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  • Is IDirectInput8::FindDevice totally broken on Windows 7?

    - by Noora
    I'm developing on Windows 7, and using DirectInput8 for my input needs. I'm tracking gamepad additions and removals (that is, GUID_DEVINTERFACE_HID devices) using the DBT_DEVICEARRIVAL and DBT_DEVICEREMOVECOMPLETE messages, which works fine. However, what I've come to find out is that no matter what I do, passing the received values from DBT_DEVICEARRIVAL to IDirectInput8's FindDevice method, it will always fail to identify the device, returning DIERR_DEVICENOTREG. DirectInput still clearly knows about the device, because I can enumerate and create it just fine. I've tried with three different gamepads, and the error persists, so it's not about that either. I also tried passing some alternative interface GUIDs for the RegisterDeviceNotification call, didn't help. So, has anyone else faced the same problem, and have you found a usable workaround? I'm afraid I'll soon have to stoop down to re-enumerating all devices when something is added or removed, but I'll first give this question one last shot here. EDIT: For the record, I've also tried pretty much every single HID API & SetupAPI function for alternative ways of figuring out the needed GUIDs, with zero success. So if you're facing the same problem as me, don't bother with that route. I'm pretty sure those GUIDs are made up by DirectInput itself somehow. Short of reverse engineering dinput8.dll, I'm truly out of ideas now.

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  • Deal Registration is moving to OPS– Guest Post

    - by Kristin Rose
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} We have listened to, contemplated around, and agreed with your feedback when it comes to our current deal registration system, and now we are proud to announce that deal registration is moving to the Oracle Partner Store! If you missed the live announcement at Oracle OpenWorld, watch below as Titina Ott, VP of  Worldwide Alliances & Channels, presents on this upcoming and exciting functionality. Some benefits of this move include: Simplified Registration Form Easier and Faster Product Selection Expanded Browser Support Shared Registration Visibility Between VAD and VAR Downloadable tracking and reporting Shared Customer Selection From Partner Ordering Functions As you may already be aware, the Oracle Partner Store is a very popular, feature rich application for partners like you, that handles software and hardware ordering, including configurations, additional discount requests and product and price information. This big move is set to go live November 19th 2012, but don’t wait until then! If you don’t already have an Oracle Partner Store account, register today  and get ready for the big move! Best Regards, Simon Davis Senior Director Ww A&C Quote To Order

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  • What You Said: Are You A Second Screen Multi-Tasker?

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Earlier this week we asked you if you used a second screen while watching television or movies–such as a smartphone or tablet. Now we’re back to highlight how HTG readers are engaging (or disengaging) with their mobile devices. Image courtesy of Umani, a TV-companion application for iPad. By far and away the biggest trend was the use of the second screen as a filler for commercials and/or and outright diversion from lackluster programming. Jack in TN writes: Yes. I keep a laptop going 7×24 pretty much, and TV in going normally. Pretty much my ‘throne’ in the family room. I have almost always multi-tasked, before laptop it was a book or magazine or 3 at my side. My wife has accused me of using TV as a radio more than once, and I can’t say she is wrong. How to Get Pro Features in Windows Home Versions with Third Party Tools HTG Explains: Is ReadyBoost Worth Using? HTG Explains: What The Windows Event Viewer Is and How You Can Use It

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  • Over 300 "NetBeans Platform for Beginners" Sold

    - by Geertjan
    I've noticed that the authors of "NetBeans Platform for Beginners" have started exposing the number of sales they have achieved. Below, notice the '304' (which will probably change quite quickly) at the lower left end of this screenshot: That's pretty good since the book has only existed for a few months and developers tend to share books they buy in PDF format. That probably means there are 300 teams of software developers around the world who are using the book, which is pretty awesome. (Though it would help the authors significantly, I'm sure, if individual developers on teams would buy the book, rather than sharing one between them. Come on, let's support these great authors so that they'll write more books like this.) Also note that there is a set of reviewer comments on the page above: Plus, the book is updated at the end of each month, so it continues to grow and improve from month to month, for free for everyone who has bought it. If you've read the book and want to contribute a review like the above, contact walternyland @ yahoo dot com. Great work, guys! For anyone out there who hasn't got it yet: https://leanpub.com/nbp4beginners

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  • Should I make my project free software?

    - by SkyDan
    The story Over the last couple month I have been working on a pretty big project. It's an enterprise-level software, I designed to be used at a local gym, but I believe it can be used in other places, where things like keeping track of clients, attendances, purchases and payments are required. The problem Well recently, I started to think on how to mature this project from being home-made. Not just because I want my project to grow but also because I would like to have some gain from it. The solutions? And here I saw 2 paths: License the software under some restricted license and try to sell the software to other business around. This way I can get some money for college (I am a high school junior right now) License the software under some free license, publish it on GitHub or something, and try to engage other developers to participate in the project. This way I get experience of working in a team and a better chance that the project will keep growing. The latter would be a good + for my resume, when I'll trying to find a job. So far both ways seem pretty exciting and beneficial to me. The first one offers a good college career, while the second one offers some additional experience and the project's growth. The questions Can anyone point to some other +/- of these 2 options? What would the better option in my situation and why? Or are there other options?

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  • MS Marketing Strategy

    - by Aaron Kowall
    I found this week’s Windows Phone 8 event interesting.  Not just because it looks like some fantastic new features in the new OS but because of the wait for release.  If I were a Nokia shareholder (which I am not) I’d be very unhappy with MS announcing that Windows Phone 8 will NOT work with current hardware.  So, there are some very nice Lumia devices that are now end-of-life that have arrived relatively recently at carriers and retailers. I understand that MS needs to demonstrate progress against iOS and Android and that there is some Windows 8 tie-in that they are trying to capitalize (and MS IS still all about Windows).  However, it’s a bit of a kick to partners that have invested in the platform with pretty decent devices (Samsung, HTC and of course Nokia). Personally, I’m still using a Samsung Foucs.  I was seriously considering upgrading to a Lumia 900 (we just got Lync mobile available) but will now wait it out until new devices arrive with Windows 8.  If MS had waited to announce, I would happily have upgraded to the Lumia and when I found out it couldn’t be upgraded then that would be a gamble I took and lost and I’d live with it.  Now, however, I can see the future and know that waiting is the better option for me so that is 1 sale Nokia will miss out on.  Based on some chats I’ve seen on mobile forums I’m certainly far from the only one. I’m sure glad I’m not in charge of marketing at MS.  There are tough decisions to be made there and I’m pretty sure you piss somebody off regardless. Technorati Tags: WP8,Lumia,Nokia,Samsung

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  • Will Unity skills be interchangeable?

    - by Starkers
    I'm currently learning Unity and working my way through a video game maths primer text book. My goal is to create a racing game for WebGL (using Three.js and maybe Physic.js). I'm well aware that the Unity program shields you from a lot of what's going on and a lot of the grunt work attached to developing even a simple video game, but if I power through a bunch of Unity tutorials, will a lot of the skills I learn translate over to other frameworks/engines? I'm pretty proficient at level design with WebGL, and I'm a good 3D modeller. My weaknesses are definitely AI and Physics. While I am rapidly shoring up my math, and while Physics is undeniably interesting there's only so many hours in the day and there's a wealth of engines out there to take care of this sort of thing. AI does appeal to me a lot more, and is a lot more necessary. AI changes drastically from game to game, is tweaked heavily during development, and the physics is a lot more constant. Will leaning AI concepts in Unity allow me to transfer this knowledge pretty much anywhere? Or will I just be paddling up Unity creek with these skills?

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  • Choosing the Database Solution for Large Data Application

    - by GµårÐïåñ
    I have been tasked to write an application that will be a combination of document and inventory management in VB.net which will be used to store document images in TIFF, PDF, XPS, TXT, DOC, PPT and so on as binary data that can be retrieved for viewing, printing, and possible OCR to be searchable as well along with meta data such as sender, recipient, type of document, date, source, etc. So the table would probably be something like: DOC_NAME, DOC_DATE, NOTES, ... DOC_BINARY (where the actual document will be put inside) What my concern is finding a database solution that will not become unstable due to size restrictions, records limitations and performance. Some of the options are MS_SQL, SQL Express, SQLite, mySQL, and Access. Now I can pretty much eliminate Access right off the bat as it is just too limiting and not scalable. I can further eliminate SQL Express because of the 2 GB limit and again scalability. So that leaves me with MS_SQL, SQLite and mySQL (although if anyone has other options they think would be good as well, please feel free to share them, by no means am I set on these only). So this brings me to what you guys think is the best option for what I have described. The goal is that the data is all in one place (a single file) that will make backup and portability easier. For small volume usage, pretty much any solution will hold for a while, but my goal is to think ahead and make sure its able to withstand heavy large volume usage as well. Another consideration is also the interoperability with .NET and stability of such code to avoid errors and memory leaks. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.

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  • Day in the Life of Agile - The Forge Michigan November 27, 2012

    - by csmith18119
    Went to training at The Forge yesterday and did a Day in the life of Agile with Pillar.  It was pretty good. Check them out at: http://pillartechnology.com/ Abstract: A single-day agile project simulation that is engaging, educational, provocative, and fun. This simulation introduces concepts like time-boxed iterations, User Stories, collective estimation, commitment to a product owner for iteration scope, formal verification ritual at iteration conclusion, tracking velocity, and making results big and visible through charts. The exercise is designed to simulate not only how agile teams and practices work, but the inevitable challenges that arise as teams attempt to adopt such practices. One of the best parts of this training was getting some hands on experience with agile.  We used a program called Scratch to create an arcade video game.  Our team chose Frogger.  We had 3 iterations at 20 minutes each.  I think we did pretty good but in the panic of trying to get a bunch done in only 20 minutes made it interesting. To check out our project, I uploaded it to my CodePlex site Download Source Code (Under Scratch/Frogger) Cool class! I highly recommend if you get the opportunity.

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  • Open Source Highlight: namebench

    - by eddraper
    DNS is a big deal.  Even small incremental changes to improve its performance can yield significant value due to the vast quantity of look-ups required when using the internet.  Until now, It’s always been one of those things I had to kinda take on faith… was my ISP doing a good job?  Are those public DNS server really that much faster?  What about security and privacy concerns? Let me introduce you to namebench.  This is the kinda tool I really love – one that immediately delivers value and is almost over-the-top OCD in its attention to detail. Trust me, this tool is utterly ruthless in it’s quest for getting it right – you’re not left with a big question mark after it presents its data.  The results are conclusive and actionable.  Here’s what is does: It hunts down the fastest DNS servers from your desktop that it can find using thousands of requests.  No, it doesn’t pop up this little dialog in 10 seconds to give you some “off the cuff” answer from a handful of providers.  It takes the better part of 10-15 minutes to run.  When it finishes, it presents you with a veritable horn-o-plenty of data.  Mean response duration, response distribution, bad data,  no stone is left un-turned. Check it out.  You’ll dig it.

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  • How to avoid the GameManager god object?

    - by lorancou
    I just read an answer to a question about structuring game code. It made me wonder about the ubiquitous GameManager class, and how it often becomes an issue in a production environment. Let me describe this. First, there's prototyping. Nobody cares about writing great code, we just try to get something running to see if the gameplay adds up. Then there's a greenlight, and in an effort to clean things up, somebody writes a GameManager. Probably to hold a bunch of GameStates, maybe to store a few GameObjects, nothing big, really. A cute, little, manager. In the peaceful realm of pre-production, the game is shaping up nicely. Coders have proper nights of sleep and plenty of ideas to architecture the thing with Great Design Patterns. Then production starts and soon, of course, there is crunch time. Balanced diet is long gone, the bug tracker is cracking with issues, people are stressed and the game has to be released yesterday. At that point, usually, the GameManager is a real big mess (to stay polite). The reason for that is simple. After all, when writing a game, well... all the source code is actually here to manage the game. It's easy to just add this little extra feature or bugfix in the GameManager, where everything else is already stored anyway. When time becomes an issue, no way to write a separate class, or to split this giant manager into sub-managers. Of course this is a classical anti-pattern: the god object. It's a bad thing, a pain to merge, a pain to maintain, a pain to understand, a pain to transform. What would you suggest to prevent this from happening?

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  • Test JPQL with NetBeans IDE 7.3 Tools

    - by Geertjan
    Since I pretty much messed up this part of the "Unlocking Java EE 6 Platform" demo, which I did together with PrimeFaces lead Çagatay Çivici during JavaOne 2012, I feel obliged to blog about it to clarify what should have happened! In my own defense, I only learned about this feature 15 minutes before the session started. In 7.3 Beta, it works for Java SE projects, while for Maven-based web projects, you need a post 7.3 Beta build, which is what I set up for my demo right before it started. Then I saw that the feature was there, without actually trying it out, which resulted in that part of the demo being a bit messy. And thanks to whoever it was in the audience who shouted out how to use it correctly! Screenshots below show everything related to this new feature, available from 7.3 onwards, which means you can try out your JPQL queries right within the IDE, without deploying the application (you only need to build it since the queries are run on the compiled classes): SQL view: Result view for the above: Here, you see the result of a more specific query, i.e., check that a record with a specific name value is present in the database: Also note that there is code completion within the editor part of the dialog above. I.e., as you press Ctrl-Space, you'll see context-sensitive suggestions for filling out the query. All this is pretty cool stuff! Saves time because now there's no need to deploy the app to check the database connection.

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  • I need a decent alternative to c++ [closed]

    - by wxiiir
    I've learned php and c++, i will list the things i liked and didn't liked on each of them, how i decided to learn them in the first place and why i feel the need to learn a decent alternative to c++, i'm not a professional programmer and only do projects for myself. PHP - Decided to learn because i wanted to build a dynamic website, that i did and turned out very good, i even coded a 'not so basic' search engine for it that would display the results 'google style' and really fast, pretty cool stuff. PROS - Pretty consistent syntax for all stuff (minor caveats), great functionality, a joy for me to code in it (it seems to 'know' what i want it to do and just does it) CONS - Painfully slow for number crunching (which takes me to c++ that i only learned because i wanted to do some number crunching and it had to be screaming fast) C++ - Learned because number crunching was so slow in php and manipulating large amounts of data was very difficult, i thought, it's popular programming language and all, and tests show that it's fast, the basic stuff resemble php so it shouldn't be hard to pick up PROS - It can be used to virtually anything, very very fast CONS - Although fun to code at the start, if i need to do something out of the ordinary, memory allocation routines, pointer stuff, stack sizes etc... will get me tired really quick, syntax is a bit inconsistent some times (more caveats) I guess that from what i wrote you guys will understand what i'm looking for, there are thousands of languages out there, it's likely that one of them will suit my needs, i've been seeing stuff today and a friend of mine that is a professional programmer tried OCaml and Fortran and said that both are fast for numerical stuff, i've been inclined to test Fortran, but i need some more input because i want to have some other good 'candidates' to choose from, for example the python syntax seemed great to me, but then i found out from some tests that it was a lot slower than c++ and i simply don't want to twiddle my thumbs all day.

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  • Top down or bottom up approach?

    - by george_zakharov
    this is the closest I think I can get to define my problem. I'm an interface designer and now I'm working with a team of programmers to develop a new CMS for a heavy media site. I'm sorry if it's a very, very dumb question to ask here, but I really need some help. As I've started developing a specification list for a prototype it turned out a very big one. I do realize now that the client-side will be JS heavy, with lots of DnD and other "cool designer stuff". The CMS will even include a small project management system for its users, nothing big like Basecamp, but with a live feed of comments etc. The problem is the the team has now separated. Someone is proposing the existing backend solution used in other CMS, someone is proposing to rewrite everything from scratch. The point to keep the code is that it is faster, the point to rewrite is to make it better for the proposed design (include Node.js and other stuff I don't actually get). The question is — can the UI specs influence back-end? The guys that propose to use the existing solution did everything with the Yii framework (as far as I know), and they say that everything on server is not affected by this "interface coolness". Others say that it does, that even autosave can't work without server load. Please, if this is really incomprehensible, again, I'm sorry, and I'll happy to clarify it after your questions. Thanks in advance

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  • Problem with understanding how to start

    - by Coolface
    Okay, this might be a little off-topic but i try anyway. Sorry to bother. So i'm working as sysadmin for at least 5 years now and i quite enjoy IT field in general. Somehow i was never interested in programming much but always want to learn something at least easy and for personal usage. As sysadmin i need scripting skills so learn shell scripting without much problems, i also try to learn pascal, delphi, basic over time and must recent was python. Well, my problem is when i try to learn programming i just can't apply what i learn from the books to the real word. What i mean is i understand there are data structures, algorithms, variables, lib's, if-then logic, etc. but i just can't understand how to apply this things when i want to do real things. Like i want to get a something simple as parse web page, i draw a quick algorithm like get a web page, find a word on it and write a to file, on the paper everything look simple but when i get to the coding i just stuck pretty much from the start. I try read code of the real programs that just totally confusing especially big parts with many classes so i'm just quickly lost a trail what this code do. I think i just lack some fundamentals to see a big picture but don't really know what this might be? Or maybe i just don't have a passion to programming at all... My best bet was a shell scripting so i have really no problems to write complex scripts but this just not enough. Recently i was read around 5 or 6 python books because everyone say it's so easy even kid can code something but still no much luck, python is good and easy but i can't make something harder then a prodecurial style code like in bash for easy things but when i want harder things i'm still stuck. In college i was also not a math and tech guy and like to study non-tech stuff mostly like economy, psychology maybe that my problem? Anyway any advice would be greatly appriciated.

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  • Oracle Open World 2012?????

    - by Liu Maclean(???)
    Oracle Open World 2012?????: ???.. Oracle OpenWorld 2012 sessions????:Search Content Catalog for Oracle OpenWorld 2012 sessions ?????????session??? Open World 2012??: Larry ??Exadata X3 OOW 2012???Exadata X3,?? X3-2 ?Expansion Rack X3-2?X3-8 Exadata X3????:http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/exadata/overview/index.html  ORACLE EXADATA Database MACHINE X3-8 sheetORACLE EXADATA Database MACHINE X3-2 sheet Exadata X3-2???????: X3-2?compute db node?????????8?Intel Xeon E5-2690??? ??????????12????16?,???33%????? ???96GB???128GB,????256GB ??????????50% X3-2 cell node??????????????Intel Xeon ??????flash card flash card??????4?,??flash card?????????40%? ???X3-2???22.4TB?flash ,??????flash????????????????????,???10????? CPU???6?,????????Intel Xeon model ????????X2-2??,???600GB???????3TB?????? ??Exadata X3-2?????????,??????????1/4?????,1/8????????????????? Exadata X3-8???????: X3-8???X2-8?????,???X3-8??????????X3-2??,??X3-8?????22.4TB?????? ???CEO??  Engineered to Work Together OOW????? Oracle Open World 2012 ????? Open World 2012 ??:http://www.oracle.com/openworld/index.htmlOpen World 2012 ????:http://www.oracle.com/openworld/register/packages/index.html ??: Sept. 30 – Oct. 4, 2012 9?30?? 10?4? ??:Moscone Center, San Francisco (747 Howard Street, San Francisco, California 94103). ?????Mark Hurd??OOW 2012: How big is oow OOW 2012?????????: Focus On Database Technologies Focus On Real Application Clusters Focus On Exadata Focus On Oracle Database Appliance Focus On Oracle Database Application Development Focus On Oracle Database Security Focus On Big Data Focus On Data Warehousing Focus On High Availability Focus On Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c (and Private Cloud) Focus On Oracle Spatial and Graph Focus On Oracle Database Utilities Focus On Oracle Database Upgrade Focus On Oracle Database Private Cloud Focus On .Net Focus On Oracle Database on Windows Focus On Engineered Systems Focus On Sunday Users Forum

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  • Can an Employer turn you down if you have said the fact about current work culture being bad [closed]

    - by MansonRix
    I had recently an interview where I scored good in 1st two round of technical interview . Then in the 3rd round was the managerial round where the guy started about my experience and whether I have vaptured any requirement and handled and trained any teams. This went pretty well for around 50 mins . Then there was the awkward question , Interviewer: why amI looking for a change? Me: coz I want to explore my carrier options? Interviewer: But your current company is big enough and you can explore options over there? (This was supposedly the trap) Me: Apart from that I am missing the flexibilty of working with Us and Europe based company as my current company is not that flexible. Interviewer: What exactly you don't find flexible. Me: The login time . Even if you get late by 1sec you might have to explin. Though this is not a big problem , still I will prefer flexibilty as we are working really hard. Interviewer: Allright ( Then couple of more questions) , Hope to C U Ya , that's pretty much it . Now I called up HR and they say , they are yet to get the feedback from Interviewer. Did I screw it? I mean does some one really have to pretend always by saying positive things about company and manager though not saying negative things?

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  • ???: Oracle NoSQL Database??

    - by zhangqm
    ?????????Oracle?????Oracle NoSQL Database,?????NoSQL Database ??????????Oracle NoSQL Database??2???,Community Edition ?Enterprise Edition?????????NoSQL Database 11g R2 (11gR2.1.2.123). ?????????????????: Oracle NoSQL Database OTN portal (includes download facility) Oracle NoSQL Database OTN documentation Oracle NoSQL Database license information ??Oracle NoSQL Database ???????????,????,?????(key-value)???TB????,????????????(???)????,??????????????????????????,????,??????????? ?Oracle NoSQL Database?,???????????key-value???,??key???????:??????????key?(?????string),????????(??????????bytes)??????key-value ??primary key?hash?,????????????????????????????????,???????,????????????????????????? ???????????????????Java API??????Oracle NoSQL Database driver ????????,?????key-value????????????????Oracle NoSQL Database ?????Create, Read, Update and Delete (CRUD)??,???????durability??????????????????????:?????web console???command line??? Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition Oracle NoSQL Database?? Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition ????????,??????????????????????????????,?????????????????? ????????????Oracle NoSQL Database Driver?????key-value????????????Oracle NoSQL Database Driver??:?????????hash??????????????????,?????????????????????? ????????Oracle NoSQL Database Oracle NoSQL Database????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????: ???? ???? ???? ?????? ???? ?????? ????,??,?? ???? ???? ??? (sub-millisecond) ???????? ????? ??????? ????????  ?????Oracle?????? ???? (Oracle Big Data Appliance) ???? ?????????????????????????????????,???“??”???????????,Oracle NoSQL Database???????????Oracle NoSQL Database?????(Cloud)??,????????(TB?PB??)???Oracle NoSQL Database ??????ETL??(??MapReduce, Hadoop)??,??acquire-organize-analyze ?????????? ???????Oracle NoSQL Database?????: • Large schema-less data repositories• Web?? (click-through capture)• ????• ????• ?????????? • Sensor/statistics/network capture (?????, ?????)• ?????????• ???? (MMS, SMS, routing)• ???? Oracle NoSQL Database (Community Edition ??)??????????? Oracle Big Data Appliance???

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  • optimizing iPhone OpenGL ES fill rate

    - by NateS
    I have an Open GL ES game on the iPhone. My framerate is pretty sucky, ~20fps. Using the Xcode OpenGL ES performance tool on an iPhone 3G, it shows: Renderer Utilization: 95% to 99% Tiler Utilization: ~27% I am drawing a lot of pretty large images with a lot of blending. If I reduce the number of images drawn, framerates go from ~20 to ~40, though the performance tool results stay about the same (renderer still maxed). I think I'm being limited by the fill rate of the iPhone 3G, but I'm not sure. My questions are: How can I determine with more granularity where the bottleneck is? That is my biggest problem, I just don't know what is taking all the time. If it is fillrate, is there anything I do to improve it besides just drawing less? I am using texture atlases. I have tried to minimize image binds, though it isn't always possible (drawing order, not everything fits on one 1024x1024 texture, etc). Every frame I do 10 image binds. This seem pretty reasonable, but I could be mistaken. I'm using vertex arrays and glDrawArrays. I don't really have a lot of geometry. I can try to be more precise if needed. Each image is 2 triangles and I try to batch things were possible, though often (maybe half the time) images are drawn with individual glDrawArrays calls. Besides the images, I have ~60 triangles worth of geometry being rendered in ~6 glDrawArrays calls. I often glTranslate before calling glDrawArrays. Would it improve the framerate to switch to VBOs? I don't think it is a huge amount of geometry, but maybe it is faster for other reasons? Are there certain things to watch out for that could reduce performance? Eg, should I avoid glTranslate, glColor4g, etc? I'm using glScissor in a 3 places per frame. Each use consists of 2 glScissor calls, one to set it up, and one to reset it to what it was. I don't know if there is much of a performance impact here. If I used PVRTC would it be able to render faster? Currently all my images are GL_RGBA. I don't have memory issues. Here is a rough idea of what I'm drawing, in this order: 1) Switch to perspective matrix. 2) Draw a full screen background image 3) Draw a full screen image with translucency (this one has a scrolling texture). 4) Draw a few sprites. 5) Switch to ortho matrix. 6) Draw a few sprites. 7) Switch to perspective matrix. 8) Draw sprites and some other textured geometry. 9) Switch to ortho matrix. 10) Draw a few sprites (eg, game HUD). Steps 1-6 draw a bunch of background stuff. 8 draws most of the game content. 10 draws the HUD. As you can see, there are many layers, some of them full screen and some of the sprites are pretty large (1/4 of the screen). The layers use translucency, so I have to draw them in back-to-front order. This is further complicated by needing to draw various layers in ortho and others in perspective. I will gladly provide additional information if reqested. Thanks in advance for any performance tips or general advice on my problem!

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  • Memory Troubles with UIImagePicker

    - by Dan Ray
    I'm building an app that has several different sections to it, all of which are pretty image-heavy. It ties in with my client's website and they're a "high-design" type outfit. One piece of the app is images uploaded from the camera or the library, and a tableview that shows a grid of thumbnails. Pretty reliably, when I'm dealing with the camera version of UIImagePickerControl, I get hit for low memory. If I bounce around that part of the app for a while, I occasionally and non-repeatably crash with "status:10 (SIGBUS)" in the debugger. On low memory warning, my root view controller for that aspect of the app goes to my data management singleton, cruises through the arrays of cached data, and kills the biggest piece, the image associated with each entry. Thusly: - (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning { // Releases the view if it doesn't have a superview. [super didReceiveMemoryWarning]; UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Low Memory Warning" message:@"Cleaning out events data" delegate:nil cancelButtonTitle:@"All right then." otherButtonTitles:nil]; [alert show]; [alert release]; NSInteger spaceSaved; DataManager *data = [DataManager sharedDataManager]; for (Event *event in data.eventList) { spaceSaved += [(NSData *)UIImagePNGRepresentation(event.image) length]; event.image = nil; spaceSaved -= [(NSData *)UIImagePNGRepresentation(event.image) length]; } NSString *titleString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Saved %d on event images", spaceSaved]; for (WondrMark *mark in data.wondrMarks) { spaceSaved += [(NSData *)UIImagePNGRepresentation(mark.image) length]; mark.image = nil; spaceSaved -= [(NSData *)UIImagePNGRepresentation(mark.image) length]; } NSString *messageString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"And total %d on event and mark images", spaceSaved]; NSLog(@"%@ - %@", titleString, messageString); // Relinquish ownership any cached data, images, etc that aren't in use. } As you can see, I'm making a (poor) attempt to eyeball the memory space I'm freeing up. I know it's not telling me about the actual memory footprint of the UIImages themselves, but it gives me SOME numbers at least, so I can see that SOMETHING'S happening. (Sorry for the hamfisted way I build that NSLog message too--I was going to fire another UIAlertView, but realized it'd be more useful to log it.) Pretty reliably, after toodling around in the image portion of the app for a while, I'll pull up the camera interface and get the low memory UIAlertView like three or four times in quick succession. Here's the NSLog output from the last time I saw it: 2010-05-27 08:55:02.659 EverWondr[7974:207] Saved 109591 on event images - And total 1419756 on event and mark images wait_fences: failed to receive reply: 10004003 2010-05-27 08:55:08.759 EverWondr[7974:207] Saved 4 on event images - And total 392695 on event and mark images 2010-05-27 08:55:14.865 EverWondr[7974:207] Saved 4 on event images - And total 873419 on event and mark images 2010-05-27 08:55:14.969 EverWondr[7974:207] Saved 4 on event images - And total 4 on event and mark images 2010-05-27 08:55:15.064 EverWondr[7974:207] Saved 4 on event images - And total 4 on event and mark images And then pretty soon after that we get our SIGBUS exit. So that's the situation. Now my specific questions: THE time I see this happening is when the UIPickerView's camera iris shuts. I click the button to take the picture, it does the "click" animation, and Instruments shows my memory footprint going from about 10mb to about 25mb, and sitting there until the image is delivered to my UIViewController, where usage drops back to 10 or 11mb again. If we make it through that without a memory warning, we're golden, but most likely we don't. Anything I can do to make that not be so expensive? Second, I have NSZombies enabled. Am I understanding correctly that that's actually preventing memory from being freed? Am I subjecting my app to an unfair test environment? Third, is there some way to programmatically get my memory usage? Or at least the usage for a UIImage object? I've scoured the docs and don't see anything about that.

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  • How to upload video on YouTube with Ruby

    - by viatropos
    I am trying to upload a youtube video using the GData gem (I have seen the youtube_g gem but would like to make it work with pure GData if possible), but I keep getting this error: GData::Client::BadRequestError in 'MyProject::Google::YouTube should upload the actual video to youtube (once it does, mock this test out)' request error 400: No file found in upload request. I am using this code: def metadata data = <<-EOF <?xml version="1.0"?> <entry xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" xmlns:yt="http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007"> <media:group> <media:title type="plain">Bad Wedding Toast</media:title> <media:description type="plain"> I gave a bad toast at my friend's wedding. </media:description> <media:category scheme="http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007/categories.cat">People</media:category> <media:keywords>toast, wedding</media:keywords> </media:group> </entry> EOF end @yt = GData::Client::YouTube.new @yt.clientlogin("name", "pass") @yt.developer_key = "myKey" url = "http://uploads.gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/name/uploads" mime_type = "multipart/related" file_path = "sample_upload.mp4" @yt.post_file(url, file_path, mime_type, metadata) What is the recommended/standard way for uploading videos to youtube with ruby, what is your method? Update After applying the changes to wrapped_entry, the string it produces looks like this: --END_OF_PART_59003 Content-Type: application/atom+xml; charset=UTF-8 <?xml version="1.0"?> <entry xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" xmlns:yt="http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007"> <media:group> <media:title type="plain">Bad Wedding Toast</media:title> <media:description type="plain"> I gave a bad toast at my friend's wedding. </media:description> <media:category scheme="http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007/categories.cat">People</media:category> <media:keywords>toast, wedding</media:keywords> </media:group> </entry> --END_OF_PART_59003 Content-Type: multipart/related Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary ... and inspecting the request and response looks like this: Request: <GData::HTTP::Request:0x1b8bb44 @method=:post @url="http://uploads.gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/lancejpollard/uploads" @body=#<GData::HTTP::MimeBody:0x1b8c738 @parts=[#<GData::HTTP::MimeBodyString:0x1b8c058 @bytes_read=0 @string="--END_OF_PART_30909\r\nContent-Type: application/atom+xml; charset=UTF-8\r\n\r\n <?xml version=\"1.0\"?>\n<entry xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom\"\n xmlns:media=\"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/\"\n xmlns:yt=\"http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007\">\n <media:group>\n <media:title type=\"plain\">Bad Wedding Toast</media:title>\n <media:description type=\"plain\">\n I gave a bad toast at my friend's wedding.\n </media:description>\n <media:category scheme=\"http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007/categories.cat\">People</media:category>\n <media:keywords>toast wedding</media:keywords>\n </media:group>\n</entry> \n\r\n--END_OF_PART_30909\r\nContent-Type: multipart/related\r\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: binary\r\n\r\n"> #<File:/Users/Lance/Documents/Development/git/thing/spec/fixtures/sample_upload.mp4> #<GData::HTTP::MimeBodyString:0x1b8c044 @bytes_read=0 @string="\r\n--END_OF_PART_30909--"] @current_part=0 @boundary="END_OF_PART_30909" @headers={"Slug"="sample_upload.mp4" "User-Agent"="GoogleDataRubyUtil-AnonymousApp" "GData-Version"="2" "X-GData-Key"="key=AI39si7jkhs_ECjF4unOQz8gpWGSKXgq0KJpm8wywkvBSw4s8oJd5p5vkpvURHBNh-hiYJtoKwQqSfot7KoCkeCE32rNcZqMxA" "Content-Type"="multipart/related; boundary=\"END_OF_PART_30909\"" "MIME-Version"="1.0"} Response: #<GData::HTTP::Response:0x1b897e0 @body="No file found in upload request." @headers={"cache-control"=>"no-cache no-store must-revalidate" "connection"=>"close" "expires"=>"Fri 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMT" "content-type"=>"text/plain; charset=utf-8" "date"=>"Fri 11 Dec 2009 02:10:25 GMT" "server"=>"Upload Server Built on Nov 30 2009 13:21:18 (1259616078)" "x-xss-protection"=>"0" "content-length"=>"32" "pragma"=>"no-cache"} @status_code=400> Still not working, I'll have to check it out more with those changes.

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  • Making a non-trivial Image and Video Gallery with a really nice interface

    - by Cawas
    Short part: I'm starting to build an Image and Video Gallery for our intranet. It's pretty much like an image gallery with video thumbnails that play on click. It's just good to keep that in mind because caching and streaming happen in very different ways there. It will serve to browse our reference database, which will also contain searching, tagging and voting. There are 3 features that I need to begin with: Quick preview of thumbnails from each Gallery Fast zoom in / out Animated scrolling Now to the long part, since I can't seem to reduce this: I hope this question belongs here. Maybe people can read this through and identify with it, specially since I expect answers to be pretty specific. The first plan was getting Apple's mobile me gallery as base, because it just so happens to have all those 3 features. If you've never seem it, you should check it out. Move the mouse over each collection and you'll get a nice preview "per pixel". Carousel got a really good scrolling, not just because of the pretty effect. I like it much more than cooliris, but it would be nice to have it in several rows, maybe without the magnifying effect... Then it could be all in the same place with the zoom. The more the features blend-in together, the better. Zooming out with the mouse, scrolling by dragging, once the zoom is really out it becomes a browsing through galleries, with the quick-show preview of each, all properly cached and fast. That'd be perfect. A very compelling interface will be important in this project. Well, my point here is just describing what I need and hope to hear from people with more experience in all that stuff of what's already done and what I'd have to do myself. And how (i.e. which framework to use) to do it. To begin with, I've found a gallery demo and its source code (I think it was from here, but the link seems broken now). I guess it was made in SproutCore, which is what mobileme was based upon. Definitely with JQuery (which already seems a little slow). But I'm still missing two features there: the carousel and the fast zoom (it's just not as slow as the zoom in this demo with cappuccino). Then I've found a supposedly better one with a pretty good and similar zoom, that I'm not sure if it's using any framework and is already in php. Right now it'd be better having just the HTML, no server-side, since I'm building interface first. So, can anyone point directions? There are way too many options! Should I look for another solution closer to what I need, or try and tweak this one? I'm not familiar with any framework at all. Sorry for bringing this question that I will have to answer myself anyway sooner or later and sorry that I couldn't make this smaller. Thanks.

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  • Best way to add an extra (nested) form in the middle of a tabbed form

    - by Scharrels
    I've got a web application, consisting mainly of a big form with information. The form is split into multiple tabs, to make it more readable for the user: <form> <div id="tabs"> <ul> <li><a href="#tab1">Tab1</a></li> <li><a href="#tab2">Tab2</a></li> </ul> <div id="tab1">A big table with a lot of input rows</div> <div id="tab2">A big table with a lot of input rows</div> </div> </form> The form is dynamically extended (extra rows are added to the tables). Every 10 seconds the form is serialized and synchronized with the server. I now want to add an interactive form on one of the tabs: when a user enters a name in a field, this information is sent to the server and an id associated with that name is returned. This id is used as an identifier for some dynamically added form fields. A quick sketchup of such a page would look like this: <form action="bigform.php"> <div id="tabs"> <ul> <li><a href="#tab1">Tab1</a></li> <li><a href="#tab2">Tab2</a></li> </ul> <div id="tab1">A big table with a lot of input rows</div> <div id="tab2"> <div class="associatedinfo"> <p>Information for Joe</p> <ul> <li><input name="associated[26][]" /></li> <li><input name="associated[26][]" /></li> </ul> </div> <div class="associatedinfo"> <p>Information for Jill</p> <ul> <li><input name="associated[12][]" /></li> <li><input name="associated[12][]" /></li> </ul> </div> <div id="newperson"> <form action="newform.php"> <p>Add another person:</p> <input name="extra" /><input type="submit" value="Add" /> </form> </div> </div> </div> </form> The above will not work: nested forms are not allowed in HTML. However, I really need to display the form on that tab: it's part of the functionality of that page. I also want the behaviour of a separate form: when the user hits return in the form field, the "Add" submit button is pressed and a submit action is triggered on the partial form. What is the best way to solve this problem?

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  • Upload File to Windows Azure Blob in Chunks through ASP.NET MVC, JavaScript and HTML5

    - by Shaun
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2013/07/01/upload-file-to-windows-azure-blob-in-chunks-through-asp.net.aspxMany people are using Windows Azure Blob Storage to store their data in the cloud. Blob storage provides 99.9% availability with easy-to-use API through .NET SDK and HTTP REST. For example, we can store JavaScript files, images, documents in blob storage when we are building an ASP.NET web application on a Web Role in Windows Azure. Or we can store our VHD files in blob and mount it as a hard drive in our cloud service. If you are familiar with Windows Azure, you should know that there are two kinds of blob: page blob and block blob. The page blob is optimized for random read and write, which is very useful when you need to store VHD files. The block blob is optimized for sequential/chunk read and write, which has more common usage. Since we can upload block blob in blocks through BlockBlob.PutBlock, and them commit them as a whole blob with invoking the BlockBlob.PutBlockList, it is very powerful to upload large files, as we can upload blocks in parallel, and provide pause-resume feature. There are many documents, articles and blog posts described on how to upload a block blob. Most of them are focus on the server side, which means when you had received a big file, stream or binaries, how to upload them into blob storage in blocks through .NET SDK.  But the problem is, how can we upload these large files from client side, for example, a browser. This questioned to me when I was working with a Chinese customer to help them build a network disk production on top of azure. The end users upload their files from the web portal, and then the files will be stored in blob storage from the Web Role. My goal is to find the best way to transform the file from client (end user’s machine) to the server (Web Role) through browser. In this post I will demonstrate and describe what I had done, to upload large file in chunks with high speed, and save them as blocks into Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Traditional Upload, Works with Limitation The simplest way to implement this requirement is to create a web page with a form that contains a file input element and a submit button. 1: @using (Html.BeginForm("About", "Index", FormMethod.Post, new { enctype = "multipart/form-data" })) 2: { 3: <input type="file" name="file" /> 4: <input type="submit" value="upload" /> 5: } And then in the backend controller, we retrieve the whole content of this file and upload it in to the blob storage through .NET SDK. We can split the file in blocks and upload them in parallel and commit. The code had been well blogged in the community. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public ActionResult About(HttpPostedFileBase file) 3: { 4: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 5: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 6: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(file.FileName); 7: var blockDataList = new Dictionary<string, byte[]>(); 8: using (var stream = file.InputStream) 9: { 10: var blockSizeInKB = 1024; 11: var offset = 0; 12: var index = 0; 13: while (offset < stream.Length) 14: { 15: var readLength = Math.Min(1024 * blockSizeInKB, (int)stream.Length - offset); 16: var blockData = new byte[readLength]; 17: offset += stream.Read(blockData, 0, readLength); 18: blockDataList.Add(Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)), blockData); 19:  20: index++; 21: } 22: } 23:  24: Parallel.ForEach(blockDataList, (bi) => 25: { 26: blob.PutBlock(bi.Key, new MemoryStream(bi.Value), null); 27: }); 28: blob.PutBlockList(blockDataList.Select(b => b.Key).ToArray()); 29:  30: return RedirectToAction("About"); 31: } This works perfect if we selected an image, a music or a small video to upload. But if I selected a large file, let’s say a 6GB HD-movie, after upload for about few minutes the page will be shown as below and the upload will be terminated. In ASP.NET there is a limitation of request length and the maximized request length is defined in the web.config file. It’s a number which less than about 4GB. So if we want to upload a really big file, we cannot simply implement in this way. Also, in Windows Azure, a cloud service network load balancer will terminate the connection if exceed the timeout period. From my test the timeout looks like 2 - 3 minutes. Hence, when we need to upload a large file we cannot just use the basic HTML elements. Besides the limitation mentioned above, the simple HTML file upload cannot provide rich upload experience such as chunk upload, pause and pause-resume. So we need to find a better way to upload large file from the client to the server.   Upload in Chunks through HTML5 and JavaScript In order to break those limitation mentioned above we will try to upload the large file in chunks. This takes some benefit to us such as - No request size limitation: Since we upload in chunks, we can define the request size for each chunks regardless how big the entire file is. - No timeout problem: The size of chunks are controlled by us, which means we should be able to make sure request for each chunk upload will not exceed the timeout period of both ASP.NET and Windows Azure load balancer. It was a big challenge to upload big file in chunks until we have HTML5. There are some new features and improvements introduced in HTML5 and we will use them to implement our solution.   In HTML5, the File interface had been improved with a new method called “slice”. It can be used to read part of the file by specifying the start byte index and the end byte index. For example if the entire file was 1024 bytes, file.slice(512, 768) will read the part of this file from the 512nd byte to 768th byte, and return a new object of interface called "Blob”, which you can treat as an array of bytes. In fact,  a Blob object represents a file-like object of immutable, raw data. The File interface is based on Blob, inheriting blob functionality and expanding it to support files on the user's system. For more information about the Blob please refer here. File and Blob is very useful to implement the chunk upload. We will use File interface to represent the file the user selected from the browser and then use File.slice to read the file in chunks in the size we wanted. For example, if we wanted to upload a 10MB file with 512KB chunks, then we can read it in 512KB blobs by using File.slice in a loop.   Assuming we have a web page as below. User can select a file, an input box to specify the block size in KB and a button to start upload. 1: <div> 2: <input type="file" id="upload_files" name="files[]" /><br /> 3: Block Size: <input type="number" id="block_size" value="512" name="block_size" />KB<br /> 4: <input type="button" id="upload_button_blob" name="upload" value="upload (blob)" /> 5: </div> Then we can have the JavaScript function to upload the file in chunks when user clicked the button. 1: <script type="text/javascript"> 1: 2: $(function () { 3: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 4: }); 5: });</script> Firstly we need to ensure the client browser supports the interfaces we are going to use. Just try to invoke the File, Blob and FormData from the “window” object. If any of them is “undefined” the condition result will be “false” which means your browser doesn’t support these premium feature and it’s time for you to get your browser updated. FormData is another new feature we are going to use in the future. It could generate a temporary form for us. We will use this interface to create a form with chunk and associated metadata when invoked the service through ajax. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 4: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 5: } 6: else { 7: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 8: return; 9: } 10: }); Each browser supports these interfaces by their own implementation and currently the Blob, File and File.slice are supported by Chrome 21, FireFox 13, IE 10, Opera 12 and Safari 5.1 or higher. After that we worked on the files the user selected one by one since in HTML5, user can select multiple files in one file input box. 1: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 2: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 3: var file = files[i]; 4: var fileSize = file.size; 5: var fileName = file.name; 6: } Next, we calculated the start index and end index for each chunks based on the size the user specified from the browser. We put them into an array with the file name and the index, which will be used when we upload chunks into Windows Azure Blob Storage as blocks since we need to specify the target blob name and the block index. At the same time we will store the list of all indexes into another variant which will be used to commit blocks into blob in Azure Storage once all chunks had been uploaded successfully. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10:  11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 14: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 15: var blocks = []; 16: var offset = 0; 17: var index = 0; 18: var list = ""; 19: while (offset < fileSize) { 20: var start = offset; 21: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 22:  23: blocks.push({ 24: name: fileName, 25: index: index, 26: start: start, 27: end: end 28: }); 29: list += index + ","; 30:  31: offset = end; 32: index++; 33: } 34: } 35: }); Now we have all chunks’ information ready. The next step should be upload them one by one to the server side, and at the server side when received a chunk it will upload as a block into Blob Storage, and finally commit them with the index list through BlockBlobClient.PutBlockList. But since all these invokes are ajax calling, which means not synchronized call. So we need to introduce a new JavaScript library to help us coordinate the asynchronize operation, which named “async.js”. You can download this JavaScript library here, and you can find the document here. I will not explain this library too much in this post. We will put all procedures we want to execute as a function array, and pass into the proper function defined in async.js to let it help us to control the execution sequence, in series or in parallel. Hence we will define an array and put the function for chunk upload into this array. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4:  5: // start to upload each files in chunks 6: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 7: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 8: var file = files[i]; 9: var fileSize = file.size; 10: var fileName = file.name; 11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: ... ... 14:  15: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 16: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 17: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 18: }); 19: }); 20: } 21: }); 22: }); As you can see, I used File.slice method to read each chunks based on the start and end byte index we calculated previously, and constructed a temporary HTML form with the file name, chunk index and chunk data through another new feature in HTML5 named FormData. Then post this form to the backend server through jQuery.ajax. This is the key part of our solution. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 15: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 16: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 17: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 18: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 19: var fd = new FormData(); 20: fd.append("name", block.name); 21: fd.append("index", block.index); 22: fd.append("file", blob); 23: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 24: $.ajax({ 25: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 26: data: fd, 27: processData: false, 28: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 29: type: "POST", 30: success: function (result) { 31: if (!result.success) { 32: alert(result.error); 33: } 34: callback(null, block.index); 35: } 36: }); 37: }); 38: }); 39: } 40: }); Then we will invoke these functions one by one by using the async.js. And once all functions had been executed successfully I invoked another ajax call to the backend service to commit all these chunks (blocks) as the blob in Windows Azure Storage. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); That’s all in the client side. The outline of our logic would be - Calculate the start and end byte index for each chunks based on the block size. - Defined the functions of reading the chunk form file and upload the content to the backend service through ajax. - Execute the functions defined in previous step with “async.js”. - Commit the chunks by invoking the backend service in Windows Azure Storage finally.   Save Chunks as Blocks into Blob Storage In above we finished the client size JavaScript code. It uploaded the file in chunks to the backend service which we are going to implement in this step. We will use ASP.NET MVC as our backend service, and it will receive the chunks, upload into Windows Azure Bob Storage in blocks, then finally commit as one blob. As in the client side we uploaded chunks by invoking the ajax call to the URL "/Home/UploadInFormData", I created a new action under the Index controller and it only accepts HTTP POST request. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: } 8: catch (Exception e) 9: { 10: error = e.ToString(); 11: } 12:  13: return new JsonResult() 14: { 15: Data = new 16: { 17: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 18: error = error 19: } 20: }; 21: } Then I retrieved the file name, index and the chunk content from the Request.Form object, which was passed from our client side. And then, used the Windows Azure SDK to create a blob container (in this case we will use the container named “test”.) and create a blob reference with the blob name (same as the file name). Then uploaded the chunk as a block of this blob with the index, since in Blob Storage each block must have an index (ID) associated with so that finally we can put all blocks as one blob by specifying their block ID list. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 9: var file = Request.Files[0]; 10: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 11:  12: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 13: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 14: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 15: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 16: } 17: catch (Exception e) 18: { 19: error = e.ToString(); 20: } 21:  22: return new JsonResult() 23: { 24: Data = new 25: { 26: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 27: error = error 28: } 29: }; 30: } Next, I created another action to commit the blocks into blob once all chunks had been uploaded. Similarly, I retrieved the blob name from the Request.Form. I also retrieved the chunks ID list, which is the block ID list from the Request.Form in a string format, split them as a list, then invoked the BlockBlob.PutBlockList method. After that our blob will be shown in the container and ready to be download. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult Commit() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 9: var ids = list 10: .Split(',') 11: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 12: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 13: .ToArray(); 14:  15: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 16: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 17: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 18: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 19: } 20: catch (Exception e) 21: { 22: error = e.ToString(); 23: } 24:  25: return new JsonResult() 26: { 27: Data = new 28: { 29: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 30: error = error 31: } 32: }; 33: } Now we finished all code we need. The whole process of uploading would be like this below. Below is the full client side JavaScript code. 1: <script type="text/javascript" src="~/Scripts/async.js"></script> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: $(function () { 4: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 5: // assert the browser support html5 6: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 7: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 8: } 9: else { 10: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 11: return; 12: } 13:  14: // start to upload each files in chunks 15: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 16: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 17: var file = files[i]; 18: var fileSize = file.size; 19: var fileName = file.name; 20:  21: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 22: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 23: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 24: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 25: var blocks = []; 26: var offset = 0; 27: var index = 0; 28: var list = ""; 29: while (offset < fileSize) { 30: var start = offset; 31: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 32:  33: blocks.push({ 34: name: fileName, 35: index: index, 36: start: start, 37: end: end 38: }); 39: list += index + ","; 40:  41: offset = end; 42: index++; 43: } 44:  45: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 46: var putBlocks = []; 47: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 48: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 49: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 50: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 51: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 52: var fd = new FormData(); 53: fd.append("name", block.name); 54: fd.append("index", block.index); 55: fd.append("file", blob); 56: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 57: $.ajax({ 58: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 59: data: fd, 60: processData: false, 61: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 62: type: "POST", 63: success: function (result) { 64: if (!result.success) { 65: alert(result.error); 66: } 67: callback(null, block.index); 68: } 69: }); 70: }); 71: }); 72:  73: // invoke the functions one by one 74: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 75: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 76: var data = { 77: name: fileName, 78: list: list 79: }; 80: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 81: if (!result.success) { 82: alert(result.error); 83: } 84: else { 85: alert("done!"); 86: } 87: }); 88: }); 89: } 90: }); 91: }); 92: </script> And below is the full ASP.NET MVC controller code. 1: public class HomeController : Controller 2: { 3: private CloudStorageAccount _account; 4: private CloudBlobClient _client; 5:  6: public HomeController() 7: : base() 8: { 9: _account = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("DataConnectionString")); 10: _client = _account.CreateCloudBlobClient(); 11: } 12:  13: public ActionResult Index() 14: { 15: ViewBag.Message = "Modify this template to jump-start your ASP.NET MVC application."; 16:  17: return View(); 18: } 19:  20: [HttpPost] 21: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 22: { 23: var error = string.Empty; 24: try 25: { 26: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 27: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 28: var file = Request.Files[0]; 29: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 30:  31: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 32: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 33: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 34: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 35: } 36: catch (Exception e) 37: { 38: error = e.ToString(); 39: } 40:  41: return new JsonResult() 42: { 43: Data = new 44: { 45: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 46: error = error 47: } 48: }; 49: } 50:  51: [HttpPost] 52: public JsonResult Commit() 53: { 54: var error = string.Empty; 55: try 56: { 57: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 58: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 59: var ids = list 60: .Split(',') 61: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 62: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 63: .ToArray(); 64:  65: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 66: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 67: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 68: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 69: } 70: catch (Exception e) 71: { 72: error = e.ToString(); 73: } 74:  75: return new JsonResult() 76: { 77: Data = new 78: { 79: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 80: error = error 81: } 82: }; 83: } 84: } And if we selected a file from the browser we will see our application will upload chunks in the size we specified to the server through ajax call in background, and then commit all chunks in one blob. Then we can find the blob in our Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Optimized by Parallel Upload In previous example we just uploaded our file in chunks. This solved the problem that ASP.NET MVC request content size limitation as well as the Windows Azure load balancer timeout. But it might introduce the performance problem since we uploaded chunks in sequence. In order to improve the upload performance we could modify our client side code a bit to make the upload operation invoked in parallel. The good news is that, “async.js” library provides the parallel execution function. If you remembered the code we invoke the service to upload chunks, it utilized “async.series” which means all functions will be executed in sequence. Now we will change this code to “async.parallel”. This will invoke all functions in parallel. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallel(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); In this way all chunks will be uploaded to the server side at the same time to maximize the bandwidth usage. This should work if the file was not very large and the chunk size was not very small. But for large file this might introduce another problem that too many ajax calls are sent to the server at the same time. So the best solution should be, upload the chunks in parallel with maximum concurrency limitation. The code below specified the concurrency limitation to 4, which means at the most only 4 ajax calls could be invoked at the same time. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallelLimit(putBlocks, 4, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: });   Summary In this post we discussed how to upload files in chunks to the backend service and then upload them into Windows Azure Blob Storage in blocks. We focused on the frontend side and leverage three new feature introduced in HTML 5 which are - File.slice: Read part of the file by specifying the start and end byte index. - Blob: File-like interface which contains the part of the file content. - FormData: Temporary form element that we can pass the chunk alone with some metadata to the backend service. Then we discussed the performance consideration of chunk uploading. Sequence upload cannot provide maximized upload speed, but the unlimited parallel upload might crash the browser and server if too many chunks. So we finally came up with the solution to upload chunks in parallel with the concurrency limitation. We also demonstrated how to utilize “async.js” JavaScript library to help us control the asynchronize call and the parallel limitation.   Regarding the chunk size and the parallel limitation value there is no “best” value. You need to test vary composition and find out the best one for your particular scenario. It depends on the local bandwidth, client machine cores and the server side (Windows Azure Cloud Service Virtual Machine) cores, memory and bandwidth. Below is one of my performance test result. The client machine was Windows 8 IE 10 with 4 cores. I was using Microsoft Cooperation Network. The web site was hosted on Windows Azure China North data center (in Beijing) with one small web role (1.7GB 1 core CPU, 1.75GB memory with 100Mbps bandwidth). The test cases were - Chunk size: 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, 4MB. - Upload Mode: Sequence, parallel (unlimited), parallel with limit (4 threads, 8 threads). - Chunk Format: base64 string, binaries. - Target file: 100MB. - Each case was tested 3 times. Below is the test result chart. Some thoughts, but not guidance or best practice: - Parallel gets better performance than series. - No significant performance improvement between parallel 4 threads and 8 threads. - Transform with binaries provides better performance than base64. - In all cases, chunk size in 1MB - 2MB gets better performance.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • The ASP.NET Daily Community Spotlight - How posts get there, and how to make it your Visual Studio Start Page

    - by Jon Galloway
    One really cool part of my job is selecting the articles for the Daily Community Spotlight, on the home page of the ASP.NET website. The spotlight highlights a new post about ASP.NET development every day from a member of the ASP.NET community. You can find it on the home page of the ASP.NET site, at http://asp.net These posts aren't automatically drawn from a pool of RSS feeds or anything - I pick a new post for each day of the year. How I pick the posts I have a few important selection criteria: Interesting to well rounded ASP.NET developers The ASP.NET website has a lot of material for all skill and experience levels, from download / get started to advanced. I try to select community spotlight posts to round that out with fresh and timely information that working ASP.NET developers can really use. Posts highlight solutions to common problems, clever projects and code that helps you leverage ASP.NET, and important announcements about things you can use today. As part of that, I try to mix between ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, and Web Pages (a.k.a. WebMatrix). As a professional developer, I want to keep on top of all of my options for ASP.NET development, and the common platform base they all share generally means that good ASP.NET code is good ASP.NET code. Exposing new and non-Microsoft community members as much as possible The exercise of selecting good ASP.NET community posts every day of the year has made me think about what the community is. Given the choice, I'll always favor non-Microsoft employees, but since Microsoft often hires ASP.NET community members and MVP's (myself included), I really think that the ASP.NET community includes developers who are using and writing about ASP.NET, both inside and outside of Microsoft. I'm especially excited about the opportunity to highlight new and lesser known bloggers. Usually being featured on the ASP.NET Community Spotlight gives a pretty good traffic bump, and I love being able to both provide great content to the community and encourage lesser known community members by giving them some (much deserved) attention. Announcements only when they're useful to working developers - not marketing Some of the posts are announcements about new releases, such as Scott Hanselman's post on ASP.NET Universal Providers for Session, Memebership, and Roles. I include those when I think they're interesting and of immediate use to you on projects. I occasionally get asked to link to new content from a team at Microsoft; if it's useful and timely content I'll ask them to point me to a blog post by an actual person rather than a faceless team. How the posts are managed This feed used to be managed by an internal spreadsheet on a Sharepoint site, which was painful for a lot of reasons. I took a cue from Jon Udell, who uses of a public Delicious feed feed for his Elm City project, and we moved the management of these posts over to a Delicious feed as well. You can hear more about Jon's use of Delicious in Elm City in our Herding Code interview - still one of my favorite interviews. We ended up with a simpler scenario, but Note: I watched the Yahoo/Delicious news over the past year and was happy to see that Delicious was recently acquired by the founders of YouTube. I investigated several other Delicious competitors, but am happy with Delicious for now. My Delicious feed here: http://www.delicious.com/jon_galloway You can also browse through this past year's ASP.NET Community Spotlight posts using the (pretty cool) Delicious Browse Bar Submitting articles I'm always on the lookout for new articles to feature. The best way to get them to me is to share them via Delicious. It's pretty easy - sign up for an account, then you can add a post and share it to me. Alternatively, you can send them to me via Twitter (@jongalloway) or e-mail (). If you do e-mail me, it helps to include a short description and your full name so I can credit you. Way too many developer blogs don't include names and pictures; if I can't find them I can't feature the post. Subscribing to the Community Spotlight feed The Community Spotlight is available as an RSS feed, so you might want to subscribe to it: http://www.asp.net/rss/spotlight Setting the ASP.NET Community Spotlight feed as your Visual Studio start page If you're an ASP.NET developer, you might consider setting the ASP.NET Community Spotlight as the content for your Visual Studio Start Page. It's really easy - here's how to do it in Visual Studio 2010: Display the Visual Studio Start Page if it's not already showing (View / Start Page) Click on the Latest News tab and enter the following RSS URL: http://www.asp.net/rss/spotlight If you didn't previously have RSS feeds enabled for your start page, click the Enable RSS Feed button Now, every time you start up Visual Studio you'll see great content from members of the ASP.NET community: You can also configure - and disable, if you'd like - the Visual Studio start page in the Tools / Options / Environment / Startup dialog. Credits I'll do a follow-up highlighting some places I commonly find great content for the feed, but I'd like to specifically point out two of them: Elijah Manor posts a lot of great content, which is available in his Twitter feed at @elijahmanor, on his Delicious feed, and on a dedicated website - Web Dev Tweets Chris Alcock's The Morning Brew is a must-read blog which highlights each day's best blog posts across the .NET community. He's an absolute machine, and no matter how obscure the post I find, I can guarantee he'll find it as well if he hasn't already. Did I say must read?

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