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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 27, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 27, 2010Popular ReleasesMahTweets for Windows Phone: Nightly 69: Latest nightly for build 69XamlQuery/WPF - The Write Less, Do More, WPF Library: XamlQuery-WPF v1.2 (Runtime, Source): This is the first release of popular XamlQuery library for WPF. XamlQuery has already gained recognition among Silverlight developers.Math.NET Numerics: Beta 1: First beta of Math.NET Numerics. Only contains the managed linear algebra provider. Beta 2 will include the native linear algebra providers along with better documentation and examples.WatchersNET.SiteMap: WatchersNET.SiteMap 01.03.02: Whats NewNew Tax Filter, You can now select which Terms you want to Use.Minecraft GPS: Minecraft GPS 1.1: 1.1 Release New Features Compass! New style. Set opacity on main window to allow overlay of Minecraft.Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2010 Code Samples 2010-11-25: Code samples for Visual Studio 2010Typps (formerly jiffycms) wysiwyg rich text HTML editor for ASP.NET AJAX: Typps 2.9: -When uploading files (not images), through the file uploader and the multi-file uploader, FileUploaded and MultiFileUploaded event handlers were reporting an empty event argument, this is fixed now. -Fixed also url field not updating when uploading a file ( not image)Wii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 0.8.5 Beta: - WBFS repair (default) options fixed - Transfer to image fixed - Settings ui widget names fixed - Some little bug fixes You need to reset the settings! Delete WiiBaFu's config file or registry entries on windows: Linux: ~/.config/WiiBaFu/wiibafu.conf Windows: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WiiBaFu\wiibafu Mac OS X: ~/Library/Preferences/com.wiibafu.wiibafu.plist Caution: This is a BETA version! Errors, crashes and data loss not impossible! Use in test environments only, not on productive syste...Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.3: Added process count and world size calculation progress to the status bar. Added View->'Status Bar' menu item to show/hide the status bar. Status bar is automatically shown when loading a world. Added a prompt, when loading a world, to use or clear cached images.SQL Monitor: SQL Monitor 1.4: 1.added automatically load sql server instances 2.added friendly wait cursor 3.fixed problem with 4.0 fx 4.added exception handlingSexy Select: sexy select v0.4: Changes in v0.4 Added method : elements. This returns all the option elements that are currently added to the select list Added method : selectOption. This method accepts two values, the element to be modified and the selected state. (true/false)Deep Zoom for WPF: First Release: This first release of the Deep Zoom control has the same source code, binaries and demos as the CodeProject article (http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/DeepZoom.aspx).Simple Service Locator: Simple Service Locator v0.12: The Simple Service Locator is an easy-to-use Inversion of Control library that is a complete implementation of the Common Service Locator interface. It solely supports code-based configuration and is an ideal starting point for developers unfamiliar with larger IoC / DI libraries New features in this release Collections that are registered using RegisterAll<T> can now be injected using automatic constructor injection. A new RegisterAll<T>(params T[]) method overload is added that allows ea...BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.0 RC: This is a Release Candidate version for BlogEngine.NET 2.0. The most current, stable version of BlogEngine.NET is version 1.6. Find out more about the BlogEngine.NET 2.0 RC here. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. To get started, be sure to check out our installation documentation and the installation screencast. If you are upgrading from a previous version, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.0 instructions. As this ...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel Template, version 1.0.1.156: The NodeXL Excel template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 workbook. What's NewThis release adds a feature for aggregating the overall metrics in a folder full of NodeXL workbooks, adds geographical coordinates to the Twitter import features, and fixes a memory-related bug. See the Complete NodeXL Release History for details. Please Note: There is a new option in the setup program to install for "Just Me" or "Everyone." Most people...VFPX: FoxBarcode v.0.11: FoxBarcode v.0.11 - Released 2010.11.22 FoxBarcode is a 100% Visual FoxPro class that provides a tool for generating images with different bar code symbologies to be used in VFP forms and reports, or exported to other applications. Its use and distribution is free for all Visual FoxPro Community. Whats is new? Added a third parameter to the BarcodeImage() method Fixed some minor bugs History FoxBarcode v.0.10 - Released 2010.11.19 - 85 Downloads Project page: FoxBarcodeDotNetAge -a lightweight Mvc jQuery CMS: DotNetAge 1.1.0.5: What is new in DotNetAge 1.1.0.5 ?Document Library features and template added. Resolve issues of templates Improving publishing service performance Opml support added. What is new in DotNetAge 1.1 ? D.N.A Core updatesImprove runtime performance , more stabilize. The DNA core objects model added. Personalization features added that allows users create the personal website, manage their resources, store personal data DynamicUIFixed the PageManager could not move page node bug. ...ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome (jQuery Ajax helpers): 1.3.1 and demos: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form and Pager tested on mozilla, safari, chrome, opera, ie 9b/8/7/6MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.24.6966: Fixed Updater; Fixed minor bugs;WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.1: Version: 2.0.0.1 (Milestone 1): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...New ProjectsCommunity Megaphone for Windows Phone: The Official CommunityMegaphone application for Windows Phone. Releases are in XAP format, allowing you to upload the compiled application into a device using the Windows Phone Application Deployment tool. Download the source code to learn how to build Windows Phone applications.Group positioning GPS: this is a project for a subject in the university geographic information systems, its about a group of gadjets that can know the position of the other devices in the same group.IIS HTTPS Binder: On IIS 7 that you can not create more than one HTTPS binding, even though you have more then one SSL certificate and you need HTTPS binding on different hosted websites. If you have one IP address you can bind only one SSL to chosen website. This small application can fix this.Inspired Faith Now Playing: A ClickOnce-deployed desktop application that sits in your application tray and notifies you when any of your favorite Messianic Jewish and Christian artists or songs play on the Inspired Faith online radio station (http://inspiredfaith.org)MA Manager: The goal of this software is to help manage a martial arts school through multiple clients and platforms. This allows instructors to easily track students progress overtime.MathModels: This project contains commonly used algorithm implementations in C# .netMyFlickr API: MyFlickr API is a library for developers allows them to call Flickr API from any .Net Application.NerdOnRails.DynamicProxy: a small dynamic-proxy implementation using the new dynamic object that was introduced with .Net 4.NerdOnRails.Injector: a small dependency injection framework for .netNHyperV: NHyperV is a C# Hyper-V programming model.Power Scheme Switcher: This is a very simple utility that exposes an icon in the system tray and allows you to quickly change the Power Plan Scheme from there. It is developed in c# with Vs 2010(WinForm)rcforms: Custom sharepoint forms exampleRobo Commander: This is a Lego NXT commander developed under Visual Studio. This console will have basic commands and uses the NXT++ libraries. Shared Genomics Project - Workbench Codebase: The Shared Genomics workbench enables a diverse user group of researchers to explore the associations between genetic and other factors in their datasets. It provides a graphical user interface to the analysis functions published in a sister Codeplex project i.e. MPI Codebase.SharePoint 2010 PowerShell v2 reference: This project hosts a complete PowerShell v2 reference for SharePoint 2010.Social PowerFlow: Experiments with PowerWF and the social network - integrating Windows Powershell and Windows Workflow Foundation with Facebook and TwitterTweetSayings: Twitter SayingsXamlQuery/WPF - The Write Less, Do More, WPF Library: XamlQuery/WPF is a lightweight yet powerful library that enables rapid development in WPF. It simplifies several tasks like page/window traversing; finding controls by name, type, style, property value or position in control tree; event handling; animating and much more.XmlDSigEx XML Digital Signature Library: The XmlDSigEx library is an alternative to using the SignedXml classes in the .Net Framework. It addresses some of the shortcomings of the standard types particularly in regards to canonicalisation and the enveloped transform. It is currently under development.Yoi's Online Project: This is online storage for Yovi's project?????? ???? ???: ?????? ???? ?? ????? ??? ?????? ? ??????? ?? ???? ??? ????

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Use Cast() and TypeOf() to Change Sequence Type

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. We’ve seen how the Select() extension method lets you project a sequence from one type to a new type which is handy for getting just parts of items, or building new items.  But what happens when the items in the sequence are already the type you want, but the sequence itself is typed to an interface or super-type instead of the sub-type you need? For example, you may have a sequence of Rectangle stored in an IEnumerable<Shape> and want to consider it an IEnumerable<Rectangle> sequence instead.  Today we’ll look at two handy extension methods, Cast<TResult>() and OfType<TResult>() which help you with this task. Cast<TResult>() – Attempt to cast all items to type TResult So, the first thing we can do would be to attempt to create a sequence of TResult from every item in the source sequence.  Typically we’d do this if we had an IEnumerable<T> where we knew that every item was actually a TResult where TResult inherits/implements T. For example, assume the typical Shape example classes: 1: // abstract base class 2: public abstract class Shape { } 3:  4: // a basic rectangle 5: public class Rectangle : Shape 6: { 7: public int Widtgh { get; set; } 8: public int Height { get; set; } 9: } And let’s assume we have a sequence of Shape where every Shape is a Rectangle… 1: var shapes = new List<Shape> 2: { 3: new Rectangle { Width = 3, Height = 5 }, 4: new Rectangle { Width = 10, Height = 13 }, 5: // ... 6: }; To get the sequence of Shape as a sequence of Rectangle, of course, we could use a Select() clause, such as: 1: // select each Shape, cast it to Rectangle 2: var rectangles = shapes 3: .Select(s => (Rectangle)s) 4: .ToList(); But that’s a bit verbose, and fortunately there is already a facility built in and ready to use in the form of the Cast<TResult>() extension method: 1: // cast each item to Rectangle and store in a List<Rectangle> 2: var rectangles = shapes 3: .Cast<Rectangle>() 4: .ToList(); However, we should note that if anything in the list cannot be cast to a Rectangle, you will get an InvalidCastException thrown at runtime.  Thus, if our Shape sequence had a Circle in it, the call to Cast<Rectangle>() would have failed.  As such, you should only do this when you are reasonably sure of what the sequence actually contains (or are willing to handle an exception if you’re wrong). Another handy use of Cast<TResult>() is using it to convert an IEnumerable to an IEnumerable<T>.  If you look at the signature, you’ll see that the Cast<TResult>() extension method actually extends the older, object-based IEnumerable interface instead of the newer, generic IEnumerable<T>.  This is your gateway method for being able to use LINQ on older, non-generic sequences.  For example, consider the following: 1: // the older, non-generic collections are sequence of object 2: var shapes = new ArrayList 3: { 4: new Rectangle { Width = 3, Height = 13 }, 5: new Rectangle { Width = 10, Height = 20 }, 6: // ... 7: }; Since this is an older, object based collection, we cannot use the LINQ extension methods on it directly.  For example, if I wanted to query the Shape sequence for only those Rectangles whose Width is > 5, I can’t do this: 1: // compiler error, Where() operates on IEnumerable<T>, not IEnumerable 2: var bigRectangles = shapes.Where(r => r.Width > 5); However, I can use Cast<Rectangle>() to treat my ArrayList as an IEnumerable<Rectangle> and then do the query! 1: // ah, that’s better! 2: var bigRectangles = shapes.Cast<Rectangle>().Where(r => r.Width > 5); Or, if you prefer, in LINQ query expression syntax: 1: var bigRectangles = from s in shapes.Cast<Rectangle>() 2: where s.Width > 5 3: select s; One quick warning: Cast<TResult>() only attempts to cast, it won’t perform a cast conversion.  That is, consider this: 1: var intList = new List<int> { 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 }; 2:  3: // casting ints to longs, this should work, right? 4: var asLong = intList.Cast<long>().ToList(); Will the code above work?  No, you’ll get a InvalidCastException. Remember that Cast<TResult>() is an extension of IEnumerable, thus it is a sequence of object, which means that it will box every int as an object as it enumerates over it, and there is no cast conversion from object to long, and thus the cast fails.  In other words, a cast from int to long will succeed because there is a conversion from int to long.  But a cast from int to object to long will not, because you can only unbox an item by casting it to its exact type. For more information on why cast-converting boxed values doesn’t work, see this post on The Dangers of Casting Boxed Values (here). OfType<TResult>() – Filter sequence to only items of type TResult So, we’ve seen how we can use Cast<TResult>() to change the type of our sequence, when we expect all the items of the sequence to be of a specific type.  But what do we do when a sequence contains many different types, and we are only concerned with a subset of a given type? For example, what if a sequence of Shape contains Rectangle and Circle instances, and we just want to select all of the Rectangle instances?  Well, let’s say we had this sequence of Shape: 1: var shapes = new List<Shape> 2: { 3: new Rectangle { Width = 3, Height = 5 }, 4: new Rectangle { Width = 10, Height = 13 }, 5: new Circle { Radius = 10 }, 6: new Square { Side = 13 }, 7: // ... 8: }; Well, we could get the rectangles using Select(), like: 1: var onlyRectangles = shapes.Where(s => s is Rectangle).ToList(); But fortunately, an easier way has already been written for us in the form of the OfType<T>() extension method: 1: // returns only a sequence of the shapes that are Rectangles 2: var onlyRectangles = shapes.OfType<Rectangle>().ToList(); Now we have a sequence of only the Rectangles in the original sequence, we can also use this to chain other queries that depend on Rectangles, such as: 1: // select only Rectangles, then filter to only those more than 2: // 5 units wide... 3: var onlyBigRectangles = shapes.OfType<Rectangle>() 4: .Where(r => r.Width > 5) 5: .ToList(); The OfType<Rectangle>() will filter the sequence to only the items that are of type Rectangle (or a subclass of it), and that results in an IEnumerable<Rectangle>, we can then apply the other LINQ extension methods to query that list further. Just as Cast<TResult>() is an extension method on IEnumerable (and not IEnumerable<T>), the same is true for OfType<T>().  This means that you can use OfType<TResult>() on object-based collections as well. For example, given an ArrayList containing Shapes, as below: 1: // object-based collections are a sequence of object 2: var shapes = new ArrayList 3: { 4: new Rectangle { Width = 3, Height = 5 }, 5: new Rectangle { Width = 10, Height = 13 }, 6: new Circle { Radius = 10 }, 7: new Square { Side = 13 }, 8: // ... 9: }; We can use OfType<Rectangle> to filter the sequence to only Rectangle items (and subclasses), and then chain other LINQ expressions, since we will then be of type IEnumerable<Rectangle>: 1: // OfType() converts the sequence of object to a new sequence 2: // containing only Rectangle or sub-types of Rectangle. 3: var onlyBigRectangles = shapes.OfType<Rectangle>() 4: .Where(r => r.Width > 5) 5: .ToList(); Summary So now we’ve seen two different ways to get a sequence of a superclass or interface down to a more specific sequence of a subclass or implementation.  The Cast<TResult>() method casts every item in the source sequence to type TResult, and the OfType<TResult>() method selects only those items in the source sequence that are of type TResult. You can use these to downcast sequences, or adapt older types and sequences that only implement IEnumerable (such as DataTable, ArrayList, etc.). Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,LINQ,Little Wonders,TypeOf,Cast,IEnumerable<T>

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 12, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 12, 2011Popular ReleasesSizeOnDisk: 1.0.8.4: Fix: Contextual menu failures. Switch to ShellExecuteEx of Win32Api.Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.1 (June 2011) for .NET 4.0: Release of Phalanger 2.1 - the opensource PHP compiler for .NET framework 4.0. Installation package also includes basic version of Phalanger Tools for Visual Studio 2010. This allows you to easily create, build and debug Phalanger web or application inside this ultimate integrated development environment. You can even install the tools into the free Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Integrated). To improve the performance of your application using MySQL, please use Managed MySQL Extension for Phala...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.7: Version: 2.0.0.7 (Milestone 7): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...SimplePlanner: v2.0b: For 2011-2012 Sem 1 ???2011-2012 ????Visual Studio 2010 Help Downloader: 1.0.0.3: Domain name support for proxy Cleanup old packages bug Writing to EventLog with UAC enabled bug Small fixes & RefactoringMedia Companion: MC 3.406b weekly: With this version change a movie rebuild is required when first run -else MC will lock up on exit. Extract the entire archive to a folder which has user access rights, eg desktop, documents etc. Refer to the documentation on this site for the Installation & Setup Guide Important! If you find MC not displaying movie data properly, please try a 'movie rebuild' to reload the data from the nfo's into MC's cache. Fixes Movies Readded movie preference to rename invalid or scene nfo's to info ext...Windows Azure VM Assistant: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5 (Debug) - Test Release VersionNetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.9: Changes: - fix examples (include issue 16026) - add new examples - 32Bit/64Bit Walkthrough is now available in technical Documentation. Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:..............................................................COM Proxy Management, Events, etc. - Examples in C# and VB.Net:............................................................Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access - COMAddi...Reusable Library: V1.1.3: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developerClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.54.0: New on this release: 1) Mayor performance improvements. 2) AdjustToContents now take into account the text rotation. 3) Fixed issues 6782, 6784, 6788HTML-IDEx: HTML-IDEx .15 ALPHA: This release fixes line counting a little bit and adds the masshighlight() sub, which highlights pasted and inserted code.AutoLoL: AutoLoL v2.0.3: - Improved summoner spells are now displayed - Fixed some of the startup errors people got - Double clicking an item selects it - Some usability changes that make using AutoLoL just a little easier - Bug fixes AutoLoL v2 is not an update, but an entirely new version! Please install to a different directory than AutoLoL v1Host Profiles: Host Profiles 1.0: Host Profiles 1.0 Release Quickly modify host file Automatically flush dnsVidCoder: 0.9.2: Updated to HandBrake 4024svn. This fixes problems with mpeg2 sources: corrupted previews, incorrect progress indicators and encodes that incorrectly report as failed. Fixed a problem that prevented target sizes above 2048 MB.SharePoint Search XSL Samples: SharePoint 2010 Samples: I have updated some of the samples from the 2007 release. These all work in SharePoint 2010. I removed the Pivot on File Extension because SharePoint 2010 search has refiners that perform the same function.AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta5: ??AcDown?????????????，??????????????，????、????。?????Acfun????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??v3.0 Beta5 ?????????? ???? ?? ???????? ???"????????"?? ????????????? ????????/???? ?? ???"????"??? ?? ??????????? ?? ?? ??????????? ?? ?????????????????? ??????????????????? ???????????????? ????????????Discussions???????? ????AcDown??????????????VFPX: GoFish 4 Beta 1: Current beta is Build 144 (released 2011-06-07 ) See the GoFish4 info page for details and video link: http://vfpx.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=GoFishShowUI: Write-UI -in PowerShell: ShowUI: ShowUI is a PowerShell module to help you write rich user interfaces in script.SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack: SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack 1.0.3: Fixed User Management screen when "RequiresQuestionAndAnswer" set to true Reply to Email Address can now be customized User Management page now only displays users that reside in the membership database Web parts have been changed to inherit from System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart, so that they will display on anonymous application pages For installation and configuration steps see here.Babylon Toolkit: Babylon.Toolkit v1.0.4: Note about samples: In order to run samples, you need to configure visual studio to run them as an "Out-of-browser application". in order to do that, go to the property page of a sample project, go to the Debug tab, and check the "Out-of-browser application" radio. New features : New Effects BasicEffect3Lights (3 dir lights instead of 1 position light) CartoonEffect (work in progress) SkinnedEffect (with normal and specular map support) SplattingEffect (for multi-texturing with smooth ...New ProjectsAnything Over Anything (Network Tunneling): Tunneling software created using the Reactive Extensions framework! Rx is not just for events!!!BDDocs - Behavior Driven Documentation: An alternative tool to enable project collaboration between stakeholders in a BDD environment. Focuses more on the domain and its implementation then the technical details of the testing framework.Checkin Policies for TFS 2010: More check-in policies for TFS 2010cheese: Projet d'études sur les jeux d'échecs http://davcha.wordpress.comCodeCrusade: Code Crusade is a programming game based around Lua and C#.Dimensional Values: Dimensional Values is a class library that defines units like inch, foot, meter, second, minute, hour, Newton, Pascal, Hertz, etc. that qualify values stored in classes of different dimensions such as the length dimension, the time dimension, the force dimension, etc. The library takes care of unit conversion automatically and produces higher dimension class objects from the mathematical operators (for example, dividing a length dimensional value by a time dimensional value automatically y...Enlight Adventures: Enlight Adventures is a Windows Phone 7 game that is based on the activities of the Enlight Fountain Control Group at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.Expression Tree Serializer: .NET 4.0 and Silverlight 4 class library that serializes and deserializes Expression instances. Also: a WCF IQueryable LINQ Provider and Web Http (REST) client for Silverlight that provides a simplified REST client API (i.e. WCF's WebChannelFactory) that's easier to use than WebClient.F# and C# ASP.NET MVC 3 (Razor) VSIX Project Template Example: This project provides an example of how to create a F# and C# VSIX Project Template made up of a C# ASP.NET MVC 3 web application, a F# Library that contains controllers, models, etc., and a F# Library that can be used to contain unit tests. FreeForm - SilverLight Dynamic Form Builder: FreeForm is a SilverLight4 Dynamic Forms Designer. It is enterprise forms for gathering information and making tools, include a lot of Silverlight4 interface control. Now Give Up InfoPath! TO Use FreeForm! First version online DEMO: http://crmwin.com/TestPage.html?Type=tempInternational Geek Developer Alliance: Take it easy!Kouak - HTTP File Share Server: Kouak is a basic portable file share server over http. He let you share easily files in eterogenous environements and in just few click. He don't need installation and run on every machine from windows xp s2 to windows 7.MARK: MARK is an interpreted programming language, written in PHP, for beginners to learn the fundamentals of programming paradigms. To make learning easier this language cuts the syntactic learning curve out that can hinder learning - hence allowing any beginner to learn the fundamentals of programming easily, whilst having fun with an easy-to-write, powerful programming language.Movie Manager: A tool for personal Movie CollectionNairc: This is a telescope control system project of Nairc.NPD: NPD Trading SystemObjects Library: OLib is a list of objects for programming, Programmers don't have to make alot of own classes anymoreProgressbar Field: The progress bar is typically used when an application performs tasks such as project progress or sales activity. Users of an application might consider an application non-informative if there is no visual cue.PTask: PTask is an API built on the .NET Task API that simplifies the execution in parrallel of dependent units of work. It provides a fluent API for building node dependency structures and executes those structures with the maximum level of parralelization using the thread pool.Quant: quantSharpAuctioneer: A set of classes to parse and read the World of Warcraft Auctioneer Add-On scan data.SimplePlanner: NTU Simple PlannerSiteUnity Framework: SiteUnity Framework makes it easier to build website. The target of framework, write less and simple code to build complex website. For that purpose there are some modules for viewing and managing page. It's develop in Asp.NET using C#, Mssql and Jquery.SMTP Proxy for GMail and Windows Live Mail/Hotmail: GMail and Microsoft Live Mail require encrypted connections (SSL/TLS), but not all software supports SSL/TLS. SmtpProxy accepts unencrypted connections and forwards them to GMail/Live. It runs as a Windows Service and supports ALL email clients. It's developed in C#/.NET4.WipeTouch, a jQuery plugin for touch devices: jQuery plugin for touch wipe events. Detects when user wipes on all 9 directions (top, bottom, left, right and diagonals) and triggers the desired event.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, February 29, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, February 29, 2012Popular ReleasesZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.4.0.0: sync with rev. 2196 of the java version important fix for RGBLuminanceSource generating barcode bitmaps Windows Phone demo client (only tested with emulator, because I don't have a Windows Phone) Barcode generation support for Windows Forms demo client Webcam support for Windows Forms demo clientOrchard Project: Orchard 1.4: Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.4: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-4-Release-NotesFluentData -Micro ORM with a fluent API that makes it simple to query a database: FluentData version 1.2: New features: - QueryValues method - Added support for automapping to enumerations (both int and string are supported). Fixed 2 reported issues.NetSqlAzMan - .NET SQL Authorization Manager: 3.6.0.15: 3.6.0.15 28-Feb-2012 • Fix: The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel, cannot be used for communication because it is in the Faulted state. Work Item 10435: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/10435 • Fix: Made StorageCache thread safe. Thanks to tangrl. • Fix: Members property of SqlAzManApplicationGroup is not functioning. Thanks to tangrl. Work Item 10267: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/10267 • Fix: Indexer are making database calls. Thanks to t...SCCM Client Actions Tool: Client Actions Tool v1.1: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.1 is the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Added stop button to stop the ongoing process. Added action "Query update status". Added option "saveOnlineComputers" in config.ini to enable saving list of online computers from last session. Default value for "LatestClientVersion" set to SP2 R3 (4.00.6487.2157). Wuauserv service manual startup mode is considered healthy on Windows 7. Errors are now suppressed in checkReleases...Document.Editor: 2012.1: Whats new for Document.Editor 2012.1: Improved Recent Documents list Improved Insert Shape Improved Dialogs Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsKinect PowerPoint Control: Kinect PowerPoint Control v1.1: Updated for Kinect SDK 1.0.SharpCompress - a fully native C# library for RAR, 7Zip, Zip, Tar, GZip, BZip2: SharpCompress 0.8: API Updates: SOLID Extract Method for Archives (7Zip and RAR). ExtractAllEntries method on Archive classes will extract archives as a streaming file. This can offer better 7Zip extraction performance if any of the entries are solid. The IsSolid method on 7Zip archives will return true if any are solid. Removed IExtractionListener was removed in favor of events. Unit tests show example. Bug fixes: PPMd passes tests plus other fixes (Thanks Pavel) Zip used to always write a Post Descri...Social Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.3): This new version includes: - Download new networks for Facebook fan pages. - New options for downloading more posts - Bug fixes To use the new graph data provider, do the following: Unzip the Zip file into the "PlugIns" folder that can be found in the NodeXL installation folder (i.e "C:\Program Files\Social Media Research Foundation\NodeXL Excel Template\PlugIns") Open NodeXL template and you can access the new importer from the "Import" menuASP.NET REST Services Framework: Release 1.1 - Standard version: Beginning from v1.1 the REST-services Framework is compatible with ASP.NET Routing model as well with CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) principle. These two are often important when building REST API functionality within your application. It also includes ability to apply Filters to a class to target all WebRest methods, as well as some performance enhancements. New version includes Metadata Explorer providing ability exploring the existing services that becomes essential as the number ...SQL Live Monitor: SQL Live Monitor 1.31: A quick fix to make it this version work with SQL 2012. Version 2 already has 2012 working, but am still developing the UI in version 2, so this is just an interim fix to allow user to monitor SQL 2012.DotNet.Highcharts: DotNet.Highcharts 1.1 with Examples: Fixed small bug in JsonSerializer about the numbers represented as string. Fixed Issue 310: decimal values don't work Fixed Issue 345: Disable Animation Refactored Highcharts class. Implemented Issue 341: More charts on one page. Added new class Container which can combine and display multiple charts. Usage: new Container(new[] { chart1, chart2, chart3, chart4 }) Implemented Feature 302: Inside an UpdatePanel - Added method (InFunction) which create the Highchart inside JavaScript f...Content Slider Module for DotNetNuke: 01.02.00: This release has the following updates and new features: Feature: One-Click Enabling of Pager Setting Feature: Cache Sliders for Performance Feature: Configurable Cache Setting Enhancement: Transitions can be Selected Bug: Secure Folder Images not Viewable Bug: Sliders Disappear on Postback Bug: Remote Images Cause Error Bug: Deleted Images Cause Error System Requirements DotNetNuke v06.00.00 or newer .Net Framework v3.5 SP1 or newer SQL Server 2005 or newerImage Resizer for Windows: Image Resizer 3 Preview 3: Here is yet another iteration toward what will eventually become Image Resizer 3. This release is stable. However, I'm calling it a preview since there are still many features I'd still like to add before calling it complete. Updated on February 28 to fix an issue with installing on multi-user machines. As usual, here is my progress report. Done Preview 3 Fix: 3206 3076 3077 5688 Fix: 7420 Fix: 7527 Fix: 7576 7612 Preview 2 6308 6309 Fix: 7339 Fix: 7357 Preview 1 UI...Finestra Virtual Desktops: 2.5.4500: This is a bug fix release for version 2.5. It fixes several things and adds a couple of minor features. See the 2.5 release notes for more information on the major new features in that version. Important - If Finestra crashes on startup for you, you must install the Visual C++ 2010 runtime from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5555. Fixes a bug with window animations not refreshing the screen on XP and with DWM off Fixes a bug with with crashing on XP due to a bug in t...AutoExpandOver - Show popup on mouseover, focus, click in Silverlight: AutoExpandOver 2.1: Many fixes. All leaks are gone. Features added.FileSquirrel: FileSquirrel Alpha 1.2.1 32bit and x64: FileSquirrel Alpha 1.2.1Publishing SCSM Work Item to a Sharepoint Calendar: PublishWI command line tool (Updated): Updated for SCSM 2012 (RC) PublishWI command line tool Usage: PublishWI.exe WIID URL CalendarName WIID: ID of the Work Item to publish (for example, CR3333) URL: URL of the SharePoint site, such as http://www.sharepoint.com CalendarName: The name of the sharepoint calendar to publish WI to.HttpRider - Tool for Web Site Performance and Stress Tests: HttpRider 1.0: Please let me know any issues you face. ThanksMedia Companion: MC 3.432b Release: General Now remembers window location. Catching a few more exceptions when an image is blank TV A couple of UI tweaks Movies Fixed the actor name displaying HTML Fixed crash when using Save files as "movie.nfo", "movie.tbn", & "fanart.jpg" New CSV template for HTML output function Added <createdate> tag for HTML output A couple of UI tweaks Known Issues Multiepisodes are not handled correctly in MC. The created nfo is valid, but they are not displayed in MC correctly & saving the...New Projects.NET Implementation of Extensions for Financial Services: NXFS is planned to be a compliant .Net implementation of CEN/XFS (currently version 3.20) to overcome some deficits of native implementation such as not supporting highly productive programming languages (like C#) and supporting only Windows XP and x86 platform.BigCoder WebMaster Tools: BigCoder WebMaster ToolsBigCoder Whois Program: BigCoder Whois ProgrambiscuitCMS: biscuitCMS makes it easier for <target user group> to <activity>. You'll no longer have to <activity>. It's developed in <programming language>. BridgeSeismic: BridgeSeismicData Normilizer: Decomposer for SQL fact tables, for BI projectsDownload Indexed Cache: "Download Indexed Cache" implements the Bing API Version 2 to retrieve content indexed within the Bing Cache to support the "Search Engine Reconnaissance" section of the OWASP Testing Guide v3. FITSExplorer: FITS Explorer is designed to allow astronomers to quickly and easily browse and preview the image and metadata stored in FITS files. The application was developed using primarily WPF and C#, with some low-level data manipulation routines written in C++ for high-performance.ICalSync: icalsyncLeague Manager: Nosso gerenciador de campeonatosLemcube SISTRI: interfacciamento ai servizi di Interoperabilità SIS.: Lemcube SISTRI: interfacciamento ai servizi di Interoperabilità SIS.LittlePluginLib: A small plugin system based on the .net framework 3.5Log reading: Reading and parsing huge log files, download from ftp server and upload to msql database.Mail Aggregator Service: To address the problem of being 'spammed' by your own alert emails this service was created to group/batch mail messages sent to the same 'to' address. It can integrate into QuickMon or even be used as a stand-alone tool to send out alert notifications. MangoTicTacToe: Demo application of a simple Silverlight game for Windows Phone 7. This tictactoe game features some of the most basics requirements for making a Silverlight game for Windows Phone 7.MonkeyButt: Web alternatives to commercial software like Facebook and Google.PizzaSoft: PizzaSoftproject: project demoSharePoint 2010 Automatically Generated Solution Demo: In this demo project I show how to generate Sandboxed Solutions by code at runtime.SoftService: Software ServiceSPAdmin: SharePoint WarmUp ToolSSASNet: SSASNetSSIS Data Masker: A SSIS Data Flow Transformation Component To Provide Basic Data Masking Capabilities.UpiGppf: This is a high shcool projectXMPP/Media Library for .NET and Windows Phone 7.5: .NET libraries for XMPP, TLS, RTP, STUN, SOCKS and more for windows and windows phone.

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• Testing Workflows &ndash; Test-After

  - by Timothy Klenke

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TimothyK/archive/2014/05/30/testing-workflows-ndash-test-after.aspxIn this post I’m going to outline a few common methods that can be used to increase the coverage of of your test suite.  This won’t be yet another post on why you should be doing testing; there are plenty of those types of posts already out there.  Assuming you know you should be testing, then comes the problem of how do I actual fit that into my day job.  When the opportunity to automate testing comes do you take it, or do you even recognize it? There are a lot of ways (workflows) to go about creating automated tests, just like there are many workflows to writing a program.  When writing a program you can do it from a top-down approach where you write the main skeleton of the algorithm and call out to dummy stub functions, or a bottom-up approach where the low level functionality is fully implement before it is quickly wired together at the end.  Both approaches are perfectly valid under certain contexts. Each approach you are skilled at applying is another tool in your tool belt.  The more vectors of attack you have on a problem – the better.  So here is a short, incomplete list of some of the workflows that can be applied to increasing the amount of automation in your testing and level of quality in general.  Think of each workflow as an opportunity that is available for you to take. Test workflows basically fall into 2 categories:  test first or test after.  Test first is the best approach.  However, this post isn’t about the one and only best approach.  I want to focus more on the lesser known, less ideal approaches that still provide an opportunity for adding tests.  In this post I’ll enumerate some test-after workflows.  In my next post I’ll cover test-first. Bug Reporting When someone calls you up or forwards you a email with a vague description of a bug its usually standard procedure to create or verify a reproduction plan for the bug via manual testing and log that in a bug tracking system.  This can be problematic.  Often reproduction plans when written down might skip a step that seemed obvious to the tester at the time or they might be missing some crucial environment setting. Instead of data entry into a bug tracking system, try opening up the test project and adding a failing unit test to prove the bug.  The test project guarantees that all aspects of the environment are setup properly and no steps are missing.  The language in the test project is much more precise than the English that goes into a bug tracking system. This workflow can easily be extended for Enhancement Requests as well as Bug Reporting. Exploratory Testing Exploratory testing comes in when you aren’t sure how the system will behave in a new scenario.  The scenario wasn’t planned for in the initial system requirements and there isn’t an existing test for it.  By definition the system behaviour is “undefined”. So write a new unit test to define that behaviour.  Add assertions to the tests to confirm your assumptions.  The new test becomes part of the living system specification that is kept up to date with the test suite. Examples This workflow is especially good when developing APIs.  When you are finally done your production API then comes the job of writing documentation on how to consume the API.  Good documentation will also include code examples.  Don’t let these code examples merely exist in some accompanying manual; implement them in a test suite. Example tests and documentation do not have to be created after the production API is complete.  It is best to write the example code (tests) as you go just before the production code. Smoke Tests Every system has a typical use case.  This represents the basic, core functionality of the system.  If this fails after an upgrade the end users will be hosed and they will be scratching their heads as to how it could be possible that an update got released with this core functionality broken. The tests for this core functionality are referred to as “smoke tests”.  It is a good idea to have them automated and run with each build in order to avoid extreme embarrassment and angry customers. Coverage Analysis Code coverage analysis is a tool that reports how much of the production code base is exercised by the test suite.  In Visual Studio this can be found under the Test main menu item. The tool will report a total number for the code coverage, which can be anywhere between 0 and 100%.  Coverage Analysis shouldn’t be used strictly for numbers reporting.  Companies shouldn’t set minimum coverage targets that mandate that all projects must have at least 80% or 100% test coverage.  These arbitrary requirements just invite gaming of the coverage analysis, which makes the numbers useless. The analysis tool will break down the coverage by the various classes and methods in projects.  Instead of focusing on the total number, drill down into this view and see which classes have high or low coverage.  It you are surprised by a low number on a class this is an opportunity to add tests. When drilling through the classes there will be generally two types of reaction to a surprising low test coverage number.  The first reaction type is a recognition that there is low hanging fruit to be picked.  There may be some classes or methods that aren’t being tested, which could easy be.  The other reaction type is “OMG”.  This were you find a critical piece of code that isn’t under test.  In both cases, go and add the missing tests. Test Refactoring The general theme of this post up to this point has been how to add more and more tests to a test suite.  I’ll step back from that a bit and remind that every line of code is a liability.  Each line of code has to be read and maintained, which costs money.  This is true regardless whether the code is production code or test code. Remember that the primary goal of the test suite is that it be easy to read so that people can easily determine the specifications of the system.  Make sure that adding more and more tests doesn’t interfere with this primary goal. Perform code reviews on the test suite as often as on production code.  Hold the test code up to the same high readability standards as the production code.  If the tests are hard to read then change them.  Look to remove duplication.  Duplicate setup code between two or more test methods that can be moved to a shared function.  Entire test methods can be removed if it is found that the scenario it tests is covered by other tests.  Its OK to delete a test that isn’t pulling its own weight anymore. Remember to only start refactoring when all the test are green.  Don’t refactor the tests and the production code at the same time.  An automated test suite can be thought of as a double entry book keeping system.  The unchanging, passing production code serves as the tests for the test suite while refactoring the tests. As with all refactoring, it is best to fit this into your regular work rather than asking for time later to get it done.  Fit this into the standard red-green-refactor cycle.  The refactor step no only applies to production code but also the tests, but not at the same time.  Perhaps the cycle should be called red-green-refactor production-refactor tests (not quite as catchy).   That about covers most of the test-after workflows I can think of.  In my next post I’ll get into test-first workflows.

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• Performance required to improve Windows Experience Index?

  - by Ian Boyd

  Is there a guide on the metrics required to obtain a certain Windows Experience Index? A Microsoft guy said in January 2009: On the matter of transparency, it is indeed our plan to disclose in great detail how the scores are calculated, what the tests attempt to measure, why, and how they map to realistic scenarios and usage patterns. Has that amount of transparency happened? Is there a technet article somewhere? If my score was limited by my Memory subscore of 5.9. A nieve person would suggest: Buy a faster RAM Which is wrong of course. From the Windows help: If your computer has a 64-bit central processing unit (CPU) and 4 gigabytes (GB) or less random access memory (RAM), then the Memory (RAM) subscore for your computer will have a maximum of 5.9. You can buy the fastest, overclocked, liquid-cooled, DDR5 RAM on the planet; you'll still have a maximum Memory subscore of 5.9. So in general the knee-jerk advice "buy better stuff" is not helpful. What i am looking for is attributes required to achieve a certain score, or move beyond a current limitation. The information i've been able to compile so far, chiefly from 3 Windows blog entries, and an article: Memory subscore Score Conditions ======= ================================ 1.0 < 256 MB 2.0 < 500 MB 2.9 <= 512 MB 3.5 < 704 MB 3.9 < 944 MB 4.5 <= 1.5 GB 5.9 < 4.0GB-64MB on a 64-bit OS Windows Vista highest score 7.9 Windows 7 highest score Graphics Subscore Score Conditions ======= ====================== 1.0 doesn't support DX9 1.9 doesn't support WDDM 4.9 does not support Pixel Shader 3.0 5.9 doesn't support DX10 or WDDM1.1 Windows Vista highest score 7.9 Windows 7 highest score Gaming graphics subscore Score Result ======= ============================= 1.0 doesn't support D3D 2.0 supports D3D9, DX9 and WDDM 5.9 doesn't support DX10 or WDDM1.1 Windows Vista highest score 6.0-6.9 good framerates (e.g. 40-50fps) at normal resoltuions (e.g. 1280x1024) 7.0-7.9 even higher framerates at even higher resolutions 7.9 Windows 7 highest score Processor subscore Score Conditions ======= ========================================================================== 5.9 Windows Vista highest score 6.0-6.9 many quad core processors will be able to score in the high 6 low 7 ranges 7.0+ many quad core processors will be able to score in the high 6 low 7 ranges 7.9 8-core systems will be able to approach 8.9 Windows 7 highest score Primary hard disk subscore (note) Score Conditions ======= ======================================== 1.9 Limit for pathological drives that stop responding when pending writes 2.0 Limit for pathological drives that stop responding when pending writes 2.9 Limit for pathological drives that stop responding when pending writes 3.0 Limit for pathological drives that stop responding when pending writes 5.9 highest you're likely to see without SSD Windows Vista highest score 7.9 Windows 7 highest score Bonus Chatter You can find your WEI detailed test results in: C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore e.g. 2011-11-06 01.00.19.482 Disk.Assessment (Recent).WinSAT.xml <WinSAT> <WinSPR> <DiskScore>5.9</DiskScore> </WinSPR> <Metrics> <DiskMetrics> <AvgThroughput units="MB/s" score="6.4" ioSize="65536" kind="Sequential Read">89.95188</AvgThroughput> <AvgThroughput units="MB/s" score="4.0" ioSize="16384" kind="Random Read">1.58000</AvgThroughput> <Responsiveness Reason="UnableToAssess" Kind="Cap">TRUE</Responsiveness> </DiskMetrics> </Metrics> </WinSAT> Pre-emptive snarky comment: "WEI is useless, it has no relation to reality" Fine, how do i increase my hard-drive's random I/O throughput? Update - Amount of memory limits rating Some people don't believe Microsoft's statement that having less than 4GB of RAM on a 64-bit edition of Windows doesn't limit the rating to 5.9: And from xxx.Formal.Assessment (Recent).WinSAT.xml: <WinSPR> <LimitsApplied> <MemoryScore> <LimitApplied Friendly="Physical memory available to the OS is less than 4.0GB-64MB on a 64-bit OS : limit mem score to 5.9" Relation="LT">4227858432</LimitApplied> </MemoryScore> </LimitsApplied> </WinSPR> References Windows Vista Team Blog: Windows Experience Index: An In-Depth Look Understand and improve your computer's performance in Windows Vista Engineering Windows 7 Blog: Engineering the Windows 7 “Windows Experience Index”

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, July 02, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, July 02, 2013Popular ReleasesMastersign.Expressions: Mastersign.Expressions v0.4.2: added support for if(<cond>, <true-part>, <false-part>) fixed multithreading issue with rand() improved demo applicationNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module: NB_Store v2.3.6 Rel0: v2.3.6 Is now DNN6 and DNN7 compatible Important : During update this install with overwrite the menu.xml setting, if you have changed this then make a backup before you upgrade and reapply your changes after the upgrade. Please view the following documentation if you are installing and configuring this module for the first time System Requirements Skill requirements Downloads and documents Step by step guide to a working store Please ask all questions in the Discussions tab. Document.Editor: 2013.26: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.26: New Insert Chart Improved User Interface Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsWsus Package Publisher: Release V1.2.1307.01: Fix an issue in the UI, approvals are not shown correctly in the 'Report' tabDirectX Tool Kit: July 2013: July 1, 2013 VS 2013 Preview projects added and updates for DirectXMath 3.05 vectorcall Added use of sRGB WIC metadata for JPEG, PNG, and TIFF SaveToWIC functions updated with new optional setCustomProps parameter and error check with optional targetFormatCore Server 2012 Powershell Script Hyper-v Manager: new_root.zip: Verison 1.0JSON Toolkit: JSON Toolkit 4.1.736: Improved strinfigy performance New serializing feature New anonymous type support in constructorsDotNetNuke® IFrame: IFrame 04.05.00: New DNN6/7 Manifest file and Azure Compatibility.VidCoder: 1.5.2 Beta: Fixed crash on presets with an invalid bitrate.Gardens Point LEX: Gardens Point LEX version 1.2.1: The main distribution is a zip file. This contains the binary executable, documentation, source code and the examples. ChangesVersion 1.2.1 has new facilities for defining and manipulating character classes. These changes make the construction of large Unicode character classes more convenient. The runtime code for performing automaton backup has been re-implemented, and is now faster for scanners that need backup. Source CodeThe distribution contains a complete VS2010 project for the appli...ZXMAK2: Version 2.7.5.7: - fix TZX emulation (Bruce Lee, Zynaps) - fix ATM 16 colors for border - add memory module PROFI 512K; add PROFI V03 rom image; fix PROFI 3.XX configTwitter image Downloader: Twitter Image Downloader 2 with Installer: Application file with Install shield and Dot Net 4.0 redistributableUltimate Music Tagger: Ultimate Music Tagger 1.0.0.0: First release of Ultimate Music TaggerBlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.2: 2013.06.28 Ver5.9.2 (1) ??????????(????SMTP?????)?????????? (2) HTTPS???????????Outlook 2013 Add-In: Configuration Form: This new version includes the following changes: - Refactored code a bit. - Removing configuration from main form to gain more space to display items. - Moved configuration to separate form. You can click the little "gear" icon to access the configuration form (still very simple). - Added option to show past day appointments from the selected day (previous in time, that is). - Added some tooltips. You will have to uninstall the previous version (add/remove programs) if you had installed it ...Terminals: Version 3.0 - Release: Changes since version 2.0:Choose 100% portable or installed version Removed connection warning when running RDP 8 (Windows 8) client Fixed Active directory search Extended Active directory search by LDAP filters Fixed single instance mode when running on Windows Terminal server Merged usage of Tags and Groups Added columns sorting option in tables No UAC prompts on Windows 7 Completely new file persistence data layer New MS SQL persistence layer (Store data in SQL database)...NuGet: NuGet 2.6: Released June 26, 2013. Release notes: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/release-notes/nuget-2.6Python Tools for Visual Studio: 2.0 Beta: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.0 Beta. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, HPC, IPython, and cross platform debugging support. For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuewiStN...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 and WP8 (v1.3 beta): Preview: New MPEG DASH adaptive streaming plugin for Windows Azure Media Services Preview: New Ultraviolet CFF plugin. Preview: New WP7 version with WP8 compatibility. (source code only) Source code is now available via CodePlex Git Misc bug fixes and improvements: WP8 only: Added optional fullscreen and mute buttons to default xaml JS only: protecting currentTime from returning infinity. Some videos would cause currentTime to be infinity which could cause errors in plugins expectin...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.8: SERVER OWNERS: note that the default maprot has changed once again. Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we continue to try to package for those OSes. Or better yet, try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compi...New ProjectsALM Rangers DevOps Tooling and Guidance: Practical tooling and guidance that will enable teams to realize a faster deployment based on continuous feedback.Core Server 2012 Powershell Script Hyper-v Manager: Free core Server 2012 powershell scripts and batch files that replace the non-existent hyper-v manager, vmconnect and mstsc.Enhanced Deployment Service (EDS): EDS is a web service based utility designed to extend the deployment capabilities of administrators with the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit.ExtendedDialogBox: Libreria DialogBoxJazdy: This project is here only because we wanted to take advantage of a public git server.Mon Examen: This web interface is meant to make examinationsneet: summaryOrchard Multi-Choice Voting: A multiple choice voting Orchard module.Particle Swarm Optimization Solving Quadratic Assignment Problem: This project is submitted for the solving of QAP using PSO algorithms with addition of some modification Porjects: 23123123PPL Power Pack: PPL Power PackProperty Builder: Visual Studio tool for speeding up process of coding class properties getters and setters.RedRuler for Redline: I tried some on-screen rulers, none of them help me measure the UI element quickly based on the Redline. So I decided to created this handy RedRuler tool. Royale Living: Mahindra Royale Community PortalSearch and booking Hotel or Tours: Ð? án nghiên c?u c?a sinh viên tdt theo mô hình mvc 4SystemBuilder.Show: This tool is a helper after you create your project in visual studio to create the respective objects and interface. TalentDesk: new ptojectTcmplex: The Training Center teaches many different kind of course such as English, French, Computer hardware and computer softwareTFS Reporting Guide: Provides guidance and samples to enable TFS users to generate reports based on WIT data.Umbraco AdaptiveImages: Adaptive Images Package for UmbracoVirtualNet - A ILcode interpreter/emulator written in C++/Assembly: VirtualNet is a interpreter/emulator for running .net code in native without having to install the .Net FrameWorkVisual Blocks: Visual Blocks ????IDE ????? ??????? ????? ????/?? Visual Studio and Cloud Based Mobile Device Testing: Practical guidance enabling field to remove blockers to adoption and to use and extend the Perfecto Mobile Cloud Device testing within the context of VS.Windows 8 Time Picker for Windows Phone: A Windows Phone implementation of the Time Picker control found in the Windows 8.1 Alarms app.???? - SmallBasic?: ?????????

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• Using SSIS to send a HTML E-Mail Message with built-in table of Counts.

  - by Kevin Shyr

  For the record, this can be just as easily done with a .NET class with a DLL call.  The two major reasons for this ending up as a SSIS package are: There are a lot of SQL resources for maintenance, but not as many .NET developers. There is an existing automated process that links up SQL Jobs (more on that in the next post), and this is part of that process.   To start, this is what the SSIS looks like: The first part of the control flow is just for the override scenario.   In the Execute SQL Task, it calls a stored procedure, which already formats the result into XML by using "FOR XML PATH('Row'), ROOT(N'FieldingCounts')".  The result XML string looks like this: <FieldingCounts>   <Row>     <CellId>M COD</CellId>     <Mailed>64</Mailed>     <ReMailed>210</ReMailed>     <TotalMail>274</TotalMail>     <EMailed>233</EMailed>     <TotalSent>297</TotalSent>   </Row>   <Row>     <CellId>M National</CellId>     <Mailed>11</Mailed>     <ReMailed>59</ReMailed>     <TotalMail>70</TotalMail>     <EMailed>90</EMailed>     <TotalSent>101</TotalSent>   </Row>   <Row>     <CellId>U COD</CellId>     <Mailed>91</Mailed>     <ReMailed>238</ReMailed>     <TotalMail>329</TotalMail>     <EMailed>291</EMailed>     <TotalSent>382</TotalSent>   </Row>   <Row>     <CellId>U National</CellId>     <Mailed>63</Mailed>     <ReMailed>286</ReMailed>     <TotalMail>349</TotalMail>     <EMailed>374</EMailed>     <TotalSent>437</TotalSent>   </Row> </FieldingCounts>  This result is saved into an internal SSIS variable with the following settings on the General tab and the Result Set tab:   Now comes the trickier part.  We need to use the XML Task to format the XML string result into an HTML table, and I used Direct input XSLT And here is the code of XSLT: <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output method="html" indent="yes"/>   <xsl:template match="/ROOT">         <table border="1" cellpadding="6">           <tr>             <td></td>             <td>Mailed</td>             <td>Re-mailed</td>             <td>Total Mail (Mailed, Re-mailed)</td>             <td>E-mailed</td>             <td>Total Sent (Mailed, E-mailed)</td>           </tr>           <xsl:for-each select="FieldingCounts/Row">             <tr>               <xsl:for-each select="./*">                 <td>                   <xsl:value-of select="." />                 </td>               </xsl:for-each>             </tr>           </xsl:for-each>         </table>   </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet>    Then a script task is used to send out an HTML email (as we are all painfully aware that SSIS Send Mail Task only sends plain text) Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 using System; using System.Data; using Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime; using System.Windows.Forms; using System.Net.Mail; using System.Net;   namespace ST_b829a2615e714bcfb55db0ce97be3901.csproj {     [System.AddIn.AddIn("ScriptMain", Version = "1.0", Publisher = "", Description = "")]     public partial class ScriptMain : Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Tasks.ScriptTask.VSTARTScriptObjectModelBase     {           #region VSTA generated code         enum ScriptResults         {             Success = Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.DTSExecResult.Success,             Failure = Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.DTSExecResult.Failure         };         #endregion           public void Main()         {             String EmailMsgBody = String.Format("<HTML><BODY><P>{0}</P><P>{1}</P></BODY></HTML>"                                                 , Dts.Variables["Config_SMTP_MessageSourceText"].Value.ToString()                                                 , Dts.Variables["InternalStr_CountResultAfterXSLT"].Value.ToString());             MailMessage EmailCountMsg = new MailMessage(Dts.Variables["Config_SMTP_From"].Value.ToString().Replace(";", ",")                                                         , Dts.Variables["Config_SMTP_Success_To"].Value.ToString().Replace(";", ",")                                                         , Dts.Variables["Config_SMTP_SubjectLinePrefix"].Value.ToString() + " " + Dts.Variables["InternalStr_FieldingDate"].Value.ToString()                                                         , EmailMsgBody);             //EmailCountMsg.From.             EmailCountMsg.CC.Add(Dts.Variables["Config_SMTP_Success_CC"].Value.ToString().Replace(";", ","));             EmailCountMsg.IsBodyHtml = true;               SmtpClient SMTPForCount = new SmtpClient(Dts.Variables["Config_SMTP_ServerAddress"].Value.ToString());             SMTPForCount.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultNetworkCredentials;               SMTPForCount.Send(EmailCountMsg);               Dts.TaskResult = (int)ScriptResults.Success;         }     } } Note on this code: notice the email list has Replace(";", ",").  This is only here because the list is configurable in the SQL Job Step at Set Values, which does not react well with colons as email separator, but system.Net.Mail only handles comma as email separator, hence the extra replace in the string. The result is a nicely formatted email message with count information:

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• Personal Technology – Laptop Screen Blank – No Post – No BIOS – No Boot

  - by Pinal Dave

  If your laptop Screen is Blank and there is no POST, BIOS or boot, you can follow the steps mentioned here and there are chances that it will work if there is no hardware failure inside. Step 1: Remove the power cord from the laptop Step 2: Remove the battery from the laptop Step 3: Hold power button (keep it pressed) for almost 60 seconds Step 4: Plug power back in laptop Step 5: Start computer and it should just start normally. Step 6: Now shut down Step 7: Insert the battery back in the laptop Step 8: Start laptop again and it should work Note 1: If your laptop does not work after inserting back the memory. Remove the memory and repeat above process. Do not insert the battery back as it is malfunctioning. Note 2: If your screen is faulty or have issues with your hardware (motherboard, screen or anything else) this method will not fix your computer. Those, who care about how I come up with this not SQL related blog post, here is the very funny true story. If you are a married man, you will know what I am going to describe next. May be you have faced the same situation or at least you feel and understand my situation. My wife’s computer suddenly stops working when she was searching for my daughter’s mathematics worksheets online. While the fatal accident happened with my wife’s computer (which was my loyal computer for over 4 years before she got it), I was working in my home office, fixing a high priority issue (live order’s database was corrupted) with one of the largest eCommerce websites.  While I was working on production server where I was fixing database corruption, my wife ran to my home office. Here is how the conversation went: Wife: This computer does not work. I: Restart it. Wife: It does not start. I: What did you do with it? Wife: Nothing, it just stopped working. I: Okey, I will look into it later, working on the very urgent issue. Wife: I was printing my daughter’s worksheet. I: Hm.. Okey. Wife: It was the mathematics worksheet, which you promised you will teach but you never get around to do it, so I am doing it myself. I: Thanks. I appreciate it. I am very busy with this issue as million dollar transaction are not happening as the database got corrupted and … Wife: So what … umm… You mean to say that you care about this customer more than your daughter. You know she got A+ in every other class but in mathematics she got only A. She missed that extra credit question. I: She is only 4, it is okay. Wife: She is 4.5 years old not 4. So you are not going to fix this computer which does not start at all. I think our daughter next time will even get lower grades as her dad is busy fixing something. I: Alright, I give up bring me that computer. Our daughter who was listening everything so far she finally decided to speak up. Daughter: Dad, it is a laptop not computer. I: Yes, sweety get that laptop here and your dad is going to fix the this small issue of million dollar issue later on. I decided to pay attention to my wife’s computer. She was right. No matter what I do, it will not boot up, it will not start, no BIOS, no POST screen. The computer starts for a second but nothing comes up on the screen. The light indicating hard drive comes up for a second and goes off. Nothing happens. I removed every single USB drive from the laptop but it still would not start. It was indeed no fun for me. Finally I remember my days when I was not married and used to study in University of Southern California, Los Angeles. I remembered that I used to have very old second (or maybe third or fourth) hand computer with me. In polite words, I had pre-owned computer and it used to face very similar issues again and again. I had small routine I used to follow to fix my old computer and I had decided to follow the same steps again with this computer. Step 1: Remove the power cord from the laptop Step 2: Remove the battery from the laptop Step 3: Hold power button (keep it pressed) for almost 60 seconds Step 4: Plug power back in laptop Step 5: Start computer and it should just start normally. Step 6: Now shut down Step 7: Insert the battery back in the laptop Step 8: Start laptop again and it should work Note 1: If your laptop does not work after inserting back the memory. Remove the memory and repeat above process. Do not insert the battery back as it is malfunctioning. Note 2: If your screen is faulty or have issues with your hardware (motherboard, screen or anything else) this method will not fix your computer. Once I followed above process, her computer worked. I was very delighted, that now I can go back to solving the problem where millions of transactions were waiting as I was fixing corrupted database and it the current state of the database was in emergency mode. Once I fixed the computer, I looked at my wife and asked. I: Well, now this laptop is back online, can I get guaranteed that she will get A+ in mathematics in this week’s quiz? Wife: Sure, I promise. I: Fantastic. After saying that I started to look at my database corruption and my wife interrupted me again. Wife: Btw, I forgot to tell you. Our daughter had got A in mathematics last week but she had another quiz today and she already have received A+ there. I kept my promise. I looked at her and she started to walk outside room, before I say anything my phone rang. DBA from eCommerce company had called me, as he was wondering why there is no activity from my side in last 10 minutes. DBA: Hey bud, are you still connected. I see um… no activity in last 10 minutes. I: Oh, well, I was just saving the world. I am back now. After two hours I had fixed the database corruption and everything was normal. I was outsmarted by my wife but honestly I still respect and love her the same as she is the one who spends countless hours with our daughter so she does not miss me and I can continue writing blogs and keep on doing technology evangelism. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Humor, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• jQuery CSS Property Monitoring Plug-in updated

  - by Rick Strahl

  A few weeks back I had talked about the need to watch properties of an object and be able to take action when certain values changed. The need for this arose out of wanting to build generic components that could 'attach' themselves to other objects. One example is a drop shadow - if I add a shadow behavior to an object I want the shadow to be pinned to that object so when that object moves I also want the shadow to move with it, or when the panel is hidden the shadow should hide with it - automatically without having to explicitly hook up monitoring code to the panel. For example, in my shadow plug-in I can now do something like this (where el is the element that has the shadow attached and sh is the shadow): if (!exists) // if shadow was created el.watch("left,top,width,height,display", function() { if (el.is(":visible")) $(this).shadow(opt); // redraw else sh.hide(); }, 100, "_shadowMove"); The code now monitors several properties and if any of them change the provided function is called. So when the target object is moved or hidden or resized the watcher function is called and the shadow can be redrawn or hidden in the case of visibility going away. So if you run any of the following code: $("#box") .shadow() .draggable({ handle: ".blockheader" }); // drag around the box - shadow should follow // hide the box - shadow should disappear with box setTimeout(function() { $("#box").hide(); }, 4000); // show the box - shadow should come back too setTimeout(function() { $("#box").show(); }, 8000); This can be very handy functionality when you're dealing with objects or operations that you need to track generically and there are no native events for them. For example, with a generic shadow object that attaches itself to any another element there's no way that I know of to track whether the object has been moved or hidden either via some UI operation (like dragging) or via code. While some UI operations like jQuery.ui.draggable would allow events to fire when the mouse is moved nothing of the sort exists if you modify locations in code. Even tracking the object in drag mode this is hardly generic behavior - a generic shadow implementation can't know when dragging is hooked up. So the watcher provides an alternative that basically gives an Observer like pattern that notifies you when something you're interested in changes. In the watcher hookup code (in the shadow() plugin) above  a check is made if the object is visible and if it is the shadow is redrawn. Otherwise the shadow is hidden. The first parameter is a list of CSS properties to be monitored followed by the function that is called. The function called receives this as the element that's been changed and receives two parameters: The array of watched objects with their current values, plus an index to the object that caused the change function to fire. How does it work When I wrote it about this last time I started out with a simple timer that would poll for changes at a fixed interval with setInterval(). A few folks commented that there are is a DOM API - DOMAttrmodified in Mozilla and propertychange in IE that allow notification whenever any property changes which is much more efficient and smooth than the setInterval approach I used previously. On browser that support these events (FireFox and IE basically - WebKit has the DOMAttrModified event but it doesn't appear to work) the shadow effect is instant - no 'drag behind' of the shadow. Running on a browser that doesn't support still uses setInterval() and the shadow movement is slightly delayed which looks sloppy. There are a few additional changes to this code - it also supports monitoring multiple CSS properties now so a single object can monitor a host of CSS properties rather than one object per property which is easier to work with. For display purposes position, bounds and visibility will be common properties that are to be watched. Here's what the new version looks like: $.fn.watch = function (props, func, interval, id) { /// <summary> /// Allows you to monitor changes in a specific /// CSS property of an element by polling the value. /// when the value changes a function is called. /// The function called is called in the context /// of the selected element (ie. this) /// </summary> /// <param name="prop" type="String">CSS Properties to watch sep. by commas</param> /// <param name="func" type="Function"> /// Function called when the value has changed. /// </param> /// <param name="interval" type="Number"> /// Optional interval for browsers that don't support DOMAttrModified or propertychange events. /// Determines the interval used for setInterval calls. /// </param> /// <param name="id" type="String">A unique ID that identifies this watch instance on this element</param> /// <returns type="jQuery" /> if (!interval) interval = 200; if (!id) id = "_watcher"; return this.each(function () { var _t = this; var el$ = $(this); var fnc = function () { __watcher.call(_t, id) }; var itId = null; var data = { id: id, props: props.split(","), func: func, vals: [props.split(",").length], fnc: fnc, origProps: props, interval: interval }; $.each(data.props, function (i) { data.vals[i] = el$.css(data.props[i]); }); el$.data(id, data); hookChange(el$, id, data.fnc); }); function hookChange(el$, id, fnc) { el$.each(function () { var el = $(this); if (typeof (el.get(0).onpropertychange) == "object") el.bind("propertychange." + id, fnc); else if ($.browser.mozilla) el.bind("DOMAttrModified." + id, fnc); else itId = setInterval(fnc, interval); }); } function __watcher(id) { var el$ = $(this); var w = el$.data(id); if (!w) return; var _t = this; if (!w.func) return; // must unbind or else unwanted recursion may occur el$.unwatch(id); var changed = false; var i = 0; for (i; i < w.props.length; i++) { var newVal = el$.css(w.props[i]); if (w.vals[i] != newVal) { w.vals[i] = newVal; changed = true; break; } } if (changed) w.func.call(_t, w, i); // rebind event hookChange(el$, id, w.fnc); } } $.fn.unwatch = function (id) { this.each(function () { var el = $(this); var fnc = el.data(id).fnc; try { if (typeof (this.onpropertychange) == "object") el.unbind("propertychange." + id, fnc); else if ($.browser.mozilla) el.unbind("DOMAttrModified." + id, fnc); else clearInterval(id); } // ignore if element was already unbound catch (e) { } }); return this; } There are basically two jQuery functions - watch and unwatch. jQuery.fn.watch(props,func,interval,id) Starts watching an element for changes in the properties specified. props The CSS properties that are to be watched for changes. If any of the specified properties changes the function specified in the second parameter is fired. func (watchData,index) The function fired in response to a changed property. Receives this as the element changed and object that represents the watched properties and their respective values. The first parameter is passed in this structure:    { id: itId, props: [], func: func, vals: [] }; A second parameter is the index of the changed property so data.props[i] or data.vals[i] gets the property value that has changed. interval The interval for setInterval() for those browsers that don't support property watching in the DOM. In milliseconds. id An optional id that identifies this watcher. Required only if multiple watchers might be hooked up to the same element. The default is _watcher if not specified. jQuery.fn.unwatch(id) Unhooks watching of the element by disconnecting the event handlers. id Optional watcher id that was specified in the call to watch. This value can be omitted to use the default value of _watcher. You can also grab the latest version of the  code for this plug-in as well as the shadow in the full library at: http://www.west-wind.com:8080/svn/jquery/trunk/jQueryControls/Resources/ww.jquery.js watcher has no other dependencies although it lives in this larger library. The shadow plug-in depends on watcher.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011

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• Elegance, thy Name is jQuery

  - by SGWellens

  So, I'm browsing though some questions over on the Stack Overflow website and I found a good jQuery question just a few minutes old. Here is a link to it. It was a tough question; I knew that by answering it, I could learn new stuff and reinforce what I already knew: Reading is good, doing is better. Maybe I could help someone in the process too. I cut and pasted the HTML from the question into my Visual Studio IDE and went back to Stack Overflow to reread the question. Dang, someone had already answered it! And it was a great answer. I never even had a chance to start analyzing the issue. Now I know what a one-legged man feels like in an ass-kicking contest. Nevertheless, since the question and answer were so interesting, I decided to dissect them and learn as much as possible. The HTML consisted of some divs separated by h3 headings.  Note the elements are laid out sequentially with no programmatic grouping: <h3 class="heading">Heading 1</h3> <div>Content</div> <div>More content</div> <div>Even more content</div><h3 class="heading">Heading 2</h3> <div>some content</div> <div>some more content</div><h3 class="heading">Heading 3</h3> <div>other content</div></form></body>  The requirement was to wrap a div around each h3 heading and the subsequent divs grouping them into sections. Why? I don't know, I suppose if you screen-scrapped some HTML from another site, you might want to reformat it before displaying it on your own. Anyways… Here is the marvelously, succinct posted answer: $('.heading').each(function(){ $(this).nextUntil('.heading').andSelf().wrapAll('<div class="section">');}); I was familiar with all the parts except for nextUntil and andSelf. But, I'll analyze the whole answer for completeness. I'll do this by rewriting the posted answer in a different style and adding a boat-load of comments: function Test(){ // $Sections is a jQuery object and it will contain three elements var $Sections = $('.heading'); // use each to iterate over each of the three elements $Sections.each(function () { // $this is a jquery object containing the current element // being iterated var $this = $(this); // nextUntil gets the following sibling elements until it reaches // an element with the CSS class 'heading' // andSelf adds in the source element (this) to the collection $this = $this.nextUntil('.heading').andSelf(); // wrap the elements with a div $this.wrapAll('<div class="section" >'); });}  The code here doesn't look nearly as concise and elegant as the original answer. However, unless you and your staff are jQuery masters, during development it really helps to work through algorithms step by step. You can step through this code in the debugger and examine the jQuery objects to make sure one step is working before proceeding on to the next. It's much easier to debug and troubleshoot when each logical coding step is a separate line of code. Note: You may think the original code runs much faster than this version. However, the time difference is trivial: Not enough to worry about: Less than 1 millisecond (tested in IE and FF). Note: You may want to jam everything into one line because it results in less traffic being sent to the client. That is true. However, most Internet servers now compress HTML and JavaScript by stripping out comments and white space (go to Bing or Google and view the source). This feature should be enabled on your server: Let the server compress your code, you don't need to do it. Free Career Advice: Creating maintainable code is Job One—Maximum Priority—The Prime Directive. If you find yourself suddenly transferred to customer support, it may be that the code you are writing is not as readable as it could be and not as readable as it should be. Moving on… I created a CSS class to enhance the results: .section{ background-color: yellow; border: 2px solid black; margin: 5px;} Here is the rendered output before:   …and after the jQuery code runs.   Pretty Cool! But, while playing with this code, the logic of nextUntil began to bother me: What happens in the last section? What stops elements from being collected since there are no more elements with the .heading class? The answer is nothing.  In this case it stopped collecting elements because it was at the end of the page.  But what if there were additional HTML elements? I added an anchor tag and another div to the HTML: <h3 class="heading">Heading 1</h3> <div>Content</div> <div>More content</div> <div>Even more content</div><h3 class="heading">Heading 2</h3> <div>some content</div> <div>some more content</div><h3 class="heading">Heading 3</h3> <div>other content</div><a>this is a link</a><div>unrelated div</div> </form></body> The code as-is will include both the anchor and the unrelated div. This isn't what we want.   My first attempt to correct this used the filter parameter of the nextUntil function: nextUntil('.heading', 'div')  This will only collect div elements. But it merely skipped the anchor tag and it still collected the unrelated div:   The problem is we need a way to tell the nextUntil function when to stop. CSS selectors to the rescue! nextUntil('.heading, a')  This tells nextUntil to stop collecting elements when it gets to an element with a .heading class OR when it gets to an anchor tag. In this case it solved the problem. FYI: The comma operator in a CSS selector allows multiple criteria.   Bingo! One final note, we could have broken the code down even more: We could have replaced the andSelf function here: $this = $this.nextUntil('.heading, a').andSelf(); With this: // get all the following siblings and then add the current item$this = $this.nextUntil('.heading, a');$this.add(this);  But in this case, the andSelf function reads real nice. In my opinion. Here's a link to a jsFiddle if you want to play with it. I hope someone finds this useful Steve Wellens CodeProject

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• Network communications mechanisms for SQL Server

  - by Akshay Deep Lamba

  Problem I am trying to understand how SQL Server communicates on the network, because I'm having to tell my networking team what ports to open up on the firewall for an edge web server to communicate back to the SQL Server on the inside. What do I need to know? Solution In order to understand what needs to be opened where, let's first talk briefly about the two main protocols that are in common use today: TCP - Transmission Control Protocol UDP - User Datagram Protocol Both are part of the TCP/IP suite of protocols. We'll start with TCP. TCP TCP is the main protocol by which clients communicate with SQL Server. Actually, it is more correct to say that clients and SQL Server use Tabular Data Stream (TDS), but TDS actually sits on top of TCP and when we're talking about Windows and firewalls and other networking devices, that's the protocol that rules and controls are built around. So we'll just speak in terms of TCP. TCP is a connection-oriented protocol. What that means is that the two systems negotiate the connection and both agree to it. Think of it like a phone call. While one person initiates the phone call, the other person has to agree to take it and both people can end the phone call at any time. TCP is the same way. Both systems have to agree to the communications, but either side can end it at any time. In addition, there is functionality built into TCP to ensure that all communications can be disassembled and reassembled as necessary so it can pass over various network devices and be put together again properly in the right order. It also has mechanisms to handle and retransmit lost communications. Because of this functionality, TCP is the protocol used by many different network applications. The way the applications all can share is through the use of ports. When a service, like SQL Server, comes up on a system, it must listen on a port. For a default SQL Server instance, the default port is 1433. Clients connect to the port via the TCP protocol, the connection is negotiated and agreed to, and then the two sides can transfer information as needed until either side decides to end the communication. In actuality, both sides will have a port to use for the communications, but since the client's port is typically determined semi-randomly, when we're talking about firewalls and the like, typically we're interested in the port the server or service is using. UDP UDP, unlike TCP, is not connection oriented. A "client" can send a UDP communications to anyone it wants. There's nothing in place to negotiate a communications connection, there's nothing in the protocol itself to coordinate order of communications or anything like that. If that's needed, it's got to be handled by the application or by a protocol built on top of UDP being used by the application. If you think of TCP as a phone call, think of UDP as a postcard. I can put a postcard in the mail to anyone I want, and so long as it is addressed properly and has a stamp on it, the postal service will pick it up. Now, what happens it afterwards is not guaranteed. There's no mechanism for retransmission of lost communications. It's great for short communications that doesn't necessarily need an acknowledgement. Because multiple network applications could be communicating via UDP, it uses ports, just like TCP. The SQL Browser or the SQL Server Listener Service uses UDP. Network Communications - Talking to SQL Server When an instance of SQL Server is set up, what TCP port it listens on depends. A default instance will be set up to listen on port 1433. A named instance will be set to a random port chosen during installation. In addition, a named instance will be configured to allow it to change that port dynamically. What this means is that when a named instance starts up, if it finds something already using the port it normally uses, it'll pick a new port. If you have a named instance, and you have connections coming across a firewall, you're going to want to use SQL Server Configuration Manager to set a static port. This will allow the networking and security folks to configure their devices for maximum protection. While you can change the network port for a default instance of SQL Server, most people don't. Network Communications - Finding a SQL Server When just the name is specified for a client to connect to SQL Server, for instance, MySQLServer, this is an attempt to connect to the default instance. In this case the client will automatically attempt to communicate to port 1433 on MySQLServer. If you've switched the port for the default instance, you'll need to tell the client the proper port, usually by specifying the following syntax in the connection string: <server>,<port>. For instance, if you moved SQL Server to listen on 14330, you'd use MySQLServer,14330 instead of just MySQLServer. However, because a named instance sets up its port dynamically by default, the client never knows at the outset what the port is it should talk to. That's what the SQL Browser or the SQL Server Listener Service (SQL Server 2000) is for. In this case, the client sends a communication via the UDP protocol to port 1434. It asks, "Where is the named instance?" So if I was running a named instance called SQL2008R2, it would be asking the SQL Browser, "Hey, how do I talk to MySQLServer\SQL2008R2?" The SQL Browser would then send back a communications from UDP port 1434 back to the client telling the client how to talk to the named instance. Of course, you can skip all of this of you set that named instance's port statically. Then you can use the <server>,<port> mechanism to connect and the client won't try to talk to the SQL Browser service. It'll simply try to make the connection. So, for instance, is the SQL2008R2 instance was listening on port 20080, specifying MySQLServer,20080 would attempt a connection to the named instance. Network Communications - Named Pipes Named pipes is an older network library communications mechanism and it's generally not used any longer. It shouldn't be used across a firewall. However, if for some reason you need to connect to SQL Server with it, this protocol also sits on top of TCP. Named Pipes is actually used by the operating system and it has its own mechanism within the protocol to determine where to route communications. As far as network communications is concerned, it listens on TCP port 445. This is true whether we're talking about a default or named instance of SQL Server. The Summary Table To put all this together, here is what you need to know: Type of Communication Protocol Used Default Port Finding a SQL Server or SQL Server Named Instance UDP 1434 Communicating with a default instance of SQL Server TCP 1433 Communicating with a named instance of SQL Server TCP * Determined dynamically at start up Communicating with SQL Server via Named Pipes TCP 445

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• Tracing Silex from PHP to the OS with DTrace

  - by cj

  In this blog post I show the full stack tracing of Brendan Gregg's php_syscolors.d script in the DTrace Toolkit. The Toolkit contains a dozen very useful PHP DTrace scripts and many more scripts for other languages and the OS. For this example, I'll trace the PHP micro framework Silex, which was the topic of the second of two talks by Dustin Whittle at a recent SF PHP Meetup. His slides are at Silex: From Micro to Full Stack. Installing DTrace and PHP The php_syscolors.d script uses some static PHP probes and some kernel probes. For Oracle Linux I discussed installing DTrace and PHP in DTrace PHP Using Oracle Linux 'playground' Pre-Built Packages. On other platforms with DTrace support, follow your standard procedures to enable DTrace and load the correct providers. The sdt and systrace providers are required in addition to fasttrap. On Oracle Linux, I loaded the DTrace modules like: # modprobe fasttrap # modprobe sdt # modprobe systrace # chmod 666 /dev/dtrace/helper Installing the DTrace Toolkit I download DTraceToolkit-0.99.tar.gz and extracted it: $ tar -zxf DTraceToolkit-0.99.tar.gz The PHP scripts are in the Php directory and examples in the Examples directory. Installing Silex I downloaded the "fat" Silex .tgz file from the download page and extracted it: $ tar -zxf silex_fat.tgz I changed the demonstration silex/web/index.php so I could use the PHP development web server: <?php // web/index.php $filename = __DIR__.preg_replace('#(\?.*)$#', '', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); if (php_sapi_name() === 'cli-server' && is_file($filename)) { return false; } require_once __DIR__.'/../vendor/autoload.php'; $app = new Silex\Application(); //$app['debug'] = true; $app->get('/hello', function() { return 'Hello!'; }); $app->run(); ?> Running DTrace The php_syscolors.d script uses the -Z option to dtrace, so it can be started before PHP, i.e. when there are zero of the requested probes available to be traced. I ran DTrace like: # cd DTraceToolkit-0.99/Php # ./php_syscolors.d Next, I started the PHP developer web server in a second terminal: $ cd silex $ php -S localhost:8080 -t web web/index.php At this point, the web server is idle, waiting for requests. DTrace is idle, waiting for the probes in php_syscolors.d to be fired, at which time the action associated with each probe will run. I then loaded the demonstration page in a browser: http://localhost:8080/hello When the request was fulfilled and the simple output of "Hello" was displayed, I ^C'd php and dtrace in their terminals to stop them. DTrace output over a thousand lines long had been generated. Here is one snippet from when run() was invoked: C PID/TID DELTA(us) FILE:LINE TYPE -- NAME ... 1 4765/4765 21 Application.php:487 func -> run 1 4765/4765 29 ClassLoader.php:182 func -> loadClass 1 4765/4765 17 ClassLoader.php:198 func -> findFile 1 4765/4765 31 ":- syscall -> access 1 4765/4765 26 ":- syscall <- access 1 4765/4765 16 ClassLoader.php:198 func <- findFile 1 4765/4765 25 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 15 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 22 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 14 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 15 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 60 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 20 ":- syscall -> open 1 4765/4765 16 ":- syscall <- open 1 4765/4765 26 ":- syscall -> newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall <- newfstat 1 4765/4765 17 ":- syscall -> newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall <- newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall -> newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall <- newfstat 1 4765/4765 20 ":- syscall -> mmap 1 4765/4765 14 ":- syscall <- mmap 1 4765/4765 3201 ":- syscall -> mmap 1 4765/4765 27 ":- syscall <- mmap 1 4765/4765 1233 ":- syscall -> munmap 1 4765/4765 53 ":- syscall <- munmap 1 4765/4765 15 ":- syscall -> close 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall <- close 1 4765/4765 34 Request.php:32 func -> main 1 4765/4765 22 Request.php:32 func <- main 1 4765/4765 31 ClassLoader.php:182 func <- loadClass 1 4765/4765 33 Request.php:249 func -> createFromGlobals 1 4765/4765 29 Request.php:198 func -> __construct 1 4765/4765 24 Request.php:218 func -> initialize 1 4765/4765 26 ClassLoader.php:182 func -> loadClass 1 4765/4765 89 ClassLoader.php:198 func -> findFile 1 4765/4765 43 ":- syscall -> access ... The output shows PHP functions being called and returning (and where they are located) and which system calls the PHP functions in turn invoked. The time each line took from the previous one is displayed in the third column. The first column is the CPU number. In this example, the process was always on CPU 1 so the output is naturally ordered without requiring post-processing, or the D script requiring to be modified to display a time stamp. On a terminal, the output of php_syscolors.d is color-coded according to whether each function is a PHP or system one, hence the file name. Summary With one tool, I was able to trace the interaction of a user application with the operating system. I was able to do this to an application running "live" in a web context. The DTrace Toolkit provides a very handy repository of DTrace information. Even though the PHP scripts were created in the time frame of the original PHP DTrace PECL extension, which only had PHP function entry and return probes, the scripts provide core examples for custom investigation and resolution scripts. You can easily adapt the ideas and and create scripts using the other PHP static probes, which are listed in the PHP Manual. Because DTrace is "always on", you can take advantage of it to resolve development questions or fix production situations.

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• The Great Divorce

  - by BlackRabbitCoder

  I have a confession to make: I've been in an abusive relationship for more than 17 years now.  Yes, I am not ashamed to admit it, but I'm finally doing something about it. I met her in college, she was new and sexy and amazingly fast -- and I'd never met anything like her before.  Her style and her power captivated me and I couldn't wait to learn more about her.  I took a chance on her, and though I learned a lot from her -- and will always be grateful for my time with her -- I think it's time to move on. Her name was C++, and she so outshone my previous love, C, that any thoughts of going back evaporated in the heat of this new romance.  She promised me she'd be gentle and not hurt me the way C did.  She promised me she'd clean-up after herself better than C did.  She promised me she'd be less enigmatic and easier to keep happy than C was.  But I was deceived.  Oh sure, as far as truth goes, it wasn't a complete lie.  To some extent she was more fun, more powerful, safer, and easier to maintain.  But it just wasn't good enough -- or at least it's not good enough now. I loved C++, some part of me still does, it's my first-love of programming languages and I recognize its raw power, its blazing speed, and its improvements over its predecessor.  But with today's hardware, at speeds we could only dream to conceive of twenty years ago, that need for speed -- at the cost of all else -- has died, and that has left my feelings for C++ moribund. If I ever need to write an operating system or a device driver, then I might need that speed.  But 99% of the time I don't.  I'm a business-type programmer and chances are 90% of you are too, and even the ones who need speed at all costs may be surprised by how much you sacrifice for that.   That's not to say that I don't want my software to perform, and it's not to say that in the business world we don't care about speed or that our job is somehow less difficult or technical.  There's many times we write programs to handle millions of real-time updates or handle thousands of financial transactions or tracking trading algorithms where every second counts.  But if I choose to write my code in C++ purely for speed chances are I'll never notice the speed increase -- and equally true chances are it will be far more prone to crash and far less easy to maintain.  Nearly without fail, it's the macro-optimizations you need, not the micro-optimizations.  If I choose to write a O(n2) algorithm when I could have used a O(n) algorithm -- that can kill me.  If I choose to go to the database to load a piece of unchanging data every time instead of caching it on first load -- that too can kill me.  And if I cross the network multiple times for pieces of data instead of getting it all at once -- yes that can also kill me.  But choosing an overly powerful and dangerous mid-level language to squeeze out every last drop of performance will realistically not make stock orders process any faster, and more likely than not open up the system to more risk of crashes and resource leaks. And that's when my love for C++ began to die.  When I noticed that I didn't need that speed anymore.  That that speed was really kind of a lie.  Sure, I can be super efficient and pack bits in a byte instead of using separate boolean values.  Sure, I can use an unsigned char instead of an int.  But in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter as much as you think it does.  The key is maintainability, and that's where C++ failed me.  I like to tell the other developers I work with that there's two levels of correctness in coding: Is it immediately correct? Will it stay correct? That is, you can hack together any piece of code and make it correct to satisfy a task at hand, but if a new developer can't come in tomorrow and make a fairly significant change to it without jeopardizing that correctness, it won't stay correct. Some people laugh at me when I say I now prefer maintainability over speed.  But that is exactly the point.  If you focus solely on speed you tend to produce code that is much harder to maintain over the long hall, and that's a load of technical debt most shops can't afford to carry and end up completely scrapping code before it's time.  When good code is written well for maintainability, though, it can be correct both now and in the future. And you know the best part is?  My new love is nearly as fast as C++, and in some cases even faster -- and better than that, I know C# will treat me right.  Her creators have poured hundreds of thousands of hours of time into making her the sexy beast she is today.  They made her easy to understand and not an enigmatic mess.  They made her consistent and not moody and amorphous.  And they made her perform as fast as I care to go by optimizing her both at compile time and a run-time. Her code is so elegant and easy on the eyes that I'm not worried where she will run to or what she'll pull behind my back.  She is powerful enough to handle all my tasks, fast enough to execute them with blazing speed, maintainable enough so that I can rely on even fairly new peers to modify my work, and rich enough to allow me to satisfy any need.  C# doesn't ask me to clean up her messes!  She cleans up after herself and she tries to make my life easier for me by taking on most of those optimization tasks C++ asked me to take upon myself.  Now, there are many of you who would say that I am the cause of my own grief, that it was my fault C++ didn't behave because I didn't pay enough attention to her.  That I alone caused the pain she inflicted on me.  And to some extent, you have a point.  But she was so high maintenance, requiring me to know every twist and turn of her vast and unrestrained power that any wrong term or bout of forgetfulness was met with painful reminders that she wasn't going to watch my back when I made a mistake.  But C#, she loves me when I'm good, and she loves me when I'm bad, and together we make beautiful code that is both fast and safe. So that's why I'm leaving C++ behind.  She says she's changing for me, but I have no interest in what C++0x may bring.  Oh, I'll still keep in touch, and maybe I'll see her now and again when she brings her problems to my door and asks for some attention -- for I always have a soft spot for her, you see.  But she's out of my house now.  I have three kids and a dog and a cat, and all require me to clean up after them, why should I have to clean up after my programming language as well?

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• Master Data

  - by david.butler(at)oracle.com

  Let's take a deeper look at what we mean when we talk about 'Master' data. In its most general sense, master data is data that exists in more than one operational application. These are the applications that automate business processes. These applications require significant amounts of data to function correctly.  This includes data about the objects that are involved in transactions, as well as the transaction data itself.  For example, when a customer buys a product, the transaction is managed by a sales application.  The objects of the transaction are the Customer and the Product.  The transactional data is the time, place, price, discount, payment methods, etc. used at the point of sale. Many thousands of transactional data attributes are needed within the application. These important data elements are local to the applications and have no bearing on other applications. Harmonization and synchronization across applications is not necessary. The Customer and Product objects of the transaction also have a large number of attributes. Customer for example, includes hierarchies, hierarchical and matrixed relationships, contacts, classifications, preferences, accounts, identifiers, profiles, and addresses galore for 'ship to', 'mail to'; 'service at'; etc. Dozens of attributes exist for individuals, hundreds for organizations, and thousands for products. This data has meaning beyond any particular application. It exists in many applications and drives the vital cross application enterprise business processes. These are the processes that define and differentiate the organization. At every decision point, information about the objects of the process determines the direction of the process flow. This is the nature of the data that exists in more than one application, and this is why we call it 'master data'. Let me elaborate. Parties Oracle has developed a party schema to model all participants in your daily business operations. It models people, organizations, groups, customers, contacts, employees, and suppliers. It models their accounts, locations, classifications, and preferences.  And most importantly, it models the vast array of hierarchical and matrixed relationships that exist between all the participants in your real world operations.  The model logically separates people and organizations from their relationships and accounts.  This separation creates flexibility unmatched in the industry and accounts for the fact that the Oracle schema for Customers, Suppliers, and Accounts is a true superset of the wide variety of commercial and homegrown customer models in existence. Sites Sites are places where business is conducted. They can be addresses, clusters such as retail malls, locations within a cluster, floors within a building, places where meters are located, rooms on floors, etc.  Fully understanding all attributes of a site is key to many business processes. Attributes such as 'noise abatement policy' at a point of delivery, or the size of an oven in a business kitchen drive day-to-day activities such as delivery schedules or food promotions. Typically this kind of data is siloed in departments and scattered across applications and spreadsheets.  This leads to conflicting information and poor operational efficiencies. Oracle's Global Single Schema can hold all site attributes in one place and enables a single version of authoritative site information across the enterprise. Products and Services The Oracle Global Single Schema also includes a number of entities that define the products and services a company creates and offers for sale. Key entities include Items organized into Catalogs and Price Lists. The Catalog structures provide for the ability to capture different views of a product such as engineering, manufacturing, and service which are based on a unified product model. As a result, designers, manufacturing engineers, purchasers and partners can work simultaneously on a common product definition. The Catalog schema allows for unlimited attributes, combines them into meaningful groups, and maps them to catalog categories to track these different types of information. The model also maps an unlimited number of functional structures for each item. For example, multiple Bills of Material (BOMs) can be constructed representing requirements BOM, features BOM, and packaging BOM for an item. The Catalog model also supports hierarchical information about each item and all standard Global Data Synchronization attributes. Business Processes Utilizing Linked Data Entities Each business entity codified into a centralized master data environment significantly improves the efficiency of the automated business processes that use the consolidated data.  When all the key business entities used by an organization's process are so consolidated, the advantages are multiplied.  The primary reason for business process breakdowns (i.e. data errors across application boundaries) is eliminated. All processes are positively impacted and business process automation is itself automated.  I like to use the "Call to Resolution" business process as an example to help illustrate this important point. It involves call center applications, service applications, RMA applications, transportation applications, inventory applications, etc. Customer, Site, Product and Supplier master data must all be correct and consistent across these applications.  What's more, the data relationships between customer and product, and product and suppliers must be right. This is the minimum quality needed to insure the business process flows without error. But that is not the end of the story. Critical master data attributes such as customer loyalty, profitability, credit worthiness, and propensity to buy can optimize the call center point of contact component of the process. Critical product information such as alternative parts or equivalent products can optimize the resolution selected by the process. A comprehensive understanding of the 'service at' location can help insure multiple trips are avoided in the process. Full supplier information on reliability, delivery delays, and potential alternates can prevent supplier exceptions and play a significant role in optimizing the process.  In other words, these master data attributes enable the optimization of the "Call to Resolution" enterprise business process. Master data supports and guides business process flows. Thus the phrase 'Master Data' is indeed appropriate. MDM is the software that houses, manages, and governs the master data that resides in all applications and controls the enterprise business processes. A complete master data solution takes a data model that holds fully attributed master data entities and their inter-relationships. Oracle has this model. Oracle, with its deep understanding of application data is the logical choice for managing all your master data within the enterprise whether or not your organization actually runs any Oracle Applications.

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• Working with Key Flex Fields in OAF

  - by PRajkumar

  1. Create a New Workspace and Project Right click Workspaces and click create New OA Workspace and name it as PRajkumarKFFDemo. Automatically a new OA Project will also be created. Name the project as KFFDemo and package as prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.kffdemo   2. Create a New Application Module (AM) Right Click on KFFDemo > New > ADF Business Components > Application Module Name -- KFFAM Package -- prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.kffdemo.server   Check Application Module Class: KFFAMImpl Generate JavaFile(s)   3. Create a New View Object (VO) Right click on KFFDemo > New > ADF Business Components > View Object Name -- KFFVO Package -- prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.kffdemo.server   Note - The VO is not based on any EO so click next and go to the query section and paste the query   SELECT  code_combination_id FROM    gl_code_combinations_kfv   In Step8 Check Object Class: KFFVOImpl -> Generate Java File -> Bind Variable Accessors   4. Add View Object to Root UI Application Module Right Click on KFFAM > Edit KFFAM > Data Model and shuttle KFFVO from Available View Objects to Data Model   5. Create a New Page Right click on KFFDemo > New > Web Tier > OA Components > Page Name -- KFFPG Package -- prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.kffdemo.webui   6. Select the KFFPG and go to the strcuture pane where a default region has been created   7. Select region1 and set the following properties:   Attribute Property ID PageLayoutRN AM Definition prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.kffdemo.server.KFFAM Window Title Key Flex Field Demo Window Title Key Flex Field Demo     8. Create Stack Layout Region Under Page Layout Region Right click PageLayoutRN > New > Region   Attribute Property ID MainRN AM Definition stackLayout   9. Create a New Item of type Flex under the Stack Layout Region Right click on MainRN > New > Item Set Following Properties for New Item --   Attribute Property ID KeyFlexItem Item Style Flex Prompt Accounting Key Flex Field Appl Short Name SQLGL Name GL# Type Key View Instance KFFVO1     10. Create Controller for page KFFPG Right Click on PageLayoutRN > Set New Controller Package Name: prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.kffdemo.webui Class Name: KFFCO   Write Following Code in KFFCO processRequest   public void processRequest(OAPageContext pageContext, OAWebBean webBean) {  super.processRequest(pageContext, webBean);    OAKeyFlexBean kffId = (OAKeyFlexBean)webBean.findIndexedChildRecursive("KeyFlexItem");    // Set the code combination lov   kffId.useCodeCombinationLOV(true);   //set the structure code for the item key flex    kffId.setStructureCode("FED_AFF");   //Set the attribute name to the item   kffId.setCCIDAttributeName("CodeCombinationId");  //Execute the Query   KFFAMImpl am = (KFFAMImpl)pageContext.getApplicationModule(webBean);   KFFVOImpl vo = (KFFVOImpl)am.findViewObject("KFFVO1");          if(!vo.isPreparedForExecution())   {          vo.executeQuery();   } }   Note -- If you do not want to see the key flex field is merging one then change the code in the controller class as below   kffId.useCodeCombinationLOV(false);   11. Use the below Query to find the Structure Code   SELECT  fif.application_id,                  fif.id_flex_code,                  fif.id_flex_name,                  fif.application_table_name,                   fif.description,                  fifs.id_flex_num,                  fifs.id_flex_structure_code,                  fifse.segment_name,                  fifse.segment_num,                  fifse.flex_value_set_id  FROM     fnd_id_flexs                    fif,                  fnd_id_flex_structures   fifs,                   fnd_id_flex_segments    fifse  WHERE  fif.application_id      = fifs.application_id  AND       fif.id_flex_code         = fifs.id_flex_code  AND       fifse.application_id   = fif.application_id  AND       fifse.id_flex_code      = fif.id_flex_code  AND       fifse.id_flex_num      = fifs.id_flex_num  AND       fif.id_flex_code         LIKE 'GL#' AND       fif.id_flex_name       LIKE 'Accounting Flexfield';   12. Congratulation you have successfully finished. Run Your page and Test Your Work        

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• Agile Testing Days 2012 – Day 2 – Learn through disagreement

  - by Chris George

  I think I was in the right place! During Day 1 I kept on reading tweets about Lean Coffee that has happened earlier that morning. It intrigued me and I figured in for a penny in for a pound, and set my alarm for 6:45am. Following the award night the night before, it was _really_ hard getting up when it went off, but I did and after a very early breakfast, set off for the 10 min walk to the Dorint. With Lean Coffee due to start at 07:30, I arrived at the hotel and made my way to one of the hotel bars. I soon realised I was in the right place as although the bar was empty, there was a table with post-it’s and pens! This MUST be the place! The premise of Lean Coffee is to have several small timeboxed discussions. Everyone writes down what they would like to discuss on post-its that are then briefly explained and submitted to the pile. Once everyone is done, the group dot-votes on the topics. The topics are then sorted by the dot vote counts and the discussions begin. Each discussion had 8 mins to start with, which meant it prevented the discussions getting off topic too much. After the time elapsed, the group had a vote whether to extend the discussion by a further 4 mins or move on. Several discussion were had around training, soft skills etc. The conversations were really interesting and there were quite a few good ideas. Overall it was a very enjoyable experience, certainly worth the early start! Make Melly Happy Following Lean Coffee was real coffee, and much needed that was! The first keynote of the day was “Let’s help Melly (Changing Work into Life)”by Jurgen Appelo. Draw lines to track happiness This was a very interesting presentation, and set the day nicely. The theme to the keynote was projects are about the people, more-so than the actual tasks. So he started by showing a photo of an employee ‘Melly’ who looked happy enough. He then stated that she looked happy but actually hated her job. In fact 50% of Americans hate their jobs. He went on to say that the world over 50% of people hate Americans their jobs. Jurgen talked about many ways to reduce the feedback cycle, not only of the project, but of the people management. Ideas such as Happiness doors, happiness tracking (drawing lines on a wall indicating your happiness for that day), kudo boxes (to compliment a colleague for good work). All of these (and more) ideas stimulate conversation amongst the team, lead to early detection of issues and investigation of solutions. I’ve massively simplified Jurgen’s keynote and have certainly not done it justice, so I will post a link to the video once it’s available. Following more coffee, the next talk was “How releasing faster changes testing” by Alexander Schwartz. This is a topic very close to our hearts at the moment, so I was eager to find out any juicy morsels that could help us achieve more frequent releases, and Alex did not disappoint. He started off by confirming something that I have been a firm believer in for a number of years now; adding more people can do more harm than good when trying to release. This is for a number of reasons, but just adding new people to a team at such a critical time can be more of a drain on resources than they add. The alternative is to have the whole team have shared responsibility for faster delivery. So the whole team is responsible for quality and testing. Obviously you will have the test engineers on the project who have the specialist skills, but there is no reason that the entire team cannot do exploratory testing on the product. This links nicely with the Developer Exploratory testing presented by Sigge on Day 1, and certainly something that my team are really striving towards. Focus on cycle time, so what can be done to reduce the time between dev cycles, release cycles. What’s stops a release, what delays a release? all good solid questions that can be answered. Alex suggested that perhaps the product doesn’t need to be fully tested. Doing less testing will reduce the cycle time therefore get the release out faster. He suggested a risk-based approach to planning what testing needs to happen. Reducing testing could have an impact on revenue if it causes harm to customers, so test the ‘right stuff’! Determine a set of tests that are ‘face saving’ or ‘smoke’ tests. These tests cover the core functionality of the product and aim to prevent major embarrassment if these areas were to fail! Amongst many other very good points, Alex suggested that a good approach would be to release after every new feature is added. So do a bit of work -> release, do some more work -> release. By releasing small increments of work, the impact on the customer of bugs being introduced is reduced. Red Pill, Blue Pill The second keynote of the day was “Adaptation and improvisation – but your weakness is not your technique” by Markus Gartner and proved to be another very good presentation. It started off quoting lines from the Matrix which relate to adapting, improvising, realisation and mastery. It has alot of nerds in the room smiling! Markus went on to explain how through deliberate practice ( and a lot of it!) you can achieve mastery, but then you never stop learning. Through methods such as code retreats, testing dojos, workshops you can continually improve and learn. The code retreat idea was one that interested me. It involved pairing to write an automated test for, say, 45 mins, they deleting all the code, finding a different partner and writing the same test again! This is another keynote where the video will speak louder than anything I can write here! Markus did elaborate on something that Lisa and Janet had touched on yesterday whilst busting the myth that “Testers Must Code”. Whilst it is true that to be a tester, you don’t need to code, it is becoming more common that there is this crossover happening where more testers are coding and more programmers are testing. Markus made a special distinction between programmers and developers as testers develop tests code so this helped to make that clear. “Extending Continuous Integration and TDD with Continuous Testing” by Jason Ayers was my next talk after lunch. We already do CI and a bit of TDD on my project team so I was interested to see what this continuous testing thing was all about and whether it would actually work for us. At the start of the presentation I was of the opinion that it just would not work for us because our tests are too slow, and that would be the case for many people. Jason started off by setting the scene and saying that those doing TDD spend between 10-15% of their time waiting for tests to run. This can be reduced by testing less often, reducing the test time but this then increases the risk of introduced bugs not being spotted quickly. Therefore, in comes Continuous Testing (CT). CT systems run your unit tests whenever you save some code and runs them in the background so you can continue working. This is a really nice idea, but to do this, your tests must be fast, independent and reliable. The latter two should be the case anyway, and the first is ideal, but hard! Jason makes several suggestions to make tests fast. Firstly keep the scope of the test small, secondly spin off any expensive tests into a suite which is run, perhaps, overnight or outside of the CT system at any rate. So this started to change my mind, perhaps we could re-engineer our tests, and continuously run the quick ones to give an element of coverage. This talk was very interesting and I’ve already tried a couple of the tools mentioned on our product (Mighty Moose and NCrunch). Sadly due to the way our solution is built, it currently doesn’t work, but we will look at whether we can make this work because this has the potential to be a mini-game-changer for us. Using the wrong data Gojko’s Hierarchy of Quality The final keynote of the day was “Reinventing software quality” by Gojko Adzic. He opened the talk with the statement “We’ve got quality wrong because we are using the wrong data”! Gojko then went on to explain that we should judge a bug by whether the customer cares about it, not by whether we think it’s important. Why spend time fixing issues that the customer just wouldn’t care about and releasing months later because of this? Surely it’s better to release now and get customer feedback? This was another reference to the idea of how it’s better to build the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right. Get feedback early to make sure you’re making the right thing. Gojko then showed something which was very analogous to Maslow’s heirachy of needs. Successful – does it contribute to the business? Useful – does it do what the user wants Usable – does it do what it’s supposed to without breaking Performant/Secure – is it secure/is the performance acceptable Deployable Functionally ok – can it be deployed without breaking? He then explained that User Stories should focus on change. In other words they should focus on the users needs, not the users process. Describe what the change will be, how that change will happen then measure it! Networking and Beer Following the day’s closing keynote, there were drinks and nibble for the ‘Networking’ evening. This was a great opportunity to talk to people. I find approaching strangers very uncomfortable but once again, when in Rome! Pete Walen and I had a long conversation about only fixing issues that the customer cares about versus fixing issues that make you proud of your software! Without saying much, and asking the right questions, Pete made me re-evaluate my thoughts on the matter. Clever, very clever!  Oh and he ‘bought’ me a beer! My Takeaway Triple from Day 2: release small and release often to minimize issues creeping in and get faster feedback from ‘the real world’ Focus on issues that the customers care about, not what we think is important It’s okay to disagree with someone, even if they are well respected agile testing gurus, that’s how discussion and learning happens!  

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• Open source CMS for a university department

  - by Greg Kuperberg

  I realize that this type of question gets asked over and over again. Nonetheless, I want to ask a more specific version. I'm in a university math department. Long ago our sysadmins (or just one at the time) switched to a web content management system. At the time, Zope looked like an informed choice. We have used Zope for years, but at least in my opinion, it has always been a controversial decision. At the time I didn't understand why it was so important to have a web CMS. Now I see that it certainly is important, but I don't know that it should be Zope. The good (even necessary) features of Zope for us are: It's free and Linux-based. It is a true CMS and not something else (e.g. wiki or blog) It lets you write HTML and scripts. What I really don't like about Zope is that the outcome of using it is all-or-nothing in a lot of ways. At least in convenient use, it ends up dividing the enterprise into superusers who can do everything, and lusers who can't do anything (except write their own home pages in plain HTML). It has a huge user manual, which end users won't have time to read. Somehow with the access permissions, the simple thing to do is to let a few admins access all of the source and data and that's it. Since this is a math department, the user base varies from real novices to people who understand computers reasonably well. But as it stands, any change that involves Zope has to go through the sysadmins. When the sysadmins are in a hurry, sometimes they will also just add plain HTML pages to the web site instead of using the Zope framework. It doesn't help matters that Zope is fairly disk-intensive and fairly hype-intensive. Not to dwell on Zope too much, but I am wondering what is the right web CMS for a mixed user base of terminal novices, quick studies, and experienced users. Some users might want intermediate permissions, e.g. read permission but not write permission, or permission to change some subset of the pages or see some subset of the database tables. Also it should be Linux-based and open source and a little bit scalable, and of course widely used and well-supported is a good idea. I might guess that the answer is Drupal just because that was the general answer before, but I don't know if it is the right type of CMS for this purpose. (But note that Python is a relatively popular language in a math department, among other reasons because Sage is based on Python.) I can see that I didn't completely define the question and that people are guessing what type of site it is. It is the UC Davis Math Department. The main structure of the site is not suitable for a wiki and it is also not the same thing as a course environment like Moodle. Rather, the site is mostly structured as a generic medium-small enterprise. Some components of the site could be a wiki, Moodle, LaTeX plugin, Request Tracker, etc. However, the main issue is not these components. The main issue is that it would be better to decentralize management of the site. Right now, everything that is in the Zope CMS has to go through the sysadmins. Every other user in the department either has to put in a request to them, or write their own web pages with no help from Zope. There are two main reasons for this: (1) Other people in the department don't have time to read the Zope manual. (2) It's a hassle to set up intermediate permissions in Zope. However, there are other people in the department who know how to write computer programs and use markup languages. I wouldn't want a solution that assumes that users either can't be trusted with much more than drag-and-drop, or that they are IT professionals who sleep with documentation manuals. I'm wondering if Plone/Zope still has this quality, since certainly Zope by itself does. But I also wonder sometimes if common-sense flexibility is unfashionable these days, and that things in general have be either mindlessly easy or incredibly powerful.

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• 3D picking lwjgl

  - by Wirde

  I have written some code to preform 3D picking that for some reason dosn't work entirely correct! (Im using LWJGL just so you know.) I posted this at stackoverflow at first but after researching some more in to my problem i found this neat site and tought that you guys might be more qualified to answer this question. This is how the code looks like: if(Mouse.getEventButton() == 1) { if (!Mouse.getEventButtonState()) { Camera.get().generateViewMatrix(); float screenSpaceX = ((Mouse.getX()/800f/2f)-1.0f)*Camera.get().getAspectRatio(); float screenSpaceY = 1.0f-(2*((600-Mouse.getY())/600f)); float displacementRate = (float)Math.tan(Camera.get().getFovy()/2); screenSpaceX *= displacementRate; screenSpaceY *= displacementRate; Vector4f cameraSpaceNear = new Vector4f((float) (screenSpaceX * Camera.get().getNear()), (float) (screenSpaceY * Camera.get().getNear()), (float) (-Camera.get().getNear()), 1); Vector4f cameraSpaceFar = new Vector4f((float) (screenSpaceX * Camera.get().getFar()), (float) (screenSpaceY * Camera.get().getFar()), (float) (-Camera.get().getFar()), 1); Matrix4f tmpView = new Matrix4f(); Camera.get().getViewMatrix().transpose(tmpView); Matrix4f invertedViewMatrix = (Matrix4f)tmpView.invert(); Vector4f worldSpaceNear = new Vector4f(); Matrix4f.transform(invertedViewMatrix, cameraSpaceNear, worldSpaceNear); Vector4f worldSpaceFar = new Vector4f(); Matrix4f.transform(invertedViewMatrix, cameraSpaceFar, worldSpaceFar); Vector3f rayPosition = new Vector3f(worldSpaceNear.x, worldSpaceNear.y, worldSpaceNear.z); Vector3f rayDirection = new Vector3f(worldSpaceFar.x - worldSpaceNear.x, worldSpaceFar.y - worldSpaceNear.y, worldSpaceFar.z - worldSpaceNear.z); rayDirection.normalise(); Ray clickRay = new Ray(rayPosition, rayDirection); Vector tMin = new Vector(), tMax = new Vector(), tempPoint; float largestEnteringValue, smallestExitingValue, temp, closestEnteringValue = Camera.get().getFar()+0.1f; Drawable closestDrawableHit = null; for(Drawable d : this.worldModel.getDrawableThings()) { // Calcualte AABB for each object... needs to be moved later... firstVertex = true; for(Surface surface : d.getSurfaces()) { for(Vertex v : surface.getVertices()) { worldPosition.x = (v.x+d.getPosition().x)*d.getScale().x; worldPosition.y = (v.y+d.getPosition().y)*d.getScale().y; worldPosition.z = (v.z+d.getPosition().z)*d.getScale().z; worldPosition = worldPosition.rotate(d.getRotation()); if (firstVertex) { maxX = worldPosition.x; maxY = worldPosition.y; maxZ = worldPosition.z; minX = worldPosition.x; minY = worldPosition.y; minZ = worldPosition.z; firstVertex = false; } else { if (worldPosition.x > maxX) { maxX = worldPosition.x; } if (worldPosition.x < minX) { minX = worldPosition.x; } if (worldPosition.y > maxY) { maxY = worldPosition.y; } if (worldPosition.y < minY) { minY = worldPosition.y; } if (worldPosition.z > maxZ) { maxZ = worldPosition.z; } if (worldPosition.z < minZ) { minZ = worldPosition.z; } } } } // ray/slabs intersection test... // clickRay.getOrigin().x + clickRay.getDirection().x * f = minX // clickRay.getOrigin().x - minX = -clickRay.getDirection().x * f // clickRay.getOrigin().x/-clickRay.getDirection().x - minX/-clickRay.getDirection().x = f // -clickRay.getOrigin().x/clickRay.getDirection().x + minX/clickRay.getDirection().x = f largestEnteringValue = -clickRay.getOrigin().x/clickRay.getDirection().x + minX/clickRay.getDirection().x; temp = -clickRay.getOrigin().y/clickRay.getDirection().y + minY/clickRay.getDirection().y; if(largestEnteringValue < temp) { largestEnteringValue = temp; } temp = -clickRay.getOrigin().z/clickRay.getDirection().z + minZ/clickRay.getDirection().z; if(largestEnteringValue < temp) { largestEnteringValue = temp; } smallestExitingValue = -clickRay.getOrigin().x/clickRay.getDirection().x + maxX/clickRay.getDirection().x; temp = -clickRay.getOrigin().y/clickRay.getDirection().y + maxY/clickRay.getDirection().y; if(smallestExitingValue > temp) { smallestExitingValue = temp; } temp = -clickRay.getOrigin().z/clickRay.getDirection().z + maxZ/clickRay.getDirection().z; if(smallestExitingValue < temp) { smallestExitingValue = temp; } if(largestEnteringValue > smallestExitingValue) { //System.out.println("Miss!"); } else { if (largestEnteringValue < closestEnteringValue) { closestEnteringValue = largestEnteringValue; closestDrawableHit = d; } } } if(closestDrawableHit != null) { System.out.println("Hit at: (" + clickRay.setDistance(closestEnteringValue).x + ", " + clickRay.getCurrentPosition().y + ", " + clickRay.getCurrentPosition().z); this.worldModel.removeDrawableThing(closestDrawableHit); } } } I just don't understand what's wrong, the ray are shooting and i do hit stuff that gets removed but the result of the ray are verry strange it sometimes removes the thing im clicking at, sometimes it removes things thats not even close to what im clicking at, and sometimes it removes nothing at all. Edit: Okay so i have continued searching for errors and by debugging the ray (by painting smal dots where it travles) i can now se that there is something oviously wrong with the ray that im sending out... it has its origin near the world center (nearer or further away depending on where on the screen im clicking) and always shots to the same position no matter where I direct my camera... My initial toughts is that there might be some error in the way i calculate my viewMatrix (since it's not possible to get the viewmatrix from the gluLookAt method in lwjgl; I have to build it my self and I guess thats where the problem is at)... Edit2: This is how i calculate it currently: private double[][] viewMatrixDouble = {{0,0,0,0}, {0,0,0,0}, {0,0,0,0}, {0,0,0,1}}; public Vector getCameraDirectionVector() { Vector actualEye = this.getActualEyePosition(); return new Vector(lookAt.x-actualEye.x, lookAt.y-actualEye.y, lookAt.z-actualEye.z); } public Vector getActualEyePosition() { return eye.rotate(this.getRotation()); } public void generateViewMatrix() { Vector cameraDirectionVector = getCameraDirectionVector().normalize(); Vector side = Vector.cross(cameraDirectionVector, this.upVector).normalize(); Vector up = Vector.cross(side, cameraDirectionVector); viewMatrixDouble[0][0] = side.x; viewMatrixDouble[0][1] = up.x; viewMatrixDouble[0][2] = -cameraDirectionVector.x; viewMatrixDouble[1][0] = side.y; viewMatrixDouble[1][1] = up.y; viewMatrixDouble[1][2] = -cameraDirectionVector.y; viewMatrixDouble[2][0] = side.z; viewMatrixDouble[2][1] = up.z; viewMatrixDouble[2][2] = -cameraDirectionVector.z; /* Vector actualEyePosition = this.getActualEyePosition(); Vector zaxis = new Vector(this.lookAt.x - actualEyePosition.x, this.lookAt.y - actualEyePosition.y, this.lookAt.z - actualEyePosition.z).normalize(); Vector xaxis = Vector.cross(upVector, zaxis).normalize(); Vector yaxis = Vector.cross(zaxis, xaxis); viewMatrixDouble[0][0] = xaxis.x; viewMatrixDouble[0][1] = yaxis.x; viewMatrixDouble[0][2] = zaxis.x; viewMatrixDouble[1][0] = xaxis.y; viewMatrixDouble[1][1] = yaxis.y; viewMatrixDouble[1][2] = zaxis.y; viewMatrixDouble[2][0] = xaxis.z; viewMatrixDouble[2][1] = yaxis.z; viewMatrixDouble[2][2] = zaxis.z; viewMatrixDouble[3][0] = -Vector.dot(xaxis, actualEyePosition); viewMatrixDouble[3][1] =-Vector.dot(yaxis, actualEyePosition); viewMatrixDouble[3][2] = -Vector.dot(zaxis, actualEyePosition); */ viewMatrix = new Matrix4f(); viewMatrix.load(getViewMatrixAsFloatBuffer()); } Would be verry greatfull if anyone could verify if this is wrong or right, and if it's wrong; supply me with the right way of doing it... I have read alot of threads and documentations about this but i can't seam to wrapp my head around it... Edit3: Okay with the help of Byte56 (thanks alot for the help) i have now concluded that it's not the viewMatrix that is the problem... I still get the same messedup result; anyone that think that they can find the error in my code, i certenly can't, have bean working on this for 3 days now :(

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, November 30, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, November 30, 2010Popular ReleasesSense/Net Enterprise Portal & ECMS: SenseNet 6.0.1 Community Edition: Sense/Net 6.0.1 Community Edition This half year we have been working quite fiercely to bring you the long-awaited release of Sense/Net 6.0. Download this Community Edition to see what we have been up to. These months we have worked on getting the WebCMS capabilities of Sense/Net 6.0 up to par. New features include: New, powerful page and portlet editing experience. HTML and CSS cleanup, new, powerful site skinning system. Upgraded, lightning-fast indexing and query via Lucene. Limita...Minecraft GPS: Minecraft GPS 1.1.1: New Features Compass! New style. Set opacity on main window to allow overlay of Minecraft. Open World in any folder. Fixes Fixed style so listbox won't grow the window size. Fixed open file dialog issue on non-vista kernel machines.DotSpatial: DotSpatial 11-28-2001: This release introduces some exciting improvements. Support for big raster, both in display and changing the scheme. Faster raster scheme creation for all rasters. Caching of the "sample" values so once obtained the raster symbolizer dialog loads faster. Reprojection supported for raster and image classes. Affine transform fully supported for images and rasters, so skewed images are now possible. Projection uses better checks when loading unprojected layers. GDAL raster support f...Virtu: Virtu 0.9.0: Source Requirements.NET Framework 4 Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2010 Express Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools (which includes XNA Game Studio 4) Binaries RequirementsSilverlight 4 .NET Framework 4 XNA Framework 4SuperWebSocket: SuperWebSocket(60438): It is the first release of SuperWebSocket. Because it is base on SuperSocket, most features of SuperSocket are supported in SuperWebSocket. The source code include a LiveChat demo.MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.25.7002: Fixed updater Fixed FileServe Fixed LetItBitNotepad.NET: Notepad.NET 0.7 Preview 1: Whats New?* Optimized Code Generation: Which means it will run significantly faster. * Preview of Syntax Highlighting: Only VB.NET highlighting is supported, C# and Ruby will come in Preview 2. * Improved Editing Updates (when the line number, etc updates) to be more graceful. * Recent Documents works! * Images can be inserted but they're extremely large. Known Bugs* The Update Process hangs: This is a bug apparently spawning since 0.5. It will be fixed in Preview 2. Until then, perform a fr...Cropper: 1.9.4: Mostly fixes for issues with a few feature requests. Fixed Issues 2730 & 3638 & 14467 11044 11447 11448 11449 14665 Implemented Features 6123 11581PFC: PFC for PB 11.5: This is just a migration from the 11.0 code. No changes have been made yet (and they are needed) for it to work properly with 11.5.PDF Rider: PDF Rider 0.5: This release does not add any new feature for pdf manipulation, but enables automatic updates checking, so it is reccomended to install it in order to stay updated with next releases. Prerequisites * Microsoft Windows Operating Systems (XP - Vista - 7) * Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 runtime * A PDF rendering software (i.e. Adobe Reader) that can be opened inside Internet Explorer. Installation instructionsChoose one of the following methods: 1. Download and run the "pdfRider0...BCLExtensions: BCL Extensions v1.0: The files associated with v1.0 of the BCL Extensions library.XamlQuery/WPF - The Write Less, Do More, WPF Library: XamlQuery-WPF v1.2 (Runtime, Source): This is the first release of popular XamlQuery library for WPF. XamlQuery has already gained recognition among Silverlight developers.Math.NET Numerics: Beta 1: First beta of Math.NET Numerics. Only contains the managed linear algebra provider. Beta 2 will include the native linear algebra providers along with better documentation and examples.Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2010 Code Samples 2010-11-25: Code samples for Visual Studio 2010Wii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 0.8.5 Beta: - WBFS repair (default) options fixed - Transfer to image fixed - Settings ui widget names fixed - Some little bug fixes You need to reset the settings! Delete WiiBaFu's config file or registry entries on windows: Linux: ~/.config/WiiBaFu/wiibafu.conf Windows: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WiiBaFu\wiibafu Mac OS X: ~/Library/Preferences/com.wiibafu.wiibafu.plist Caution: This is a BETA version! Errors, crashes and data loss not impossible! Use in test environments only, not on productive syste...Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.3: Added process count and world size calculation progress to the status bar. Added View->'Status Bar' menu item to show/hide the status bar. Status bar is automatically shown when loading a world. Added a prompt, when loading a world, to use or clear cached images.Sexy Select: sexy select v0.4: Changes in v0.4 Added method : elements. This returns all the option elements that are currently added to the select list Added method : selectOption. This method accepts two values, the element to be modified and the selected state. (true/false)Deep Zoom for WPF: First Release: This first release of the Deep Zoom control has the same source code, binaries and demos as the CodeProject article (http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/DeepZoom.aspx).BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.0 RC: This is a Release Candidate version for BlogEngine.NET 2.0. The most current, stable version of BlogEngine.NET is version 1.6. Find out more about the BlogEngine.NET 2.0 RC here. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. To get started, be sure to check out our installation documentation and the installation screencast. If you are upgrading from a previous version, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.0 instructions. As this ...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel Template, version 1.0.1.156: The NodeXL Excel template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 workbook. What's NewThis release adds a feature for aggregating the overall metrics in a folder full of NodeXL workbooks, adds geographical coordinates to the Twitter import features, and fixes a memory-related bug. See the Complete NodeXL Release History for details. Please Note: There is a new option in the setup program to install for "Just Me" or "Everyone." Most people...New ProjectsActiveRecordTest: ActiveRecordTest is a sample project that is really a quick guide for start using Castle ActiveRecord within an ASP.NET web application.BacteriaManage: just test codeplexDS CMS: Diamond Shop - open source project. 1. ASP.NET MVC 3.0 2. Entity Framework 3. Jquery 4. LinqGeneral Media Access WebService: This project is focused on building a general purpose media access webservice based on WCF.JavaEE server for XUNU: C'est le serveur internet du site à ChoupieLearning management system: Learning management system to help teachers on their work.LogWriterReader using Named pipe: LogWriterReader using Named pipeNMix: NMix???EntLib，NHibernate，log4net??????????，????????????????，?????????、?????、????、????、?????????。Nosso Rico Dinheirinho: Financial control system like Microsoft Money, but via web.Post Template: Post Template (for now) is for craigslist posters looking to make their posts more visually appealing. Abstracting the styling and layout details of HTML and CSS, Post Template eliminates the need to know these languages when posting. Post Template is mostly written in C#.SharePoint Silverlight Clock: SharePoint Silverlight ClockSilverlight MVVM wizard using Caliburn Micro: This MVVM style Silverlight 4 wizard shows some Caliburn Micro features, as well as the use of MEF and MVVM style unit testing. The UI and code are based on the code accompanying the "Code Project" article "Creating an Internationalized Wizard in WPF" from dec. 2008.Spider Framework: A ruler-based spider framework developing with C#syx Open Source Project: syx Open Source ProjectTigerCat: TigerCat will support application development as infrastructure and RAD tools.TitleNetSolution: This my team Solution.!Uploadert: UploadertWidget Suite for DotNetNuke: This project is intended to hold a suite of useful widgets to make your skinning easier, and raise the level of interactivity with DotNetNuke website visitors.ZenBridge for Picasa: ZenBridge for Picasa makes it easy for Zenfolio users to upload edited images directly to a chosen Zenfolio gallery. It's developed in C#.NET 4.

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• Pixel Shader Giving Black output

  - by Yashwinder

  I am coding in C# using Windows Forms and the SlimDX API to show the effect of a pixel shader. When I am setting the pixel shader, I am getting a black output screen but if I am not using the pixel shader then I am getting my image rendered on the screen. I have the following C# code using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Windows.Forms; using System.Runtime.InteropServices; using SlimDX.Direct3D9; using SlimDX; using SlimDX.Windows; using System.Drawing; using System.Threading; namespace WindowsFormsApplication1 { // Vertex structure. [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)] struct Vertex { public Vector3 Position; public float Tu; public float Tv; public static int SizeBytes { get { return Marshal.SizeOf(typeof(Vertex)); } } public static VertexFormat Format { get { return VertexFormat.Position | VertexFormat.Texture1; } } } static class Program { public static Device D3DDevice; // Direct3D device. public static VertexBuffer Vertices; // Vertex buffer object used to hold vertices. public static Texture Image; // Texture object to hold the image loaded from a file. public static int time; // Used for rotation caculations. public static float angle; // Angle of rottaion. public static Form1 Window =new Form1(); public static string filepath; static VertexShader vertexShader = null; static ConstantTable constantTable = null; static ImageInformation info; [STAThread] static void Main() { filepath = "C:\\Users\\Public\\Pictures\\Sample Pictures\\Garden.jpg"; info = new ImageInformation(); info = ImageInformation.FromFile(filepath); PresentParameters presentParams = new PresentParameters(); // Below are the required bare mininum, needed to initialize the D3D device. presentParams.BackBufferHeight = info.Height; // BackBufferHeight, set to the Window's height. presentParams.BackBufferWidth = info.Width+200; // BackBufferWidth, set to the Window's width. presentParams.Windowed =true; presentParams.DeviceWindowHandle = Window.panel2 .Handle; // DeviceWindowHandle, set to the Window's handle. // Create the device. D3DDevice = new Device(new Direct3D (), 0, DeviceType.Hardware, Window.Handle, CreateFlags.HardwareVertexProcessing, presentParams); // Create the vertex buffer and fill with the triangle vertices. (Non-indexed) // Remember 3 vetices for a triangle, 2 tris per quad = 6. Vertices = new VertexBuffer(D3DDevice, 6 * Vertex.SizeBytes, Usage.WriteOnly, VertexFormat.None, Pool.Managed); DataStream stream = Vertices.Lock(0, 0, LockFlags.None); stream.WriteRange(BuildVertexData()); Vertices.Unlock(); // Create the texture. Image = Texture.FromFile(D3DDevice,filepath ); // Turn off culling, so we see the front and back of the triangle D3DDevice.SetRenderState(RenderState.CullMode, Cull.None); // Turn off lighting D3DDevice.SetRenderState(RenderState.Lighting, false); ShaderBytecode sbcv = ShaderBytecode.CompileFromFile("C:\\Users\\yashwinder singh\\Desktop\\vertexShader.vs", "vs_main", "vs_1_1", ShaderFlags.None); constantTable = sbcv.ConstantTable; vertexShader = new VertexShader(D3DDevice, sbcv); ShaderBytecode sbc = ShaderBytecode.CompileFromFile("C:\\Users\\yashwinder singh\\Desktop\\pixelShader.txt", "ps_main", "ps_3_0", ShaderFlags.None); PixelShader ps = new PixelShader(D3DDevice, sbc); VertexDeclaration vertexDecl = new VertexDeclaration(D3DDevice, new[] { new VertexElement(0, 0, DeclarationType.Float3, DeclarationMethod.Default, DeclarationUsage.PositionTransformed, 0), new VertexElement(0, 12, DeclarationType.Float2 , DeclarationMethod.Default, DeclarationUsage.TextureCoordinate , 0), VertexElement.VertexDeclarationEnd }); Application.EnableVisualStyles(); MessagePump.Run(Window, () => { // Clear the backbuffer to a black color. D3DDevice.Clear(ClearFlags.Target | ClearFlags.ZBuffer, Color.Black, 1.0f, 0); // Begin the scene. D3DDevice.BeginScene(); // Setup the world, view and projection matrices. //D3DDevice.VertexShader = vertexShader; //D3DDevice.PixelShader = ps; // Render the vertex buffer. D3DDevice.SetStreamSource(0, Vertices, 0, Vertex.SizeBytes); D3DDevice.VertexFormat = Vertex.Format; // Setup our texture. Using Textures introduces the texture stage states, // which govern how Textures get blended together (in the case of multiple // Textures) and lighting information. D3DDevice.SetTexture(0, Image); // Now drawing 2 triangles, for a quad. D3DDevice.DrawPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList , 0, 2); // End the scene. D3DDevice.EndScene(); // Present the backbuffer contents to the screen. D3DDevice.Present(); }); if (Image != null) Image.Dispose(); if (Vertices != null) Vertices.Dispose(); if (D3DDevice != null) D3DDevice.Dispose(); } private static Vertex[] BuildVertexData() { Vertex[] vertexData = new Vertex[6]; vertexData[0].Position = new Vector3(-1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); vertexData[0].Tu = 0.0f; vertexData[0].Tv = 0.0f; vertexData[1].Position = new Vector3(-1.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f); vertexData[1].Tu = 0.0f; vertexData[1].Tv = 1.0f; vertexData[2].Position = new Vector3(1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); vertexData[2].Tu = 1.0f; vertexData[2].Tv = 0.0f; vertexData[3].Position = new Vector3(-1.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f); vertexData[3].Tu = 0.0f; vertexData[3].Tv = 1.0f; vertexData[4].Position = new Vector3(1.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f); vertexData[4].Tu = 1.0f; vertexData[4].Tv = 1.0f; vertexData[5].Position = new Vector3(1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); vertexData[5].Tu = 1.0f; vertexData[5].Tv = 0.0f; return vertexData; } } } And my pixel shader and vertex shader code are as following // Pixel shader input structure struct PS_INPUT { float4 Position : POSITION; float2 Texture : TEXCOORD0; }; // Pixel shader output structure struct PS_OUTPUT { float4 Color : COLOR0; }; // Global variables sampler2D Tex0; // Name: Simple Pixel Shader // Type: Pixel shader // Desc: Fetch texture and blend with constant color // PS_OUTPUT ps_main( in PS_INPUT In ) { PS_OUTPUT Out; //create an output pixel Out.Color = tex2D(Tex0, In.Texture); //do a texture lookup Out.Color *= float4(0.9f, 0.8f, 0.0f, 1); //do a simple effect return Out; //return output pixel } // Vertex shader input structure struct VS_INPUT { float4 Position : POSITION; float2 Texture : TEXCOORD0; }; // Vertex shader output structure struct VS_OUTPUT { float4 Position : POSITION; float2 Texture : TEXCOORD0; }; // Global variables float4x4 WorldViewProj; // Name: Simple Vertex Shader // Type: Vertex shader // Desc: Vertex transformation and texture coord pass-through // VS_OUTPUT vs_main( in VS_INPUT In ) { VS_OUTPUT Out; //create an output vertex Out.Position = mul(In.Position, WorldViewProj); //apply vertex transformation Out.Texture = In.Texture; //copy original texcoords return Out; //return output vertex }

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• How can unrealscript halt event handler execution after an arbitrary number of lines with no return or error?

  - by Dan Cowell

  I have created a class that extends TcpLink and is instantiated in a custom Kismet Sequence Action. It is being instantiated correctly and is making the GET HTTP request that I need it to (I have checked my access log in apache) and Apache is responding to the request with the appropriate content. The problem I have is that I'm using the event receive mode and it appears that somehow the handler for the Opened event is halted after a specific number of lines of code have executed. Here is my code for the Opened event: event Opened() { // A connection was established WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] event opened"); WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] Sending simple HTTP query"); //The HTTP GET request //char(13) and char(10) are carrage returns and new lines requesttext = "userId="$userId$"&apartmentId="$apartmentId; SendText("GET /"$path$"?"$requesttext$" HTTP/1.0"); SendText(chr(13)$chr(10)); SendText("Host: "$TargetHost); SendText(chr(13)$chr(10)); SendText("Connection: Close"); SendText(chr(13)$chr(10)$chr(13)$chr(10)); //WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] Sent request: "$requesttext); //WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] end HTTP query"); //WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] LinkState: "$LinkState); //WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] LinkMode: "$LinkMode); WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] ReceiveMode: "$ReceiveMode); WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] Error: "$string(GetLastError())); } As you can see, a number of the Broadcast calls have been commented out. Initially, only the lines up to the Broadcast containing "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] Sent request: " were being executed and none of the Broadcasts were commented out. After commenting out that line, the next Broadcast was successful and so on and so forth. As a test, I commented out the very first Broadcast to see if the connection closing had any effect: // A connection was established //WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] event opened"); WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] Sending simple HTTP query"); Upon doing that, an additional Broadcast at the end of the function executed. Thus the inference that there is an upper limit to the number of lines executed. Additionally, my ReceivedText handler is never called, despite Apache returning the correct HTTP 200 response with a body. My working hypothesis is that somehow after the Sequence Action finishes executing the garbage collector cleans up the TcpLinkClient instance. My biggest source of confusion with that is how on earth it does it during the execution of an event handler. Has anyone ever seen anything like this before? My full TcpLinkClient class is below: /* * TcpLinkClient based on an example usage of the TcpLink class by Michiel 'elmuerte' Hendriks for Epic Games, Inc. * */ class DNomad_TcpLinkClient extends TcpLink; var PlayerController PC; var string TargetHost; var int TargetPort; var string path; var string requesttext; var string userId; var string apartmentId; var string statusCode; var string responseData; event PostBeginPlay() { super.PostBeginPlay(); } function DoTcpLinkRequest(string uid, string id) //removes having to send a host { userId = uid; apartmentId = id; Resolve(targethost); } function string GetStatus() { return statusCode; } event Resolved( IpAddr Addr ) { // The hostname was resolved succefully WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] "$TargetHost$" resolved to "$ IpAddrToString(Addr)); // Make sure the correct remote port is set, resolving doesn't set // the port value of the IpAddr structure Addr.Port = TargetPort; //dont comment out this log because it rungs the function bindport WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] Bound to port: "$ BindPort() ); if (!Open(Addr)) { WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] Open failed"); } } event ResolveFailed() { WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[TcpLinkClient] Unable to resolve "$TargetHost); // You could retry resolving here if you have an alternative // remote host. //send failed message to scaleform UI //JunHud(JunPlayerController(PC).myHUD).JunMovie.CallSetHTML("Failed"); } event Opened() { // A connection was established //WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] event opened"); WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] Sending simple HTTP query"); //The HTTP GET request //char(13) and char(10) are carrage returns and new lines requesttext = "userId="$userId$"&apartmentId="$apartmentId; SendText("GET /"$path$"?"$requesttext$" HTTP/1.0"); SendText(chr(13)$chr(10)); SendText("Host: "$TargetHost); SendText(chr(13)$chr(10)); SendText("Connection: Close"); SendText(chr(13)$chr(10)$chr(13)$chr(10)); //WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] Sent request: "$requesttext); //WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] end HTTP query"); //WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] LinkState: "$LinkState); //WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] LinkMode: "$LinkMode); WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] ReceiveMode: "$ReceiveMode); WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "[DNomad_TcpLinkClient] Error: "$string(GetLastError())); } event Closed() { // In this case the remote client should have automatically closed // the connection, because we requested it in the HTTP request. WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "Connection closed."); // After the connection was closed we could establish a new // connection using the same TcpLink instance. } event ReceivedText( string Text ) { WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "Received Text: "$Text); //we dont want the header info, so we split the string after two new lines Text = Split(Text, chr(13)$chr(10)$chr(13)$chr(10), true); WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "Split Text: "$Text); statusCode = Text; } event ReceivedLine( string Line ) { WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "Received Line: "$Line); } event ReceivedBinary( int Count, byte B[255] ) { WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self, "Received Binary of length: "$Count); } defaultproperties { TargetHost="127.0.0.1" TargetPort=80 //default for HTTP LinkMode=MODE_Text ReceiveMode=RMODE_Event path = "dnomad/datafeed.php" userId = "0"; apartmentId = "0"; statusCode = ""; send = false; }

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• Finally, upgrade from Nokia X3 to Samsung Galaxy S III

  This time, something slightly different but nonetheless not less interesting, hopefully. Living on a remote island like Mauritius, ill-praised 'Cyber Island' in the Indian Ocean, has its advantages in life style and relaxed environment to life in but in terms of technological aspects it can be quite a nightmare. Well, I guess this might be different story to report about... one day. Cyber Island Mauritius Despite it's shiny advertisement as Cyber Island and business in ICT hub to Africa, Mauritius is not on the latest track of available models in computer hardware or, in the context of this article, cellulars or smart-phone, or communication technology in general. Okay, I have to admit that this statement is only partly true. Money can buy, even here in Mauritius. Luckily, there are ways and ways to deal with this outcry of modern, read: technological, civilisation issues. Online shopping you might think? Yes, for sure, until you discover in your checkout procedure that a small island in the Indian Ocean isn't a preferred destination for delivery and the precious time you spent on putting your items into your cart and feeding your personal level of anticipation gets ruined on the last stint. Ordering from abroad saves you money Anyway, I got in touch with my personal courier and luckily there were some extra-kilos left in the luggage. First obstacle sorted, we have a Transporter! Okay, on the next occasion off to Amazon online and using their Prime service for fast delivery. Actually, the order was placed on Saturday evening and everything got delivered on Tuesday morning - nice job in less than 72 hours. Okay, among the items of that shopping rush I ordered a shiny Samsung Galaxy S III 16GB in oceanic blue - did I mention, that you hardly get a blue model in Mauritius? - for my BWE. Interesting side-notes: First, Amazon Germany dropped the prices for roughly 30% on the S3, and we got the 16GB model for less than 500 Euro (or approx. Rs. 19.500,-) compared to the usual Rs. 27.000,- on the local market. It even varies whether the local price is inclusive or exclusive VAT (15%). Second, since a while she was bothering me to get an iPhone and an iPad for her, fair enough I thought, decent hardware, posh design and reliable services. Until we watched the 'magical' introduction of Samsung's new models at the IFA exhibition, she read the bashing comments on Google+ on the iPhone 5 and I gave her a brief summary on the law suit between Apple and Samsung in the USA. So, yes, Samsung USA is right, the next big thing is already here - literally. My BWE loves the look and touch of the Galaxy S3. And for me it was more cost-effective in terms of purchases done at the App Store, ups, Play Store. Transfer of contacts, text messages and media files Okay, now that the hardware is in place, how to transfer all those contacts, text messages, media files, etc. between those two devices? In the past, I used to use the Nokia Communication Suite between various models but now for Android? Well, as usual Google and Bing are reliable friends and among the first hits I came across an article about How to Transfer Contacts from Nokia to Android. Couldn't be easier, right? Well, sort of... my main Windows systems are already running on Windows 8, and this actually caused problems with the mobile/smart-phone device drivers. The article provides the download for an older version 1.10 which upgrades to 2.11 (as time of writing this entry) but both couldn't get the Galaxy S3 and the Nokia connected. Shame on me... the product page clearly doesn't mention Windows 8 (for now) and Windows 8 isn't available for the general audience at all... After I took a spare machine running on Windows Vista everything went smooth. Software installed, upgrade done, device drivers for Android automatically downloaded and installed, and the same painless routine for the Nokia part. I think, I rebooted the system twice during the whole setup procedure but hey, it was more or less a distraction while coding some stuff in ASP.NET MVC and Telerik Kendo UI. The transfer of contacts and text messages was done via Wondershare MobileGo for Android, and all media files by moving the additional microSD card from one device to the other. But even without an external SD card, it would have been very easy to copy the files via Windows Explorer directly. Little catch and excellent service Fine, we are almost done and the only step left is to shift the SIM card... Ouch, gotcha! The X3 uses a standard size SIM card while the S III only accepts microSIM form factor. What an irony, bigger smartphone needs smaller SIM card. Luckily, the next showroom of Emtel is just 5 mins away up the road, and the service staff over there know their job. Finally, after roughly 10 mins of paper work, activation and small chit-chat, the S3 came to life on the mobile network. Owning a smart-phone now and knowing that my BWE would like to interact more on social networks away from home, especially to upload pictures and provide local 'check-ins', I activated a data package for her in advance, too. Even that it is Saturday, everything was already done and ready to be used. Nice bonus: The Emtel clerk directly offered me to set up the configuration for the Emtel data services, yes sure, go ahead, this saves me to search for that in the settings. Okay, spoiler-alert here, setting a static APN to access the Emtel network and the internet wouldn't be a challenge. But hey, she already had the phone in her hands and I could keep my eyes on the children. Well done, Emtel! Resume Thanks to the useful software package by Wondershare is was a hands-free experience to transfer all the data from a Nokia mobile on Symbian S60 to a Samsung Galaxy S III on Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). In the future, this wont be a serious issue at all anymore thanks to synchronisation services and cloud storage. And for now, I'm only waiting for the official upgrades for Jelly Bean.

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• Agile Like Jazz

  - by Jeff Certain

  (I’ve been sitting on this for a week or so now, thinking that it needed to be tightened up a bit to make it less rambling. Since that’s clearly not going to happen, reader beware!) I had the privilege of spending around 90 minutes last night sitting and listening to Sonny Rollins play a concert at the Disney Center in LA. If you don’t know who Sonny Rollins is, I don’t know how to explain the experience; if you know who he is, I don’t need to. Suffice it to say that he has been recording professionally for over 50 years, and helped create an entire genre of music. A true master by any definition. One of the most intriguing aspects of a concert like this, however, is watching the master step aside and let the rest of the musicians play. Not just play their parts, but really play… letting them take over the spotlight, to strut their stuff, to soak up enthusiastic applause from the crowd. Maybe a lot of it has to do with the fact that Sonny Rollins has been doing this for more than a half-century. Maybe it has something to do with a kind of patience you learn when you’re on the far side of 80 – and the man can still blow a mean sax for 90 minutes without stopping! Maybe it has to do with the fact that he was out there for the love of the music and the love of the show, not because he had anything to prove to anyone and, I like to think, not for the money. Perhaps it had more to do with the fact that, when you’re at that level of mastery, the other musicians are going to be good. Really good. Whatever the reasons, there was a incredible freedom on that stage – the ability to improvise, for each musician to showcase their own specialization and skills, and them come back to the common theme, back to being on the same page, as it were. All this took place in the same venue that is home to the L.A. Phil. Somehow, I can’t ever see the same kind of free-wheeling improvisation happening in that context. And, since I’m a geek, I started thinking about agility. Rollins has put together a quintet that reflects his own particular style and past. No upright bass or piano for Rollins – drums, bongos, electric guitar and bass guitar along with his sax. It’s not about the mix of instruments. Other trios, quartets, and sextets use different mixes of instruments. New Orleans jazz tends towards trombones instead of sax; some prefer cornet or trumpet. But no matter what the choice of instruments, size matters. Team sizes are something I’ve been thinking about for a while. We’re on a quest to rethink how our teams are organized. They just feel too big, too unwieldy. In fact, they really don’t feel like teams at all. Most of the time, they feel more like collections or people who happen to report to the same manager. I attribute this to a couple factors. One is over-specialization; we have a tendency to have people work in silos. Although the teams are product-focused, within them our developers are both generalists and specialists. On the one hand, we expect them to be able to build an entire vertical slice of the application; on the other hand, each developer tends to be responsible for the vertical slice. As a result, developers often work on their own piece of the puzzle, in isolation. This sort of feels like working on a jigsaw in a group – each person taking a set of colors and piecing them together to reveal a portion of the overall picture. But what inevitably happens when you go to meld all those pieces together? Inevitably, you have some sections that are too big to move easily. These sections end up falling apart under their own weight as you try to move them. Not only that, but there are other challenges – figuring out where that section fits, and how to tie it into the rest of the puzzle. Often, this is when you find a few pieces need to be added – these pieces are “glue,” if you will. The other issue that arises is due to the overhead of maintaining communications in a team. My mother, who worked in IT for around 30 years, once told me that 20% per team member is a good rule of thumb for maintaining communication. While this is a rule of thumb, it seems to imply that any team over about 6 people is going to become less agile simple because of the communications burden. Teams of ten or twelve seem like they fall into the philharmonic organizational model. Complicated pieces of music requiring dozens of players to all be on the same page requires a much different model than the jazz quintet. There’s much less room for improvisation, originality or freedom. (There are probably orchestral musicians who will take exception to this characterization; I’m calling it like I see it from the cheap seats.) And, there’s one guy up front who is running the show, whose job is to keep all of those dozens of players on the same page, to facilitate communications. Somehow, the orchestral model doesn’t feel much like a self-organizing team, either. The first violin may be the best violinist in the orchestra, but they don’t get to perform free-wheeling solos. I’ve never heard of an orchestra getting together for a jam session. But I have heard of teams that organize their work based on the developers available, rather than organizing the developers based on the work required. I have heard of teams where desired functionality is deferred – or worse yet, schedules are missed – because one critical person doesn’t have any bandwidth available. I’ve heard of teams where people simply don’t have the big picture, because there is too much communication overhead for everyone to be aware of everything that is happening on a project. I once heard Paul Rayner say something to the effect of “you have a process that is perfectly designed to give you exactly the results you have.” Given a choice, I want a process that’s much more like jazz than orchestral music. I want a process that doesn’t burden me with lots of forms and checkboxes and stuff. Give me the simplest, most lightweight process that will work – and a smaller team of the best developers I can find. This seems like the kind of process that will get the kind of result I want to be part of.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, December 29, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, December 29, 2010Popular ReleasesDocX: DocX v1.0.0.11: Building Examples projectTo build the Examples project, download DocX.dll and add it as a reference to the project. OverviewThis version of DocX contains many bug fixes, it is a serious step towards a stable release. Added1) Unit testing project, 2) Examples project, 3) To many bug fixes to list here, see the source code change list history.Cosmos (C# Open Source Managed Operating System): 71406: This is the second release supporting the full line of Visual Studio 2010 editions. Changes since release 71246 include: Debug info is now stored in a single .cpdb file (which is a Firebird database) Keyboard input works now (using Console.ReadLine) Console colors work (using Console.ForegroundColor and .BackgroundColor)AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.0: Added the all new Masteries Browser which replaces the Quick Open combobox AutoLoL will now attemt to create file associations for mastery (*.lolm) files Each Mastery Build can now contain keywords that the Masteries Browser will use for filtering Changed the way AutoLoL detects if another instance is already running Changed the format of the mastery files to allow more information stored in* Dialogs will now focus the Ok or Cancel button which allows the user to press Return to clo...Confree for Outlook: Confree for Outlook 1.0: Confree for OutlookFeaturesCreate a Claro/Telmex conference directly from Outlook (only works for Argentina). NotesBy now, only works with Claro/Telmex Argentina (if you are using http://simon.telmex.net.ar, we are good).Paint.NET PSD Plugin: 1.6.0: Handling of layer masks has been greatly improved. Improved reliability. Many PSD files that previously loaded in as garbage will now load in correctly. Parallelized loading. PSD files containing layer masks will load in a bit quicker thanks to the removal of the sequential bottleneck. Hidden layers are no longer made visible on save. Many thanks to the users who helped expose the layer masks problem: Rob Horowitz, M_Lyons10. Please keep sending in those bug reports and PSD repro files!Razor Templating Engine: Razor Templating Engine v1.2: Changes: ADDED: Standard namespaces imports for all templates: System, System.Collections.Generic, System.Linq (Changeset 5635) ADDED: Methods for Precompilation (Changeset 3283) CHANGED: Refactored precompilation to be exposed per-TemplateService. (Changeset 3440) CHANGED: Added more descriptive compilation exception message. (Changeset 3629) FIXED: Forced reference to Microsoft.CSharp to correct support for testing frameworks. (Changeset 3689) FIXED: Added support for nested anonymous obj...PhysicalMeasure C# library: PhysicalMeasure 1.0 Release 2010-12-28: PhysicalMeasure 1.0 Release 2010-12-28Facebook C# SDK: 4.1.1: From 4.1.1 Release: Authentication bug fix caused by facebook change (error with redirects in Safari) Authenticator fix, always returning true From 4.1.0 Release Lots of bug fixes Removed Dynamic Runtime Language dependencies from non-dynamic platforms. Samples included in release for ASP.NET, MVC, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, WPF, WinForms, and one Visual Basic Sample Changed internal serialization to use Json.net BREAKING CHANGE: Canvas Session is no longer supported. Use Signed...MonitorWang: MonitorWang v1.0.5 (Growler): What's new?Added Growl Notification Finalisers - these are interceptor components that work exclusively with the Growl Publisher. These allow you to modify the Growl Notification just prior to it being sent by the publisher. You can inject custom logic to precisely control how the Growl Notification will appear; this includes changing the Growl Priority level and message text. I've created to two Growl Notification Finalisers - one allows you to change the Growl Notification Priorty based on ...Catel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.0.0: And there it is, the final release of Catel, and it is no longer a beta version!EnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.7 ALPHA: 2.2.7 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Mongoose has bee...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.19: Mono 2.8, Silverlight, OAuth, 100% Twitter API coverage, streaming, extensibility via Raw Queries, and added documentation. Bug fixes.Rocket Framework (.Net 4.0): Rocket Framework for Windows V 1.0.0: Architecture is reviewed and adjusted in a way so that I can introduce the Web version and WPF version of this framework next. - Rocket.Core is introduced - Controller button functions revisited and updated - DB is renewed to suite the implemented features - Create New button functionality is changed - Add Question Handling featuresFlickr Wallpaper Rotator (for Windows desktop): Wallpaper Flickr 1.1: Some minor bugfixes (mostly covering when network connection is flakey, so I discovered them all while at my parents' house for Christmas).NoSimplerAccounting: NoSimplerAccounting 6.0: -Fixed a bug in expense category report.NHibernate Mapping Generator: NHibernate Mapping Generator 2.0: Added support for Postgres (Thanks to Angelo)NewLife XCode: XCode v6.5.2010.1223 ????（????v3.5??）: XCode v6.5.2010.1223 ????，??： NewLife.Core ??? NewLife.Net ??? XControl ??? XTemplate ????，??C#?????? XAgent ???? NewLife.CommonEnitty ??????（???，XCode??????） XCode?? ?????????，??????????????????，?????95% XCode v3.5.2009.0714 ??，?v3.5?v6.0???????????????，?????????。v3.5???????????，??????????????。 XCoder ??XTemplate?????????，????????XCode??? XCoder_Src ???????（????XTemplate????），??????????????????VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.0: Please see changes: http://support.vivoware.com/project/ChangeLog.aspx?PROJID=48Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.6 Beta - codename JUNO: The Umbraco 4.6 beta (codename JUNO) release contains many new features focusing on an improved installation experience, a number of robust developer features, and contains more than 89 bug fixes since the 4.5.2 release. Improved installer experience Updated Starter Kits (Simple, Blog, Personal, Business) Beautiful, free, customizable skins included Skinning engine and Skin customization (see Skinning Documentation Kit) Default dashboards on install with hide option Updated Login t...ASP.NET MVC SiteMap provider: MvcSiteMapProvider 2.3.0: Using NuGet?MvcSiteMapProvider is also listed in the NuGet feed. Learn more... Like the project? Consider a donation!Donate via PayPal via PayPal. Release notesThis will be the last release targeting ASP.NET MVC 2 and .NET 3.5. MvcSiteMapProvider 3.0.0 will be targeting ASP.NET MVC 3 and .NET 4 Web.config setting skipAssemblyScanOn has been deprecated in favor of excludeAssembliesForScan and includeAssembliesForScan ISiteMapNodeUrlResolver is now completely responsible for generating th...New Projects42 Sight Holistic Data Warehousing on Microsoft SQL Server 2008: This project is the Holistic DW Template. Included are the 3 MS XL spreadsheet reporting models as described in the book Holistic Data Warehousing. This Template is multi-purpose and requires no modification other than you populating it according to the book examplesAndshev.OrmTools: Tools for generating SQL queries using LINQ. ORM framework is also planned to be implemented.BFG and Dice Roller: This solution will contain 2 concepts, the Dice Roller with hooks for extension into other applications, as well as a Personal Battlefleet Gothic Helper application to help manage, control, and smoothe the flow of BFG games. The BFG application will target the Phone 7 platform.BlondieODOS: its an osBluehat Community projetcts: Bluehat Community projetcts.C# - DBWrapper MySQL: Abro aqui a discussão para criarmos uma classe para manipular dados em MySQL.CardGame for Education: This project goal is to create a small Card Game and to teach the team members how to design, implement and how to use "real world" tools. Englishlearning: My test project!Faran Silver: Silverlight Controls Developed till now. Include: 1- Persian Date Input 2- Close-able Tab Item 3- Shamsi Date Convertergocodelibrary: This is my project.Id3Stuff: Project that throws together some nice id3 mass editing functionsInfoStrat.OakFx: OakFx by InfoStratinivi: iniviJJODESK: This little utility software written in Vb.net 2.0, allows you to : - switch IE proxy, - manage IP, - launch website, - launch other utilty tools , - launch and manage cmd, bat, vbs script. - and much more ..... First I wrote this tool for my personal use, because I work with several networks, and customer sites. I think many other software developpers have the same need. All parameters are customisable, and are store in an ini text file. And it can run on an USB stick. learn MVC: Just keeping all source code in one place. Thats all folksLJF.Utility: Utility?????Lucidity: Lucid WILDMixModes Synergy - The WPF Toolkit: MixModes Synergy 2010 is a complete toolset that simplifies user interface development in Windows Presentation Foundation based applications. Synergy includes rich user interface controls providing professional look and feel for your applications out of the box.Multi Targetted Rss Reader: A Multi Targetted Rss Reader demo that shows how to multi target your view model across different screens (WP7, Silverlight, WPF, Surface).Secure Batch Command Tool For Administrators: A command line tool that will help you to protect your passwords that you should provide in your batch files. This tool encrypt Dos commands and update the batch files in a way that keeps your batch file maintainable and easy to use.SharePoint 2010 Conditional Lookup Control: I created a "Conditional Lookup" control for SharePoint 2010. With this you can connect two lookup fields controls on list forms to fill the second control with values depending on the selected value in the first control. There is a demo inside.sql dot: Ease when making a connection to the sql serverwolisbetter: WOL is better!WP7PasswordsBackup: backup/sync client for windows phone 7 passwords app. ??????: ??????

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