Geekswithblogs.net

Resharper Nightly Builds and Stylecop

TATWORTH — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:11:42 GMT

The latest stylecop checks the ReSharper build number. In case you have to put on a more recent nightly build (as I am in the process of doing), here is the URL:

http://confluence.jetbrains.net/display/ReSharper/ReSharper+6.1.1+Nightly+Builds

(Stylecop 4.7.8.0 checks the build number of ReSharper)

Can't code withoutPowerful search and navigation in C#,
VB, XML, ASP.NET, XAML and more

Site Columns can't be deleted / edited in SharePoint 2010??

Melanie Curfman — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:46:29 GMT

I've recently migrated over to 2010 -- this is to say that I've recently started working at a company with an enterprise level 2010 SharePoint instance.

As I was doing to customer requirement - content type-architecture-alignment and testing last week, I noticed that there are various SharePoint site columns that can't be modified and / or removed from (even) a custom list once they've been added.

I did quick internet search and wasn't able to find anything riveting.

Anyone know what the scoop is on this?

Job hopping with the buddy system

tom — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:51:32 GMT

Imagine this scenario: You are sitting in your final technical interview the lead architect asks you about your experience using the MVC pattern noted on your resume. Before you can answer the coworker who developed that application with you says “I can answer this one, if that’s OK.” The interview goes great and in two weeks you get the call and receive an offer for both of you.

That’s one offer with given to a team of job applicants. You all accept together as one unit or agree to reject the offer and keep looking.

Sound crazy? Not according to The authors of “The 2020 Workplace” nor to sseveral bloggers like damonoverboe.net and moddingideas.com (see prediction 6). “The 2020 Workplace” suggests that the future of IT may operate more “like Hollywood” with specialized teams who are hired, evaluated, rewarded, and even reprimanded as a group.

This book was required reading for the masters program I just completed in Dec of 11. This was the primary text for Dr Perreault’s class. It is interesting that Damon would promote such a similar concept.

There is some compelling evidence that the importance of “socializing” your work reputations is increasing. Have you noticed an uptick in coworkers who found out about the job openings through Facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter? Have you or has your boss or interviewing company been to your blog? Perhaps the same people who vouch for us on LinkedIn and Facebook should be in our interviews with us and if we are successful together why wouldn’t we want to keep working together?

What do you think? Is this a good idea? Will employers start hiring entire teams? Thank you for your input.

Stylecop 4.7.8.0 released

TATWORTH — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:29:30 GMT

Stylecop 4.7.8.0 has been released at http://stylecop.codeplex.com/releases/view/79972

"This version is now compatible with R# 5.1 (5.1.3000.12), R# 6.0 (6.0.2202.688), R# 6.1 (6.1.37.86) and R# 6.1.1 (6.1.42.60) available from http://confluence.jetbrains.net/display/ReSharper/ReSharper+6.1.1+Nightly+Builds

Here are the bug details for fixed in 4.7 and closed in 4.7 issues (over 20 issues fixed since 4.6)"

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Path Too Long for Team Foundation Database Project Build

deadlydog — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:43:55 GMT

Arrggghhhh TFS and builds! Such a love-hate relationship! So we have our TFS builds setup to both compile our C# projects as well as compile and deploy our Team Foundation (TF) Database (DB) projects. One day I started getting the following file path too long error message on our build server:

$/RQ4TeamProject/Prototypes/BuildProcessTests/RQ4.Database.sln - 1 error(s), 69 warning(s), View Log File
C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\TeamData\Microsoft.Data.Schema.TSqlTasks.targets (80): The "SqlSetupDeployTask" task failed unexpectedly. Microsoft.Data.Schema.Build.BuildFailedException: The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters. ---> System.IO.PathTooLongException: The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters. at System.IO.PathHelper.Append(Char value) at System.IO.Path.NormalizePath(String path, Boolean fullCheck, Int32 maxPathLength) at System.IO.FileStream.Init(String path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, Int32 rights, Boolean useRights, FileShare share, Int32 bufferSize, FileOptions options, SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES secAttrs, String msgPath, Boolean bFromProxy, Boolean useLongPath) at System.IO.FileStream..ctor(String path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, FileShare share, Int32 bufferSize, FileOptions options, String msgPath, Boolean bFromProxy) at System.IO.FileStream..ctor(String path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, FileShare share, Int32 bufferSize, FileOptions options) at System.IO.StreamReader..ctor(String path, Encoding encoding, Boolean detectEncodingFromByteOrderMarks, Int32 bufferSize) at System.IO.StreamReader..ctor(String path, Boolean detectEncodingFromByteOrderMarks) at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Sql.Build.SqlPrePostDeploymentModifier.GenerateMergedSqlCmdFiles(DeploymentContributorConfigurationSetup setup, DeploymentContributorConfigurationFile configFile) at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Sql.Build.SqlPrePostDeploymentModifier.OnEstablishDeploymentConfiguration(DeploymentContributorConfigurationSetup setup) at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Build.DeploymentContributor.EstablishDeploymentConfiguration(DeploymentContributorConfigurationSetup setup) --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Build.DeploymentContributor.EstablishDeploymentConfiguration(DeploymentContributorConfigurationSetup setup) at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Build.DeploymentProjectBuilder.VerifyConfiguration() at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Tasks.DBSetupDeployTask.BuildDeploymentProject(ErrorManager errors, ExtensionManager em) at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Tasks.DBSetupDeployTask.Execute() at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.TaskExecutionHost.Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.ITaskExecutionHost.Execute() at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.TaskBuilder.ExecuteInstantiatedTask(ITaskExecutionHost taskExecutionHost, TaskLoggingContext taskLoggingContext, TaskHost taskHost, ItemBucket bucket, TaskExecutionMode howToExecuteTask, Boolean& taskResult)

Naturally I said, "Ok, our TF DB project isn't compiling because a path is too long. Somebody must have checked in a stored procedure with a really long name". After viewing the history of the branch I was trying to build however, I didn't see anything that stuck out. So for fun I thought I would shorten the Build Definition name's length and build again. Viola, like most path issues with TFS this fixed the issue (this is because the build definition name is often used in the path that TFS moves/builds files to). However, we have many queries setup that match the specific Build Definition name (since it's used in the "Integrated in Build" work item value), so shortening it wasn't a long term solution. As an added frustration bonus, I discovered our build definition name was only 1 character too long!

The first thing I did was make a Path Length Checker program so I could see how long the file paths (files and directories) really were on the build server. Oddly enough, the longest paths were 40 characters short of the maximum limit described by the error message.

So I took a look at our database folder structure and saw that it really was wasting a lot of characters. This is what the path to one of our stored procedure folders looks like: "..\Database\Schema Objects\Schemas\dbo\Programmability\Stored Procedures\Procs1". I figured that I would just rename some of these folders in Visual Studio and that should be good........OMG never try this while connected to TFS! I got a popup warning for every single file under the directory I was renaming (thousands of them), with something along the lines of "Cannot access file X, or it is locked.....blah blah. Please press OK". So after holding down the enter key for a over an hour to get past all these prompts it finally finished. When I reviewed the changes to check in, I saw that many duplicate folders had been created, and there were miscellaneous files all over the place; some got moved, some never; what a mess. So I went ahead and reverted my changes.

So I thought, "Ok, let's try this again, but first going offline so as not to connect to TFS". So I disabled my internet connection and opened the database solution (this is the only way that I know of to work "offline" in TFS :( ). I then tried to change the high level folder "Schema Objects" to just "Schema". Nope, Visual Studio complained that the folder was locked and couldn't be changed. I thought to myself, "TFS makes all non-checked out files read-only, and I'm offline so it can't check them out. That must be the problem". So I opened up explorer and made all of the files and folders writable and tried again. Nope, no deal; same error message.

So I thought, "Alright, let's try doing a low level directory instead". It seems that VS would only let me rename a directory that didn't contain other directories. So I renamed the "Procs1" folder to just "1". I no longer got the warning prompt for every file, but it was still pretty slow and I could watch VS process every file in the Solution Explorer window. After about 10 minutes it finally finished. So I checked in my changes and tried building again. Nope, same error message as before about the path being too long.

So I said screw this. I opened up the TFS Source Control Explorer and renamed the folder from there. It worked just fine. I then had to open up the Database.dbproj file in a text editor and do a find and replace to replace "\Schema Objects\" with "\Schema\". This worked for refactoring the folder structure quickly, but I was still getting the "path too long" error message on the build server. Arrrrgg!

So I went back to the build, set the verbosity to “diagnostic” and launched another build (which failed again with the path too long error). Looking through the error message I noticed that it did complete building the DB schema, and went on to failing on building the Pre/Post deployment scripts. Looking back to my original error message and reading it more carefully I noticed this line, “Microsoft.Data.Schema.Sql.Build.SqlPrePostDeploymentModifier.GenerateMergedSqlCmdFiles”. So now I was pretty sure the problem was in the pre and post deployment scripts.

Now, we have a very custom process for our database scripts, and part of this process involves using SQLCMD mode to include other script files into our pre and post deployment files when they are generated; it basically makes it look like the referenced script’s contents were in the pre/post deployment script the entire time. This is necessary for us so that developers don't have to look through pre and post deployment scripts that are tens of thousands of lines long. It turns out that while none of these referenced script files themselves had a path that was over the limit, somehow during the generation of the pre/post deployment scripts it was making the path even longer. I looked through our referenced scripts and saw a few particularly long ones. So I refactored them to shorten the file names, and presto the build worked! Hooray!

I’m guessing that the reason the build wouldn’t give me an actual filename when it encountered the error is because SQLCMD mode was dynamically referencing those scripts at build time, so to the build it just looked like the pre and post deployment scripts were each thousands of lines long, when in fact they are only maybe 50 lines long, but they "include" other files, and those file references must be used at build time.

So the morals of this story are:

1. If VS is blowing chunks when you try to rename a folder (especially when connected to TFS), don't do it through VS. Instead modify the folder structure outside of VS and then manually edit the .csproj/.dbproj/.vbproj files to mirror the changes.

2. Whenever you are stumped on a build error, go back and THOROUGHLY read the ENTIRE error message.

3. Be careful when using compile-time language features to reference/include external files.

Free Document scanning software - FreeOCR

TATWORTH — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:28:05 GMT

Free OCR scanning software is available from http://www.paperfile.net/

Click link below to download FreeOCR.net.
This is a bootstrap installer and will only download the files needed to install the latest version of FreeOCR

Download Here

This includes the English language Pack

APress Deal of the Day - 5/Feb/2012 - Applied ASP.NET 4 in Context

TATWORTH — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:50:36 GMT

Today's $10 Deal of the day from APress at http://www.apress.com/9781430234678 is Applied ASP.NET 4 in Context

"Applied ASP.NET 4 in Context answers the commonly asked question, "Yes, but how does it work in reality?" Through a series of carefully constructed examples, the book shows how ASP.NET works in a real-world context, showing how technologies and best practices can be drawn together to create well-crafted web applications."

I have read other books by Alan Freeman and I know he is an excellent author who is good at providing real world examples.

Testing from Live Writer

TomStickel — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 08:53:44 GMT

this is a simple test

SQL Clustered vs. Non-Cluster Index

TomStickel — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 07:12:24 GMT

When you first create a new table, there is no index created by default. In technical terms, a table without an index is called a “heap”. We can confirm the fact that this new table doesn’t have an index by taking a look at the sysindexes system table, which contains one for this table with an of indid = 0. The sysindexes table, which exists in every database, tracks table and index information. “Indid” refers to Index ID, and is used to identify indexes. An indid of 0 means that a table does not have an index, and is stored by SQL Server as a heap.

Creating a Non-Clustered Index

Now, we will create a unique non-clustered index on the empid column to see how it affects the data, and how the data is stored in SQL Server.

CREATE UNIQUE NONCLUSTERED INDEX DummyTable1_empid
ON DummyTable1 (empid)
GO

A clustered index determines the physical order of data in a table. A clustered index is analogous to a telephone directory, which arranges data by last name. Because the clustered index dictates the physical storage order of the data in the table, a table can contain only one clustered index. However, the index can comprise multiple columns (a composite index), like the way a telephone directory is organized by last name and first name.

Clustered indexes are also efficient for finding a specific row when the indexed value is unique. For example, the fastest way to find a particular employee using the unique employee ID column emp_id is to create a clustered index or PRIMARY KEY constraint on the emp_id column.

Note PRIMARY KEY constraints create clustered indexes automatically if no clustered index already exists on the table and a nonclustered index is not specified when you create the PRIMARY KEY constraint.

Alternatively, a clustered index could be created on lname, fname (last name, first name), because employee records are often grouped and queried in this way rather than by employee ID.

How Does a Non-Clustered Index Work?

A table can have more than one Non-Clustered index. But, it should have only one clustered index that works based on the Binary tree concept. Non-Clustered column always depends on the Clustered column on the database.

Most database administrators are familiar with the potential performance benefits they can gain through the judicious use of indexes on database tables. Indexes allow you to speed query performance on commonly used columns and improve the overall processing speed of your database.
Microsoft SQL Server supports two types of indexes:

Clustered indexes define the physical sorting of a database table’s rows in the storage media. For this reason, each database table may have only one clustered index. If a PRIMARY KEY constraint is created for a database table and no clustered index currently exists for that table, SQL Server automatically creates a clustered index on the primary key

vs.

Non-clustered indexes are created outside of the database table and contain a sorted list of references to the table itself.
SQL Server 2000 supports a maximum of 249 non-clustered indexes per table. However, it’s important to keep in mind that non-clustered indexes slow down the data modification and insertion process, so indexes should be kept to a minimum

----

One of the hardest tasks facing database administrators is the selection of appropriate columns for non-clustered indexes. You should consider creating non-clustered indexes on any columns that are frequently referenced in the WHERE clauses of SQL statements. Other good candidates are columns referenced by JOIN and GROUP BY operations.
You may wish to also consider creating non-clustered indexes that cover all of the columns used by certain frequently issued queries. These queries are referred to as “covered queries” and experience excellent performance gains.
SQL Server provides a wonderful facility known as the Index Tuning Wizard which greatly enhances the index selection process. To use this tool, first use SQL Profiler to capture a trace of the activity for which you wish to optimize performance. You may wish to run the trace for an extended period of time to capture a wide range of activity. Then, using Enterprise Manager, start the Index Tuning Wizard and instruct it to recommend indexes based upon the captured trace. It will not only suggest appropriate columns for queries but also provide you with an estimate of the performance increase you’ll experience after making those changes!

Accessing QuickBooks Data for Use in LightSwitch

GGBlogger — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 23:05:38 GMT

Intuit Partner Platform and Data Access

I’m going to make some assumptions that will cover a lot of folks developing applications to work with QuickBooks.

1. You are running a copy of QuickBooks on your development machine.

2. You are running Visual Studio 2010 as your development environment of choice.

3. You have some flavor of Microsoft LightSwitch installed.

4. You want to access QuickBooks data on your machine to USE LightSwitch.

Well now you have an option. Head on over to http://www.rssbus.com and pick up a copy of their QuickBooks Data Provider for ADO.NET. A one developer license with royalty-free distribution will cost you $599 at the present time and in the next few minutes I’m going to help you get started using this package.

Although this software comes with a number of samples getting started was not all that intuitive for me. After a number of false starts I did a GoToMeeting with a gentleman named Casey and he showed me how to get started. The problem is that this package can serve in a number of capacities accessing QuickBooks data whether the data is local or remote so to get you started I am going to show you how to set things up locally to allow you to run QuickBooks Data Provider to use the samples supplied and to use LightSwitch to access the data. If you have a need for other setups you will need to consult their help files.

Let’s start with the QuickBooks Remote Connector provided as part of the package. You won’t find it in your menu choices in the start menu but if you cruise on down to c:\program files (x86)\RSSBus\RSSBus QuickBooks Data Provider\RemoteConnector you will find RemoteConnector.exe. I chose to pin it to my taskbar but you could also make it a desktop icon. This connector is a mini http listener and it’s easy to get multiple instances running and we don’t want that. I’ll have more on that in a bit.

When you start it you will get this:

The most important thing to note is that we’re using port 2080. Now click the Users tab:

Fill in a user name and password. This is strictly for the use of the data connector and has no other purpose. To find the company file you want to use click the browse button and you will get:

(Word of warning – clicking the Red X button at the upper right of the screen DOES NOT close the connector. To CLOSE the connector use the Exit button on the menu strip!!!!!)

Choose the file you want to access and click the start button. This starts the connector in listening mode. EVERY time you run this it will generate a new connection. You can see these in the hidden files section.

You only want ONE of these running at any given time. With one connector started and running you’re ready to move on to using the connection to access QB data.

So let’s access some data

My suggestion is to start the sample account application provided by RSS. The demos are installed as links when you install the Data Connector but you can also find them in Program Files (x86) under RSSBus. The form for the account application looks like this.

Fill in the details using http://localhost:2080 and your user name and password that you used in the connector dialog:

Before you go further open QuickBooks with the data you selected to use with the connector. With QuickBooks running click the Refresh button. QuickBooks should present you with the following screen:

You have a number of options here but I chose Yes, always and allowed it o access personal data for my testing purposes. Click Continue… to get:

First warning – select Yes unless you want to change it then a final warning:

Click done and you can close QuickBooks if you like. Now click the refresh button on the account application and you should get this:

You’re now accessing QuickBooks data from an application external to QuickBooks. I know it seems like a lot of work but if you follow the instructions above things should go smoothly. I ended up with about a dozen Remote Connectors running on some of my first attempts. It took Casey and a GoToMeeting session to get me sorted out. Now I love it LOL. I’ll do more with LightSwitch in another blog.

Bud Aaron – the Geriatric Geek

http://www.dotnetchecks.com

Dice.com IT jobs search results Feb. 2012

TomStickel — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 23:03:10 GMT

Nationwide search on dice.com

Feb. 4, 2012

C# - 8,518

ASP.NET 4,957

.NET MVC 1,101

Biztalk 409

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 461

Sharepoint 4,022

SQL Server 14,390

Java 16,854

groovy 292

Oracle 18,118

Monster.com IT job search results from March 2010

TomStickel — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 22:53:25 GMT

Monster.com

Nationwide search

Job Title: Empty ; Skills/keyword: mvc location: empty

Results: 523 jobs nationwide (mostly java )

Change to Skills/keyword ASP.NET MVC

Results: 80 jobs nationwide

.net mvc = 129

groovy = 66 jobs

grails = 44 jobs

C# 3,481

VB.NET 855

.NET >5,000

ASP.NET 2,245

Java > 5,000

Delphi = 93

VB = 2,559

Visual Basic 2,604

ORM - 150

Hibernate - 851

NHibernate - 53

Linq = 162

Entity Framework = 97

fxcop = 5 jobs

Oracle = >5,000

SQL Server = 4,148

mysql = 1,431

db2 = 699

Nunit = 120

JUnit = 422

Selenium = 142

Coldfusion = 304

Perl = 2,371

PHP = 1,540

Python = 1,029

Ruby on Rails = 221

Automation Engineer = 297

Spring = 1,710

Subverion = 559

VSS = 83

Visual Source Safe = 120

CVS = 824

StarTeam = 14

vmware = 1,326

Virtualbox = 3

C++ = 4,266

Coming Back in action!!!

Srijith Sarman — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 22:08:09 GMT

It's been exactly over three years and two months since I last logged in to this blog. The last post which I made on Dec 2008, was itself after a one year gap :). Well, now let me try if I can continue this activity. Lot of learning, lot of new cool stuffs. Technology itself has been changed quite dramatically over this period with the addition of new cool stuffs and I believe my English as well improved a little bit :). Microsoft developers finally started realizing the drawbacks of ASP.NET architecture and started drifting towards more web world friendly architecture like ASP.NET MVC. Thanks to the huge fan base of Ruby On Rails.

In this context to start off this new beginning I will quote some interesting remark I found from the Mr.Asp.Net Scott Guthrie. Who is better than him to quote when I want to discuss about MVC?

"Some guidance I occasionally give people on my team when working and communicating with others:

1.You will rarely win a debate with someone by telling them that they are stupid - no matter how well intention ed or eloquent your explanation of their IQ problems might be.

2.There will always be someone somewhere in the world who is smarter than you - don’t always assume that they aren’t in the room with you.

3. People you interact with too often forget the praise you give them, and too often remember a past insult - so be judicious in handing them out as they come back to haunt you later.

4. People can and do change their minds - be open to being persuaded in a debate, and neither gloat nor hold it against someone else if they also change their minds. "

Great points!!! Very true as well.

LINQ Query and Lambda Expressions

TomStickel — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:11:22 GMT

Lambda expressions are a powerful tool to writing quick, concise code. They can be used in numerous situations, most notably in conjuction with LINQ statements.

A lambda expression is an anonymous function that can contain expressions and statements, and can be used to create delegates or expression tree types.

All lambda expressions use the lambda operator =>, which is read as “goes to”. The left side of the lambda operator specifies the input parameters (if any) and the right side holds the expression or statement block. The lambda expression x => y * z is read “x goes to y times z.”

Here’s how a typical LINQ query looks like without using lambda expressions:

var query = from m in db.PersonalMessages

where m.ConversationID_FK == ConversationID

select m;

Okay, not bad. It looks like a SQL query in reverse (i.e. you start off with “from” and end with “select”). This is so that intellisense can help you out—if you started with select, it would have on idea where you were going with the query.
we are selecting PersonalMessages where the ConversationID is equal to some value passed into the method. The query itself is kinda verbose, and I like to keep my code short and sweet, so how do I re-write this using lambda expressions? Here is the code, and then we’ll break it down:

var query = db.PersonalMessages
.Where(m => m.ConversationID_FK == ConversationID);

We got rid of “select’”, “from” and “in”, etc. Cleaned it up quite a bit. What all is happening though? Basically it’s written out like:

My Query = Get Personal Messages from my data context Where the ConversationID is equal to this #.

In other words, it reads exactly like it does in the first written out query, but it’s done faster. The where statement is like a mini-method. You’re defining some variable M (you can use any letter, I always use m for the sake of convention in my code) and then in this case you’re giving m some condition to work with.
You’re basically saying, define m real quick (m=>) as a stand-in for PersonalMessage. Then only return PersonalMessages where m’s ConversationID is equal to some value.

This is why I shouldn’t blog before a cup of coffee….

George Clingerman — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:19:11 GMT

Wake up in the morning feeling all C Sharpy
Grab my laptop by my bed, I'm going to code this pretty
Brush my teeth and my hair much later I'm sure
Cause when I'm coding an idea I ain't looking to score

I'm talking curly braces have to close, close
Writing comments all in prose, prose.
Errors blowing up my codes, codes

Music popping, coding my favorite ideas
Pulling up, reading the tweets
Starting to get a little bit Lispy

No slop, make it top
Coding, blow that keyboard up
Today I'm going write
Till I see no sunlight
Fric, frack, errors back
But the coding just won’t stop no

Coad-oh oh oh
Coad-oh oh oh

Patches issued for PCAnywhere

TATWORTH — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 15:30:26 GMT

Patches have been issued for PC Anywhere. Please see:

Former Apple iPhone engineer Bob Borchers

Kit Ong — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:14:25 GMT

Bob Borchers revealed that the reason a lot of iPhone adverts show the time as 9:42 am on the iPhone was because the iPhone was originally launched at that time.

For one of the commercial for the original iPhone, Borchers said the phone number used to demo the Google Map function was genuine and is the actual number number of the Pacific Catch Restaurant in San Franscisco and the last time he was there they still had the iPhone special, which is calamari.

http://www.macnn.com/articles/12/02/02/talk.to.students.emphasizes.innovation/

Organization & Architecture UNISA Studies – Chap 2

MarkPearl — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 09:59:47 GMT

Designing for Performance

The basic building blocks for todays computers are virtually the same as those of the early IAS computers. The focus has been on optimizing and increasing speeds while keeping the same architecture.

Processors

Increasing speed with processors uses several techniques including…

Branch prediction – a processor looks ahead in the instruction code fetched from memory and predicts which branches or groups of instructions are likely to be processed next.
Data flow analysis – the processor analyses which instructions are dependent on each others results or data to create an optimized schedule of instructions preventing unnecessary delay
Speculative execution – Using branch prediction and data flow analysis some processors speculatively execute instructions ahead of their actual appearance in the program execution saving the results in a temporary location

Performance Balance

While processor power has increased over the years, other critical components have not kept up. The result is a need to look for ways of balancing the performance. One of the main bottlenecks has been the interface between processor and main memory.

There are a number of ways that a system architect can address this problem including the following…

Increase the number of bits that are retrieved at one time by making DRAMs wider rather than deeper and using wide bus data paths
Change the DRAM interface to make it more efficient by including a cache or other buffering scheme on the DRAM chip
Reduce the frequency of memory access by incorporating increasingly complex and efficient cache structures between the processor and main memory including the incorporation of one or more caches on the processor as well as on an off chip cache close to the processor chip
Increase the interconnect bandwidth between processors and memory by using higher speed buses and by using a hierarchy of buses to buffer and structure data flow.

Another are of design focus is the handling of I/O devices. The main challenge is getting the data from these devices moved between processor and peripheral. Strategies include buffering and cache techniques. The use of multiple processor configurations can aid in satisfying I/O demands as well.

There are generally two constantly evolving factors

The rate at which performance is changing in the various technology areas differs greatly from one type of element to another
New applications and new peripheral devices constantly change the nature of the demand on the system in terms of typical instruction profile and the data access patterns

Improvements in Chip Organization and Architecture

There are 3 approaches to achieving increased processor speed…

Increase the hardware speed of the processor (i.e. shrinking the size of the logic gates on the processor chip which would increase the individual operations executed on the chip)
Increase the size and speed of caches that are interposed between the processor and main memory.
Make changes to the processor organization and architecture that increase the effective speed od instruction execution (normally via parallelism)

As clock speeds and logic density increase, a number of obstacles become more significant including…

Power – the power density increases with an increase in logic density and clock speed. One challenge of this is the difficulty of dissipating the heat generated on high-density, high-speed chips
RC delay – The speed at which electrons can flow on a chip between transistors is limited by the resistance and capacitance of the metal wires connecting them. delay increases as the RC product increases. As components on the chip decrease in size, the wires are closer together, increasing capacitance
Memory latency – Memory speeds lag processor speeds as previously discussed

With these challenges becoming harder to reduce, designers of chips are now resorting to placing multiple processors on the same chip, with a large shared cache. Multicore processors provide the potential to increase performance without increasing the clock rate. Thus the current strategy is to rather use two simpler processors instead of one more complicated processor.

The Evolutions of the Intel x86 Architecture

There are two main architectures that we will examine – Intel x86 and ARM processors

CISC Design - The Intel x86 is an excellent example of CISC design (Complex Instruction Set Computers).
RISK Design - The ARM architecture is used in a wide variety of devices and embedded systems and is a good example of RISC design (Reduced instruction set).

Some of the main differences between the Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium 4, the Core (Duo) and the Core 2

Pentium – introduced the use of superscalar techniques, which allow multiple instructions to execute in parallel
Pentium Pro – Made aggressive use of register renaming, branch prediction, data flow analysis and speculative execution
Pentium II – Used Intel MMX technology which is designed to specifically process video, audio, and graphics data efficiently
Pentium III – Incorporates additional floating-point instructions to support 3D graphics software
Pentium 4 – Includes additional floating point and other enhancements for multimedia
Core – First microprocessor with a dual core, i.e. two processors on a single chip
Core 2 – Extends the architecture to 64 bits

Invitation to the IASA SE Florida Chapter Meeting on 02/21/2012

Rainer Habermann — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 03:28:26 GMT

IASA SE Florida Chapter

Software Design Patterns
Nina Grantcharova
Software Architect at LL Global
02/21/2012 6:00PM Meet 6:30PM Presentation

Posted:
Rainer Habermann
President IASA SE Florida Chapter

South Florida Code Camp 02/18/2012 at Nova University

Rainer Habermann — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 03:16:27 GMT

South Florida Code Camp on 02/18/2012 - a free event: 66 Speakers - 14 Tracks - 81 Sessions

Rainer Habermann
SFCC Speaker Coordinator

Migrating Custom Lists with Attachments from OLSB to Office 365

Michael Stephenson — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:05:20 GMT

Before I get into this I am not an Office Live Small Business or Office 365 expert but I have used Office Live Small Business for number of years as a light weight way of managing some parts of my business. I now need to migrate to Office 365 and one of the areas which concerned me was around custom lists which had attachments. I had a number of these with lots of rows and I had been waiting for some information on how these would be migrated and hoped they would just be migrated for me automatically.

When the migration guidance came out this was unfortunately not the case so I thought this post may help some others who have the same task to perform over the coming months before the final closure of OLSB.

Step 1: Replicate the list structure

In your Office Live Small Business account open up the custom list and go to its settings so you can see the structure of the list.

In your Office 365 account create the new custom list to replicate the structure from Office Live Small Business.

A couple of recommendations here:

You may want to consider leaving the constraints on columns such as choices etc for later and initially create the columns with simple types then fix them later
Ensure the columns are in the same order to make things simpler

Step 2: Open Your existing list in Microsoft Access

In your Office Live Small Business custom list use the Actions menu and select Open with Access.

This will open the list in Microsoft Access so you will obviously need it installed.

When the list opens in access choose the option to export a copy of the data and an appropriate location to save it.

Step 3: Open your new list in Microsoft Access

In your Office 365 account open your list and select the Open with Access option highlighted below.

When the list opens choose to have data linked to the sharepoint site like in the below pic.

Step 4: Copy the core data

Unfortunately you cannot copy everything all in one go because the rows must be created before an item can be attached. From here the next thing to do is to select the column headers in the access instance from the Office Live Small Business list. Select all headers except the one for the attachments column. Like in the below picture.

Next go to the Access instance which is linked to the Sharepoint List in the Office 365 site. Paste the lines into this Access instance. The paste action will slowly insert the new rows into the Office 365 SharePoint List.

Step 5: Copy Attachments

You should now have two Microsoft Access databases with the same rows in. One a copy from Office Live Small Business and one with a linked table to the Office 365 SharePoint list. The rows will all be in the same order.

The next step is to copy the attachments.

In the Office Live Small Business Access instance select the column header for the attachments. The one with the paper clip symbol as its header. Then copy the entire column.

In the Office 365 Access instance select the attachments column header and paste the entire column.

This paste action will probably take a while if you have a lot of attachments.

Conclusion

As I mentioned at the start the biggest concern I had with the Office Live Small Business to Office 365 migration was around what to do with all of my custom lists and attachments. Unfortunately the self migration guide wasn't very useful for this bit because It just said to export your data but didn't cover importing it or anything about attachments.

As you can see this only took a short time to do so generally I am quite pleased that this is complete and I can now get on with enjoying the many new features of Office 365 and let my OLSB account disappear into the past.

Make sure computer names are 15 characters or less for MSMQ messages to get delivered

John Breakwell — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:01:11 GMT

Thanks to Seif Attar for highlighting this problem.

It seems MSMQ doesn’t like sending to computers with names longer than 15 characters (which some may remember is the NetBIOS limitation).

To try it out, I created a queue on a Windows XP machine with a computer name of VeryLongMSMQServer and sent off some test messages to

DIRECT=os:verylongmsmqserver\private$\txqueue

I requested acknowledgements so I could see any errors and wasn’t disappointed:

As soon as I renamed the machine to ShortMSMQServer, restarted and sent new messages to

DIRECT=os:shortmsmqserver\private$\txqueue

the problem disappeared:

The messages are delivered to the destination’s queue manager in both cases but are rejected when the machine name is too long.

My suspicion is that this is a NetBIOS limitation. When I initially changed the machines computer name to one that was too long, Windows XP complained “The NetBIOS name of the computer is limited to 15 bytes. The NetBIOS name will be shortened to “VERYLONGMSMQSER”.:

I did try enabling the IgnoreOSNameValidation registry value in case that would help but no luck.

Organizing Your Work With OneNote Page Templates

Tim Murphy — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:15:39 GMT

If you have seen the Windows Phone commercial where the father is in the grocery store with the shopping list in OneNote you have gotten you first taste of the flexibility that can be had with OneNote. I like most consultants have a lot of fires going and once and I am finding that the templates in OneNote are helping me to get a handle on the different projects and tasks I need to track.

I started using OneNote to do simply what its name suggests: take and organize notes. Lately though I am finding ways that it can help to centralize things that I had been using multiple applications to accomplish. Having them all in one place, as with most things makes it easier to not miss something.

You may find using the tasks feature of Outlook works well for you, but I found that I was in and out of my email so fast that I ignored the tasks. As simple To Do List template in OneNote seems to be the solution for me since I spend so much time documenting projects. As an alternative you can use the Prioritized To Do List shown below or the Project To Do List which gives you a list per project.

When starting a project at a new client Project Overview is a great way to organize your thought and make sure that you cover all the essentials. While I am just starting to use it this template is quickly proving its worth.

Of course if you don’t find a template that fits your needs you can create your own templates. Start with one of the standards and edit it. Then click Save Current Page As A Template. This is great especially for customizing templates like the project overview to suit you needs.

There are many other features to this tool for you to explore. Add to everything above that it is a write once, maintain anywhere product and I can easily access my notes from any browser or even my Windows Phone. Life is getting just a little better.

del.icio.us Tags: OneNote,ToDo,Task Management,Windows Phone,Office

Implementing Team Foundation Server 2010 In A Mixed Development Environment

Tim Murphy — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:58:05 GMT

Most of us spend our time in Visual Studio writing .NET code within a Visual Studio solution. Given this situation we find it very easy to integrate with Team Foundation Server for our source control and have a well known work pattern. But what happens when you want to use TFS as source control for non-Microsoft development?

The most important thing to remember is that source control should be as transparent as possible to the developer. If the particular language or product does not have an Integrated Development Environment then having plug-ins to maintain this transparency is not possible and your next concern is making the way the developers interact with TFS as simple as possible.

Let’s assume that you are facing the latter situation. The first thing to do is sit down with the team and find out what their normal process is for developing. You need to find out how the code that becomes their executables are organized. The key is striking a balance between logical separation and making extra work by creating too many projects. If they users are accustomed to managing their code in a single folder then you may want to maintain that same structure for your TFS projects.

Once you get past the structure issues you then need to address the subject of branching and labeling. I recently ran into a situation where the non-Microsoft development was customization of a packaged software. This presented additional considerations. They get a copy of the off the shelf code with each release from the vendor. There may be features that are actually removed from one release to the next. This made it easier to start a new project for each release than using labels or branching. The last thing they wanted was code files creeping back in if they got latest and only new files had been overwritten but the obsolete files were still there.

In the end it boils down to understanding the needs of your development teams and molding your usage models to those needs. Maintain as much transparency for your developers as possible by limiting the touch points for TFS and as often as possible allowing them to continue developing the way the always have.

del.icio.us Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,Visual Studio

A nice feature of Style 4.7.7.0

TATWORTH — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:25:22 GMT

I have just installed the latest stylecop 4.7.7.0 and the latest nightly build of Resharper (build 42) and they work well. Stylecop now has a feature whereby you can override the maximum number of issues reported.

I used an an as-downloaded copy of PowerCollections and increased the limit to 100,000 issues and did a ReScan all with Stylecop. Here are the last 3 lines of the report:

------ StyleCop completed ------

========== Violation Count: 15080 ==========

What will you be if computers weren't in existence?

Vincent Maverick Durano — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:11:59 GMT

Yeah it's a tough question especially since most of us across the globe, both young and old heavily rely on computers and the internet . Today, life would be virtually impossible without it. When I was in elementary school I always dreamed of becoming an artist. I loved to paint and draw because I can express my thoughts and emotions through art. But things changed after I graduated in high school because my family couldn't afford to send me to university. I earned my BS degree because I got a scholarship from STI to study computer science. So now I work as a web developer. But to answer the question, if computers didn't exist then I would be a carpenter and a farmer then I would create a machine from wood that will compile codes made out of paper that will produce kernels of corn ~ just kidding on that part =D. Seriously I would definitely be an architect or an artist because being an artist is having the freedom to express your personality through art. The picture below is one of my drawings which I’ve drawn a long long time ago. Not pretty cool but it rocks! :D

How about you? What do you think will you be doing now if computers weren't in existence?

Technorati Tags: Computers,General

APress Deal of the Day - 3/Feb/2012 - Pro SharePoint Designer 2010

TATWORTH — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:49:36 GMT

Today's $10 Deal of the day from APress at http://www.apress.com/9781430236177 is Pro SharePoint Designer 2010

"SharePoint Designer 2010 is the key to customizing and improving the functionality and appearance of SharePoint sites, and Pro SharePoint Designer 2010 is your one-stop shop to getting the most from this powerful application."

Android Development with Eclipse

TomStickel — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:24:43 GMT

Install Eclipse

Then install the android plugin

http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html#installing

Basic Hello World

http://developer.android.com/resources/tutorials/hello-world.html

KSoap2 for WCF

Structure and MVC3 and DI (Dependency Injection) Links to save

TomStickel — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:23:04 GMT

http://hellspawndev.blogspot.com/2011/10/structuremap-mvc3-generic-repository.html

http://forums.asp.net/t/1729740.aspx/1

http://www.thecodinghumanist.com/blog/archives/2011/1/20/structuremap-and-asp-net-mvc-3-getting-started

http://www.devtrends.co.uk/blog/how-not-to-do-dependency-injection-the-static-or-singleton-container

http://www.mikesdotnetting.com/Article/117/Dependency-Injection-and-Inversion-of-Control-with-ASP.NET-MVC

Why I cancelled my Spotify Premium subscription - the tale of an atypical music consumer

Liam Westley — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:21:59 GMT

Disclaimer

Firstly, I must come clean, I work for a digital music company which is involved in digital music streaming and downloads. In no way are the views expressed are the views of the company for which I work. They are merely the subjective views of an atypical music consumer.

I say atypical because despite being over 40, I seek out new bands on the radio, using listen again on 6Music and BBC Introducing programmes, such as Christian Carlisle’s excellent BBC Sheffield programme. I make an effort to go to at least one gig every month, including such gigs as the NME New Radar tour. Also, if I like a band, I will always try to buy their CDs, especially singles, my favourite format.

My mobile use

In addition, my mobile phone use is also unusual, in that I have a very old fashioned candy bar Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone, a Benq E72. This provides my voice and text service, and also contains a 32Gb microSD card holding the 8000+ tracks that is my music collection. I listen to this using a Sony MW600 Bluetooth headset, the combination of which is incredibly reliable. The E72 is a 2G + WiFi phone with no data plan, just calls and unlimited text messages for £10 per month.

I also own what is now termed a ‘smartphone’, an Orange San Francisco badged ZTE Blade flashed with a custom Android 2.2 ROM. This contains a mobile broadband SIM from Three, providing a monthly allowance of 5Gb of 3G data for £7.50, which can be used directly or via tethering.

Spotify

Getting hooked

I first began using a the Spotify client at work; the free service including advertising, and enjoyed the ability to tap into a music catalogue that included many tracks which I did not own myself. I liked the shared playlists, which were sometimes used to create office playlists to which everyone could contribute.

The only downside, apart from the appalling quality of the advertising segments, was the lack of some of my favourite music. I’m a big fan of Spacemen 3, nothing there. Spiritualized, later releases, but not all. Sugar, no there. B-sides of older singles, not there.

It did grate that I had these tracks on my phone’s tiny 32Gb microSD card, and on my laptop, but this was a free service, so I don't think it is really fair to complain.

Becoming a premium subscriber

Eventually I decided to take the plunge and become a premium subscriber. Partly because of where I work and wanting to see a rival music delivery system, but also due to a desire to remove the annoying advertisements and allow me to access the mobile client on my Android phone and download offline content that I didn’t own.

For the first 3 or 4 months, it all seemed fine, I learnt the quirks of the mobile client and accepted that there were a few faults, but it was new, so that was to be expected. The lack of content could be partly solved by loading some of my own music collection onto a microSD card in the ZTE Blade smartphone.

Immediacy

There was a high point of being a premium Spotify subscriber. On the top of a 27 bus heading to Koko to an NME New Radar gig last October I spotted a tweet from the Joy Formidable that their new single, The Big More, had been released. I fired up Spotify and started downloading the tracks to listen to for the remainder of the journey. This even included a live version of Whirring, which was recorded at Koko in March, where I had been part of the audience swept along by the beauty of the introduction played on a harp.

This immediacy was quite intoxicating. I heard that one of my favourite new bands had released a new single, and downloaded it within minutes. However, having an offline copy didn’t prevent me buying the original, which as a CD only sold at gigs I couldn't attend, meant paying a premium for a copy sold on eBay.

This is one of my key reasons for using Spotify; listening to a new release, especially albums, and deciding whether it was worth buying the CD. I will always prefer to own the CD, as it provides a high quality archive copy, with decent artwork. If I consider there are only a few tracks worth having, I relent and buy digital downloads, but always burn them to a CD for archive.

Disillusion

So this all sounds like it worked quite well. I had music downloaded offline, which I would have otherwise had to pay for, and I could access much more music than was available from my own music collection, on my 32Gb microSD.

However, it never did become my sole music player, and I learnt that the offline files couldn’t replace the permanent access I had enjoyed without the subscription. The reasons are a complex mix of poor application design, restrictive access and lack of breadth of content outside mainstream music.

Poor user experience

I think the Android application is one of the more nasty pieces of user interface design I have seen for some time. I realise this is subjective but some really poor design choices and I can only believe lack of any serious rival has prevented these being addressed. With no real competition Spotify has no incentive to fix these issues. There are some very obtuse menu options and idiocy such as the redundant ‘Are you sure you want to exit’ dialogs after you click on the Exit menu. An important tenet of interface design should be Don't make the user feel stupid, which the Android client fails spectacularly;

If you update the Spotify application via the Marketplace, despite claiming that all user data will be preserved, you’ll be shocked when you realise that all your offline content will have been removed. Used up valuable 3G data allowance downloading offline content? Let’s hope not as you’ll need to re-download it all again. It can be over emphasised that there is absolutely no warning that this is about to happen.
On the Android client you cannot alter the order of items within the playlist. I believe this is possble on the iOS application, and I had hoped this would be fixed within a few months, but apparently not. Clearly I must be meant to edit my playlists using my Windows client, obviously when I’m out and about I couldn’t possibly want to do this. The only visible update I’ve seen in the Android app was the inclusion of a Facebook login option. Clearly Facebook login is a higher priority than a functioning playlist. Spotify have processes to update the functionality of their Android client, but only for items they consider worthy of the effort.
If you do add items to a playlist, they are added as the next item to be played. That makes creating a decent playlist virtually impossible as you have to build it from the end to the beginning, so no linking similar songs together in the order you think of them, and building it while the first tracks are playing. This is really basic stuff. I know it is, because it was in my media player on Windows CE (and Windows Phone) TEN years ago. It’s also something I do a lot, while listening to one song, it jars my emotional memory, and triggers a string of new tracks to add to the playlist.
And don’t get me started on Bluetooth support. This may be the ZTE Blade to blame, but it is massively not reliable, it stutters through songs, especially tracks not already offline, and don’t alternate between using the Bluetooth and the screen UI controls to change tracks. It all gets massively out of sync, with incorrect song titles and album art, so you really have no idea what you are playing. And that poor Bluetooth support also means that if you pause the music, and the device enters standby, you have to unlock the phone to restart the music. On my Benq E72 the keypad may be locked but the pause, prev and next buttons on the Bluetooth headset are still fully functional.

Even the Windows application has real issues. The auto update functionality means every now and then I start Spotify, see the playlist appear, only for it to vanish without warning, or any message, to reappear a minute or so later, updated, and with no explanation of what might have changed or if content requires to be downloaded again.

Music – here today and gone tomorrow, or never there at all

To some extent I can cope with the lack of some obscure music being on Spotify, and I don’t resent artists such as Adele (and her label, XL Recordings) for refusing to allow her latest album onto the system. If Adele doesn't want to cannibalise CD and digital downloads and doesn't need the exposure Spotify provides to smaller bands, then good on her.

More of an issue is seeing albums you have downloaded offline vanish without warning, as happened with The Burns Unit, ‘Side Show’. Having got used to listening to this as part of my subscription, with no advance warning, a message appeared one day saying it was being removed as it was no longer available.

As far as I am aware, no CD I have every bought has informed me that the music was no longer available so that I opened the case to find the silver disc strangely absent.

Value for money

The final nail in the coffin is the value for money. For me it became obvious that it represented poor value for money. In the six months I have had a subscription I have never really had more than 10 offline files that I do not own on a physical CD or digital download.

I could have happily downloaded every track for the price of one month’s subscription, and even worse, I could happily buy every album containing those tracks for the price of the six months of subscribing to the premium service.

It is sobering to consider that I pay just under £40 per month for a satellite television subscription with BskyB and £10 of that is for unlimited broadband. So in terms of content, Sky provide 100’s of television channels, repeatedly update the EPG and Sky+ system and put a huge amount of effort into usability of both of these applications.

In comparison, Spotify, for a third of this amount provides a poor user experience, especially on mobile, with much less valuable additional content to my own music collection

Should Spotify be worried?

Here is the reality – I don’t think Spotify should be worried. I know a much larger number of people who are very satisfied with their subscription. For them, the issues I have raised don’t really affect them, and Spotify provides a very useful means to instantly access a massive amount of music with the added benefit of social interaction with friends.

Even so I think Spotify shouldn't be complacent. They need to realise that selling subscriptions does mean that they will have to care more about treating their customers better. That means all customers, even if they have the temerity to use an Android handset.

They will also have to deal with artists better, and pay them properly, or more will decide to remove access to their content.

And finally, I think they may need to reconsider removing the reliance on Facebook logins for all new users. I was an early user so I still have my original Spotify login. I know that if I needed to use Facebook just to access Spotify I would never have used it in the first place.

But then, as I've mentioned, I’m an atypical music consumer.

Archive Links of Things to Read / Research / look it...

TomStickel — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:34:21 GMT

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ThreeThingsILearnedAboutSoftwareWHILENOTInCollege.aspx

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2011UltimateDeveloperAndPowerUsersToolListForWindows.aspx

http://www.soapui.org/SOAP-and-WSDL/adding-headers-and-attachments.html

http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/index.html

http://www.matthewbussa.com/2011/05/installing-and-configuring-cruise.html

http://www.blog.ingenuitynow.net/How+To+Unit+Test+Code+That+Uses+AppSettings+From+WebConfig.aspx

Testing WCF Web Services

TomStickel — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:25:38 GMT

Recently someone was showing me WCFStorm for testing WCF services, which is very simple to use.

However, SOAPUI certainly has a lot of power.

I needed to add an image to send to a service and noticed that references

http://www.soapui.org/SOAP-and-WSDL/adding-headers-and-attachments.html

My XML ended up looking like this:

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:ubox="UBoxMobileService.Interfaces" xmlns:ubox1="UBoxMobile.Data.Classes">

<soapenv:Header/>

<soapenv:Body>

<ubox:UploadCustomerSignature>

<ubox:request>

<ubox:UserIdMakingRequest>320628</ubox:UserIdMakingRequest>

<ubox:Entity>990019</ubox:Entity>

<ubox:TimeStamp>2010-09-23T10:00:00.0000</ubox:TimeStamp>

<ubox:ServiceCredentials>

<ubox:Username>User</ubox:Username>

<ubox:Password>mypassword</ubox:Password>

</ubox:ServiceCredentials>

<ubox:CurrentLocation>

<ubox1:Name>t</ubox1:Name>

<ubox1:Type>Customer</ubox1:Type>

<ubox1:LatLong>

<ubox1:Latitude>34</ubox1:Latitude>

<ubox1:Longitude>34</ubox1:Longitude>

</ubox1:LatLong>

<ubox1:Address>

<ubox1:Line1>d</ubox1:Line1>

<ubox1:Line2>d</ubox1:Line2>

<ubox1:Line3>d</ubox1:Line3>

<ubox1:City>d</ubox1:City>

<ubox1:State>az</ubox1:State>

<ubox1:PostalCode>85295</ubox1:PostalCode>

</ubox1:Address>

<ubox1:CenterNumber>0</ubox1:CenterNumber>

</ubox:CurrentLocation>

<ubox:ContractId>9559206</ubox:ContractId>

<ubox:DetailsId>8254262</ubox:DetailsId>

<ubox:ImageData>cid:Frs.jpg</ubox:ImageData>

<ubox:IsSignature>true</ubox:IsSignature>

</ubox:request>

</ubox:UploadCustomerSignature>

</soapenv:Body>

</soapenv:Envelope>

Stamp to honour flyby of Pluto by the New Horizons Spacecraft

TATWORTH — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:21:31 GMT

The New Horizons team are asking that the flyby of Pluto by the New Horizons spacescraft be honoured by the issue of a stamp. Please sign up at http://www.change.org/petitions/usps-honor-new-horizons-and-the-exploration-of-pluto-with-a-usps-stamp

My favorites visual studio extensions

Emanuele Bartolesi — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:18:52 GMT

Visual Studio 2010 offers a collection of extensions that help the developer's life.
In this list I try to share some that I hope will help you as they have helped me.

Visual Studio Achievement Extension

This extension is less useful than the whole list, but one of my favorites.

NuGet Package Manager

This is a package management system for the platform. NET that simplifies the inclusion of third-party libraries in your projects. The included libraries are automatically updated.

Productivity Power Tools

The first extension that I installed on my dev machine.

PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2010

This extension adds many features to the IDE.

VSCommands 2010

Navigation and generation code improvements.

Code Compare

With this extension you can compare code (in file and folder) very easily.

GhostDOC

I use this extension since many years and I can’t live without it.
It creates XML documentation from comments.

If you found other interesting extensions, do not hesitate to contact me!

Just slowing down a bit...

James Michael Hare — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:11:29 GMT

Given recent changes in my personal life with my son's diagnosis I will probably be blogging more on a bi-weekly basis instead of weekly for a while. I'm hoping this will be a temporary change until we get things all in order.

Also, I may be sprinkling in a few C++ posts as well to keep things fresh. I've been working on a C++ project as of late and though it is no longer my primary language, I still feel it has a lot of power and is worth knowing well.

Thanks for your understanding!