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• Implementing the Reactive Manifesto with Azure and AWS

  - by Elton Stoneman

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman/archive/2013/10/31/implementing-the-reactive-manifesto-with-azure-and-aws.aspxMy latest Pluralsight course, Implementing the Reactive Manifesto with Azure and AWS has just been published! I’d planned to do a course on dual-running a messaging-based solution in Azure and AWS for super-high availability and scale, and the Reactive Manifesto encapsulates exactly what I wanted to do. A “reactive” application describes an architecture which is inherently resilient and scalable, being event-driven at the core, and using asynchronous communication between components. In the course, I compare that architecture to a classic n-tier approach, and go on to build out an app which exhibits all the reactive traits: responsive, event-driven, scalable and resilient. I use a suite of technologies which are enablers for all those traits: ASP.NET SignalR for presentation, with server push notifications to the user Messaging in the middle layer for asynchronous communication between presentation and compute Azure Service Bus Queues and Topics AWS Simple Queue Service AWS Simple Notification Service MongoDB at the storage layer for easy HA and scale, with minimal locking under load. Starting with a couple of console apps to demonstrate message sending, I build the solution up over 7 modules, deploying to Azure and AWS and running the app across both clouds concurrently for the whole stack - web servers, messaging infrastructure, message handlers and database servers. I demonstrating failover by killing off bits of infrastructure, and show how a reactive app deployed across two clouds can survive machine failure, data centre failure and even whole cloud failure. The course finishes by configuring auto-scaling in AWS and Azure for the compute and presentation layers, and running a load test with blitz.io. The test pushes masses of load into the app, which is deployed across four data centres in Azure and AWS, and the infrastructure scales up seamlessly to meet the load – the blitz report is pretty impressive: That’s 99.9% success rate for hits to the website, with the potential to serve over 36,000,000 hits per day – all from a few hours’ build time, and a fairly limited set of auto-scale configurations. When the load stops, the infrastructure scales back down again to a minimal set of servers for high availability, so the app doesn’t cost much to host unless it’s getting a lot of traffic. This is my third course for Pluralsight, with Nginx and PHP Fundamentals and Caching in the .NET Stack: Inside-Out released earlier this year. Now that it’s out, I’m starting on the fourth one, which is focused on C#, and should be out by the end of the year.

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• Obtaining positional information in the IEnumerable Select extension method

  - by Kyle Burns

  This blog entry is intended to provide a narrow and brief look into a way to use the Select extension method that I had until recently overlooked. Every developer who is using IEnumerable extension methods to work with data has been exposed to the Select extension method, because it is a pretty critical piece of almost every query over a collection of objects.  The method is defined on type IEnumerable and takes as its argument a function that accepts an item from the collection and returns an object which will be an item within the returned collection.  This allows you to perform transformations on the source collection.  A somewhat contrived example would be the following code that transforms a collection of strings into a collection of anonymous objects: 1: var media = new[] {"book", "cd", "tape"}; 2: var transformed = media.Select( item => 3: { 4: Media = item 5: } ); This code transforms the array of strings into a collection of objects which each have a string property called Media. If every developer using the LINQ extension methods already knows this, why am I blogging about it?  I’m blogging about it because the method has another overload that I hadn’t seen before I needed it a few weeks back and I thought I would share a little about it with whoever happens upon my blog.  In the other overload, the function defined in the first overload as: 1: Func<TSource, TResult> is instead defined as: 1: Func<TSource, int, TResult>   The additional parameter is an integer representing the current element’s position in the enumerable sequence.  I used this information in what I thought was a pretty cool way to compare collections and I’ll probably blog about that sometime in the near future, but for now we’ll continue with the contrived example I’ve already started to keep things simple and show how this works.  The following code sample shows how the positional information could be used in an alternating color scenario.  I’m using a foreach loop because IEnumerable doesn’t have a ForEach extension, but many libraries do add the ForEach extension to IEnumerable so you can update the code if you’re using one of these libraries or have created your own. 1: var media = new[] {"book", "cd", "tape"}; 2: foreach (var result in media.Select( 3: (item, index) => 4: new { Item = item, Index = index })) 5: { 6: Console.ForegroundColor = result.Index % 2 == 0 7: ? ConsoleColor.Blue : ConsoleColor.Yellow; 8: Console.WriteLine(result.Item); 9: }

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• Business Insight, IT Execution: 9 Project Management Tips

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Excerpt from Profit Magazine - by David Rosenbaum When Marcos Baccetto was first asked to be the business-side project lead on Eaton Corporation’s Vehicle Group South America (VGSA) Oracle project, the operations services manager responsible for running manufacturing was, he confesses, “a little afraid” because of his lack of IT experience. Today, Baccetto calls the project “a fantastic experience,” and he is a true believer in the benefits of a close relationship between IT implementers and their line-of-business peers. Through his partnership with Jesiele Lima, then VGSA IT manager, Baccetto and Eaton’s South American operations team came to understand several important principles of business and IT. Here he shares nine tips managers should consider when working on an enterprise technology project. 1. Make it a business project, not an IT project. All levels of functional management must have ownership, responsibility, and accountability for the success of the implementation. 2. Share responsibility. Business owners should sign off on tests and data conversion. 3. Clean your data. Dedicating a team to improve core data quality prior to project launch can be a significant time-saver. 4. Select resources properly. Have functional people who can translate business needs to IT and can influence organizational change. 5. Manage scope. Follow project management methodologies and disciplines. 6. Adopt common processes, global solutions. Avoid customized, local solutions. The big-picture business goals can get lost in the details. 7. Implement processes prior to the go-live date. Change management can be key. Keep the workforce informed and train users in advance. 8. Define metrics milestones. Assume there will be a crisis during deployment. Having baseline metrics to compare against will help implementers keep their cool—and the project moving forward. 9. The sponsor’s commitment is critical. It is needed to support the truly difficult decisions.

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• Play or Lift: which one is more explicit?

  - by Andrea

  I am going to investigate web development with Scala, and the choice is between learning Lift or Play: probably I will not have enough time to try both, at least at first. Now, many comparisons between the two are available on the internet, but I would like to know how do they compare with respect to being explicit and involving less magic. Let me explain what I mean by example. I have used, to various degrees, CakePHP, symfony2, Django and Grails. I feel a very clear distinction between Django and symfony2, which are very explicit about what you are doing, and Grails and CakePHP, which try to do their best to guess what you are trying to achieve and often feel "magical". Let me give some examples comparing Django and Grails. In Django, views are functions that take a request as input and return a response. You can instantiate explicitly an instance of HttpResponse and populate its body with a string, or you can use shortcut functions to leverage the template system. In any case the return value from your view always has the same type. In contrast, the render method from Grails is highly polymorphic. You can throw a context at it and it will try to render a template which is found by convention using that context. Or you can pass it a pair of a template path and a context and that will work too. Or a string. Or XML. Grails tries hard to make sense of whatever you return from your controller. In the Django ORM, each model class has a static attribute representing the manager for that class. That manager exposes a fluent interface to build querysets. In Grails, you can have a similar functionality by composing detached criteria. Still, the most common way to query objects seems to be the use of runtime-generated methods like FindUserByEmailNotNull or FindPostByDateGreaterThan. I will not go further, but my point is that in Django-like frameworks you have control over the whole flow of the request/response process, while in Grails-like ones I feel I only have to feel the blanks and the framework will manage the rest of the flow for me. This is not to criticize Grails or CakePHP; which type you prefer is mainly a matter of preference. In fact, I happen to like some aspects of Grails, but I feel more comfortable with a framework which does less for me. Back to the point of the question: which one among Play and Lift is more explicit about what you do and which one tries to simplify more what you have to do with a layer of "magic"?

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• ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0

  - by Sam Abraham

  In the next few lines, I would like to briefly review ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0.  I was honored to be extended the opportunity to review this valuable tool as part of the GeeksWithBlogs influencers Program, a quarterly award providing its recipients access to valuable tools and enabling them with an opportunity to provide a brief write-up reviewing the complimentary tools they receive.   Typical Usage   ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0 is very intuitive and easy to use for any user be it novice or expert. A simple yet comprehensive menu screen enables the selection of the appropriate program type to profile as well as the executable or site for this program.   A typical use case starts with establishing a baseline memory snapshot, which tells us the initial memory cost used by the program under normal or low activity conditions. We would then take a second snapshot after the program has performed an activity which we want to investigate for memory leaks. We can then compare the initial baseline snapshot against the snapshot when the program has completed processing the activity in question to study anomalies in memory that did not get freed-up after the program has completed its performed function. The following are some screenshots outlining the selection of the program to profile (an executable for this demonstration’s purposes).   Figure 1 - Getting Started   Figure 2 - Selecting an Application to Profile     Features and Options   Right after the second snapshot is generated, Memory Profiler gives us immediate access to information on memory fragmentation, size differences between snapshots, unmanaged memory allocation and statistics on the largest classes taking up un-freed memory space.   We would also have the option to itemize objects held in memory grouped by object types within which we can study the instances allocated of each type. Filtering options enable us to quickly narrow object instances we are interested in.   Figure 3 - Easily accessible Execution Memory Information   Figure 4 - Class List   Figure 5 - Instance List   Figure 6-  Retention Graph for a Particular Instance   Conclusion I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to evaluate ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0. The tool's intuitive User Interface design and easily accessible menu options enabled me to quickly identify problem areas where memory was left unfreed in my code.     Tutorials and References  FInd out more About ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0 http://www.red-gate.com/supportcenter/Product?p=ANTS Memory Profiler   Checkout what other reviewers of this valuable tool have already shared: http://geekswithblogs.net/BlackRabbitCoder/archive/2011/03/10/ants-memory-profiler-7.0.aspx http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/28/ants-memory-profiler-7.0-review.aspx

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• JGridView (Part 2)

  - by Geertjan

  The second sample in the JGrid download is a picture viewer that needs to be seen to be believed. Here it is, integrated into a NetBeans Platform application (click to enlarge it): When you mouse over the images, they change, showing several different images instantaneously. Here's the explorer view above, mainly making use of code from the sample: public class JGridView extends JScrollPane { @Override public void addNotify() { super.addNotify(); final ExplorerManager em = ExplorerManager.find(this); if (em != null) { final JGrid grid = new JGrid(); Node root = em.getRootContext(); final Node[] nodes = root.getChildren().getNodes(); final PicViewerObject[] pics = new PicViewerObject[nodes.length]; for (int i = 0; i < nodes.length; i++) { Node node = nodes[i]; pics[i] = node.getLookup().lookup(PicViewerObject.class); } grid.getCellRendererManager().setDefaultRenderer(new PicViewerRenderer()); grid.setModel(new DefaultListModel() { @Override public int getSize() { return pics.length; } @Override public Object getElementAt(int i) { return pics[i]; } }); grid.setFixedCellDimension(160); grid.addMouseMotionListener(new MouseAdapter() { int lastIndex = -1; @Override public void mouseMoved(MouseEvent e) { if (lastIndex >= 0) { Object o = grid.getModel().getElementAt(lastIndex); if (o instanceof PicViewerObject) { Rectangle r = grid.getCellBounds(lastIndex); if (r != null && !r.contains(e.getPoint())) { ((PicViewerObject) o).setMarker(false); grid.repaint(r); } } } int index = grid.getCellAt(e.getPoint()); if (index >= 0) { Object o = grid.getModel().getElementAt(index); if (o instanceof PicViewerObject) { Rectangle r = grid.getCellBounds(index); if (r != null) { ((PicViewerObject) o).setFraction(((float) e.getPoint().x - (float) r.x) / (float) r.width); ((PicViewerObject) o).setMarker(true); lastIndex = index; grid.repaint(r); } } } } }); grid.getSelectionModel().addListSelectionListener(new ListSelectionListener() { @Override public void valueChanged(ListSelectionEvent e) { //Somehow compare the selected item //with the list of books and find a matching book: int selectedIndex = grid.getSelectedIndex(); for (int i = 0; i < nodes.length; i++) { int picId = pics[i].getId(); if (selectedIndex == picId) { try { em.setSelectedNodes(new Node[]{nodes[i]}); } catch (PropertyVetoException ex) { Exceptions.printStackTrace(ex); } } } } }); setViewportView(grid); } } } The next step is to create a generic JGridView that will handle any kind of object automatically.

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• The Other Side of XBRL

  - by john.orourke(at)oracle.com

  With the United States SEC's mandate for XBRL filings entering its third year, and impacting over 7000 additional companies in 2011, there's a lot of buzz in the industry about how companies should address the new reporting requirements.  Should they outsource the XBRL tagging process to a third party publisher, handle the process in-house with a bolt-on XBRL tool, or should they integrate XBRL tagging with the financial close and reporting process?  Oracle is recommending the latter approach, in fact  here's a link to a recent webcast that I did with CFO.com on this topic: http://www.cfo.com/webcasts/index.cfm/l_eventarchive/14548560 But production of XBRL-based filings is only half of the story. The other half is consumption of XBRL by regulators, academics, financial analysts and investors.  As I mentioned in my December article on the XBRL US conference, the feedback from these groups is that they are not really leveraging XBRL for analysis of companies due to a lack of tools and historic XBRL-based data on public companies.   The good news here is that the historic data problem is getting better as large, accelerated filers enter their third year of XBRL filings.  And the situation is getting better on the reporting and analysis tools side of the equation as well - and Oracle is leading the way. In early January, Oracle released the Oracle XBRL Extension for Oracle Database 11g.  This is a "no cost option" on top of the latest Oracle Database 11.2.0.2.0 release. With this added functionality organizations will have the ability to create one or more back-end XBRL repositories based on Oracle Database, which provide XBRL storage and query-ability with a set of XBRL-specific services.  The XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB integrates easily with Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) for analytics and with interactive development environments (IDEs) and design tools for creating and editing XBRL taxonomies. The Oracle XBRL Extension to Oracle Database 11g should be attractive to regulators, stock exchanges, universities and other organizations that need to collect, analyze and disseminate XBRL-based filings.  It should also be attractive to organizations that produce XBRL filings, and need a way to store and compare their own XBRL-based financial filings to those of their peers and competitors. If you would like more information, here's a link to a web page on the Oracle Technology Network with the details about Oracle XBRL Extension for Oracle Database 11g, including data sheet, white paper, presentation, demos and other information: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/features/xmldb/index-087631.html

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• 3 Reasons You Need To Know Something About Every Technology

  - by Tim Murphy

  I make my living as a consultant and a general technologist.  I credit my success to the fact that I have never been afraid to pick up any product, language or platform needed to get the job done.  While Microsoft technologies I my mainstay, I have done work on mainframe and UNIX platforms and have worked with a wide variety of database engines.  Each one has it’s use and most times it is less expensive to find a way to communicate with an existing system than to replace it. So what are the main benefits of expending the effort to learn a new technology? New ways to solve problems Accelerate development Advise clients and get new business opportunities By new technology I mean ones that you haven’t had experience with before.  They don’t have to be the the one that just came out yesterday.  As they say, those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.  If you can learn something from an older technology it can be just as valuable as the shiny new one.  Either way, when you add another tool to your kit you get a new view on each problem you face.  This makes it easier to create a sound solution. The next thing you can learn from working with different products and techniques is how to more efficiently develop solve problems.  Many times if you are working with a new language you will find that there are specific design patterns that are used with it in normal use.  These can usually be applied with most languages.  You just needed to be exposed to them. The last point is about helping your clients and helping yourself.  If you can get in on technologies early you will have advantage over your competition in the market.  You will also be able to honestly advise you client on why they should or should not go with a new product.  Being able to compare products and their features is always an ability that stake holders appreciate. You don’t need to learn every detail of a product.  Learn enough to function and get an idea of how to use the technology.  Keep eating those technology Wheaties and you will be ready to go the distance in any project. del.icio.us Tags: Technology,technologists,technology generalist,Software Architecture

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• Enabling EUS support in OUD 11gR2 using command line interface

  - by Sylvain Duloutre

  Enterprise User Security (EUS) allows Oracle Database to use users & roles stored in LDAP for authentication and authorization.Since the 11gR2 release, OUD natively supports EUS. EUS can be easily configured during OUD setup. ODSM (the graphical admin console) can also be used to enable EUS for a new suffix. However, enabling EUS for a new suffix using command line interface is currently not documented, so here is the procedure: Let's assume that EUS support was enabled during initial setup.Let's o=example be the new suffix I want to use to store Enterprise users. The following sequence of command must be applied for each new suffix: // Create a local database holding EUS context infodsconfig create-workflow-element --set base-dn:cn=OracleContext,o=example --set enabled:true --type db-local-backend --element-name exampleContext -n // Add a workflow element in the call path to generate on the fly attributes required by EUSdsconfig create-workflow-element --set enabled:true --type eus-context --element-name eusContext --set next-workflow-element:exampleContext -n // Add the context to a workflow for routingdsconfig create-workflow --set base-dn:cn=OracleContext,o=example --set enabled:true --set workflow-element:eusContext --workflow-name exampleContext_workflow -n //Add the new workflow to the appropriate network groupdsconfig set-network-group-prop --group-name network-group --add workflow:exampleContext_workflow -n // Create the local database for o=exampledsconfig create-workflow-element --set base-dn:o=example --set enabled:true --type db-local-backend --element-name example -n // Create a workflow element in the call path to the user data to generate on the fly attributes expected by EUS dsconfig create-workflow-element --set enabled:true --set eus-realm:o=example --set next-workflow-element:example --type eus --element-name eusWfe// Add the db to a workflow for routingdsconfig create-workflow --set base-dn:o=example --set enabled:true --set workflow-element:eusWfe --workflow-name example_workflow -n //Add the new workflow to the appropriate network groupdsconfig set-network-group-prop --group-name network-group --add workflow:example_workflow -n  // Add the appropriate acis for EUSdsconfig set-access-control-handler-prop \           --add global-aci:'(target="ldap:///o=example")(targetattr="authpassword")(version 3.0; acl "EUS reads authpassword"; allow (read,search,compare) userdn="ldap:///??sub?(&(objectclass=orclservice)(objectclass=orcldbserver))";)' dsconfig set-access-control-handler-prop \       --add global-aci:'(target="ldap:///o=example")(targetattr="orclaccountstatusevent")(version 3.0; acl "EUS writes orclaccountstatusenabled"; allow (write) userdn="ldap:///??sub?(&(objectclass=orclservice)(objectclass=orcldbserver))";)' Last but not least you must adapt the content of the ${OUD}/config/EUS/eusData.ldif  file with your suffix value then inport it into OUD.

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• So, I though I wanted to learn frontend/web development and break out of my comfort zone...

  - by ripper234

  I've been a backend developer for a long time, and I really swim in that field. C++/C#/Java, databases, NoSql, caching - I feel very much at ease around these platforms/concepts. In the past few years, I started to taste end-to-end web programming, and recently I decided to take a job offer in a front end team developing a large, complex product. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and become more of an "all around developer". Problem is, I'm getting more and more convinced I don't like it. Things I like about backend programming, and missing in frontend stuff: More interesting problems - When I compare designing a server that handle massive data, to adding another form to a page or changing the validation logic, I find the former a lot more interesting. Refactoring refactoring refactoring - I am addicted to Visual Studio with Resharper, or IntelliJ. I feel very comfortable writing code as it goes without investing too much thought, because I know that with a few clicks I can refactor it into beautiful code. To my knowledge, this doesn't exist at all in javascript. Intellisense and navigation - I hate looking at a bunch of JS code without instantly being able to know what it does. In VS/IntelliJ I can summon the documentation, navigate to the code, climb up inheritance hiererchies ... life is sweet. Auto-completion - Just hit Ctrl-Space on an object to see what you can do with it. Easier to test - With almost any backend feature, I can use TDD to capture the requirements, see a bunch of failing tests, then implement, knowing that if the tests pass I did my job well. With frontend, while tests can help a bit, I find that most of the testing is still manual - fire up that browser and verify the site didn't break. I miss that feeling of "A green CI means everything is well with the world." Now, I've only seriously practiced frontend development for about two months now, so this might seem premature ... but I'm getting a nagging feeling that I should abandon this quest and return to my comfort zone, because, well, it's so comfy and fun. Another point worth mentioning in this context is that while I am learning some frontend tools, a lot of what I'm learning is our company's specific infrastructure, which I'm not sure will be very useful later on in my career. Any suggestions or tips? Do you think I should give frontend programming "a proper chance" of at least six to twelve months before calling it quits? Could all my pains be growing pains, and will they magically disappear as I get more experienced? Or is gaining this perspective is valuable enough, even if plan to do more "backend stuff" later on, that it's worth grinding my teeth and continuing with my learning?

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• Validate if aTextBox Value Start with a Specific Letter

  - by Vincent Maverick Durano

  In case you will be working on a page that needs to validate the first character of the TextBox entered by a user then here are two options that you can use: Option 1: Using an array   1: <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="HeadContent" runat="server"> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: function CheckFirstChar(o) { 4: var arr = ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D']; 5: if (o.value.length > 0) { 6: for (var i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) { 7: if (o.value.charAt(0) == arr[i]) { 8: alert('Valid'); 9: return true; 10: } 11: else { 12: alert('InValid'); 13: return false; 14: } 15: } 16: } 17: } 18: </script> 19: </asp:Content> 20: <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server"> 21: <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" onblur="return CheckFirstChar(this);"></asp:TextBox> 22: </asp:Content>   The example above uses an array of string for storing the list of  characters that a TextBox value should start with. We then iterate to the array and compare the first character of TextBox value to see if it matches any characters from the array. Option 2: Using Regular Expression (Preferred way)   1: <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="HeadContent" runat="server"> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: function CheckFirstChar(o) { 4: pattern = /^(A|B|C|D)/; 5: if (!pattern.test(o.value)) { 6: alert('InValid'); 7: return false; 8: } else { 9: alert('Valid'); 10: return true; 11: } 12: } 13: </script> 14: </asp:Content> 15: <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server"> 16: <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" onblur="return CheckFirstChar(this);"></asp:TextBox> 17: </asp:Content>   The example above uses regular expression with the pattern  /^(A|B|C|D)/. This will check if the TextBox value starts with A,B,C or D. Please note that it's case sensitive. If you want to allow lower case then you can alter the patter to this /^(A|B|C|D)/i. The i in the last part will cause a case-insensitive search.   That's it! I hope someone find this post useful!

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• More on Map Testing

  - by Michael Stephenson

  I have been chatting with Maurice den Heijer recently about his codeplex project for the BizTalk Map Testing Framework (http://mtf.codeplex.com/). Some of you may remember the article I did for BizTalk 2009 and 2006 about how to test maps but with Maurice's project he is effectively looking at how to improve productivity and quality by building some useful testing features within the framework to simplify the process of testing maps. As part of our discussion we realized that we both had slightly different approaches to how we validate the output from the map. Put simple Maurice does some xpath validation of the data in various nodes where as my approach for most standard cases is to use serialization to allow you to validate the output using normal MSTest assertions. I'm not really going to go into the pro's and con's of each approach because I think there is a place for both and also I'm sure others have various approaches which work too. What would be great is for the map testing framework to provide support for different ways of testing which can cover everything from simple cases to some very specialized scenarios. So as agreed with Maurice I have done the sample which I will talk about in the rest of this article to show how we can use the serialization approach to create and compare the input and output from a map in normal development testing. Prerequisites One of the common patterns I usually implement when developing BizTalk solutions is to use xsd.exe to create .net classes for most of the schemas used within the solution. In the testing pattern I will take advantage of these .net classes. The Map In this sample the map we will use is very simple and just concatenates some data from the input message to the output message. Hopefully the below picture illustrates this well. The Test In the test I'm basically taking the following actions: Use the .net class generated from the schema to create an input message for the map Serialize the input object to a file Run the map from .net using the standard BizTalk test method which was generated for running the map Deserialize the output file from the map execution to a .net class representing the output schema Use MsTest assertions to validate things about the output message The below picture shows this: As you can see the code for this is pretty simple and it's all strongly typed which means changes to my schema which can affect the tests can be easily picked up as compilation errors. I can then chose to have one test which validates most of the output from the map, or to have many specific tests covering individual scenarios within the map. Summary Hopefully this post illustrates a powerful yet simple way of effectively testing many BizTalk mapping scenarios. I will probably have more conversations with Maurice about these approaches and perhaps some of the above will be included in the mapping test framework.   The sample can be downloaded from here: http://cid-983a58358c675769.office.live.com/self.aspx/Blog%20Samples/More%20Map%20Testing/MapTestSample.zip

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• Showrooming: What's the big deal?

  - by David Dorf

  There's been lots of chatter recently on how retailers will combat showrooming this holiday season.  Best Buy and Target, for example, plan to price-match certain online sites.  But from my perspective, the whole showrooming concept is overblown.  Yes, mobile phones make is easier to comparison-shop, but consumers have been doing that all along.  Retailers have to work hard to merchandise their stores with the right products at the right price with the right promotions.  Its Retail 101. Yeah ok, many websites don't have to charge tax so they have an advantage, but they also have to cover shipping costs. Brick-and-mortar stores have the opportunity to provide expertise, fit, and instant gratification all of which are pretty big advantages. I see lots of studies that claim a large percentage of shoppers are showrooming.  Now I don't do much shopping, but when I do I rarely see anyone scanning UPC codes in the aisles.  If you dig into those studies, the question is usually something like, "have you used your mobile phone to price compare while shopping in the last year."  Well yeah, I did it once -- out of the 20 shopping trips.  And by the way, the in-store price was close enough to just buy the item.  Based on casual observation and informal surveys of friends, showrooming is not the modus-operandi for today's busy shoppers. I never see people showrooming in grocery stores, and most people don't bother for fashion.  For big purchases like appliances and furniture, I bet most people do their research online before entering the store.  The cases where I've done it was to see if a promotion was in fact a good deal.  Or even to make sure the in-store price is the same as the online price for the same brand. So, if you think you're a victim of showrooming, I suggest you look at the bigger picture.  Are you providing an engaging store experience?  Are you allowing customers to shop the way they want to shop, using various touchpoints?  Are you monitoring the competition to ensure prices are competitive?  Are your promotions attracting the right customers? Hubert Jolly, CEO of Best Buy, recently commented that showrooming might just get more people into his stores. "Once customers are in our stores, they're ours to lose."

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• Switch from back-end to front-end programming: I'm out of my comfort zone, should I switch back?

  - by ripper234

  I've been a backend developer for a long time, and I really swim in that field. C++/C#/Java, databases, NoSql, caching - I feel very much at ease around these platforms/concepts. In the past few years, I started to taste end-to-end web programming, and recently I decided to take a job offer in a front end team developing a large, complex product. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and become more of an "all around developer". Problem is, I'm getting more and more convinced I don't like it. Things I like about backend programming, and missing in frontend stuff: More interesting problems - When I compare designing a server that handle massive data, to adding another form to a page or changing the validation logic, I find the former a lot more interesting. Refactoring refactoring refactoring - I am addicted to Visual Studio with Resharper, or IntelliJ. I feel very comfortable writing code as it goes without investing too much thought, because I know that with a few clicks I can refactor it into beautiful code. To my knowledge, this doesn't exist at all in javascript. Intellisense and navigation - I hate looking at a bunch of JS code without instantly being able to know what it does. In VS/IntelliJ I can summon the documentation, navigate to the code, climb up inheritance hiererchies ... life is sweet. Auto-completion - Just hit Ctrl-Space on an object to see what you can do with it. Easier to test - With almost any backend feature, I can use TDD to capture the requirements, see a bunch of failing tests, then implement, knowing that if the tests pass I did my job well. With frontend, while tests can help a bit, I find that most of the testing is still manual - fire up that browser and verify the site didn't break. I miss that feeling of "A green CI means everything is well with the world." Now, I've only seriously practiced frontend development for about two months now, so this might seem premature ... but I'm getting a nagging feeling that I should abandon this quest and return to my comfort zone, because, well, it's so comfy and fun. Another point worth mentioning in this context is that while I am learning some frontend tools, a lot of what I'm learning is our company's specific infrastructure, which I'm not sure will be very useful later on in my career. Any suggestions or tips? Do you think I should give frontend programming "a proper chance" of at least six to twelve months before calling it quits? Could all my pains be growing pains, and will they magically disappear as I get more experienced? Or is gaining this perspective is valuable enough, even if plan to do more "backend stuff" later on, that it's worth grinding my teeth and continuing with my learning?

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• WHERE x = @x OR @x IS NULL

  - by steveh99999

  Every SQL DBA and developer should read the blog of MVP Erland Sommarskog – but particularly  his article on dynamic search conditions in T-SQL. I’ve linked above to his SQL 2005 article but his 2008 version is also a must-read. I seem to regularly come across uses of the SQL in the title above… Erland’s article explains in detail why this is inefficient, but I came across a nice example recently… A stored procedure contained the following code :- WHERE @Name is null or [Name] like @Name as a nonclustered index exists on the Name column, you might assume this would be handled efficiently by SQL Server. However, I got the following output from SET STATISTICS IO Table 'xxxxx'. Scan count 15, logical reads 47760, physical reads 9, read-ahead reads 13872, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Note the high number of logical reads… After a bit of investigation, we found that @Name could never actually be set to NULL in this particular example. ie the @x IS NULL was spurious… So, we changed the call to WHERE  [Name] like @Name Now, how much more efficient is this code ? Table 'xxxxx'. Scan count 3, logical reads 24, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0 A nice easy win in this case…… a full index scan has been replaced by a significantly more efficient index seek. I managed to recreate the same behaviour on Adventureworks – here’s a quick query to demonstrate :- USE adventureworks SET STATISTICS IO ON DECLARE @id INT = 51721 SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE @id IS NULL OR salesorderid = @id SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE salesorderid = @id Take a look at the STATISTICS IO output and compare the actual query plans used to prove the impact of  WHERE @id IS NULL. And just to follow some of Erland’s advice – here’s how you could get similar performance if it was possible that @id could actually sometimes contain NULL. DECLARE @sql NVARCHAR(4000), @parameterlist NVARCHAR(4000) DECLARE @id INT = 51721 – or change to NULL to prove query is functionally correct SET @sql = 'SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE 1 = 1' IF @id IS NOT NULL SET @sql = @sql + ' AND salesorderid = @id' IF @id IS NULL SET @sql = @sql + ' AND salesorderid IS NULL' SET @parameterlist = '@id INT' EXEC sp_executesql @sql, @parameterlist,@id Sometimes I think we focus too much on hardware and SQL Server configuration – when really the answer is focus on writing efficient SQL.

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• C# Preprocessor Directives

  - by MarkPearl

  Going back to my old c++ days at university where we had all our code littered with preprocessor directives - I thought it made the code ugly and could never understand why it was useful. Today though I found a use in my C# application. The scenario – I had made various security levels in my application and tied my XAML to the levels by set by static accessors in code. An example of my XAML code for a Combobox to be enabled would be as follows… <ComboBox IsEnabled="{x:Static security:Security.SecurityCanEditDebtor}" />   And then I would have a static method like this… public static bool SecurityCanEditDebtorPostalAddress { get { if (SecurityCanEditDebtorPostalAddress) { return true; } else { return false; } } } My only problem was that my XAML did not like the if statement – which meant that while my code worked during runtime, during design time in VS2010 it gave some horrible error like… NullReferenceException was thrown on “StatiucExtension”: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation… If however my C# method was changed to something like this… public static bool SecurityCanEditDebtorPostalAddress { get { return true; } }   My XAML viewer would be happy. But of course this would bypass my security… <Drum Roll> Welcome preprocessor directives… what I wanted was during my design experience to totally remove the “if” code so that my accessor would return true and not have any if statements, but when I release my project to the big open world, I want the code to have the is statement. With a bit of searching I found the relevant MSDN sample and my code now looks like this… public static bool SecurityCanEditDebtorPostalAddress { get { #if DEBUG return true; #else if (Settings.GetInstance().CurrentUser.SecurityCanEditDebtorPostalAddress) { return true; } else { return false; } #endif } }   Not the prettiest beast, but it works. Basically what is being said here is that during my debug mode compile my code with just the code between the #if … #else block, but what I can now do is if I want to universally switch everything to the “if else” statement, I just go to my project properties –> Build and change the “Debug” flag as illustrated in the picture below. Also note that you can define your own conditional compilation symbols, and if you even wanted to you could skip the whole properties page and define them in code using the #define & #undef directives. So while I don’t like the way the code works and would like to look more into AOP and compare it to this method, it works for now.

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• Modelling highly specific business requirements

  - by AndyBursh

  How can one go about modelling highly specific business requirements, which have no precedent in the system? Take for example the following requirement: When a purchase order contains N lines, is over X value in total and is being recorded against project Y, an email needs to be sent to persons A and B with the details This requirement supplements other requirements surrounding purchase orders, but comes in at a much later date in response to some ongoing problem elsewhere in the business. Persons A and B are not part of any role or group in the system, and don't hold any specific responsibility; they are simply the two people the business has appointed to receive these emails in this very specific case. Projects are also data driven, so project Y has no special properties to distinguish it from any other project. The only way to identify it is to compare its identifier to a magic number. How can one go about modelling this kind of case without introducing too much additional complexity? That I can think of right now, there are a couple of options. Perform the checks and actions inline with the existing code. Here we find the correct spot in the code, check the conditions in the requirement and send the emails to hardcoded addresses. Of course this is fraught with issues. At the very least it stops working if one of these people leaves or changes their email address. At worst you have to ensure that any tests and test data are aware that additional actions are taken for a specific set of criteria. Introduce some form of events system. Here we introduce an eventing system, so that we might react to some event, and fulfil the requirement outside of the usual path of execution. This sounds like a cleaner solution than option 1, but the work involved is ultimately probably slightly overkill for this one small requirement. That said, having it in place does allow the system to handle these kinds of specific requirements consistently and easily in the future. Are there any other (good/better) ways of handling highly specific requirements? I mean other than telling the other parts of the business no!

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• PASS: FY10 Actuals Posted

  - by Bill Graziano

  Earlier this year we published preliminary fiscal year 2010 financials to the Governance page on the PASS web site.  Please remember that FY10 runs from July 1st, 2009 through June 30th, 2010 and includes the November 2009 Summit.  We do our fiscal year this way so that the Summit falls earlier in the fiscal year.  The financials we had posted were P&L numbers at the portfolio level.  Prior to this we had posted our detailed budget but only posted the auditors report at the end of each year.  Today we updated our published financials to include: Pre-audit actuals from FY10 at the same level as our budget.  The document has both actuals and budget for FY10 side by side.  This is over 20 pages of detailed financial information covering hundreds of line-items. A letter describing key differences between our budget and actuals.  I walked through each line item where the difference was greater than $25,000 and explained what happened and why. We updated the financial graph going back to 2003 to include FY10. This update should “close the loop” on our financials.  You can now start with the published budget and compare it to the finished financials at the same level of detail.  We also plan to publish the auditor’s report when that is completed -- as we do every year. Overall I’m very happy with how FY10 turned out.  Keep in mind that this was the November 2009 Summit so we were still facing economic challenges.  With all that we were roughly break-even showing a $15,000 profit on $3.9 million of revenue.  I didn’t find anything shocking in reviewing our actual vs. budget but there were a few things that needed explanation.  You can see those in the letter on the governance page. Please keep in mind that these are the actuals from our operating financials.  The auditor may have us make adjustments for depreciation or other financial transactions.  We may also account for certain transactions differently for tax purposes than we do for financial reporting purposes.  I feel these financial statements give you the clearest picture of how our organization spends its money. We were late publishing these this year.  We were working through some tax issues and that delayed our ability to file our final tax forms which delayed this process.  In hindsight I should have published these documents as soon as we had them and not waited for the tax issues.  We’ll do this better in the future. And on a final note, you don’t need to login to view these documents.  If you have any questions you can post them here.  If we get more than a few questions we may see about creating some forums for financial issues on the PASS web site.

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• How to avoid oscillation by async event based systems?

  - by inf3rno

  Imagine a system where there are data sources which need to be kept in sync. A simple example is model - view data binding by MVC. Now I intend to describe these kind of systems with data sources and hubs. Data sources are publishing and subscribing for events and hubs are relaying events to data sources. By handling an event a data source will change it state described in the event. By publishing an event the data source puts its current state to the event, so other data sources can use that information to change their state accordingly. The only problem with this system, that events can be reflected from the hub or from the other data sources, and that can put the system into an infinite oscillation (by async or infinite loop by sync). For example A -- data source B -- data source H -- hub A -> H -> A -- reflection from the hub A -> H -> B -> H -> A -- reflection from another data source By sync it is relatively easy to solve this issue. You can compare the current state with the event, and if they are equal, you don't change the state and raise the same event again. By async I could not find a solution yet. The state comparison does not work by async event handling because there is eventual consistency, and new events can be published in an inconsistent state causing the same oscillation. For example: A(*->x) -> H -> B(y->x) -- can go parallel with B(*->y) -> H -> A(x->y) -- so first A changes to x state while B changes to y state -- then B changes to x state while A changes to y state -- and so on for eternity... What do you think is there an algorithm to solve this problem? If there is a solution, is it possible to extend it to prevent oscillation caused by multiple hubs, multiple different events, etc... ? update: I don't think I can make this work without a lot of effort. I think this problem is just the same as we have by syncing multiple databases in a distributed system. So I think what I really need is constraints if I want to prevent this problem in an automatic way. What constraints do you suggest?

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• is a factory pattern to prevent multuple instances for same object (instance that is Equal) good design?

  - by dsollen

  I have a number of objects storing state. There are essentially two types of fields. The ones that uniquly define what the object is (what node, what edge etc), and the oens that store state describing how these things are connected (this node is connected to these edges, this edge is part of these paths) etc. My model is updating the state variables using package methdos, so these objects all act as immutable to anyone not in Model scope. All Objects extend one base type. I've toyed with the idea of a Factory approch which accepts a Builder object and construct the applicable object. However, if an instance of the object already exists (ie would return true if I created the object defined by the builder and passed it to the equal method for the existing instance) the factory returns the current object instead of creating a new instance. Because the Equal method would only compare what uniquly defines the type of object (this is node A nto node B) but won't check the dynamic state stuff (node A is currently connected to nodes C and E) this would be a way of ensuring anyone that wants my Node A automatically knows it's state connections. More importantly it would prevent aliasing nightmares of someone trying to pass an instance of node A with different state then the node A in my model has. I've never heard of this pattern before, and it's a bit odd. I would have to do some overiding of serlization methods to make it work (ensure when I read in a serilized object I add it to my facotry list of known instances, and/or return an existing factory in it's place), as well as using a weakHashMap as if it was a weakHashSet to know rather an instance exists without worrying about a quasi-memory leak occuring. I don't know if this is too confusing or prone to it's own obscure bugs. One thing I know is that plugins interface with lowest level hardware. The plugins have to be able to return state taht is different then my memory; to tell my memory when it's own state is inconsistent. I believe this is possible despit their fetching objects that exist in my memory; we allow building of objects without checking their consistency with the model until the addToModel is called anyways; and the existing plugins design was written before all this extra state existed and worked fine without ever being aware of it. Should I just be using some other design to avoid this crazyness? (I have another question to that affect I'm posting).

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• Is there a factory pattern to prevent multiple instances for same object (instance that is Equal) good design?

  - by dsollen

  I have a number of objects storing state. There are essentially two types of fields. The ones that uniquely define what the object is (what node, what edge etc), and the others that store state describing how these things are connected (this node is connected to these edges, this edge is part of these paths) etc. My model is updating the state variables using package methods, so all these objects act as immutable to anyone not in Model scope. All Objects extend one base type. I've toyed with the idea of a Factory approach which accepts a Builder object and constructs the applicable object. However, if an instance of the object already exists (ie would return true if I created the object defined by the builder and passed it to the equal method for the existing instance) the factory returns the current object instead of creating a new instance. Because the Equal method would only compare what uniquely defines the type of object (this is node A to node B) but won't check the dynamic state stuff (node A is currently connected to nodes C and E) this would be a way of ensuring anyone that wants my Node A automatically knows its state connections. More importantly it would prevent aliasing nightmares of someone trying to pass an instance of node A with different state then the node A in my model has. I've never heard of this pattern before, and it's a bit odd. I would have to do some overriding of serialization methods to make it work (ensure that when I read in a serilized object I add it to my facotry list of known instances, and/or return an existing factory in its place), as well as using a weakHashMap as if it was a weakHashSet to know whether an instance exists without worrying about a quasi-memory leak occuring. I don't know if this is too confusing or prone to its own obscure bugs. One thing I know is that plugins interface with lowest level hardware. The plugins have to be able to return state that is different than my memory; to tell my memory when its own state is inconsistent. I believe this is possible despite their fetching objects that exist in my memory; we allow building of objects without checking their consistency with the model until the addToModel is called anyways; and the existing plugins design was written before all this extra state existed and worked fine without ever being aware of it. Should I just be using some other design to avoid this crazyness? (I have another question to that affect that I'm posting).

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• JGridView

  - by Geertjan

  JGrid was announced last week so I wanted to integrate it into a NetBeans Platform app. I.e., I'd like to use Nodes instead of the DefaultListModel that is supported natively, so that I can integrate with the Properties Window, for example: Here's how: import de.jgrid.JGrid; import java.beans.PropertyVetoException; import javax.swing.DefaultListModel; import javax.swing.JScrollPane; import javax.swing.event.ListSelectionEvent; import javax.swing.event.ListSelectionListener; import org.book.domain.Book; import org.openide.explorer.ExplorerManager; import org.openide.nodes.Node; import org.openide.util.Exceptions; public class JGridView extends JScrollPane { @Override public void addNotify() { super.addNotify(); final ExplorerManager em = ExplorerManager.find(this); if (em != null) { final JGrid grid = new JGrid(); Node root = em.getRootContext(); final Node[] nodes = root.getChildren().getNodes(); final Book[] books = new Book[nodes.length]; for (int i = 0; i < nodes.length; i++) { Node node = nodes[i]; books[i] = node.getLookup().lookup(Book.class); } grid.getCellRendererManager().setDefaultRenderer(new OpenLibraryGridRenderer()); grid.setModel(new DefaultListModel() { @Override public int getSize() { return books.length; } @Override public Object getElementAt(int i) { return books[i]; } }); grid.setUI(new BookshelfUI()); grid.getSelectionModel().addListSelectionListener(new ListSelectionListener() { @Override public void valueChanged(ListSelectionEvent e) { //Somehow compare the selected item //with the list of books and find a matching book: int selectedIndex = grid.getSelectedIndex(); for (int i = 0; i < nodes.length; i++) { String nodeName = books[i].getTitel(); if (String.valueOf(selectedIndex).equals(nodeName)) { try { em.setSelectedNodes(new Node[]{nodes[i]}); } catch (PropertyVetoException ex) { Exceptions.printStackTrace(ex); } } } } }); setViewportView(grid); } } } Above, you see references to OpenLibraryGridRenderer and BookshelfUI, both of which are part of the "JGrid-Bookshelf" sample in the JGrid download. The above is specific for Book objects, i.e., that's one of the samples that comes with the JGrid download. I need to make the above more general, so that any kind of object can be handled without requiring changes to the JGridView. Once you have the above, it's easy to integrate it into a TopComponent, just like any other NetBeans explorer view.

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• Core i7-620M vs Core i5-540M

  - by Shalan

  Hi, I'm recommending a laptop to a colleague, and the specific laptop he has chosen has the above CPU chips as options. Both chips have 2-cores/4-threads. The i7-620M is a 2.66 GHz (4MB Cache) while the i5-540M is a 2.53 GHz (3MB Cache)....both Arrandale architecture. He is a .NET programmer working with SQL Server and Oracle, and occasionally uses Adobe Fireworks for web-related design elements. He also loves playing around in Adobe Premiere Pro, and does a lot of media/video work. Would you notice any significant performance difference between the 2? The laptop manufacturer claims that the battery life on both is the same irrespective of the chip used (although I find that hard to believe), but there is a major cost difference between them, with the Core i7-620M being the more expensive. According to http://ark.intel.com, the one thing that seems different (besides the obvious speeds/frequencies/etc) is a feature called "Embedded" - what is this exactly? You can see the quick comparison here - http://ark.intel.com/Compare.aspx?ids=43544,43560 I would sincerely appreciate any advice me on this. THANKS!

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• Can't access SQL Server 2008 from workstations, but can from server

  - by Kev

  We have an app that can use mssql2k or 2k8. We've been using 2k but I decided to try 2k8 to compare. I installed in on our win2k3 server alongside mssql2k. In the ODBC applet on the server, I was able to set up access to 2k8, and it passes the test at the end successfully, whether I tell it to use Windows Authentication or an sql login. The latter is how the app always accessed mssql2k. The app works fine from the server, but when I try it on a workstation (winxpsp3), I get a window titled, "Microsoft SQL Server Login" that says: Connection failed: SQLState: '01000' SQL Server Error: 53 [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][DBNETLIB]ConnectionOpen (Connect()). Connection failed: SQLState: '08001' SQL Server ERror: 17 [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][DBNETLIB]SQL Server does not exist or access denied. Then I get the ODBC login dialog, which I can't get to login correctly (I just keep getting the same error above), even copying and pasting a password after resetting it on the server, and whether "trusted" is checked or not. "Options" is disabled. The server was straight SERVERNAME for mssql2k, but for mssql2k8 it's called SERVERNAME\mssql2008. That works on the server, why not on the workstation? (Which I'm logged in as the same person on, BTW.)

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• Synchronizing audio and video using MP4Box / ffmpeg to concatenate files

  - by jdl2003

  I have two H.264 encoded MPEG-4 files that I need to concatenate. I have been using MP4Box for this task by first ensuring the files are encoded identically (even went so far as to compare output from h264_parse on their video tracks) and then concatenating with this command: MP4Box -cat file1.mp4 -cat file2.mp4 output_file.mp4 This works and the output file is playable, but on playback in Quicktime or VLC the second video's audio starts too soon, making the entire second part of the concatenated file out of sync. I have tried reencoding the output through ffmpeg with -vcodec copy and -acodec copy but the sync issue persists. I have also tried converting to MPEG-2 format first, concatenating with a simple cat file1.mpg file2.mpg > output.mpg and reencoding the result with ffmpeg. This was even worse. I know that I can pass commands to MP4Box to adjust the start time of the audio track, but I am trying to do this programmatically for any input video (in the same encoding of course). I am looking for possible solutions that would not require human intervention / manual adjustments. Or, at least, an understanding of what is happening to make the second part of the concatenated video go out of sync.

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