing “Run as Administrator”, then type in the following command, which will show you a whole list of the plans. powercfg list Do you see that really long GUID code in the middle of each listing? That’s what we’re going to need for the next step. To make it easier, we’ll provide the codes here, just in case you don’t know how to copy to the clipboard from the command prompt. Power Scheme GUID: 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e  (Balanced) Power Scheme GUID: 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c  (High performance)Power Scheme GUID: a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a  (Power saver) Before you do any deleting, what you’re going to want to do is export the plan to a file using the –export parameter. For some unknown reason, I used the .xml extension when I did this, though the file isn’t in XML format. Moving on… here’s the syntax of the command: powercfg –export balanced.xml 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e This will export the Balanced plan to the file balanced.xml. And now, we can delete the plan by using the –delete parameter, and the same GUID.  powercfg –delete 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e If you want to import the plan again, you can use the -import parameter, though it has one weirdness—you have to specify the full path to the file, like this: powercfg –import c:\balanced.xml Using what you’ve learned, you can export each of the plans to a file, and then delete the ones you want to delete. Why Shouldn’t You Do This? Very simple. Stuff will break. On my test machine, for example, I removed all of the built-in plans, and then imported them all back in, but I’m still getting this error anytime I try to access the panel to choose what the power buttons do: There’s a lot more error messages, but I’m not going to waste your time with all of them. So if you want to delete the plans, do so at your own peril. At least you’ve been warned! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Learning Windows 7: Manage Power SettingsCreate a Shortcut or Hotkey to Switch Power PlansDisable Power Management on Windows 7 or VistaChange the Windows 7 or Vista Power Buttons to Shut Down/Sleep/HibernateDisable Windows Vista’s Built-in CD/DVD Burning Features TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow

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• Enterprise 2.0 - Connecting People, Processes & Content

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  With recent technological advances, the Internet is changing. When users head to the web, they are no longer just looking for information from a simple text and picture based website. Users want a more interactive experience - they want to participate, to share their views and get the feedback of others. And this is precisely what Web 2.0 technology addresses. Web 2.0 is about web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 technology is everywhere on the Internet and is radically changing the speed and medium in which we interact and communicate. There are thousands of examples in the consumer world of Web 2.0 applications, technologies and solutions at work. You might be familiar with some of them...blogs, wikis (Wikipedia), Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn - these are all examples of Web 2.0. And these technologies are transforming our world into a real-time, participation-oriented, user-driven, content-centric world. With all of these Web 2.0 solutions it's about the user, the consumer and all the content they are generating. It's a world full of online communities where people share and participate. We're not talking about disseminating information top-down , nor is it a bottom-up fight. Everyone has an equal opportunity to participate and share. The more you participate, the more you share, the more valued you are in the community. The web is not just a collection of documents online. It is the social web.  For the active users in the community, staying connected becomes critically important so they can participate at anytime and from anywhere. And because feedback and interaction are so critical, time is of the essence. When everyone is providing immediate responses, you feel the urge to do the same. Hence everything needs to be done right now, together...and collaboratively. With all the content being generated online by users, there is complete information overload out there. (That's a good thing for Google). But...it's no longer just about search. Sometimes you want the information to just come to you. Recommendations and discovery engines will deliver you more applicable results than a non-contextual search. How many of you have heard about a news headline on Facebook as part of your feed before you read the paper or see it on TV? This is how the new generation of workers live their daily lives...and as they enter the workforce, these trends and technologies are showing up in the enterprise too. A lot of the Web 2.0 technologies and solutions in the consumer world are geared for just that....consumers. But the core concepts that put them into the Web 2.0 category can be applied to the enterprise as well. And that is what we mean when we talk about Enterprise 2.0. Enterprise 2.0 is the use of Web 2.0 tools and technologies in the workplace.  It provides a modern user experience by connecting the people, content and business processes inside and outside the enterprise. Enterprise 2.0 empowers users to collaborate more effectively, find and share information in the proper content and improves the overall business processes which they participate in. As we head into 2011, is your organization using Enterprise 2.0 capabilities to the fullest? Are you connecting your people, processes and content together to provide a modern user experience?

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• What I Expect From Myself This Year

  - by Lee Brandt

  I am making it a point not to call them resolutions, because the word has become an institution and is beginning to have no meaning. That's why I end up not keeping my resolutions, I think. So in the spirit of holding myself to my own commitments, I will make a plan and some realistic goals. 1.) Lose weight. Everyone has this on their list, but I am going to be conservative and specific. I currently weigh 393lbs. (yeah, I know). So I want to plan to lose 10lbs per month, that's 1lb. every three days, that shouldn't be difficult if I stick to my diet and exercise plan. - How do I do this?     - Diet: vegetarian. Since I already know I have high blood pressure and borderline high cholesterol, a meat-free diet is in order. I was vegan for a little over 2 years in 2006-2008, I think I can handle vegetarian.     - Exercise: at least 3 times (preferably every day) a week for 30 minutes. It has to be something that gets my heart rate up, or burns in my muscles. I can walk for cardio to start and mild calisthenics (girly push-ups, crunches, etc.).         - Move: I spend all my time behind the computer. I have recently started to use a slight variation of the Pomodoro Technique (my Pomodoros are 50 minutes instead of 25). During my 10 minutes every hour to answer emails, chats, etc., I will take a few minutes to stretch. 2.) Get my wife pregnant. We've been talking about it for years. Now that she is done with graduate school and I have a great job, now's the time. We'll be the oldest parents in the PTA most likely, but I don't care. 3.) Blog More. Another favorite among bloggers, but I do have about six drafts for blog posts started. The topics are there all I need to do is flesh out the post. This can be the first hour of any computer time I have after work. As soon as I am done exercising, shower and post. 4.) Speak less. Most people want to speak more. I want to concentrate on the places that I enjoy and that can really use the speakers (like local code camps), rather than trying to be some national speaker. I love speaking at conferences, but I need to spend some more time at home if we're going to get pregnant. 5.) Read more. I got a Kindle for Christmas and I am loving it so far. I have almost finished Treasure Island, and am getting ready to pick my next book. I will probably read a lot of classics for 2 reasons: (1) they teach deep lessons and (2) most are free for the Kindle. 6.) Find my religion. I was raised Southern Baptist, but I want to find my own way. I've been wanting to go to the local Unitarian Church, so I will make a point to go before the end of March. I also want to add a few religious books to my reading list. My boss bought me a copy of Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus , and I have a copy of Bruce Feiler's Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths (P.S.) . I will start there. Seems like a lot now that I spell it out like this. But these are only starters. I am forty years old. I cannot keep living like I am twenty anymore. So here we go, 2011.

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• Java Developer Days India Trip Report

  - by reza_rahman

  You are probably aware of Oracle's decision to discontinue the relatively resource intensive regional JavaOnes in favor of more Java Developer Days, virtual events and deeper involvement with independent conferences. In comparison to the regional JavaOnes, Java Developer Days are smaller, shorter (typically one full day), more focused (mostly Oracle speakers/topics) and more local (targeting cities). For those who have been around the Java ecosystem for a few years, they are basically the current incarnation of the highly popular and developer centric Sun Tech Days. October 21st through October 25th I spoke at Java Developer Days India. This was basically three separate but identical events in the cities of Pune (October 21st), Chennai (October 24th) and Bangalore (October 25th). For those with some familiarity with India, other than Hyderabad these cities are India's IT powerhouses. The events were basically focused on Java EE. I delivered five of the sessions (yes, you read that right), while my friend NetBeans Group Product Manager Ashwin Rao delivered three talks. Jagadish Ramu from the GlassFish team India helped me out in Bangalore by delivering two sessions. It was also a pleasure to introduce my co-contributor to the Cargo Tracker Java EE Blue Prints project Vijay Nair at Bangalore during the opening talk. I thought it was a great dynamic between Ashwin and I flipping between talking about the new features and demoing live code in NetBeans. The following were my sessions (source PDF and abstracts posted as usual on my SlideShare account): JavaEE.Next(): Java EE 7, 8, and Beyond Building Java HTML5/WebSocket Applications with JSR 356 What’s New in Java Message Service 2 JAX-RS 2: New and Noteworthy in the RESTful Web Services API Using NoSQL with JPA, EclipseLink and Java EE The event went well and was packed in all three cities. The Q&A was great and Indian developers were particularly generous with kind words :-). It seemed the event and our presence was appreciated in the truest sense which I must say is a rarity. The events were exhausting but very rewarding at the same time. As hectic as the three city trip was I tried to see at least some of the major sights (mostly at night) since this was my very first time to India. I think the slideshow below is a good representation of the riddle wrapped up in an enigma that is India (and the rest of the Indian sub-continent for that matter): Ironically enough what struck me the most during this trip is the woman pictured below - Shushma. My chauffeur, tour guide and friend for a day, she fluidly navigated the madness that is Mumbai traffic with skills that would make Evel Knievel blush while simultaneously pointing out sights and prompting me to take pictures (Mumbai was my stopover and gateway to/from India). In some ways she is probably the most potent symbol of the new India. When we parted ways I told her she should take solace in the fact she has won mostly without a fight a potentially hazardous battle her sisters across the Arabian sea are still fighting. I'm not sure she entirely understood the significance of what I told her. I hope that she did. I also had occasion to take a pretty cool local bus ride from Chennai to Bangalore instead of yet another boring flight. All in all I really enjoyed the trip to India and hope to return again soon. Jai Hind :-)!

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• Migrating SQL Server Compact Edition (SQL CE) database to SQL Server using Web Matrix

  - by Harish Ranganathan

  One of the things that is keeping us busy is the Web Camps we are delivering across 5 cities.  If you are a reader of this blog, and also attended one of these web camps, there is a good chance that you have seen me since I was there in all the places, so far.  The topics that we cover include Visual Studio 2010 SP1, SQL CE, ASP.NET MVC & HTML5.  Whenever I talk about SQL CE, the immediate response is that, people are wow that Microsoft has shipped a FREE compact edition database, which is an embedded database that can be x-copy deployed.  If you think, well didn’t Microsoft ship SQL Express which is FREE?  The difference is that, SQL Express runs as a service in the machine (if you open SQL Configuration Manager, you can notice that SQL Express is running as a service along with your SQL Server Engine (if you have installed ).  This makes it that, even if you are willing to use SQL Express when you deploy your application, it needs to be installed on the production machine (hosting provider) and it needs to run as a service.  Many hosters don’t allow such services to run on their space. SQL CE comes as a x-Copy deploy-able database with just a few DLLs required to run it on the machine and they don’t even need to be installed in GAC on the production machine.  In fact, if you have Visual Studio 2010 SP1 installed, you can use the “Add Deployable Dependencies” option in Project-Properties and it would detect that SQL CE is something you would probably want to add as a deploy-able dependency for your project.  With that, it bundles the required DLLs as a part of the “_bin_deployableAssemblies” folder.  So your project can be x-Copy deployed and just works fine. However, SQL CE has the limit of 4GB storage space.  Real world applications often require more than just 4GB of data storage and it often turns out that people would like to use SQL CE for development/ramp up stages but would like to migrate to full fledged SQL Server after a while.  So, its only natural that the question arises “How do I move my SQL CE database to SQL Server”  And honestly, it doesn’t come across as a straight forward support.  I was talking to Ambrish Mishra (PM in SQL CE Team, Hyderabad) since I got this question in almost all the places where we talked about SQL CE.   He was kind enough to demonstrate how this can be accomplished using Web Matrix.  Open Web Matrix (Web Matrix can be installed for free from www.microsoft.com/web) and click on “Site from Template” Click on the “Bakery” template (since by default it uses a SQL CE database and has all the required sample data) and click “Ok”. In the project, you can navigate to the Database tab and will be able to find that the Bakery site uses a SQL CE database “bakery.sdf” Select the “bakery.sdf” and you will be able to see the “Migrate” button on the top right Once you click on the “Migrate” button, you will notice that the popup wizard opens up and by default is configured for SQL Express.  You can edit the same to point to your local SQL Server instance, or a remote server. Upon filling in the Server Name, Username and Password, when you click “Ok”, couple of things happen.  1. The database is migrated to SQL Server (local or remote – subject to permissions on remote server).   You can open up SQL Server Management Studio and connect to the server to verify that the “bakery” database exists under “Databases” node. 2. You can also notice that in Web Matrix, when you navigate to the “Files” tab and open up the web.config file, connection string now points to the SQL Server instance (yes, the Migrate button was smart enough to make this change too ) And there it is, your SQL Server Compact Edition database, now migrated to SQL Server!! In a future post, I would explain the steps involved when using Visual Studio. Cheers !!!

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• Validating Petabytes of Data with Regularity and Thoroughness

  - by rickramsey

  by Brian Zents When former Intel CEO Andy Grove said “only the paranoid survive,” he wasn’t necessarily talking about tape storage administrators, but it’s a lesson they’ve learned well. After all, tape storage is the last line of defense to prevent data loss, so tape administrators are extra cautious in making sure their data is secure. Not surprisingly, we are often asked for ways to validate tape media and the files on them. In the past, an administrator could validate the media, but doing so was often tedious or disruptive or both. The debut of the Data Integrity Validation (DIV) and Library Media Validation (LMV) features in the Oracle T10000C drive helped eliminate many of these pains. Also available with the Oracle T10000D drive, these features use hardware-assisted CRC checks that not only ensure the data is written correctly the first time, but also do so much more efficiently. Traditionally, a CRC check takes at least 25 seconds per 4GB file with a 2:1 compression ratio, but the T10000C/D drives can reduce the check to a maximum of nine seconds because the entire check is contained within the drive. No data needs to be sent to a host application. A time savings of at least 64 percent is extremely beneficial over the course of checking an entire 8.5TB T10000D tape. While the DIV and LMV features are better than anything else out there, what storage administrators really need is a way to check petabytes of data with regularity and thoroughness. With the launch of Oracle StorageTek Tape Analytics (STA) 2.0 in April, there is finally a solution that addresses this longstanding need. STA bundles these features into one interface to automate all media validation activities across all Oracle SL3000 and SL8500 tape libraries in an environment. And best of all, the validation process can be associated with the health checks an administrator would be doing already through STA. In fact, STA validates the media based on any of the following policies: Random Selection – Randomly selects media for validation whenever a validation drive in the standalone library or library complex is available. Media Health = Action – Selects media that have had a specified number of successive exchanges resulting in an Exchange Media Health of “Action.” You can specify from one to five exchanges. Media Health = Evaluate – Selects media that have had a specified number of successive exchanges resulting in an Exchange Media Health of “Evaluate.” You can specify from one to five exchanges. Media Health = Monitor – Selects media that have had a specified number of successive exchanges resulting in an Exchange Media Health of “Monitor.” You can specify from one to five exchanges. Extended Period of Non-Use – Selects media that have not had an exchange for a specified number of days. You can specify from 365 to 1,095 days (one to three years). Newly Entered – Selects media that have recently been entered into the library. Bad MIR Detected – Selects media with an exchange resulting in a “Bad MIR Detected” error. A bad media information record (MIR) indicates degraded high-speed access on the media. To avoid disrupting host operations, an administrator designates certain drives for media validation operations. If a host requests a file from media currently being validated, the host’s request takes priority. To ensure that the administrator really knows it is the media that is bad, as opposed to the drive, STA includes drive calibration and qualification features. In addition, validation requests can be re-prioritized or cancelled as needed. To ensure that a specific tape isn’t validated too often, STA prevents a tape from being validated twice within 24 hours via one of the policies described above. A tape can be validated more often if the administrator manually initiates the validation. When the validations are complete, STA reports the results. STA does not report simply a “good” or “bad” status. It also reports if media is even degraded so the administrator can migrate the data before there is a true failure. From that point, the administrators’ paranoia is relieved, as they have the necessary information to make a sound decision about the health of the tapes in their environment. About the Photograph Photograph taken by Rick Ramsey in Death Valley, California, May 2014 - Brian Follow OTN Garage on: Web | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

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• Analysis Services (SSAS) - Unexpected Internal Error when processing (ProcessUpdate). Workaround/Resolution

  - by James Rogers

  Many implementations require the use of ProcessUpdate to support Type 1 slowly changing dimensions. ProcessUpdate drops all of the affected indexes and aggregations in partitions affected by data that changes in the Dimension on which the ProcessUpdate is being performed. Twice now I have had situations where the processing fails with "Internal error: An unexpected exception occurred." Any subsequent ProcessUpdate processing will also fail with the same error. In talking with Microsoft the issue is corrupt indexes for the Dimension(s) being processed in the partitions of the affected measure group. I cannot guarantee that the following will correct your problem but it did in my case and saved us quite a bit of down time.   Workaround: ProcessIndexes on the entire cube that is being processed and throwing the error. This corrected the problem on both 2008 and 2008 R2.   Pros:  Does not require a complete rebuild of the data (ProcessFull) for either the Dimension or Cube. User access can continue while this ProcessIndexes in underway.   Cons: Can take a long time, especially on large cubes with many partitions, dimensions and/or aggregations. Query Performance is usually severely impacted due to the memory and CPU requirements for Aggregation and Index building   <Batch http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine"http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine">  <Parallel>     <Process xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:ddl2="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine/2" xmlns:ddl2_2="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine/2/2" xmlns:ddl100_100="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2008/engine/100/100" xmlns:ddl200="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2010/engine/200" xmlns:ddl200_200="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2010/engine/200/200">       <Object>         <DatabaseID>MyDatabase</DatabaseID>         <CubeID>MyCube</CubeID>       </Object>       <Type>ProcessIndexes</Type>       <WriteBackTableCreation>UseExisting</WriteBackTableCreation>     </Process>  </Parallel> </Batch>   The cube where the corruption exists can be found by having Profiler running while the ProcessUpdate is executing. The first partition that displays the "The Job has ended in failure." message in the TextData column will be part of the cube/measuregroup that has the corruption. You can try to run ProcessIndexes on just that measure group. This may correct the problem and save additional time if you have other large measure groups in the cube that are not affected by the corruption.   Remember to execute your normal ProcessUpdate batch after the successful completion of the ProcessIndexes. The ProcessIndexes does not pick up data changes.   Things that did not work: ProcessClearIndexes - why this doesn't work and ProcessIndexes does is unclear at this point. ProcessFull on the partition in question. In my latest case, this would clear up the problem for that partition. However, the next partition the ProcessUpdate touched that had data in it would generate and error. This leads me to believe the corruption problem will exist in all partitions in the affected measure group that have data in them.   NOTE: I experience this problem in both a SQL 2008 and SQL 2008 R2 Analysis Services environment, on separate built from the same relational database. This leads me to believe that some data condition in the tables used for the Dimension processing caused the corruption since the two environments were on physically separate hardware. I am waiting on Microsoft to analyze the dumps to give us more insight into what actually caused the corruption and will update this post accordingly.

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• Silverlight Cream for January 04, 2011 -- #1022

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Dennis Doomen, Doug Holland, Kunal Chowdhury, Sacha Barber, Paul Sheriff, Mike Snow(-2-), Peter Kuhn(-2-), and Mike Ormond. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight: Fixing the BookShelf Sample" Peter Kuhn WP7: "Searching the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace Programmatically" Doug Holland Prism/Cinch: "PRISM 4 Custom Transitioning Region" Sacha Barber Shoutouts: Sacha Barber the author of Cinch asks for some advice from users: Cinch V2 : Question For The Reader Michael Crump introduces us to SnippetManager as a way to organize your Silverlight snippets... I'm thinking any snippet: A better way to organize your Silverlight Code Snippets. Andy Beaulieu announced an update of Physics Helper 4.2 using Farseer 3.2 ... check out the breaking changes though! Dennis Doomen blogged about a new release of his Fluent Assertions: A new year with a new release of Fluent Assertions, with a blog post about it below From SilverlightCream.com: Verifying PropertyChanged events in Silverlight using Fluent Assertions Dennis Doomen release his latest Fluent Assertions for .NET and Silverlight and wrote up a big post about the new event monitoring syntax. Searching the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace Programmatically Doug Holland has a post up on MSDN blogs talking about searching the WP7 Marketplace programmatically... ya know you should be able to do it... here's how. Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part - 5) Kunal Chowdhury has Part 5 of a tutorial series on Lightswitch up at SilverlightShow... working with custom validation this time, and for the first time in this series so far actually writes some code! PRISM 4 Custom Transitioning Region Sacha Barber took time to look at Prism4/MEF and Cinch2 and found things to be fine then wrote a custom PRISM region adaptor that uses a TransitionalElement from the Microsoft Transitionals project... code available, blog post to come. Get Application Title from Windows Phone Paul Sheriff has a cool chunk of code up... getting the Application's title programmatically... and other attributes as well, if you were wondering why you might wanna do that. Detecting Users Win7 Mobile Theme Color Mike Snow has a couple as well... first up is how to detect your user's theme... obviously useful if you wanna match it. Selecting an Item in a ComboBox after Adding Items Second for Mike Snow is a general Silverlight issue... setting the selected item on a ComboBox after filling it... if you haven't stumbled across this yet, you will... A Simplified Grid Markup Reloaded Peter Kuhn has a pair of posts up since last time... this first is an extension of Colin Eberhardt's simplified Grid markup system, but it's only useful if you don't plan on using Blend... can we get a show of hands? :) Silverlight: Fixing the BookShelf Sample Next Peter Kuhn has some changes to the Bookshelf code, but more importantly has some excelling tips about shader effects, Effects on Visual Elements and how to make best use of all the above. Displaying HTML Content in Windows Phone 7 Mike Ormond has a WP7 post up describing problems a customer had early on displaying rich text and an attempt to use the WebBrowser control to pull it off and the problems that caused... check out the resultant code, and read the comments as well. 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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• Silverlight Cream for February 09, 2011 -- #1044

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Vikas, Tony Champion, Peter Kuhn, Ollie Riches, Rich Griffin, Rob Eisenberg, Andrea Boschin, Rudi Grobler(-2-), Jesse Liberty, Dan Wahlin, Roberto Sonnino, Deborah Kurata. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight double click event" Vikas WP7: "Logging in Silverlight and WP7 with MVVM Light" Tony Champion XNA: "XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 3 - Animation (transforms)" Peter Kuhn Shoutouts: Vikas deserves congratulations for passing the beta Silverlight 4 exam, but in the process he has a great list of resources to help you do the same: Exam 70-506 ( TS: Silverlight 4, Development ) From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight double click event Vikas demonstrates 3 ways to come up with a double-click in Silverlight: Timer, Rx Framework, and Behavior with code for each. Logging in Silverlight and WP7 with MVVM Light Tony Champion is discussing logging... and since he finds himself doing it in every project, he's setting up an extensible solution he can reuse and is doing so with MVVMLight XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 3 - Animation (transforms) Peter Kuhn has part 3 of his XNA for WP7 series up at SilverlightShow. In this 3rd tutorial, Peter is discussing animation with Transformations.... remember... this is XNA! WP7Contrib: Location Push Model Ollie Riches posts from the WP7C and discusses how they provide an interface for location service by abstracting away the GeoCoordinateWatcher class and provide a clean push model using the IObservable as the return types for all variants. WP7 Contrib – When messaging becomes messy and services shine Rich Griffin pulls another post up from WP7C where he discusses swapping out using Service Styles rather than Messenger Styles... in his words "when we start getting friction trying to bend the framework api to do something that it was not really meant for its time to use something [that] solves the problem better" Herding Code 104: Rob Eisenberg on Caliburn Micro Rob Eisenberg is interviewed on the latest Herding Code, talking about his baby, Caliburn Micro, and tons of other stuff as well... just check out the list of links generated for this show. Windows Phone 7 - Part #4: The application lifecycle Andrea Boschin has part 4 of his WP7 tutorial series up at SilverlightShow... In this tutorial he does a complete run-down the the WP7 Application Life-Cycle Simple Error Reporting on WP7 Rudi Grobler has a code snippet up that, with the end-user's permission of course, emails problem reports back to you... very cool idea. Simple Error Reporting on WP7 REDUX Rudi Grobler demonstrates using the Coding4Fun toolkit to display an exception prompt to the user... and then possibly email the report to you..see Rudi's other post on that. Creating An Application Bar–Don’t Panic In his latest (number 31) WP7 From Scratch episode, Jesse Liberty takes on the ApplicationBar, and uses Blend to get the job done easier. Syncing Data with a Server using Silverlight and HTTP Polling Duplex Dan Wahlin revisits some older posts of his about Push technologies in Silverlight, and provides some great insight (and code) into Http Polling Duplex Quick WPF/Silverlight tips to make great videos of your apps Roberto Sonnino has some great tips on making awesome videos of your WPF or Silverlight app. Simple Silverlight MVVM Base Class Deborah Kurata has her take at a good MVVM base class as the subject of her latest post... good points and good code. 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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• Changes in licence in forked project what are my rights?

  - by Wes

  Hi I'm intrested in using the apparently now defunct app-mdi libray in a flex application for a paying customer. http://sourceforge.net/projects/appmdi/ It appears that the app-mdi project has been forked from flex-mdi and indeed the code has so much in common it would appear almost identical to the origional code. Now in the original source flex-mdi the following licence appears in the source code /* Copyright (c) 2007 FlexMDI Contributors. See: http://code.google.com/p/flexmdi/wiki/ProjectContributors Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. */ However in the app-mdi library on the same file the following licence appears. Copyright (c) 2010, TRUEAGILE All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. Neither the name of the TRUEAGILE nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. */ Now I've no problem with the licence except for the line. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. The copyright notice in its entireity makes no sense in binary material. Specifically talking about redistobutions in the binary form. Finally the question is what exactly has to be shown on web clients who access softare that utilises this library? Also is changing the licence in this manner actually allowed?

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• SQL SERVER – Speed Up! – Parallel Processes and Unparalleled Performance – TechEd 2012 India

  - by pinaldave

  TechEd India 2012 is just around the corner and I will be presenting there on two different session. SQL Server Performance Tuning is a very challenging subject that requires expertise in Database Administration and Database Development. I always have enjoyed talking about SQL Server Performance tuning subject. Just like doctors I like to call my every attempt to improve the performance of SQL Server queries and database server as a practice too. I have been working with SQL Server for more than 8 years and I believe that many of the performance tuning concept I have mastered. However, performance tuning is not a simple subject. However there are occasions when I feel stumped, there are occasional when I am not sure what should be the next step. When I face situation where I cannot figure things out easily, it makes me most happy because I clearly see this as a learning opportunity. I have been presenting in TechEd India for last three years. This is my fourth time opportunity to present a technical session on SQL Server. Just like every other year, I decided to present something different, something which I have spend years of learning. This time, I am going to present about parallel processes. It is widely believed that more the CPU will improve performance of the server. It is true in many cases. However, there are cases when limiting the CPU usages have improved overall health of the server. I will be presenting on the subject of Parallel Processes and its effects. I have spent more than a year working on this subject only. After working on various queries on multi-CPU systems I have personally learned few things. In coming TechEd session, I am going to share my experience with parallel processes and performance tuning. Session Details Title: Speed Up! – Parallel Processes and Unparalleled Performance (Add to Calendar) Abstract: “More CPU More Performance” – A  very common understanding is that usage of multiple CPUs can improve the performance of the query. To get maximum performance out of any query – one has to master various aspects of the parallel processes. In this deep dive session, we will explore this complex subject with a very simple interactive demo. An attendee will walk away with proper understanding of CX_PACKET wait types, MAXDOP, parallelism threshold and various other concepts. Date and Time: March 23, 2012, 12:15 to 13:15 Location: Hotel Lalit Ashok - Kumara Krupa High Grounds, Bengaluru – 560001, Karnataka, India. Add to Calendar Please submit your questions in the comments area and I will be for sure discussing them during my session. If I pick your question to discuss during my session, here is your gift I commit right now – SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers Book. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology Tagged: TechEd, TechEdIn

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