Re: OT: Robo Vacs

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

I also have the Xiaomi S2 Robo and I love it. Also have the handheld
Dreame from Xiaomi and that works great as well.

I don't have carpets only laminate floors.

Best part is integration with Google Mini. When I leave home I can say "Ok
Google, Start vacuuming". Then "Ok Google, Good Bye" (to turn on alarms &
turn off lights and other stuff).






On Thu, Jan 23, 2020 at 7:21 PM Tom Gao  wrote:

> I have xiaomi brand Robo vac. Works very well had it for a few years now.
> I have 2 cats so very important for collecting fur and dust. Really amazing
> little thing that I had going off every morning at around 3am until it met
> cat poo. Now I only manually trigger it when I leave the house once every
> couple of days.
>
> On Mon, 20 Jan 2020 at 9:50 pm, David Connors  wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> Very off topic but what success has anyone had here with robo vacs?
>>
>> Our 11 month old German Shepherd is blowing her coat and the place is dog
>> hair central hence the question.
>>
>> I know a few people who have had them but they've died after a few months
>> etc. The better ones that can self empty etc seem to be around the $1500
>> mark - which gets up there in price as we have two floors and they haven't
>> invented one that climbs stairs yet. :)
>>
>> David Connors
>> da...@connors.com | M +61 417 189 363
>> Telegram: https://t.me/davidconnors
>> LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/davidjohnconnors
>>
>>

Re: Web app development process

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Greg,

My 2 cents (I'm the sort of boffin that does both the code and the styling).
I like starting from a bootstrap template and quickly learn the
conventions. They are generally not that hard. Frankly I learned 2
templates that I bought of https://wrapbootstrap.com and I use them as the
base for most stuff I do as they use similar styling principles.

The major advantage of using a template is you get the basics of creating
the right blocks of code/html.
E.g. start from a template e.g. http://wrapbootstrap.com/preview/WB0R5L90S
or https://wrapbootstrap.com/theme/nifty-light-dark-admin-template-WB0048JF7
(I use this one most)

Then create my basic working "blocks" (no code behind them, just get the
high-level) and generally in this order

   1. A simple panel  - get it right, you'll reuse it a lot. Make sure you
   have the styles for the panel, title, body, menus, footer, looks right,
   feels right and is easy.
   2. Basic grid or table
   3. Buttons
   4. Text Inputs
   5. Overall page structure
  1. Header
  2. Left-hand menu
  3. Main content page

Then I build my first pages (html only)

   1. Login
   2. Registration
   3. Forgot password
   4. Initial app dashboard

This allows me to practice the basic blocks above.

Once you have those working the rest flows quite easily.

Every time I write a new UI element I go through two thoughts processes: 1
- what can I reuse from existing code, 2 - what is new and can be shared in
the future that I have to code in a way that is reusable in the future.

Also, I use Aurelia for all my UI but any other component based UI helps
build the right isolation and re-usability of the CSS for the components.

I tried before to build it and style it later but it was a badly messed up
process. Most of the design changes required changes to the HTML structure
which generally triggered changes to how the C# behind is working or design.

My 2 cents :)

Regards,
Corneliu.








On Tue, Apr 17, 2018 at 12:45 PM, Greg Keogh  wrote:

> Folks, I'm creating a non-trivial ASP.NET Web Forms application for the
> first time in several years. I have previously suffered from the terrible
> problem where I spend more time on formatting and stying than I do on
> coding. Sometimes it can take 1 hour to get a single web page working, then
> it takes 4 hours to make it look nice. I thought I'd try Bootstrap this
> time to ease the burden of styling, but now I'm wasting more time learning
> all the conventions and quirks of Bootstrap. This is typical, I find if you
> decide to use some "kit" then you usually have to become an expert in that
> kit.
>
> The answer to this problem is to split the development into (1) coding (2)
> styling. I have done this twice before, over 10 years ago ... I write a
> completely working web site with only the bare minimum formatting and
> styles, then later someone comes along and styles it beautifully.
>
> Is anyone still doing this sort of thing? What do others do to style their
> sites with minimum suffering?
>
> Finally ... Is there anyone in this group who is a styling boffin and
> might take a short contract in several weeks time to style my app once it's
> near completion? I guess it might be several hours work spread out over a
> few days. If you can help, please email me off-list at gfke...@gmail.com,
> or phone on 0419-113-543.
>
> Cheers,
> *Greg Keogh*
>

Fwd: Very slow query on Persisted Column with Function call

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi,

I have a table with a persisted column that is build using a function call:

This is the function:
CREATE FUNCTION os.RemoveNonAlphaNumericCharacters(
@Temp NVARCHAR(2048)
)
RETURNS VARCHAR(2048)
WITH SCHEMABINDING
AS
BEGIN

DECLARE @KeepValues AS NVARCHAR(100)
SET @KeepValues = '%[^a-z^0-9]%'
WHILE PatIndex(@KeepValues, @Temp) > 0
SET @Temp = Stuff(@Temp, PatIndex(@KeepValues, @Temp), 1, '')

RETURN @Temp
END

and this is the column:
IF NOT EXISTS(SELECT * FROM SYS.COLUMNS WHERE NAME = N'NormalizedName' AND
OBJECT_ID = OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.Product'))
BEGIN
ALTER TABLE dbo.Product
-- Maximum Index is 900
ADD NormalizedName AS LEFT(os.RemoveNonAlphaNumericCharacters(Name), 500
)
PERSISTED
END

Then I have an index on that column:
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_Product_AccountId_NormalizedName ON
dbo.Product
(
AccountId,
NormalizedName
) INCLUDE(Name)
WITH (ONLINE = ON)

All quite simple really.

When I try to execute a simple search using that column the search is very
very slow and I can see in the list of executing session a call to the os.
RemoveNonAlphaNumericCharacters

SELECT TOP 1 * FROM dbo.Product P WITH(NOLOCK)
WHERE P.BusinessFileId = 51678
AND P.NormalizedName = 'test'   -- should use the index


This is what I see is running:


I'm stuck and I don't know how to fix this atm.
I really expected the function to be called only during the insert (or
maybe updates) and not during the search.

I could remove the calculated column, clean the value in C# before I save
it and remove the function all together but that requires a fair bit of
code changes.

Thoughts?

PS> This is running on an Azure SQL P4 DB.

Thanks,
Corneliu

Re: Log filter / display dashboard - Looking for recommendation [Slightly off topic]

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Greg,

I've been looking into this as well and I'm not sure if there is a
one-size-fits all.

We've been using Seq in our app and we ingest ~1-6gb logs a day. Found seq
ok but if you search ... well, anything past 24-48h is very very slow. We
did various optimizations and move lots of the logs out of seq but still
not going where we wanted it.
I'm sure with a bigger machine we could have made it faster but I can't pay
$500 for a VM ingesting logs.
What I think seq is missing is a way to declare some sort of indexes
because now it indexes & searches everything. I only have 3-4 columns that
are my Primary Key and 99% of the searches have one of those columns in
them.

We've moved some of our logs into Azure Tables. Cheap and chips. Because we
have the PK as above we made those PK in Azure Tables. Search is fast,
maybe a bit limited as we have to search for stuff like contains in the
strings but cheap and scalable.

We area also using Azure Application Insighs for everything not log related
(events, metrics, ...) that we report from inside the app.

I'm now looking to deploy this on top of Application Insights:
https://www.microsoft.com/developerblog/2017/09/26/custom-analytics-dashboard-application-insights/

Looks very customizable and if you track the right data you migth pull out
the right reports.
I don't think you want to generate reports from logs. I would add telemetry
information inside the app using App Insights and use that for reports and
use the logs purely for diagnosing purposes.

Regards,
Corneliu.













On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 10:52 AM, Greg Harris 
wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> Question: Can you recommend a standard dashboard app that takes multiple
> logs, filters out the 99% that is not relevant, works out a status,
> displays a panel of Green, Amber, Red blobs with hyperlinks to detailed log
> info?
>
> Details:
>
> I am doing an architecture consulting gig for a client (a mostly MS
> Windows / Azure site, but there are some Unix servers out there as well).
>
> They have about a dozen core applications that the business is highly
> dependent on and another 100 or so that they are less dependent on.
>
> The problem being that when something goes wrong, vendor A says “the
> problem is with vendor B’s system” and you know what vendor B says.  What
> makes this worse is that the chain goes through multiple vendors and
> systems with long inter system data flows.
>
> I want to make the recommendation to them that they implement logging and
> a top level log display dashboard for the systems they are highly dependent
> on.  The dashboard would show:
>
> 1.   Dataflow around the systems
>
> 2.   Work backlog at each sub system
>
> 3.   Status at each sub system
>
> 4.   Time since last ping at each sub system
>
> This feels to me to be a standard sort of system that every major site
> needs!
>
> I am not sure what to recommend???
>
> Question: Can you recommend a standard dashboard app that takes multiple
> logs, filters out the 99% that is not relevant, works out a status,
> displays a panel of Green, Amber, Red blobs with hyperlinks to detailed log
> info?
>
> I am thinking of Nicholas Blumhardt’s Seq application (https://getseq.net/)
> or Datadog (https://www.datadoghq.com/) but neither of these feel quite
> complete to me.
>
> We will need a hierarchy solution:
>
> 1.   App logging (has to be baked into existing and new apps)
>
> 2.   Forwarded to Site Logger (maybe baked into the app, or as an add
> on)
>
> 3.   Site Logger
>
> 4.   Filter
>
> 5.   Analysis
>
> 6.   Dashboard display
>
> At level 1 if logging needs to be added to an existing or new system, I am
> thinking that the recommendation will be to use Serilog (
> https://github.com/serilog) or Datadog (https://www.datadoghq.com/).
>
> If the app already has logging, I am thinking that some form of log
> forwarder is needed, I want to avoid paying for apps to be modified to meet
> this need if they already have logging.
>
> Levels 2-6 could be should be a standard off the shelf app.
>
> Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Best Regards
>
> Greg Harris
> Greg Harris
> harris.gre...@gmail.com
>
>
>
>

Re: [OT] Aurelia use

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

I'm one of the lovers of Aurelia (and I know Wal also on this list uses
Aurelia).

For me Aurelia is has one of the best designs possible. Clean and easy to
use. Everything is simply obvious.
With Aurelia I never had to think "how do you do this or that". It's all
simple and natural.
DI is beautiful, binding is obvious, templates are easy to read and the
html extensions like `repeat.for`,  `.bind` or `.call' are easy to remember
and use.
When I look at Angular2 my eyes hurt: *[hidden]* , **ngFor, #field.* I
mean, seriously, Angular 2 has an abuse of special characters.

With Aurelia, once you learn to build custom attributes and custom elements
you exponentially grow productivity.

That's my choice :)






On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 7:31 PM, Greg Keogh  wrote:

> Reading the jargon in this short thread so far still fills me with dread
> and fear. I think people who are using (and writing) JS frameworks are to
> close to their subject to see the bigger picture of what's happening. From
> a historical, technical and creative perspective, the whole JS ecosystem is
> like a virus that people have caught that causes hysteria. It's a gigantic
> wobbling Turboencabulator 
> propped up by a half-baked scripting language a guy wrote as a hobby. If
> the time comes when I have to put JS on my CV or write JS anything to
> make a living , then it will be the nail in my retirement coffin.
>
> Some things I want to see before I die are: discovery of extra-terrestrial
> life, the (peaceful) collapse of the North Korean dictatorship and the
> extinction of JavaScript.
>
> *GK*
>
> On 24 August 2017 at 19:04, Tom Rutter  wrote:
>
>> Yep I resisted for a long time and stayed with winforms lol but am now
>> forced to look at this stuff.
>>
>> On Thursday, 24 August 2017, Tony Wright  wrote:
>>
>>> After doing all the research I chose angular for my current enterprise
>>> application. I had to choose a technology that could withstand an assault
>>> from people who are still in a  circa 2000 mindset. It's non trivial but
>>> will do everything I need it to. There's so much to learn just to get going
>>> on any of the frameworks.
>>>
>>> Part of the decision to go with angular is also the proliferation of
>>> angular 1 apps out there, which was chosen pretty much for the same
>>> reasons. There will still be years of support required for Angular 1 apps,
>>> and much work converting them to angular 2, which is really the only path
>>> available for those apps.
>>>
>>> When I first decided to learn angular it was because there were no jobs
>>> at the time for my traditional Microsoft tech stack. At the time it freaked
>>> me out as I recognised that the world had moved on and I had to quickly get
>>> on board or be dead in the water. I analysed the market, figured out where
>>> the jobs were and viola, the rest is history.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 24 Aug 2017 6:39 PM, "Tom Rutter"  wrote:
>>>
 Yep I did notice that in the core 2.0 update. Angular 2/4 never really
 felt right to me. Aurelia felt much better. I'll have to take a look at Vue
 now.

 On Thursday, 24 August 2017, Tony Wright  wrote:

> Interestingly, dot net core 2.0, which was released a couple of weeks
> ago, only supports react,react+redux and angular 2/4 in its spa templates.
> They will work against pure dot net core as well as dot net framework. 
> Both
> Vue and react are view only and require a dog's breakfast of technologies
> to make up the stack, hence the inclusion of redux, which is now part of
> Facebooks offering. Angular is the most complete/enterprise ready of all
> the frameworks, but it has its own impediments, predominantly being it's
> stupid syntax. Vue is out performing both angular and react at the moment
> on github. But stars can be rigged, so I'm prepared to wait a bit longer
> before taking a more serious look.
>
> T.
>
> On 24 Aug 2017 5:29 PM, "Greg Keogh"  wrote:
>
>> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/which-javascript-framework-sh
>>> ould-i-choose-enterprise-tony-wright
>>>
>>
>> Nice summary, but it seems to confirm my fears that the JS ecosystem
>> is still devolving into more fragments. I mean, oh lord, not another one
>> ... Vue.js -- *GK*
>>
>
>

Re: [OT] Angular certification

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

> Rob Eisenberg worked on Angular2 (and Caliburn*). He likes his
conventions.
Yeah, really smart guy. I like his conventions :)

Who the f*** could come up with this syntax?

   - *ngFor
   - [(ngModel)]=
   - [model]=
   - {{model}}
   - (click)=
   - *ngIf
   - [class.selected]

And the @NgModule redundancies in code are a killer. Why do you need to
declare the same stuff twice? and sometimes also add it to the constructor?
Really? Twice  ... trice ... ?
[image: Inline image 2]


I mean even PHP now looks sexy :)






On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 7:41 AM, Nic Roche <nicro...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> > moved to Aurelia (www.aurelia.io)
>
>
> Rob Eisenberg worked on Angular2 (and Caliburn*). He likes his conventions.
>
>
> --
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com <ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com> on
> behalf of Corneliu I. Tusnea <corne...@acorns.com.au>
> *Sent:* Friday, 21 October 2016 9:20 PM
> *To:* ozDotNet
> *Subject:* Re: [OT] Angular certification
>
> You too Paul?
>
> I also gave up on Angular 2 and moved to Aurelia (www.aurelia.io) and I
> love it.
> <http://www.aurelia.io/>
> Home | Aurelia <http://www.aurelia.io/>
> www.aurelia.io
> Aurelia is the most powerful, flexible and forward-looking JavaScript
> client framework in the world.
>
>
> I think Angular 2 has the "done by the big guys syndrome". I don't know
> anyone (yet) who used Aurelia and ever looked back at A2!
>
> On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 4:21 PM, Paul Glavich <subscripti...@theglavs.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Gave up on Ang2. I don’t like the direction and the Release process was
>> silly. Aurelia I find much much better.
>>
>>
>>
>> -  Glav
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-bounces@ozdot
>> net.com] *On Behalf Of *Nick Randolph
>> *Sent:* Thursday, 13 October 2016 3:11 PM
>> *To:* ozDotNet <ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com>
>> *Subject:* RE: [OT] Angular certification
>>
>>
>>
>> We’re just in process of publish an app written in Angular 2, so yes,
>> definitely taking it seriously. A lot of pain upgrading from Beta/RC to RTM
>> (it’s like they didn’t understand what Beta/RC means).
>>
>>
>>
>> *Nick Randolph* | *Built to Roam Pty Ltd* | Microsoft MVP – Windows
>> Platform Development | +61 412 413 425 | @thenickrandolph |
>> skype:nick_randolph
>> The information contained in this email is confidential. If you are not
>> the intended recipient, you may not disclose or use the information in this
>> email in any way. Built to Roam Pty Ltd does not guarantee the integrity of
>> any emails or attached files. The views or opinions expressed are the
>> author's own and may not reflect the views or opinions of Built to Roam Pty
>> Ltd.
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-bounces@ozdot
>> net.com <ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com>] *On Behalf Of *Tom P
>> *Sent:* Thursday, 13 October 2016 3:05 PM
>> *To:* ozDotNet <ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [OT] Angular certification
>>
>>
>>
>> Angular 2 is entirely redone. TypeScript makes it also bearable
>>
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Tom
>>
>>
>>
>> On 13 October 2016 at 14:54, Greg Keogh <gfke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Are there any Angular certifications you guys can recommend that may be
>> taken seriously?
>>
>>
>>
>> Can anyone even take Angular seriously?!
>>
>>
>>
>> I thought it was already abandoned by the author who went off to write a
>> new competing BlahJS, or is a new group completely rewriting it to Angular
>> 2, or something like that? They all blur together.
>>
>>
>>
>> *GK*
>>
>>
>>
>
>

Re: [OT] Angular certification

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

You too Paul?

I also gave up on Angular 2 and moved to Aurelia (www.aurelia.io) and I
love it.

I think Angular 2 has the "done by the big guys syndrome". I don't know
anyone (yet) who used Aurelia and ever looked back at A2!

On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 4:21 PM, Paul Glavich 
wrote:

> Gave up on Ang2. I don’t like the direction and the Release process was
> silly. Aurelia I find much much better.
>
>
>
> -  Glav
>
>
>
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-bounces@
> ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Nick Randolph
> *Sent:* Thursday, 13 October 2016 3:11 PM
> *To:* ozDotNet 
> *Subject:* RE: [OT] Angular certification
>
>
>
> We’re just in process of publish an app written in Angular 2, so yes,
> definitely taking it seriously. A lot of pain upgrading from Beta/RC to RTM
> (it’s like they didn’t understand what Beta/RC means).
>
>
>
> *Nick Randolph* | *Built to Roam Pty Ltd* | Microsoft MVP – Windows
> Platform Development | +61 412 413 425 | @thenickrandolph |
> skype:nick_randolph
> The information contained in this email is confidential. If you are not
> the intended recipient, you may not disclose or use the information in this
> email in any way. Built to Roam Pty Ltd does not guarantee the integrity of
> any emails or attached files. The views or opinions expressed are the
> author's own and may not reflect the views or opinions of Built to Roam Pty
> Ltd.
>
>
>
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-bounces@
> ozdotnet.com ] *On Behalf Of *Tom P
> *Sent:* Thursday, 13 October 2016 3:05 PM
> *To:* ozDotNet 
> *Subject:* Re: [OT] Angular certification
>
>
>
> Angular 2 is entirely redone. TypeScript makes it also bearable
>
>
> Thanks
>
> Tom
>
>
>
> On 13 October 2016 at 14:54, Greg Keogh  wrote:
>
> Are there any Angular certifications you guys can recommend that may be
> taken seriously?
>
>
>
> Can anyone even take Angular seriously?!
>
>
>
> I thought it was already abandoned by the author who went off to write a
> new competing BlahJS, or is a new group completely rewriting it to Angular
> 2, or something like that? They all blur together.
>
>
>
> *GK*
>
>
>

Re: Entity Framework - the lay of the land

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Stephen,

My 2 cents without seeing the query.
1. Try to make a view that groups your main table with the detail table to
calculate that extra status field.
I'd expect that to be quick and easy to do.
2. Change your EF to not query the table + 100 queries for the status but
query the view.




On Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 12:29 PM, Stephen Price 
wrote:

> Hey all,
>
>
> Am looking at optimising an EF query right now, so thought it would be ok
> to hijack this thread. Even if it leads to bagging of EF, I'm ok with that. 
> [image:
> ]
>
>
> So I have a single table being queried, and I grabbed the query being run
> via SQL Server profiler.
>
> 4.5million records in the table. Have an Id field, a year field and an
> EventId field. The rest of the fields are data, so not searching those.
>
> The query being produced is  showing as an sp_execsql and does a where
> against the year field.
>
> The actual query itself takes 1699ms, but the screen takes longer to
> return the result as it then loads the detail of each item so it can show
> the current status of each row. (ie the highest version status is the
> current, in a related status table).
>
> So each query is fast but by the time it loads 100 of them, its made 100
> little calls which all add up to a long delay to the user.
>
>
> Options I'm thinking here (looking for validation of my thinking, or new
> ideas outside my database knowledge)
>
> 1. Reduce the number of items. Say 20 instead of 100.
>
> 2. Get the Status asyncronously. Would need to work out how to do that
> client side but seems viable. Initial list would load in 2 seconds, then
> statuses at the top would load almost right away. Items out of sight
> (scroll to view them) would load later.
>
> 3. Single query. Server side query is doing a take(100) to reduce the
> number of results if the search is too broad... which means its possibly
> prematurely resolving the linq query and sending the status lookups
> individually rather than single query.
>
> 4. something else. Get rid of EF and hand write SQL. Look for new job
> because didn't deliver on time. [image: ]
>
>
> Feedback, criticism, laughing and pointing all welcomed.
>
> cheers
>
> Stephen
> --
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com  on
> behalf of Kirsten Greed 
> *Sent:* Saturday, 1 October 2016 5:26:33 PM
>
> *To:* 'ozDotNet'
> *Subject:* RE: Entity Framework - the lay of the land
>
> That makes sense
>
> It would be good to have some guidelines about where the cut over point is.
>
> Also whether solutions like NService Bus could mitigate the use of EF ?
>
>
> --
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-bounces@
> ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Greg Low (??)
> *Sent:* Saturday, 1 October 2016 12:40 PM
> *To:* ozDotNet
> *Subject:* RE: Entity Framework - the lay of the land
>
> Agreed but not websites with thousands of concurrent users. The problem is
> that people don’t realise that the same logic doesn’t apply in both areas.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Greg
>
>
>
> Dr Greg Low
>
>
>
> 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913
> fax
>
> SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com | http://greglow.me
>
>
>
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-bounces@
> ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Kirsten Greed
> *Sent:* Saturday, 1 October 2016 6:42 AM
> *To:* 'ozDotNet' 
> *Subject:* RE: Entity Framework - the lay of the land
>
>
>
> Caveat: this is for winforms line of business applications.
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-bounces@
> ozdotnet.com ] *On Behalf Of *Kirsten Greed
> *Sent:* Saturday, 1 October 2016 6:35 AM
> *To:* 'ozDotNet'
> *Subject:* Entity Framework - the lay of the land
>
> My 2c
>
>
>
> Horses for courses
>
>
>
> I am using  EF Code first and loving it.
>
>
>
> Most of the posts on this thread are about *building the thing right*.
>
>
>
> Yet I am finding that EF Code first helps me a lot with *building the
> right thing.*
>
>
>
> I find changing the database design is much easier now that I use EF
> Migrations, this helps me stay in a "play" headset, lowering my fear of
> changing the database structure.
>
>
>
> There are places where I choose to break into transact-sql, but most of my
> CRUD is done via DevExpress XAF with EF Code first.
>
>
>
> My 2c :-)
>
> Kirsten
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> __ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus
> signature database 14206 (20160930) __
>
> The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.
>
> http://www.eset.com
>
>
> __ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus
> signature database 14208 (20161001) __
>
> The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.
>
> http://www.eset.com
>

Re: Entity Framework - the lay of the land

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

I'll jump in with my experience (just last year).
Using EF7 (EF Core 1.0 now?)

I always disliked EF version but I liked the original Linq2Sql which was
quite lightweight compared to EF.

   1. Database design and DTO design is very very strictly monitored and
   mapping Table > Entity is very strict with only the exact fields required.
   2. I find EF perfect for most simple reads of data as long as I don't
   have to join or simple very exact joins. Yes, I know Dapper and PetaPoco
   but heck, I really don't want to maintain strings.
   3. Views rule. Whenever we need more complicated data we do it in a
   view. We can review, optimize and tweak that as needed.
   4. SPs rock. Same as above, any work that can be moved in an SP is done
   in an SP (very few scenarios in our case)
   5. SQL Functions suck. Oh my, they suck and they are hard to fix and
   cumbersome to figure out where perf is bad.
   6. And most importantly. SQL is long-term-storage NOT the source of
   truth. We use Akka and we (now) consider SQL as eventual storage of data.
   Everything we do is in memory and whenever we have a chance we'll tell SQL
   about it (mostly so after a restart we can start with the data from SQL).
   You want to save some settings? Sure, it's in memory and hey sql, here is
   an update. Want to read a setting? It's in memory no need to ask SQL about
   it.

I think EF7 (as I said previous versions were garbage), like every other
technology can be abused.
The problem is that it can be abused way to easily.
Teams use it and abuse it instead of understanding the synergy that needs
to exist and where the power EF offers should be used.

My 2 cents,
Corneliu.







On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 9:06 PM, Tony McGee  wrote:

> Oh boy, this is a technique I see way underutilised when using EF:
>
>
> *All objects from EF were transformed into new objects for use in the
> website *e.g. If I just want a high level list of the product categories
> a customer has purchased, it's far too easily get stuck in a rigid thought
> pattern due to the object model. It says I need a Customer that has an
> Orders collection each having a set of Line Items, dollar values,
> quantities, special delivery instructions, product names, descriptions,
> packaging dimensions, blah, blah, blah NO.
> Bringing the whole database across the wire and aggregating in application
> memory is inviting a world of pain.
>
> An EF query projection containing the customer id/name and product
> category name could avoid a huge complicated SELECT * across six different
> table joins that becomes impossible to index.
>
>
>
>
> On 20/09/2016 19:20, David Rhys Jones wrote:
>
>
> I've been working with EF now for a few years,  here's a list of what went
> wrong / what went right.
>
> *Large public Website*
>
> *Good:*
> No complex queries in EF, anything more than a couple of tables and a
> stored procedure is called.
> All objects from EF were transformed into new objects for use in the
> website
> *Bad:*
>The context was shared between processes and thusly began to grow after
> an hour or two, causing a slowdown of EF. Regular flushing solved this
>   Updates into the database set the FK property but did not attach the
> object, this resulted in data being correct for a moment, but then
> overwritten with the original values when the savechanges was called.
>
>
> *Large Multinational Bank - Bulk Processing*
>*Good:*
>Most processing was done without EF,
>   The website used EF to query the same data.
>*Bad:*
>Framework implemented IEnumerable as each interface, thus
> service.GetClients().Count()  resulted in the entire table being returned.
> Changing the interface to IQueryable allowed the DB to do a count(*)
>
> *Large Multinational,  low use public website. *
>*Good:*
>   EF context is queried and disposed of as soon as possible, leaving
> the website responsive
>*Bad:*
>  Bad design of the database has resulted in needless queries bringing
> back data that is not used. All EF generated queries are complicated.
>  A mixture of stored procedures and EF context is used within a
> process resulting in incorrect values.
>
>
> I quite like EF, it's efficient to write queries in if you know what is
> being generated at the database level. I always output the SQL query to the
> debug window so I know what is being passed to the DB.
> But if the query is not self-contained and requires a lot of tables, then
> a specific stored procedure should be used.  However, do not update with a
> stored procedure if you are using Entity to read back the values. Do POCO
> updates and read the linked objects and attach them correctly.
>
> Davy.
>
>
>
> *Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes*.
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 10:03 AM, David Connors  wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 20 Sep 2016 at 13:59 Greg Low (罗格雷格博士)  wrote:
>>
>>> I often get coy when I hear 

Re: [OT] web essentials vs grunt vs gulp

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

I use gulp (outside of VS) I don't think the integration with VS is worth
it.
gulp with a watch task to the job fine for me.
I code all those in VS code

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 10:05 AM, Wallace Turner 
wrote:

> for vs2013 and vs2015 which do you use ?
> i see web essentials doesnt support scss and autoprefixing in vs2015
> (altho it did in 2013)
> which is the two things I'm chasing...
>

Re: SQL foreign key question

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Inception :)


On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 3:31 PM, David Burstin 
wrote:

> I came across this (snipped to protect the innocent):
>
>
>
> CREATE TABLE [dbo].[V2_BREC_NMIStatusHistory] (
>
> [NMIStatusHistoryId] INT   IDENTITY (1, 1) NOT FOR REPLICATION
> NOT NULL,
>
> 
>
> CONSTRAINT [PK_V2_BREC_NMIStatusHistory] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED 
> ([NMIStatusHistoryId]
> ASC),
>
> CONSTRAINT [FK_V2_BREC_NMIStatusHistory_V2_BREC_NMIStatusHistory]
> FOREIGN KEY ([NMIStatusHistoryId]) REFERENCES [dbo].
> [V2_BREC_NMIStatusHistory] ([NMIStatusHistoryId])
>
> );
>
>
>
>
>
> Notice that the primary key identity field has a foreign key constraint *on
> itself*. How does this work?
>
>
>
> I would have thought that any attempt to add a record would check the
> table for the existence of the new key, and as it obviously wouldn’t exist
> yet, that would break the foreign key constraint resulting in the record
> not being written. But, the table has plenty of data.
>
>
>
> Anyone have any ideas how this actually works, or does it just do nothing?
>

(Azure service) Logging

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi,

How do you guys do logging in your application? And how do you search
through logs for various issues?

We have a cloud app deployed in Azure and we implemented our own logging
that logs both to disk in nice neat log files and to Azure table storage.
This works great but it's hard to do searches through the logs at times. We
generate around 1-5Gb logs of a day (and no, we can't really reduce that
atm) and store 90-120 days of logs.

What are some good ways to store & search through these logs?

I looked at getseq.net and the associated libraries but I don't know if I
want to deploy a new server to handle just logging.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Corneliu.

SQL DB Upgrades

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Happy New Year everyone :)

I was curious what are the best practices these days for doing data base
upgrades.

We currently use DbUp and we write all upgrade scripts by hand to allow us
to verify them, tweak them, make sure upgrades work well. All scripts are
idempotent and they can be run as many times as we want with no side
effects.

I generally dislike generated  code or automatic DB upgrades as the schema
we have is relatively large and don't want unknown small changes to slip
through.

How do you do your SQL upgrades?
How could I improve mine?

Thanks,
Corneliu.

Re: [OT] WPF or Winforms?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Nope. They are dead. (As far as I'm concerned) unless you really really
really really need to go down that crazy path.

If you really really want a desktop app I'd look into
http://electron.atom.io/ to run a cross-platform "desktop" app build with
web technologies on top of Chrome.
Atom editor is build like that. Visual Studio Code is build in a similar
fashion but not on top of electron but pretty much identical process.

On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 2:57 PM, Tom Rutter  wrote:

> Anyone here still using winforms? Any reason to start new projects in
> winforms over WPF? How far has WPF come in the last several years?
>

Re: REST testing

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

I'm using DHC extension for Chrome for all my rest tests:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dhc-resthttp-api-client/aejoelaoggembcahagimdiliamlcdmfm?hl=en

It's fantastic.


On Mon, Sep 14, 2015 at 11:19 AM, Thomas Koster  wrote:

> Greg,
>
> On 13 September 2015 at 16:48, Greg Keogh  wrote:
> > Folks, in recent months I've been doing lots of REST call testing. I use
> the
> > scratchpad of Fiddler to select and send some request lines, then look at
> > the traffic in the inspector panes. The trouble is that my scratchpad is
> > getting longer than a Thomas Pynchon novel, so I was wondering if others
> > here have favourite techniques or tools for doing this sort of
> "playaround"
> > REST testing, perhaps with a better way or organising your scripts -- GK
>
> My favourits to "play" with a web service are Curl [1] and
> Wireshark [2]. Proper testing deserves code.
>
> Curl is a lingua franca of online REST service API documentation - I
> often see example calls given as Curl invocations. Curl is a cross-
> platform command-line tool so it composes very well with scripts. These
> may also work better with your VCS than the Fiddler scratchpad (I don't
> use Fiddler so I wouldn't know). You can also give those Curl commands
> to your JavaScript front-end team on Mac and they should know what to do
> with them.
>
> [1] http://curl.haxx.se
> [2] https://www.wireshark.org
>
> --
> Thomas Koster
>

Re: [OT] Freelancer experience

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Few years ago when I had lots more free time and no company to run and keep
me busy I used to sell some of my time on www.elance.com (similar site with
freelancer).
I had some pretty unique skill set and I was not competing with the mass of
developers on there and I was getting quite often offers for various
complicated projects: Visual Studio plugins and extensions, Outlook
extensions, couple of custom skype plugins, random debugging & fixing jobs,
web & sql performance, code and architectural reviews. Some of the projects
I only had to start them and get them to a point where a cheaper or not so
experienced developer could pick it up and continue/finish/polish/maintain
which was very cool.
I liked the projects I did and because of my odd skillset I was getting
some nice money but never enough to sustain a family or make it primary job.
If you can differentiate yourself you'll get every now and then some cool
projects. There are millions of web developers with
PHP/jQuery/WordPress/random framework.




On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 8:49 PM, Stephen Price 
wrote:

> I know some people who use it (or similar sites like fiverr.com) and like
> Dotnet Dude says (wait, who ARE you dude?) the people who do the work do it
> at a super cheap price (with comparable quality). Not saying you can't find
> someone who does a good job on there, but its a bit of a lottery. You can
> find good people there who work for next to nothing, and you will be
> competing with them.
>
> On the flip side, if you do want to find people on sites like this, I've
> heard the best way to get the quality is to put the work out to a number of
> people. You assign the same task to say five developers and let them know
> you have done so. The one who comes through with the goods gets further
> work.
>
> There is an Australian one called Airtasker that you might get more luck
> with for finding local work.
> https://www.airtasker.com/tasks/website-content-for-a-small-business-379540/?utm_campaign=TASK%20ALERT%20-%20EMAIL_content=control_medium=email_source=vero_term=Transactional_conv=1046423257
>
> There are some web dev jobs on there and I've seen some higher rates on
> there. (ie $1000).
>
> On Wed, 16 Sep 2015 at 15:41 DotNet Dude  wrote:
>
>> No real experience with any but problem with them imo is you're competing
>> against people from all around the world who will be willing to do the work
>> for way less than you who lives in here in Oz. Plus I can just imagine what
>> the specs would be like. I wouldn't bother with it if I were you, find
>> something locally if you can with a real company.
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 5:19 PM, Tom P  wrote:
>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> Does anybody here have experience with freelancer.com.au or similar
>>> sites? I'm hoping to get some work from it. Any recommendations or advice
>>> on which ones to use or avoid.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Thanks
>>> Tom
>>>
>>
>>

Re: Cross-platform charting

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Have you looked at http://www.highcharts.com/ ? Don't know if it works with
Xamarin but the graphics part is pretty damn nice :)


On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 5:52 PM, Joseph Cooney 
wrote:

> I've had good success in the past with flotr2
>
> http://www.humblesoftware.com/flotr2/
>
> On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 5:40 PM, Jorke Odolphi  wrote:
>
>> Depends if they were sitting on chairs..
>>
>> I’ve had great success with - http://d3js.org/ -it covers that platforms
>> i’ve needed to address: http://caniuse.com/#feat=svg
>>
>> The learning curve can be pretty steep – but I sense you seem to enjoy
>> that :)
>>
>>
>> From:  on behalf of Greg Keogh
>> Reply-To: ozDotNet
>> Date: Thursday, 10 September 2015 5:19 pm
>> To: ozDotNet
>> Subject: Cross-platform charting
>>
>> Hi Folks, I may have found a use for JavaScript (I can hear people
>> falling out of their chairs from here!) ... indirectly. I'm keen to hear if
>> anyone is doing what I'm about to try.
>>
>> My Xamarin generated app for phones on 3 platforms has to display charts
>> and gauges of various types. I went looking for libraries to do this and
>> found a variety with differing reputations and forum arguments about their
>> pros and cons. I found Syncfusion for Xamarin which is a technical work of
>> art and has renders for all 3 platforms that are single-line additions,
>> then you feed the data in an off you go. I had it working in an hour, and I
>> emailed them to confirm the price on their web link was actually $US99. No
>> reply, but I noticed 3 days later that the price list has updated to show
>> the price is actually $US1995, and the $99 is for the iOS target only.
>> Methinks it was a mistake. So I've deleted Syncfusion.
>>
>> Ok, now for some lateral thinking: get "someone else" to draw the charts
>> for me. Candidates are Google Charts
>>  and the Microsoft equivalent
>> (I've lost it, what's it called ... ANYONE?!).
>>
>> In the mobile apps I feed the data as JavaScript arrays into HTML and
>> show it in the WebView control which works easily on all platforms. So on
>> online service is doing all the rendering for me.
>>
>> I'm just about to try the Google one, but I thought I'd ask for comments.
>>
>> *Greg K*
>>
>
>
>
> --
>
> w: http://jcooney.net
> t: @josephcooney
>

Re: TypeScript summary

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Thomas,

You can just add aurelia to the head and be done and started just like
Angular(1) albeit your productivity will be slow.

Your issues sound to me like saying I can just open Notepad and start
coding my C# project. Why would I install Visual Studio?
Why would you install Nuget or MSBuild or System.Web.Optimization libraries
to bundle JS files? You installed them all as part of Visual Studio, that's
the only difference.
- node.js is like .Net framework (that comes these days as part of Windows)
- gulp is msbuild
- nuget is npm and bower
- System.Web.Optimization is like jspm + nuget
- Yeoman - I have no idea, I haven't installed or used that
- systemjs is not required, it's a nice to have to make things easier to
load and do the bundling/dependency resolving to avoid you to "just add
another .js file to the head". You can keep doing that and not need
systemjs. Kind of the .Net BundleCollection on steroids.
- Babel - don't know, didn't use it.
- TypeScript - it's an awesome option that compiles down to JS directly
without Babel. You really want to use this unless to avoid writing JS.
Typescript looks and feels like C# instead of JS.
Again, it's optional but heck, I hate JS

You can get prepared startup projects for VisualStudio with none of the
above odd tools:
https://github.com/cmichaelgraham/aurelia-typescript/tree/master/skel-nav-require-vs-ts
Clean, .Net solution with couple of JS files.

Side note> Angular1 requires a massive amount of work to get anything
working and get a project more than a simple demo of the ground. Angular2
has a hard to read syntax. How am I supposed to make the difference between
(click) and [click] and {click} and what each does?

Look, I totally hate JS and I only started to use these tools myself last
week, I also found the confusing at times and all have funny names and
can't figure out why there are configurations for requirejs, amd, system,
systemjs and 4 other loader libraries or what are the differences between
them but heck, after few days of work I got something cool working, and a
great UI that I tried to build before in Angular and I hated myself every
day I had to learn some random new awkward behaviour, directive, service,
provider, filter ...

I found Aurelia to rock in design and simplicity compared to Angular and
found it fast to learn and apply.

Just my 2 cents.



On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 2:24 PM, Thomas Koster <tkos...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 9 September 2015 at 13:18, Corneliu I. Tusnea
> <corne...@acorns.com.au> wrote:
> > Compared to Augular2 Aurelia simply rocks and it's so dead easy to
> > setup.
>
> Aurelia looks interesting, but a quick scan through "Getting
> Started" [1] reveals that you need the following to, ah, get started:
>
> - node.js for the entire toolchain,
> - Gulp to build,
> - jspm or bower for front end package management,
> - Yeoman for scaffolding,
> - systemjs for client-side DI,
> - Babel, CoffeeScript or TypeScript for "compiling" to browser-
>   compatible ES5/JavaScript.
>
> I have none of these things installed, yet I can start a new AngularJS
> project today by simply adding angular.js to my html head.
>
> Do you mean something else by "dead easy to setup"? All this sounds
> exactly like the JS ecosystem hell that Greg K meant.
>
> [1] http://aurelia.io/get-started.html
>
> --
> Thomas Koster
>

Powershell UI + tabs

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi,

Is there a lightweight powershell UI that has tabs so I can have multiple
tabs open?

Google searches yield random useless results.

Thanks,
Corneliu.

Re: TypeScript summary

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Greg,

Interesting comments.

I have to say I started about a week ago learning TypeScript + Aurelia (
http://aurelia.io/) which is an alternative to Angular2 and my experience
it's been very very good.
Yes, I had few bumps here and there as I need to use Typescript 1.5.3 beta
and Aurelia is still in beta as well but I have to say that in less than 2
days of work I build a super crazy & cool UI with with a relative complex
ui, lots of interactions, several model, pages, views and so on.
I hate JS, I dislike it so much and always found it so hard to code in JS
but TS + Aurelia I think they rock together.

Compared to Augular2 Aurelia simply rocks and it's so dead easy to setup.

My 2 cents from a non JS developer.

Regards,
Corneliu.





On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 11:08 AM, Paul Glavich 
wrote:

> >> JS ecosystem can go to hell.
>
> Lol. It has been there already. J It re-wrote hell in the form of a
> closure.
>
>
>
> Seriously though in answer to react comment below, I too find react’s
> syntax atrocious. Note that there is nothing at all related to react and
> C#/MVC. It is a fast rendering system by way of the shadow dom usage. It
> does have a good composition model but I simply cannot stand its syntax.
> You give up an easy to read syntax for speed and composability. Flux is a
> pattern library that is an augmentation to react that I think is quite good
> but could be used without react as well.
>
>
>
> It is the new black in terms of frameworks to use though so people are
> saying its awesome and everything else is crap, which is kind of the
> polarising community of JS dev. It is only at version 0.13.3 so it is so
> immature I would not entertain it at this time, but many are.
>
>
>
> -  Glav
>
>
>
> *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
> ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Tony Wright
> *Sent:* Wednesday, 26 August 2015 12:11 PM
> *To:* ozDotNet 
> *Subject:* Re: TypeScript summary
>
>
>
> I wouldn't mind knowing what is so good about React. I'm not enjoying the
> syntax of React so far. At the moment if I was to build a new substantial
> app it would be using Angular. I feel that you can write some pretty
> substantial applications in Angular. Having had a dabble with React, I
> don't get the same feeling, so I am wondering if the hype is bigger than
> the product itself?
>
>
>
> I know React is more about the V in MVC and Angular covers the entire MVC
> pattern in Javascript, but I am trying to understand - are they still
> essentially trying to solve a similar problem? I can go without using C#
> MVC applications at all (excepting WebApi) with Angular, so is the
> difference that React is meant to be used in conjunction with C# MVC
> solutions?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2015 at 11:57 AM, William Luu  wrote:
>
> RE: DOM manipulation.
>
>
>
> Here's a (intro and) comparison between DOM manipulation jQuery and React
>
>
> http://reactfordesigners.com/labs/reactjs-introduction-for-people-who-know-just-enough-jquery-to-get-by/
>
>
>
> On 26 August 2015 at 10:03, Bec C  wrote:
>
> +1 for Greg's comments. Coming from a sql background I found it relatively
> easy to jump into c# and .net but my jump to JS wasn't so smooth
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2015 at 9:55 AM, Greg Keogh  wrote:
>
> I hope this is my final essay on JavaScript (and so do you!). In summary,
> a few weeks ago I volunteered to write an in-browser script driven demo app
> which is simply a navigation stack of 4 screens. Angular is so currently so
> trendy I spent several hours attempting to learn and use it, but due to
> lack of an IDE, no debugging, no guidance, the custom terse syntax and
> complex dependencies I gave up (then I learn it's being rewritten in
> TypeScript anyway). I've expressed my anger at the 'zoo' of uncoordinated
> and competing JS libraries.
>
> I spent all of yesterday optimistically studying and trying TypeScript, as
> the familiar IDE and structure seemed ideal for someone from a C++/Java/C#
> background. Given my belief that the JS world is really chaotic, my overall
> conclusion is:
>
> *TypeScript is organised chaos.*
>
> I was reminded of moving from C to C++ 20 years ago. C was so freeform you
> could write spaghetti. C++ helped you write object oriented modular
> spaghetti. Just like that, TS is trying to tame the JS spaghetti and make
> it feel OOPish and respectable to people with my background, but it's still
> just putting a wedding gown on a pig.
>
> The good news is though, that once I eventually found guidance on how to
> organise multiple TS source files, how to use module { } like namespaces,
> when to use the , and why you use --out to concat files, then TS
> is probably the least worst option I've seen so far for writing large JS
> apps. At least you will finish up with organised modular chaos.
>
> So you might be able to tame JS with TS, but we are 

Re: Powershell UI + tabs

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Oh yes, that looks awesome. Thanks!!!

On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Stephen Price <step...@perthprojects.com>
wrote:

> Console2 for all your command line needs.
>
> On Wed, 9 Sep 2015 at 11:20 Corneliu I. Tusnea <corne...@acorns.com.au>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Is there a lightweight powershell UI that has tabs so I can have multiple
>> tabs open?
>>
>> Google searches yield random useless results.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Corneliu.
>>
>>

Re: MVC Redirect and Async Operations

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Task(()= { ... do stuff }).Start()


On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 8:06 PM, Greg Low (罗格雷格博士) g...@greglow.com wrote:

 One for the MVC brains trust if I can:



 I want to add some basic link redirection and logging to a test MVC site.
 So, for example, if I have a calls like:



 http://www.mytestsite.com/links/10123

 http://www.mytestsite.com/links/10939



 I want to redirect the caller to some other URL associated with each link
 number. All easy enough.



 However, I also want to log details to my database about that
 call/redirection and that’s where the issue arises.



 · I don’t want the redirection to wait synchronously for the DB
 call to complete.

 · If the logging didn’t work, I still want the redirection to
 occur.



 I’m presuming that as soon as I return a Response.Redirect or
 Response.RedirectToAction, etc, etc. that I can’t then execute code
 afterwards in the same call. I’ve wondered about starting an async DB
 operation and just not waiting for it to complete.



 Any suggestions on how best to achieve that outcome? Is some sort of
 ActionFilter a better option?



 Thanks in advance,



 Regards,



 Greg



 Dr Greg Low



 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913
 fax

 SQL Down Under | Web: *www.sqldownunder.com http://www.sqldownunder.com*

Re: MEF - Microsoft Extension Framework. Opinions requested.

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Scott,

I couldn't agree with you more. MEF feels one of those Patterns 
Practices thing that gets pushed onto us by MS at times but everyone hates
and it's f* impractical in any real life scenario.


On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 4:09 PM, Scott Barnes scott.bar...@gmail.com wrote:

 MEF was built to put the PRISM genie back in its bottle. MEF is also the
 in-house approach to the stuff Autofac and other IOC stuff do for you these
 days as well. If you like to sprinkle [Import] [Export] throughout the code
 base and are happy with its existence than it's really down to Pepsi vs
 Coke argument. Keeping in mind MEF exists nowhere .NET exists so you don't
 necessarily have to play the game of Which Nuget packaged just updated
 today, guess which one...*slap to the face*...wrong! :)

 Jokes aside, did you just throw your co-worker under a bus in the .NET
 forums thatspublic :)  you could also ask him How does MEF differ from
 other solutions out there? see what comes back, he/she may have a valid
 answer... or it could be Because the Patterns  Practices team used it and
 all hail our overlords in building 16... (or am i showing my age there)

 ---
 Regards,
 Scott Barnes
 http://www.riagenic.com

 On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 9:23 AM, Greg Keogh gfke...@gmail.com wrote:

 I agree, using MEF for really granular quick-turnaround things like
 pieces of web pages seems overkill and of little benefit unless you're
 creating some sort of clever fancy general purpose extensible web framework.

 MEF works great for dynamically discovering plug-in chunks of
 functionality in extensible ways, so long as that's what you want to do! A
 few years ago I spent hours learning the MEF lingo to use it to pick a DLL
 at runtime, but weeks later I decided it just cluttered up my quite simple
 code and I replaced it all with about 15 lines of code that looped through
 GetTypes() and Activated the one I wanted -- *Greg K*

 On 1 June 2015 at 06:48, Davy Jones djones...@gmail.com wrote:

 Thanks
 Davy

 Sent from my iPhone

 On 31 May 2015, at 16:36, Piers Williams piers.willi...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 On the face of it, I think I would gently dissuade your colleague.

 Having a level of modular isolation for areas of a webapp is not in of
 itself a bad thing, but you'd be much better off using something like
 Aufofac's modules *if the need presented* than MEF.

 MEF is a plugin framework, and even there it leaves a bit to be desired.
 I struggle to think of a scenario in which I'd use it (again).
 On 27 May 2015 6:19 pm, David Rhys Jones djones...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi all,

  I recently joined a new team and one of the Developpers is one of
 those guys that likes to complicate things for the hell of it.

 The current technology he is trying to push is  MEF (Extension
 Framework) with every web page / section in a new plugin.

 Can I have some opinions on what it's really like to use MEF.

 Thanks
 Davy

 *Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes*.

Re: MSDN Subscription renewal

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Greg K,

If your team is smaller than 5 people or you are an individual developer
you can use it. I use it for my personal use outside of my company. I think
it's a great product.

Regards,
Corneliu.


On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 11:42 PM, Greg Low (罗格雷格博士) g...@greglow.com
wrote:

  See the Q  A at the bottom of the page :
 https://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-community-vs

 Regards

  Greg

  Dr Greg Low
 CEO and Principal Mentor
 SQL Down Under
 1300SQLSQL (1300775775)

 On 22 Apr 2015, at 7:46 pm, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Can I ask why would you upgrade from Community to Premium and why
 would I buy the MSDN pack?
 I find the Community + Resharper has everything I ever wanted.


  I did notice that the Community features in the chart are nearly
 identical to the Professional, so I'm wondering the same thing. What is the
 Community edition, where do you get it and what hidden pitfalls are there
 (if any)? I don't want to burn funds for little to nothing -- *Greg K*

Re: Best unit testing tools

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

BDD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-driven_development
There is a BDD package for .Net as well.

Once you learn to write you test out of small bite-size pieces you'll love
it's power.
I hate unit tests. I think they are easy for simple code that is not worth
testing and too complicated to setup for really complicated code.
However once you learn BDD and figure out how to compose tests you can
actually start to test complex components instead of small bits of code.


On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 11:42 AM, David Burstin david.burs...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Xunit, moq, resharper, ncrunch, fluentassertions

 On 31 March 2015 at 09:24, William Luu will@gmail.com wrote:

 Perhaps start from the first post of that series -
 https://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2015/01/29/clean-tests-a-primer/

 The author mentions Fixie, which is a fairly new testing framework -
 http://fixie.github.io


 On 30 March 2015 at 22:23, William Luu will@gmail.com wrote:

 We're reviewing what to use for a new project and I'm leaning towards
 the below:

 Unit testing framework: xunit (2.0 was recently released)
 Mocking: FakeItEasy

 Also, take a look at AutoFixture.

 See -
 https://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2015/03/24/clean-tests-isolation-with-fakes/



 On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 21:49 PM, Tony Wright tonyw...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Hi all,

 What are people using these days to unit test code dot net code, and if
 not visual studio, why?

 Regards Tony



 --
 Sent from MetroMail

Re: [OT] Unbelievable ad tracking

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Alternative 7) Install a Windows Media Center for your TV, record all the
shows you want learn to skip the ads and never see an ad again on TV :)

On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 5:54 PM, David Connors da...@connors.com wrote:

 Or:

 7) Sit on your arse in front of the TV watching endless shit for dickheads
 ads for stuff you DON'T want and revel in your new freedom.

 I must be the only person here who thinks that targeted ads are a good
 idea. Endless ads for boat add-ons and things I can BBQ pork with ... Mmmm
 pork. Imagine if TV was that good.

 David Connors
 da...@connors.com | M +61 417 189 363
 Download my v-card: https://www.codify.com/cards/davidconnors
 Follow me on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/davidconnors
 Connect with me on LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/davidjohnconnors

 On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 4:37 PM, Stephen Price step...@perthprojects.com
 wrote:

 5.) Delete all social media accounts.
 6.) Stop using any device that's connected. I forget the name of it but
 there is a security rating (class C? I forget) where no connectivity, no
 keyboard no monitor and no external drives are required. Or something along
 those lines.
 7.) Become Amish.

 On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 2:31 PM, Stuart Kinnear stu...@skproactive.com
 wrote:

 There is a few things you can do.

 1) use DuckDuckGo as your search provider
 2) remove all your history from Chrome (and the other browsers for that
 matter). - I got a shock and found over 155000 entries in my history dating
 back some years
 3) only run your browser in private mode
  For Chrome:
 C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
 --incognito

 Ditto for Internet Explorer and FireFox, though off hand I cannot
 remember the command line shortcuts.

  Oh, and don't forget your phone's settings !

 4) Make sure you always log out of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn  and any
 other social media account.


 Regards, Stuart




 On 21 December 2014 at 10:58, DotNet Dude adotnetd...@gmail.com wrote:

 Do you use Chrome? Do you search while signed into a Google account?

 On Fri, Dec 19, 2014 at 6:34 PM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Folks, a couple of days ago I ran a Google search for a set of
 fine-tipped pens, found them at Officeworks, and went down and bought them
 (as well as some paper and other stuff). This evening I went to this web
 page:


 http://www.myerrorsandmysolutions.com/how-to-install-certificates-file-cer-on-microsoft-windows-phone-based-devices/
 http://t.signaledue.com/e1t/c/5/f18dQhb0S7lC8dDMPbW2n0x6l2B9nMJW7t5XYg2z8MG4N4WJpKqQK4kWF2mHLdh7Wljf19pFfl03?t=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.myerrorsandmysolutions.com%2Fhow-to-install-certificates-file-cer-on-microsoft-windows-phone-based-devices%2Fsi=6200614728499200pi=9e5263a5-4dbd-47e4-f88e-a91272819878

 In the middle of the page is a huge ad for the exact same pens that I
 bought. The URL of the ad is (truncated):

 http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk
 http://t.signaledue.com/e1t/c/5/f18dQhb0S7lC8dDMPbW2n0x6l2B9nMJW7t5XYg2z8MG4N4WJpKqQK4kWF2mHLdh7Wljf19pFfl03?t=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.googleadservices.com%2Fpagead%2Faclksi=6200614728499200pi=9e5263a5-4dbd-47e4-f88e-a91272819878?
 [cut] adurl=
 http://www.megaofficesupplies.com.au/pelikan-artline-draw-system-pen-6-nib-sizes-1-2-3-4-5-8-black-wallet-6/%3Fdfw_tracker%3D2252-8735
 http://t.signaledue.com/e1t/c/5/f18dQhb0S7lC8dDMPbW2n0x6l2B9nMJW7t5XYg2z8MG4N4WJpKqQK4kWF2mHLdh7Wljf19pFfl03?t=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.megaofficesupplies.com.au%2Fpelikan-artline-draw-system-pen-6-nib-sizes-1-2-3-4-5-8-black-wallet-6%2F%253Fdfw_tracker%253D2252-8735si=6200614728499200pi=9e5263a5-4dbd-47e4-f88e-a91272819878

 I'm really, REALLY pissed off. I hate ads, I hate being tracked, I
 have a tiny set of white-listed cookies, I erase my browsing history every
 few days, and I didn't put anything that could identify me in any web 
 pages
 in the last few days. So how the f***nig hell is this possible?! This is
 insidious, frightening and depressing.

 *Greg K*





 --

 -
 Stuart Kinnear
 Mobile: 040 704 5686.   Office: 03 9589 6502

 SK Pro-Active! Pty Ltd
 acn. 81 072 778 262
 PO Box 6082 Cromer, Vic 3193. Australia

 Business software developers.
 SQL Server, Visual Basic, C# , Asp.Net, Microsoft Office.

 -

What happened yesterday with Azure?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi every,

Yesterday Azure had a massive outage with 80% of the Azure going down world
wide.
At some point only the Australian, Brazil and Japan DCs were still working.

http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/status/#history

The outage took down XBox and Office 365 and of course everyone else
running on Azure.

There deems to be no news from Microsoft of what went wrong and why.

Jeffrey Fritz gave an explanation but I'm not buying it:
http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2014/11/19/fritz-azure-outage-web-sites.aspx?utm_source=twitterfeedutm_medium=twitter

Anybody has any other details about this?

Thanks,
Corneliu.

Re: What happened yesterday with Azure?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Craig,

There is a twitter status page:
https://twitter.com/azurestatus

It's still not updated .. even if it has heaps of other status updates ...
:(



On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 10:12 AM, Craig van Nieuwkerk crai...@gmail.com
wrote:

 This effected me bad, although at least it happened during our day time so
 I was immediately aware and could communicate to users.

 Not exactly sure what happened but I think it was related to Cloud Storage
 being down. Many of the services rely on Cloud Storage so when it is dead
 almost everything is dead. Things that concerned me are

 a) How can a problem happen simultaneously is almost every data center.
 Shouldn't they be isolated so that can't happen.
 b) They need to communicate better during outages. The status page is to
 slow to update and often not accurate. They need a Twitter account giving
 updates every 5 minutes.

 Craig

 On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 10:01 AM, Corneliu I. Tusnea 
 corne...@acorns.com.au wrote:

 Hi every,

 Yesterday Azure had a massive outage with 80% of the Azure going down
 world wide.
 At some point only the Australian, Brazil and Japan DCs were still
 working.

 http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/status/#history

 The outage took down XBox and Office 365 and of course everyone else
 running on Azure.

 There deems to be no news from Microsoft of what went wrong and why.

 Jeffrey Fritz gave an explanation but I'm not buying it:

 http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2014/11/19/fritz-azure-outage-web-sites.aspx?utm_source=twitterfeedutm_medium=twitter

 Anybody has any other details about this?

 Thanks,
 Corneliu.

OneSaas: Mid-Level Developer QA Positions Available (North Sydney, NSW)

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

If you are a mid-level developer looking for a new challenge in a dynamic
and passionate environment, then talk to us about joining our super-star
international team of 11 in North Sydney.


We work hard and play hard :)


Weekly BBQ Fridays in our office courtyard, table-tennis in our chill-out
area, weekly soccer and personal training with the rest of the team and a
lot of passion, energy and teamwork to deliver an outstanding product and
business results.


Skills required: .Net/C#, MVC4, SQL2012, REST (JSON/XML), dedication and
good focus on delivering quality code. Optional but nice to have: SignalR,
jQuery, MongoDb, multi-threading.


OneSaas is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud integration platform that
solves the challenges of integrating disparate cloud-based and on-site
software.  OneSaas provides a central hub where workflow processes between
accounting, billing  invoicing, email marketing, e-commerce,
point-of-sale, event management, drop shipping/3PL services and CRM systems
are automated seamlessly.

Ping me at corne...@onesaas.com or 0410 835 593 for more details.

Regards,
Corneliu.

Re: Programatically paying BPAY invoices

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Btw, is there any alternative to ezidebit? They seem to be the only ones
doing DD. Even eway that used to have such a module has no support anymore.


On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 10:07 PM, Jano Petras jano.pet...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi Greg,

 Unfortunately, BPay is (or used to be 3 years ago) a batch processing
 thing where bank provides a file to download one or twice daily and that's
 how someone accepting payments does reconciliation.

 As far as the other side of the coin goes (making payments instead of
 receiving them) - http://www.ezidebit.com.au/integration/api-overview/
 has BPAY module, not sure this would enable random payments to any biller
 codes though





 On 7 June 2014 13:19, GregAtGregLowDotCom g...@greglow.com wrote:

 Hi Folks,



 Anyone know if there are any interfaces that allow you to
 programmatically pay a BPAY account (and get a receipt instantly)?



 Regards,



 Greg



 Dr Greg Low



 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913
 fax

 SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com

Re: [OT] Thurday afternoon rant

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

That piece of code looks so freaking ugly Greg. new XElement(dasdass,new
XElement( ... )) .. w t  f 
Why? Why can't we just have a nice clean way of dealing with XML like LINQ
or even like Powershell?

I agree with Preet. XML is a pain in the **.

C'mon Microsoft. You build so many cool things, why not a dead-easy XML
handler for C# for both reading and creating/writing?


On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 6:37 PM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 I forgot to mention how much I also like functional creation of XML. This
 makes an element with all files in my temp folder that are older than 14
 days in descending size:

 var elem = new XElement(temp, new XElement(files,
  from f in new DirectoryInfo(Path.GetTempPath()).EnumerateFiles()
   let daysOld = DateTime.Now.Subtract(f.CreationTime).TotalDays
   where daysOld  14.0
   orderby f.Length descending
   select new XElement(file,
new XAttribute(length, f.Length),
new XAttribute(daysOld, daysOld.ToString(0.0)),
f.Name)));




 On 10 April 2014 18:03, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

  I can appreciate the hierarchical nature of XML, but for configuration
 it is quite frequently an overkill.


 How keen are you on LINQ to XML? Thanks to XElement I find creating,
 saving, loading and reading XML quite convenient these days and often use
 an XML fragment as a hepped-up INI file. I like being able to do this:

 var elem = new XElement(root, new XAttribute(id, 123), new
 XElement(active, true));

 And to pull values back out there are casts to help, and casting to a
 nullable works in case the node doesn't exist, thereby reducing code
 clutter.

 int id = (int)elem.Attribute(id);
 bool active = (bool)elem.Element(active);
 Guid? uid = (Guid?)elem.Attribute(uid);

 Greg





 On 10 April 2014 17:26, Stephen Price step...@perthprojects.com wrote:

 Ooops. I seem to have stumbled into the wrong room. This is the
 ozMedicalComplications list, right?

 ;)


 On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 2:28 PM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

  If there is one technology that drives me nuts every time I have to
 work with it, it's XML, XPATH and  associated crapping XML Namespaces.
 Why does everything have to be so bloody painful.


 XML isn't as painful as most other current technologies, it's like a
 paper cut with lemon juice spilt on it. Whereas trying to overcome 
 security
 barriers is like having a kidney stone, or trying to get a fresh checkout
 of your solution to build is like a migraine, or trying to write a html5
 app is like a spinal prolapse.

 Linq to XML avoids XPATH, but whenever I have to got back to the old
 XML model I have to lookup the XPATH syntax and how to add a namespace.
 Albihari's C# nutshell book has a couple of pages of reminders on old 
 XML
 tricks which save a lot of time.

 Greg K

Re: What's a million lines of code worth?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Doesn't sound that bad.

Just thinking how many sub-systems they have and how much redundancy is in
each system it doesn't sound that much at all.

Also think that they are not running any of-the-shelf OS which means that
part of those 19M lines of code they also have the HAL and various drivers
and whatever custom OS or host they need to have it actually sounds
reasonable.


On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 12:51 PM, Paul Evrat p...@paulevrat.com wrote:

 Hi All,



 Collins Class Submarine - 6 million lines of code.



 Joint Strike Fighter - 19 million lines of code.



 Seems plausible OR Over-bloated software development mismanagement ??



 Not saying one way or the other, just interested in your professional
 gut-feels ?



 Article -

 http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2014/s3990236.htm



 Paul E ..

Powershell Training Course

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi,

I have a new sys-admin and before he starts I'd like to put him on an
intensive 2 week powershell online training course.

Anyone can recommend a PS course that is intense and well focused for
sys-admins role?

I'd like the course to have an Azure management component as well.

Thanks,
Corneliu.

Re: OT: Windows on a Mac Pro

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

I just saw a MacPro running WindowsXP this morning on the train. If that
works .. anything will work :)

As long as you can live with the keyboard and with heaps of missing keys
the rest should be ok ...


On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 5:11 PM, Bill McCarthy 
bill.mccarthy.li...@live.com.au wrote:

 Hi,

 Any of you guys run windows on a mac pro? What is needed ? Any issues ?

 Thanks

Re: Signing up for Azure - Mobile Verification Failed?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Sorry mate, but they were asking specifically for an Australian mobile
number. Also read reports that for some unknown reason Azure registration
does not accept Google Voice numbers:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19748587/cant-sign-up-for-azure-we-were-unable-to-verify-your-account
Technology vs Technology :)



On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 9:51 PM, David Rhys Jones djones...@gmail.comwrote:

 I have a google voice account set up for just this sort of problem, US
 phone number comes through to gmail.

 Davy.


  Davy,

 So you want to keep data which is local, only ever going to be local,
 only needed locally, never accessed remotely, not WANTED to be made
 available outside our building, which can only WEAKEN our security by being
 off site, hosted offsite. BOFH: Simon Travaglia




 On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 4:35 AM, mike smith meski...@gmail.com wrote:

 See if Amazon will take your money.


 On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 2:18 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea 
 corne...@acorns.com.au wrote:

 It's the Austalian one and it recognized me as from Australia and asked
 for mobile in Au format 4xx xxx xxx
 The funny part is that it worked perfectly this morning. Exactly the
 same site, same browser, no error, got an SMS confirmation and signed up...
 But, to make the story really fun, 5h after I managed to sign-up and got
 my welcome email I got an account cancelled notification:
 *This mail is confirmation that your subscription below was cancelled on
 Monday, February 24, 2014. *
 And my account does not work anymore. FTW :(


 On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 12:22 PM, mike smith meski...@gmail.com wrote:

 Is it an American site, and perhaps looking for an American based card?
  (maybe it just wants an American billing address, if it wants an SSN,
 you're  SOL )


 On Sat, Feb 22, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea 
 corne...@acorns.com.au wrote:

 Guys,

 I've been trying for the last 2h to sign up for a new Azure
 Subscription and I always fail during the Mobile Verification.
 I've tried various valid mobile numbers but they all fail with *We
 were unable to verify your account.*

 This is very annoying and .. bad bad experience ...
 I really want to give them my credit card but heck, they don't let me
 do it :(

 I've tried calling Microsoft Australia support and they told me come
 back Monday. I tried calling Azure Customer Support through a number I 
 got
 from the MS Support Chat and they also said leave a message as we are
 outside of business hours.

 Just a whinge ... trying to use 24x7 service supported by a 8AM-5PM
 support team

 Take my credit card ... please please ... just make it less painful  :(

 Thoughts?

 Corneliu.




 --
 Meski

http://courteous.ly/aAOZcv

 Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. Sure,
 you'll get it, but it's going to be rough - Adam Hills





 --
 Meski

http://courteous.ly/aAOZcv

 Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. Sure,
 you'll get it, but it's going to be rough - Adam Hills

Re: Signing up for Azure - Mobile Verification Failed?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

It's the Austalian one and it recognized me as from Australia and asked for
mobile in Au format 4xx xxx xxx
The funny part is that it worked perfectly this morning. Exactly the same
site, same browser, no error, got an SMS confirmation and signed up...
But, to make the story really fun, 5h after I managed to sign-up and got my
welcome email I got an account cancelled notification:
*This mail is confirmation that your subscription below was cancelled on
Monday, February 24, 2014. *
And my account does not work anymore. FTW :(


On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 12:22 PM, mike smith meski...@gmail.com wrote:

 Is it an American site, and perhaps looking for an American based card?
  (maybe it just wants an American billing address, if it wants an SSN,
 you're  SOL )


 On Sat, Feb 22, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea 
 corne...@acorns.com.au wrote:

 Guys,

 I've been trying for the last 2h to sign up for a new Azure Subscription
 and I always fail during the Mobile Verification.
 I've tried various valid mobile numbers but they all fail with *We were
 unable to verify your account.*

 This is very annoying and .. bad bad experience ...
 I really want to give them my credit card but heck, they don't let me do
 it :(

 I've tried calling Microsoft Australia support and they told me come
 back Monday. I tried calling Azure Customer Support through a number I got
 from the MS Support Chat and they also said leave a message as we are
 outside of business hours.

 Just a whinge ... trying to use 24x7 service supported by a 8AM-5PM
 support team

 Take my credit card ... please please ... just make it less painful  :(

 Thoughts?

 Corneliu.




 --
 Meski

http://courteous.ly/aAOZcv

 Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. Sure,
 you'll get it, but it's going to be rough - Adam Hills

Signing up for Azure - Mobile Verification Failed?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Guys,

I've been trying for the last 2h to sign up for a new Azure Subscription
and I always fail during the Mobile Verification.
I've tried various valid mobile numbers but they all fail with *We were
unable to verify your account.*

This is very annoying and .. bad bad experience ...
I really want to give them my credit card but heck, they don't let me do it
:(

I've tried calling Microsoft Australia support and they told me come back
Monday. I tried calling Azure Customer Support through a number I got from
the MS Support Chat and they also said leave a message as we are outside
of business hours.

Just a whinge ... trying to use 24x7 service supported by a 8AM-5PM support
team

Take my credit card ... please please ... just make it less painful  :(

Thoughts?

Corneliu.

SCCM?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi,

Anyone has experience with SCCM? I'm trying to see if SCCM is the right
tool to help me manage and monitor 20+ Windows 2012 servers (Web+SQL) and I
find the documentation online to be very much all over the place.

So much functionality, so hard to figure out simple things :(

First question that I'm trying to answer if it can manage computers outside
of a domain in a separate isolated network.

All I can read about managing an untrusted forest (
http://www.petervanderwoude.nl/post/using-client-push-installation-on-untrusted-forest-systems-with-configmgr-2012/)
talks about adding the untrusted forest to the Active Directory to allow
Client Push Installations.
That kind of tells me that I need some direct connectivity (NetBios?)
between the networks which I don't have however I can't find enough details
about this.

Anyone experienced with SCCM would be able to help me answer some of these
questions please?

Thanks,
Corneliu.

Re: [OT] 43°C here

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

22°C in my office :)


On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 2:32 PM, Stephen Price step...@perthprojects.comwrote:

 It's showing 26° for my suburb. :)




 On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 11:27 AM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 I'm 1.53 km from Moorabbin Airport tower which shows: METAR YMMB 170300Z
 AUTO 34013KT  // NCD 43/08 Q1005 RMK RF00.0/000.0

 So it's 43°C outside, but it feels worse thanks to the north wind which
 is like an open oven door. Anyone else got a higher reading?

 Greg

WebApp Monitoring

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi,

We are deploying a new instance of our app for a customer and we need a
good monitoring for the app (web, sql, mongo, disk, )

We currently use Datadog (www.datadog.com) but I think it's missing some
functionality (e.g. ping a webpage).

What are some great tools for monitoring a web app (not in Azure):
1. Monitoring
2. Alerting
3. Intrusion detection
4. Anti-virus / anti-malware for the servers

I'd prefer something cloud based as the monitoring and responses will be
done by different people in different locations.

We run everything on Windows 2012 Server, SQL 2012, IIS and MongoDB.

Thanks,
Corneliu.

Download BizSpark Older Licences Software

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Morning everyone,

I have a question about downloading licensed software from Microsoft.

We used to be part of the Bizspark program which was very good to us. Part
of the program we got licences to various software including SQL Server
Standard.
Our BizSpark program finished and we exited happily.

However now I just had a hardware failure and I want to reinstall on new
hardware one of the SQL Servers that was licensed with a BizSpark licence
but I can't seem to be able to download it any more.
Is this correct? As I understand the licences are perpetual but from what I
see once you installed it you can't use them any more.

Right?

Thanks,
Corneliu.

Documentation Wiki?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi guys,

Happy New Year.

I have a bit of a trouble creating/updating the internal/development
documentation of our project and I was curious how do other people handle
documentation.
Right now we are using Confluence which is very nice. I like their diagrams
and integration of the diagrams in the documentation but I find it hard to
use overall.
1. Slow (OnDemand version)
2. Slow to navigate (only two level menu on the left)
3. Editor is buggy at times (e.g. deleting lines inside ULs)
4. Export to PDF or Word is mostly broken when you have tables.
5. Hard to link articles or parts of articles together.
6. Attachments are not really part of a document so hard to use. They are
only visible as a little icon next to the document name.

Does anyone have a better way of documenting a project? I want something
easy to use, very fast, easy to navigate and search and easy to link
articles together.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Corneliu.

Re: Documentation Wiki?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hm, that won't work for us. We need it web based, preferably some security
permissions and change tracking.


On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 5:05 PM, Preet Sangha preetsan...@gmail.com wrote:

 We are small company. A shared OneNote book works brilliantly.

 C/P  WYSIWYG

 hardly every have issues with conflicts.

 It's all on the public web via Office 365 and locally on our laptops.




 On 6 January 2014 17:23, Corneliu I. Tusnea corne...@acorns.com.auwrote:

 Hi guys,

 Happy New Year.

 I have a bit of a trouble creating/updating the internal/development
 documentation of our project and I was curious how do other people handle
 documentation.
 Right now we are using Confluence which is very nice. I like their
 diagrams and integration of the diagrams in the documentation but I find it
 hard to use overall.
 1. Slow (OnDemand version)
 2. Slow to navigate (only two level menu on the left)
 3. Editor is buggy at times (e.g. deleting lines inside ULs)
 4. Export to PDF or Word is mostly broken when you have tables.
 5. Hard to link articles or parts of articles together.
 6. Attachments are not really part of a document so hard to use. They are
 only visible as a little icon next to the document name.

 Does anyone have a better way of documenting a project? I want something
 easy to use, very fast, easy to navigate and search and easy to link
 articles together.

 Thoughts?

 Thanks,
 Corneliu.




 --
 regards,
 Preet, Overlooking the Ocean, Auckland

Re: [OT] Machine restart lock-up

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Busted SSD? I had a similar one that was hanging at random times. Returned
it back and got a replacement without any questions asked by the shop


On Fri, Dec 27, 2013 at 7:54 AM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Folks, since I installed a fresh Windows 7 in a SanDisk 256GB SSD last
 weekend my machine has developed an irritating disease: It locks up when
 restarted/rebooted. Only by turning the power off and then back on will it
 restart. Unless the power is turned off, a restart locks up at the end of
 the list of IDE devices in the BIOS screen. The only hardware change since
 last week is the replacement of a 1TB HDD with the SSD, which resulted in
 some IDE cables moving around to different slots.

 Before I start randomly moving cables around I thought I'd ask here just
 in case some hardware boffins might have seen this sort of thing before. Do
 SSD and HDD have to be in a certain physical cable order? Are the various
 IDE slots different?

 Greg K

C# WebDeveloper Position Available

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi,

I'm looking for an experienced C# WebDeveloper to join our team at OneSaas.
We are based in St Leonards, NSW have a nice team and want to grow.

What we need:
- MVC4, jQuery, CSS3, HTML5
- Preferably experience with Bootstrap

What we offer:
- Awesome work environment
- Pingpong table in the office :)
- Small friendly team (4 devs)
- Awesome project to work on
- Latest technologies (.Net 4.5, HTML5, Bootstrap, SignalR, MongoDB)

For now this is a 5-6 weeks project on the UI side but with chance of
making it longer.

If interested ping me on corne...@onesaas.com.

Regards,
Corneliu

Re: [OT] Online task management tool

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Greg,

We used Trello intensively for all our task management and project
management for a long time until we graduated and moved to Jira.
I love Trello and I think it's one of the best apps out there for shared
task management.
Very simple, very intuitive.



On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 6:59 PM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Folks I was browsing around today for a free online project management
 tool, but there are too many choices. We have 4 people who need a
 relatively simple facility to share sets of issues or tasks for a few
 related software development projects. Many I've seen are free for small
 scale use, but seem way over engineered for us. A set of glorified TODO
 lists with pretty colours and statuses would be good enough. Any
 suggestions? -- Greg K

Where to buy Sql Server Enterprise 2012?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi,

I need to buy a licence for Sql Server Enterprise 2012. 

Any idea where I could get it? Microsoft site is a bit confusing. 

Thanks,
Corneliu 

Re: In praise of T4 code generation

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Thomas,

Never had an issue with generated code from T4. All our generated code also
resides in source control so the moment you touched the .tt you also
modified the .generated and you push the together in the repo.
During a merge the same rules apply as any other merge, merge both .tt and
the generated.
Never had an issue yet (touch wood) and we have over 100 tts all over the
project but we are quite good not to change stuff in the same area in
different branches as each developer generally works in his own designated
areas.


On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 2:29 PM, Thomas Koster tkos...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi group,

 On Saturday, 12 October 2013, Greg Keogh wrote:

 ...so I decided to use T4 templates to generate it all. I'm really happy
 with the results and this post is basically just a reminder that in my
 opinion, good old fashioned code generation still has a place in the modern
 world.


 I agree that code generation still has its place and would even go as far
 as saying it is *necessary* for most real world projects. I do have
 some criticisms of T4 though.

 My biggest issue with T4 is that prima facie it is not properly
 integrated, or integrable, into msbuild. A human often has to Run custom
 tool or Transform all templates manually in the IDE. If you are also
 mucking around with multiple revisions, e.g. using your VCS to bisect or
 even just to update, stale output can easily get out of hand that may
 result in subtly broken builds.

 From past Googlings I have only managed to turn up hack solutions, mostly
 three kinds:

1. Hand-write msbuild targets into your csproj that shell out to the
TextTransform.exe tool in the SDK. This is not the same thing as the VS
custom tool, resulting generated output that is different from the VS
TextTemplatingFileGenerator custom tool, if it even works at all. It is too
easy to write a T4 template that is incompatible with one or other host.
2. Install the Visual Studio Visualization and Modeling SDK to make
use of its msbuild targets (VS2010 and up only). This is yet another T4
host that is different from both the VS custom tool and TextTransform.exe.
And why burden your developers with such a huge compile-time dependency for
what should be a trivial msbuild configuration? What about build servers
that do not even have VS installed?
3. Commit generated output to your VCS. I put this hack in the same
basket as committing binaries.

 I am very interested in what T4 aficionados do to really make it work in
 large projects. What do you do when you build a fresh checkout of a project
 with many T4 templates? What about automated builds or continuous
 integration servers?

 p.s. I experience a homomorphic problem with most other code generation
 tasks in VS, especially DataSets generated from xsd files.

 --
 Thomas

Re: In praise of T4 code generation

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Greg,

I love T4 as well. A Massive part of my project is build around very custom
T4 code generation that was all nicely coded to output very good, reliable
and repeable bits of code that helps us mostly around some complex
serializations.
It would be great it VS would include a nice T4 editor by default as the
Tangible T4 editor kills my VS every time I try to load it due maybe to the
large number of objects we have.
Apparently there are few other editors for T4 these days. I might try them
again.




On Mon, Oct 14, 2013 at 12:36 PM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 I gave up on T4 in frustration a long time ago. We use CodeSmith - we find
 it easy to use and quick to get things done. Having read this, might look
 at T4 again now and see if it's improved.


 I'm actually a licensed owner of CodeSmith 5.2, which I purchased a few
 years ago so I could use it with netTiers. However, all of the fancy bells
 and whistles and advanced features that came with it were of absolutely no
 interest to me. I have never used CodeSmith for anything (except it being
 the silent clockwork behind netTiers). For a start, I hated having yet
 another dependency on a 3rd party tool, then I would have to learn how it
 integrates with Visual Studio (I assume it does!), then learn its quirks,
 etc. I prefer TT files simply because they are built-in and just work.

 I don't think T4 has improved much in recent years, it's still the same
 basic tool.

 Greg K

Re: Code commenting

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

If it was hard to write it should be hard to read :)
Why comment?


On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 5:56 PM, Davy Jones djones...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hello
 If you are doing this in code. It points to the fact that someone is not
 pulling their weight.
 Code should not have comments. If you need them to explain something, the
 code is too complex.
 If you add them so modifications on one bit of code come back to you so
 you can fix. Make it simpler.
 If you add them to Blame later, you should be doing peer reviewed checkins
 to bring everyone up to the same level.
 If you are commenting code because it might be useful later. Delete it!
 That is what source control is for.

 There is no excuse for comments in code.

 Davy

 Sent from my starfleet datapad.

 On 13 sept. 2013, at 08:56, mike smith meski...@gmail.com wrote:

 Blame is a useful tool, ofttimes though, I'd call it credit.  For
 instance, you receive a crashdump from an old version, it shows you where
 the app crashed, and maybe you have a slight idea why.  Use blame on a
 current version, look at changes around the crash line and you've got a lot
 of the info you might need to generate a hotfix.  With all the caveats that
 hotfixes imply :)  If your devs are diligent linking the svn comment with a
 number from your CR system, that's another link.

 But I'd hate to see it actually present in the code.




 On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 2:50 PM, Craig van Nieuwkerk crai...@gmail.comwrote:

 A lot of source control systems give you that out of the box. I know Git
 and SVN both do with the BLAME command. I wouldn't want the comments
 scattered throughout the code.


 On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 2:45 PM, anthonyatsmall...@mail.com wrote:

 Anyone suggest a method to autmaticlly comment code when lines have
 changed?  Would be great to be able to see who changed what when viewing
 the code.

 ** **

 At the moment,, we write comments like //xxMOD 12AUG13   XX=PROGRAMMER
 INITIALS

 ** **

 WE use TFS but we like to write comments in code sometimes.  Any
 extensions able to do this?

 ** **

 Anthony

 Melbourne StuffUps…learn from others, share with others!

 http://www.meetup.com/Melbourne-Ideas-Incubator-Stuffups-Failed-Startups/
 



 --
 NOTICE : The information contained in this electronic mail message is
 privileged and confidential, and is intended only for use of the addressee.
 If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any
 disclosure, reproduction, distribution or other use of this communication
 is strictly prohibited.
 If you have received this communication in error, please notify the
 sender by reply transmission and delete the message without copying or
 disclosing it. (*13POrtC*)

 ---
 

 ** **





 --
 Meski

http://courteous.ly/aAOZcv

 Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. Sure,
 you'll get it, but it's going to be rough - Adam Hills

Re: Process.Start Stuck

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

It was Saturday night mate .. I was dusting off some beers and dumping some
pizza down my throat.
The I'll pass it to another team member and let them re-build it worked
better :)


On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 8:17 PM, Wallace Turner wallace.tur...@gmail.comwrote:

 dust off windbg, or open dump in vs2010 if .net4 to see what that thread
 is doing.


 On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 9:33 AM, Corneliu I. Tusnea corne...@acorns.com.au
  wrote:

 Existing Logging left and right of the Process.Start :)


 On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 10:31 PM, Wallace Turner wallace.tur...@gmail.com
  wrote:

  this stopped working and the Process.Start call blocks without ever
 returning.

 how did you verify this?


 On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 4:27 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea 
 corne...@acorns.com.au wrote:

 No, the process never starts. We did a new release from another PC
 (which we expect to be identical) and the process does not get stuck and
 everything works as expected. doh :(


 On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Wallace Turner 
 wallace.tur...@gmail.com wrote:

 is the process you're starting still running ie can u see it in task
 manager


 On Sat, Sep 7, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea 
 corne...@acorns.com.au wrote:

 Hi,

 I have a website that is running some background tasks as separate
 executables with Process.Start.
 This has been working like this for a long time. However recently on
 one of the servers this stopped working and the Process.Start call blocks
 without ever returning.
 There is no exception there is nothing in the event logs.
 The user running the app pool has rights to the folder and can
 execute the process correctly (i tried this with Run As on behalf of the
 app pool user and it works).

 Thoughts? I really didn't feel like doing some production debugging
 on Saturday night ... so maybe someone has a brilliant idea.

 Regarding code, it's just the most basic Process.Start possible:
 var processStartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo(Executable, arguments)
 {
 CreateNoWindow = true,
  WorkingDirectory = Folder,
 UseShellExecute = true,
 };

 var process = new Process
 {
 StartInfo = processStartInfo,
 EnableRaisingEvents = true
  };
 process.Exited += process_Exited;
 process.Start();

 Thanks,
 Corneliu.

Re: Process.Start Stuck

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

No, the process never starts. We did a new release from another PC (which
we expect to be identical) and the process does not get stuck and
everything works as expected. doh :(


On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Wallace Turner wallace.tur...@gmail.comwrote:

 is the process you're starting still running ie can u see it in task
 manager


 On Sat, Sep 7, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea corne...@acorns.com.au
  wrote:

 Hi,

 I have a website that is running some background tasks as separate
 executables with Process.Start.
 This has been working like this for a long time. However recently on one
 of the servers this stopped working and the Process.Start call blocks
 without ever returning.
 There is no exception there is nothing in the event logs.
 The user running the app pool has rights to the folder and can execute
 the process correctly (i tried this with Run As on behalf of the app pool
 user and it works).

 Thoughts? I really didn't feel like doing some production debugging on
 Saturday night ... so maybe someone has a brilliant idea.

 Regarding code, it's just the most basic Process.Start possible:
 var processStartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo(Executable, arguments)
 {
 CreateNoWindow = true,
  WorkingDirectory = Folder,
 UseShellExecute = true,
 };

 var process = new Process
 {
 StartInfo = processStartInfo,
 EnableRaisingEvents = true
  };
 process.Exited += process_Exited;
 process.Start();

 Thanks,
 Corneliu.

Re: Process.Start Stuck

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Existing Logging left and right of the Process.Start :)


On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 10:31 PM, Wallace Turner wallace.tur...@gmail.comwrote:

  this stopped working and the Process.Start call blocks without ever
 returning.

 how did you verify this?


 On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 4:27 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea corne...@acorns.com.au
  wrote:

 No, the process never starts. We did a new release from another PC (which
 we expect to be identical) and the process does not get stuck and
 everything works as expected. doh :(


 On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Wallace Turner 
 wallace.tur...@gmail.comwrote:

 is the process you're starting still running ie can u see it in task
 manager


 On Sat, Sep 7, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea 
 corne...@acorns.com.au wrote:

 Hi,

 I have a website that is running some background tasks as separate
 executables with Process.Start.
 This has been working like this for a long time. However recently on
 one of the servers this stopped working and the Process.Start call blocks
 without ever returning.
 There is no exception there is nothing in the event logs.
 The user running the app pool has rights to the folder and can execute
 the process correctly (i tried this with Run As on behalf of the app pool
 user and it works).

 Thoughts? I really didn't feel like doing some production debugging on
 Saturday night ... so maybe someone has a brilliant idea.

 Regarding code, it's just the most basic Process.Start possible:
 var processStartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo(Executable, arguments)
 {
 CreateNoWindow = true,
  WorkingDirectory = Folder,
 UseShellExecute = true,
 };

 var process = new Process
 {
 StartInfo = processStartInfo,
 EnableRaisingEvents = true
  };
 process.Exited += process_Exited;
 process.Start();

 Thanks,
 Corneliu.

Re: [OT] Surface Pro 2

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

How is the Helix?


On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 9:01 PM, Ken Schaefer k...@adopenstatic.com wrote:

  I replace my Surface Pro with a Lenovo Helix. However the person that
 has the Surface now loves it. They do a lot of PDF and Word annotations,
 and find the ability to just scribble notes, circle things etc. really
 handy. Of course, you don’t need a Surface to do that, but if that’s the
 main thing you use a device for, then I can see how it’d be useful.

 ** **

 Cheers

 Ken

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Scott Barnes
 *Sent:* Thursday, 5 September 2013 7:43 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: [OT] Surface Pro 2

 ** **

 When Microsoft sent me the Surface Pro I was pretty excited to use it, but
 after a week or so I pretty much stopped using it given the whole usage of
 it just didn't feel comfortable (heavy, got warm often, stylus was
 constantly being lost etc etc). I then gave it to my a co-worker to use
 instead thinking maybe I'm just to jaded about it all. He then pretty much
 arrived at the same conclusion so he then gave it to our Manager ...and
 yes, he ditched as well and then gave it to one of his peers and so far
 that guy's about to ditch it as well. ..so it's slowly making the rounds at
 work and so far it hasn't found a home as yet (I keep waiting for that
 person to say this is awesome so i can then pounce on them, open a
 notepad  pen and get them to tell me why etc - professional curiosity).

 I was hoping the next generation would try something different to
 stimulate a re-up or revisit but if they are just making iPad like
 adjustments to the specs then its kind of a weird place to occupy for them
 given its success today?

 


 

 ---
 Regards,
 Scott Barnes
 http://www.riagenic.com

 ** **

 On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 5:39 PM, Ian Thomas il.tho...@iinet.net.au wrote:
 

  Yes, it does seem a Surface-killer – more options (storage, RAM), enough
 ports. We await pricing. 

 I was impressed by recently-announced Lenovo T440 and T240 series
 ultrabooks. 2 batteries, up to 17 hours – a sensible counter to tablets. *
 ***

  
  --

 Ian Thomas
 Victoria Park, Western Australia

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Ken Schaefer
 *Sent:* Thursday, September 05, 2013 3:23 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* RE: [OT] Surface Pro 2 

  

 There’s also this just-announced competitor from Sony:

 http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/04/sony-vaio-tap-11-hands-on/

  

 Cheers

 Ken

  

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [
 mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On
 Behalf Of *Ian Thomas
 *Sent:* Thursday, 5 September 2013 5:14 PM
 *To:* ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com
 *Subject:* [OT] Surface Pro 2 

  

 *Surface Pro 2 ready to go with an adjustable kickstand and improved
 battery life*

 Basically the original Surface Pro is an ultrabook with optional keyboard.
 Now it's getting more RAM, and the (Intel) Haswell chips, so performance
 and battery life should be greatly improved. The 
 Vergehttp://www.theverge.com/2013/9/4/4694838/surface-pro-2-adjustable-kickstand-haswell-better-battery-life
 

  
  --

 Ian Thomas
 Victoria Park, Western Australia

  ** **

Re: [OT] Windows Server 2012

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

I'm ok with it. Works quite nicely on my servers and I have heaps of them
but no production on HyperV, only staging and only remote desktop which
works ok.
My main issue is that RPD keeps dropping out if I do nothing. If I use it
it's all good and fast but if I leave it open for 3-4minutes it's dead and
I have to reconnect


On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 11:19 AM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Folks, does anyone else think that Windows 2012 Server is really weird? I
 was playing with it last night for the first serious time and think it's
 like a crippled blend of bits of other versions of Windows. I've got it
 running inside Hyper-V where it boots to the desktop and you can barely do
 anything there except run Server Manager. I can't use the Windows key (due
 to Hyper-V) to get to the Start screen or show the Windows+X fake menu, so
 after booting I'm bogged at the desktop and can't do anything. I have to go
 full-screen to enable the Windows key and navigate around (which is a
 nuisance).

 From inside Server manager you can Click Manage and Tools to open many
 Admin tools, but not the familiar Control Panel apps. Even Server Manager
 is a weird app unlike other admin tools, and it's so hard to scroll around
 it and find things.

 Is anyone actually using Windows 2012 Server in anger? It doesn't seem to
 fit in anywhere, like a hallucination that was released by accident.

 Greg K

Re: decimal.ToString() (JSON Serialization)

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Yes, that's my issue. It seems that if you somehow tell is there are
multiple zeros is keeps than and displays them during the .ToString().
This is what I ended up doing:
private class JsonTextWriterOptimized : JsonTextWriter
{
public JsonTextWriterOptimized(TextWriter textWriter)
: base(textWriter)
{
}

public override void WriteValue(decimal value)
{
// we really really really want the value to be serialized as
0. not 0.00 or 0.!
//This is very important for all our hash calculations
*value = Math.Round(value, 4);   *
* value = Math.Roundvalue+0.1M)/1)*1)-0.1M, 4); //
divide first to force the appearance of 4 decimals*
base.WriteValue(value);
}
}
The I use this writer during the serialization.

That will make 123.12  123.1200 and even 100 to 100. :)



On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 5:34 PM, Mark Hurd markeh...@gmail.com wrote:

 Note that, obviously, one of Decimal's claims to fame is that it
 considers trailing zeros as significant, so serializing /should/
 record those details.

 If you want to adjust that, use Decimal.Round(value, 2), but note that
 this does not add trailing zeros, only removes extras.

 --
 Regards,
 Mark Hurd, B.Sc.(Ma.)(Hons.)


 On 11 August 2013 14:32, Corneliu I. Tusnea corne...@acorns.com.au
 wrote:
  Hi,
 
  Anyone working today?
 
  How can I force the NewtonSoft Json Serializer to serialize two decimals
 the
  same way? decimal a = 1234.1200M; decimal b = 1234.12M;
 
  var sa = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(new { value = a });
  var sb = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(new {value = b});
  Console.WriteLine(sa);
  Console.WriteLine(sb);
 
  Results are: {value:1234.1200} {value:1234.12}
 
  How can I force it to serialize them both with 4 decimals so the results
 are
  identical?
 
  Even simpler, ignoring the serializer, how can I make sa.ToString() ==
  sb.ToString() ?
  The Json Serializer is only doing a simple .ToString() behind the scenes.
 
  Regards,
  Corneliu
 

Re: decimal.ToString() (JSON Serialization)

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Greg,

That still does not make it easy to use with the JSON serializer where my
main issue is.
Here is an solution I found to work reliably across any value I throw at it.
private class JsonTextWriterOptimized : JsonTextWriter
{
public JsonTextWriterOptimized(TextWriter textWriter)
: base(textWriter)
{
}
public override void WriteValue(decimal value)
{
// we really really really want the value to be serialized as
0. not 0.00 or 0.!
value = Math.Round(value, 4);
// divide first to force the appearance of 4 decimals
value = Math.Roundvalue+0.1M)/1)*1)-0.1M, 4);
base.WriteValue(value);
}
}

Then use the custom writer:

var jsonSerializer = Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer.Create();
var sb = new StringBuilder(256);
var sw = new StringWriter(sb, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
using (var jsonWriter = new JsonTextWriterOptimized(sw))
{
jsonWriter.Formatting = Formatting.None;
jsonSerializer.Serialize(jsonWriter, instance);
}






On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 1:38 AM, Greg Harris harris.gre...@gmail.comwrote:

 I would have thought that
 ? ((decimal)123.45).ToString(0.)
 123.4500
 would be cheaper faster more understandable?

 On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 6:57 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea 
 corne...@acorns.com.au wrote:

 Yes, that's my issue. It seems that if you somehow tell is there are
 multiple zeros is keeps than and displays them during the .ToString().
 This is what I ended up doing:
 private class JsonTextWriterOptimized : JsonTextWriter
 {
 public JsonTextWriterOptimized(TextWriter textWriter)
 : base(textWriter)
 {
  }

 public override void WriteValue(decimal value)
 {
  // we really really really want the value to be serialized as
 0. not 0.00 or 0.!
 //This is very important for all our hash calculations
  *value = Math.Round(value, 4);   *
 * value = Math.Roundvalue+0.1M)/1)*1)-0.1M, 4); //
 divide first to force the appearance of 4 decimals*
  base.WriteValue(value);
 }
 }
 The I use this writer during the serialization.

 That will make 123.12  123.1200 and even 100 to 100. :)



 On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 5:34 PM, Mark Hurd markeh...@gmail.com wrote:

 Note that, obviously, one of Decimal's claims to fame is that it
 considers trailing zeros as significant, so serializing /should/
 record those details.

 If you want to adjust that, use Decimal.Round(value, 2), but note that
 this does not add trailing zeros, only removes extras.

 --
 Regards,
 Mark Hurd, B.Sc.(Ma.)(Hons.)


 On 11 August 2013 14:32, Corneliu I. Tusnea corne...@acorns.com.au
 wrote:
  Hi,
 
  Anyone working today?
 
  How can I force the NewtonSoft Json Serializer to serialize two
 decimals the
  same way? decimal a = 1234.1200M; decimal b = 1234.12M;
 
  var sa = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(new { value = a });
  var sb = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(new {value = b});
  Console.WriteLine(sa);
  Console.WriteLine(sb);
 
  Results are: {value:1234.1200} {value:1234.12}
 
  How can I force it to serialize them both with 4 decimals so the
 results are
  identical?
 
  Even simpler, ignoring the serializer, how can I make sa.ToString() ==
  sb.ToString() ?
  The Json Serializer is only doing a simple .ToString() behind the
 scenes.
 
  Regards,
  Corneliu
 

Re: Serializing large numbers of entities

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Have you had a look at ProtoBuffers what Wal recommended?
The payload is about 30% smaller and few times faster.
There is a SL implementation as well:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/73901/Silverlight-Binary-Serialization-using-Protobuf-ne




On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 6:23 PM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Folks, I think I've found a coding pattern that is quite easy for
 transferring large numbers of entity classes over the wire in one go. The
 entities I'm talking about here were generated by an EDMX, so I'm not
 free to edit or annotate them with things to assist serialization. Also
 remember that Silverlight is one of the clients.

 The XmlSerializer fails to serialize entity collections due to the
 ICollection navigation properties, and I don't think there is an equivalent
 to deserialize on the SL client side. This sadly means that XML is not a
 viable option.

 Json round-tripping is possible on all ends, and the serializer is
 surprisingly smart, taking all the classes and property types I've thrown
 at it so far. So I have decided for now that Json is my way to go, like
 this:

 var ser = new DataContractJsonSerializer(typeof(T[]));
 ser.WriteObject(stream, items);

 You can turn the stream into a string or deflate the buffer (as I do) to
 send to clients. Just reverse the process with an inflate and
 ser.ReadObject on the clients and you get your array back The Json
 serializer does a lot of the hard work. The total code is quite small,
 general purpose and it's all built-in to the framework (oops, except the
 optional deflate processing which I did with Ionic.Zlib which has SL
 support and is pretty simple).

 NOTE: This Json pattern is great when the total blob you're sending is
 reasonably sized for a single request, which is ~600KB in my case for ~6500
 objects. If sizes blow up much more then it's back to background chunking
 or paging or async cleverness like the Google search suggestions (how do
 they do that so fast?)

 Greg K

Re: FW: 240GB SSD?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Good point. I'll do that right now.
I've just finished installing Windows 8: 6m01s from Install to Welcome
to Windows. I'm impressed.


On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 3:50 PM, GregAtGregLowDotCom g...@greglow.comwrote:

 One hint though Corneliu: if you bought one locally, it mightn’t have the
 latest firmware. I’d update that before I got too carried away.

 ** **

 Regards,

 ** **

 Greg

 ** **

 Dr Greg Low

 ** **

 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913fax
 

 SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [
 mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On
 Behalf Of *Corneliu I. Tusnea
 *Sent:* Friday, 9 August 2013 3:39 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: 240GB SSD?

 ** **

 Thanks everyone. Got a Crucial 240Gb M500 from MWave. Good price and it's
 already getting installed :)

 ** **

 On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 9:48 AM, GregAtGregLowDotCom g...@greglow.com
 wrote:

 We’ve had a really good run with a bunch of Crucial M4s. They are up to
 960GB now and all are SATA3.

  

 Regards,

  

 Greg

  

 Dr Greg Low

  

 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913fax
 

 SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com

  

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Ken Schaefer
 *Sent:* Friday, 9 August 2013 9:01 AM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* RE: 240GB SSD?

  

 Samsung 840 (or the Pro if you can afford it and have SATA3). 

 Crucial M4 or the newer C500

  

 Where are you based? www.staticice.com.au is pretty good for locating
 stores/prices/stock. Then just pick a place close to you…

  

 Cheers

 Ken

  

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [
 mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On
 Behalf Of *Corneliu I. Tusnea
 *Sent:* Friday, 9 August 2013 8:46 AM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* 240GB SSD?

  

 Hi,

  

 What's a good, fast and reliable SSD these days? My old HDD from my home
 workstation decided it's that time of it's lifetime when work is no longer
 on its books so I need to replace it.

  

 PS Maybe also a place I could buy it and pick it up today.

  

 Thanks,

 Corneliu.

 ** **

Re: FW: 240GB SSD?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Greg,

I just checked Crucial site and there doesn't seem to be any firmware
upgrade.for M500 at all :)


On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 3:50 PM, GregAtGregLowDotCom g...@greglow.comwrote:

 One hint though Corneliu: if you bought one locally, it mightn’t have the
 latest firmware. I’d update that before I got too carried away.

 ** **

 Regards,

 ** **

 Greg

 ** **

 Dr Greg Low

 ** **

 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913fax
 

 SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [
 mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On
 Behalf Of *Corneliu I. Tusnea
 *Sent:* Friday, 9 August 2013 3:39 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: 240GB SSD?

 ** **

 Thanks everyone. Got a Crucial 240Gb M500 from MWave. Good price and it's
 already getting installed :)

 ** **

 On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 9:48 AM, GregAtGregLowDotCom g...@greglow.com
 wrote:

 We’ve had a really good run with a bunch of Crucial M4s. They are up to
 960GB now and all are SATA3.

  

 Regards,

  

 Greg

  

 Dr Greg Low

  

 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913fax
 

 SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com

  

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Ken Schaefer
 *Sent:* Friday, 9 August 2013 9:01 AM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* RE: 240GB SSD?

  

 Samsung 840 (or the Pro if you can afford it and have SATA3). 

 Crucial M4 or the newer C500

  

 Where are you based? www.staticice.com.au is pretty good for locating
 stores/prices/stock. Then just pick a place close to you…

  

 Cheers

 Ken

  

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [
 mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On
 Behalf Of *Corneliu I. Tusnea
 *Sent:* Friday, 9 August 2013 8:46 AM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* 240GB SSD?

  

 Hi,

  

 What's a good, fast and reliable SSD these days? My old HDD from my home
 workstation decided it's that time of it's lifetime when work is no longer
 on its books so I need to replace it.

  

 PS Maybe also a place I could buy it and pick it up today.

  

 Thanks,

 Corneliu.

 ** **

Network Location Private/Public

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi,

I'm trying to configure my new server and accidentally I've clicked on the
Network icon in my computer and then on Turn on Sharing :) Yup .. I did it
...
Now, I've turned off sharing however the network location for the public
network was changed from Public to Private and I can't seem to change it
back.
I've tried with gpedit.msc and Local Security Policies to set a different
location without any success.
Any changes I do seem to be ignored.

[image: Inline image 1]

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Corneliu
image.png

Share File Between Two Servers

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi

What's the best/safest way to share files between two servers.

They are in the same location and have private IPs (10.0.40) but there are
a bunch of other servers there so I don't want to open Network Discover 
Sharing.

Thanks,
Corneliu.

Re: Share File Between Two Servers

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

I don't have file sharing turned on which I think it means \C$ is not
available. I don't have a domain. They are just two servers next to each
other.


On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 12:21 AM, Stephen Price
step...@perthprojects.comwrote:

 Looks like its still there but you might have some issues with UAC if its
 turned on (reduced access for local admin accounts connecting remotely).
 I think the work around is to connect with either a domain account, or tun
 off UAC. If it causes an issue. For copying files you might be fine.


 On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 9:38 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea corne...@acorns.com.au
  wrote:

 Hi

 What's the best/safest way to share files between two servers.

 They are in the same location and have private IPs (10.0.40) but there
 are a bunch of other servers there so I don't want to open Network Discover
  Sharing.

 Thanks,
 Corneliu.

Re: Share File Between Two Servers

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

I want to use to backup various files between servers so I'd like to have
some type of security. I found UFTP
http://uftp-multicast.sourceforge.netwhich is using multicasting and
it's secure and looks very promising,
except the fact that it's all command line :)


On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 1:11 PM, Nathan Chere nathan.ch...@saiglobal.comwrote:

  How many files are we talking?

 If it’s a relatively small volume (ie a few Gb max) and they’re not all
 over the place throughout the file system you could try creating a free
 Dropbox/Sugarsync/etc account, install on both machines, ….?, and profit.*
 ***

 ** **

 Cheers,

 *Nathan Chere - **Software Developer (.NET)*

 *SAI Global** Property | *www.saiglobal.com/property* ***

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Stephen Price
 *Sent:* Saturday, 10 August 2013 1:01 PM

 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: Share File Between Two Servers

 ** **

 I used this program once at a LAN party, peer to peer file leeching...

 ** **

 I did a quick search and found this. http://www.d-lan.net/

 I don't recall if that was the actual program or not but the name seems
 familiar. If this one doesn't do it, you might find one similar that does
 if you search for similar...

 ** **

 On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 10:47 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea 
 corne...@acorns.com.au wrote:

  I don't have file sharing turned on which I think it means \C$ is not
 available. I don't have a domain. They are just two servers next to each
 other.

 ** **

 On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 12:21 AM, Stephen Price step...@perthprojects.com
 wrote:

  Looks like its still there but you might have some issues with UAC if
 its turned on (reduced access for local admin accounts connecting
 remotely). 

 I think the work around is to connect with either a domain account, or tun
 off UAC. If it causes an issue. For copying files you might be fine.

 ** **

 On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 9:38 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea corne...@acorns.com.au
 wrote:

  Hi

 ** **

 What's the best/safest way to share files between two servers.

 ** **

 They are in the same location and have private IPs (10.0.40) but there are
 a bunch of other servers there so I don't want to open Network Discover 
 Sharing.

 ** **

 Thanks,

 Corneliu.

 ** **

   ** **

  ** **

  ** **

 ** **

 Click here https://www.mailcontrol.com/sr/MZbqvYs5QwJvpeaetUwhCQ== to
 report this email as spam.


 This message has been scanned for malware by Websense. www.websense.com

Re: Share File Between Two Servers

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Just a quick update.

I found Bittorrent Sync:
http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync/get-started.html#joinFolder

And it seems to work very well.
1. Each shared folder has a unique secret/key and the other party has to
know it to get access to it.
2. Each shared folder can be configured to only be synced with specific
hosts (you can even if it ip/port of the other server)
3. You can disable relay or tracking servers completly so you are not
connected to anything (except your configured ports).
4. It's quite fast. It's now doing 1Mb/second between my hosts which I'm
very happy with.
5. All transfer has preference to be done over LAN not over the net.
6. It has a .Ignore so you can set various ignore file rules
7. You can synchronize any folders. No need to add stuff to a standard
folder like DropBox.
8. It's FREE :)

I think this is a winner.



On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 1:58 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea
corne...@acorns.com.auwrote:

 I want to use to backup various files between servers so I'd like to have
 some type of security. I found UFTP 
 http://uftp-multicast.sourceforge.netwhich is using multicasting and it's 
 secure and looks very promising,
 except the fact that it's all command line :)


 On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 1:11 PM, Nathan Chere 
 nathan.ch...@saiglobal.comwrote:

  How many files are we talking?

 If it’s a relatively small volume (ie a few Gb max) and they’re not all
 over the place throughout the file system you could try creating a free
 Dropbox/Sugarsync/etc account, install on both machines, ….?, and profit.
 

 ** **

 Cheers,

 *Nathan Chere - **Software Developer (.NET)*

 *SAI Global** Property | *www.saiglobal.com/property* ***

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Stephen Price
 *Sent:* Saturday, 10 August 2013 1:01 PM

 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: Share File Between Two Servers

 ** **

 I used this program once at a LAN party, peer to peer file leeching...***
 *

 ** **

 I did a quick search and found this. http://www.d-lan.net/

 I don't recall if that was the actual program or not but the name seems
 familiar. If this one doesn't do it, you might find one similar that does
 if you search for similar...

 ** **

 On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 10:47 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea 
 corne...@acorns.com.au wrote:

  I don't have file sharing turned on which I think it means \C$ is not
 available. I don't have a domain. They are just two servers next to each
 other.

 ** **

 On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 12:21 AM, Stephen Price 
 step...@perthprojects.com wrote:

  Looks like its still there but you might have some issues with UAC if
 its turned on (reduced access for local admin accounts connecting
 remotely). 

 I think the work around is to connect with either a domain account, or
 tun off UAC. If it causes an issue. For copying files you might be fine.*
 ***

 ** **

 On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 9:38 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea 
 corne...@acorns.com.au wrote:

  Hi

 ** **

 What's the best/safest way to share files between two servers.

 ** **

 They are in the same location and have private IPs (10.0.40) but there
 are a bunch of other servers there so I don't want to open Network Discover
  Sharing.

 ** **

 Thanks,

 Corneliu.

 ** **

   ** **

  ** **

  ** **

 ** **

 Click here https://www.mailcontrol.com/sr/MZbqvYs5QwJvpeaetUwhCQ== to
 report this email as spam.


 This message has been scanned for malware by Websense. www.websense.com

240GB SSD?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi,

What's a good, fast and reliable SSD these days? My old HDD from my home
workstation decided it's that time of it's lifetime when work is no longer
on its books so I need to replace it.

PS Maybe also a place I could buy it and pick it up today.

Thanks,
Corneliu.

Re: 240GB SSD?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Thanks everyone. Got a Crucial 240Gb M500 from MWave. Good price and it's
already getting installed :)


On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 9:48 AM, GregAtGregLowDotCom g...@greglow.comwrote:

 We’ve had a really good run with a bunch of Crucial M4s. They are up to
 960GB now and all are SATA3.

 ** **

 Regards,

 ** **

 Greg

 ** **

 Dr Greg Low

 ** **

 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913fax
 

 SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Ken Schaefer
 *Sent:* Friday, 9 August 2013 9:01 AM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* RE: 240GB SSD?

 ** **

 Samsung 840 (or the Pro if you can afford it and have SATA3). 

 Crucial M4 or the newer C500

 ** **

 Where are you based? www.staticice.com.au is pretty good for locating
 stores/prices/stock. Then just pick a place close to you…

 ** **

 Cheers

 Ken

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [
 mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On
 Behalf Of *Corneliu I. Tusnea
 *Sent:* Friday, 9 August 2013 8:46 AM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* 240GB SSD?

 ** **

 Hi,

 ** **

 What's a good, fast and reliable SSD these days? My old HDD from my home
 workstation decided it's that time of it's lifetime when work is no longer
 on its books so I need to replace it.

 ** **

 PS Maybe also a place I could buy it and pick it up today.

 ** **

 Thanks,

 Corneliu.

Server Application Monitoring

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi,

I'm looking for some recommendations for a system that does Server 
Application Monitoring for our servers.

I've tried NewRelic and while it's an impressive product they don't have
very good support for custom metrics and instrumentation. I'd like to be
able to publish my own metrics that should be displayed in line with the
metrics they already collect.
For example they have SQL Transactions, I'd like to add my own metric of
number of [].

I've tried Datadog and while the metrics you can have are very configurable
and you can log a lot of custom metrics and combine them in all types of
graphs as you like (very cool) they have very basic support for .Net and
SQL server compared to NewRelic.

I've tried GraphData and their default graphs/monitoring is nice but again,
only basic support for custom metrics.

I've tried CooperEgg and was .. ok 

I've checked http://www.foglight-on-demand.com/ (now owned by Dell). It
looks exactly like what I want but it only seems to work for Azure :(

Any other ideas? There has to be some system to help me monitor the health
of my app.

Thanks,
Corneliu.

Re: Server Application Monitoring

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

David,

Thanks for the reference. I'll check

1. I don't have a server to allocate for this. My servers are all in the
cloud in various locations. I really want a service not a product :)
2. I don't see anything in their list specific to .Net. NewRelic has very
good profiling for .Net



On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 12:46 PM, David Connors da...@connors.com wrote:

 PRTG is the go. It was recommended to me by someone on this list (thanks!)
 and it is boss. We use it to monitor s truck load of stuff and it is very
 flexible. Some parts of it that are boss:

- It is entirely agent based. Even in a single server install it uses
a local probe to do the polls. This is really critical as it lets us deal
with our complex network topology and customer sites by dropping agents on
their private networks. They talk back to our central management station.
- It has a bucket load of checks it can perform.
- It has some really smart ones like being able to pull values from
XML docs via REST and then graph them/set up alarms on them. We use this at
one of my startups to chart internal platform metrics without having to
stuff around putting stuff in Windows perfmon etc.
- It scales well. We use it to do TechEd - thousands of sensors across
the network - and it handles it no problems together with all of our normal
load.

 David.


 David Connors
 da...@connors.com | M +61 417 189 363
 Download my v-card: https://www.codify.com/cards/davidconnors
 Follow me on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/davidconnors
 Connect with me on LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/davidjohnconnors


 On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 12:09 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea 
 corne...@acorns.com.au wrote:

 Hi,

 I'm looking for some recommendations for a system that does Server 
 Application Monitoring for our servers.

 I've tried NewRelic and while it's an impressive product they don't have
 very good support for custom metrics and instrumentation. I'd like to be
 able to publish my own metrics that should be displayed in line with the
 metrics they already collect.
 For example they have SQL Transactions, I'd like to add my own metric of
 number of [].

 I've tried Datadog and while the metrics you can have are very
 configurable and you can log a lot of custom metrics and combine them in
 all types of graphs as you like (very cool) they have very basic support
 for .Net and SQL server compared to NewRelic.

 I've tried GraphData and their default graphs/monitoring is nice but
 again, only basic support for custom metrics.

 I've tried CooperEgg and was .. ok 

 I've checked http://www.foglight-on-demand.com/ (now owned by Dell). It
 looks exactly like what I want but it only seems to work for Azure :(

 Any other ideas? There has to be some system to help me monitor the
 health of my app.

 Thanks,
 Corneliu.

Re: Livefan F2 - Windows 8 Tablet?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Surface Pro: No 3G
Samsung: Oh my, how I dislike Samsung products. Sorry
Asus: Intel Atom?


On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 6:16 PM, Arjang Assadi arjang.ass...@gmail.comwrote:

 Why not go with a Surface Pro instead? or Samsung W8 Tablet, or even ASUS
 W8 Tablet?

 Regards

 Arjang


 On 29 July 2013 18:07, Ian Thomas il.tho...@iinet.net.au wrote:

 I was interested in this, because of the 3G - having a popup from the
 Russian Federation puts me off, though! 

 (the new Nexus 7 is probably just as attractive?)

 Ian Thomas

 Victoria Park, Western Australia

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Corneliu I. Tusnea
 *Sent:* Monday, 29 July 2013 1:29 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Livefan F2 - Windows 8 Tablet?

 ** **

 Hi,

 ** **

 Anyone tried one of these Chinese W8 tables: Livefan F2?


 http://www.aliexpress.com/item/EMS-Shipping-wifi-3G-Windows-8-ATom-N2600-dual-core-1-6GHz-2G-RAM-32G-SSD/575960908.html
 

 ** **

 Core i5, 4Gb RAM, 128Gb SSD, 3G? $999?

 It's not Surface but has 3G. 

 ** **

 Thoughts?

 Corneliu

Re: Invitation to connect on LinkedIn

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Isn't this funny? :) Who will accept his request on our behalf?


On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 7:25 AM, Tejas Goradia byteb...@gmail.com wrote:


   [image: LinkedIn]




   * From Tejas Goradia *

 Microsoft Businesss Intelligence Consultant at DWS
 Melbourne Area, Australia








 ozDotNet,

 I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

 - Tejas




   Confirm that you know Tejas
 https://www.linkedin.com/e/-cinknh-hjorbuah-6y/isd/15335023803/p4Grcq37/?hs=falsetok=0dfuKa-0h5IlQ1



  You are receiving Invitation to Connect emails. 
 Unsubscribehttp://www.linkedin.com/e/-cinknh-hjorbuah-6y/ucpwVuLvTnB_64m5IAAc8uLvcwxqUDCCsU/goo/ozdotnet%40ozdotnet%2Ecom/20061/I5105272669_1/?hs=falsetok=3O19kqM515IlQ1
 © 2012, LinkedIn Corporation. 2029 Stierlin Ct. Mountain View, CA 94043,
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Livefan F2 - Windows 8 Tablet?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi,

Anyone tried one of these Chinese W8 tables: Livefan F2?
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/EMS-Shipping-wifi-3G-Windows-8-ATom-N2600-dual-core-1-6GHz-2G-RAM-32G-SSD/575960908.html

Core i5, 4Gb RAM, 128Gb SSD, 3G? $999?
It's not Surface but has 3G.

Thoughts?
Corneliu

Re: Livefan F2 - Windows 8 Tablet?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

There are few models, Atom, I3, I5, 32Gb, 64Gb, 128Gb.


On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 1:52 PM, Ken Schaefer k...@adopenstatic.com wrote:

  URL seems to suggest that it’s an Atom, but the description says i5. I’d
 clarify that.

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Corneliu I. Tusnea
 *Sent:* Monday, 29 July 2013 1:29 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Livefan F2 - Windows 8 Tablet?

 ** **

 Hi,

 ** **

 Anyone tried one of these Chinese W8 tables: Livefan F2?


 http://www.aliexpress.com/item/EMS-Shipping-wifi-3G-Windows-8-ATom-N2600-dual-core-1-6GHz-2G-RAM-32G-SSD/575960908.html
 

 ** **

 Core i5, 4Gb RAM, 128Gb SSD, 3G? $999?

 It's not Surface but has 3G. 

 ** **

 Thoughts?

 Corneliu

SQL Server Developer Edition

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi guys,

[cross post to ozDotNet and SQLDownUnder]

I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out the licenceing of SQL Server
Developer Edition.

This is straight from the SQL_Server_2012_Licensing_Reference_Guide.pdf
from Microsoft:
*Licensing SQL Server for Non-production Use*
*When using SQL Server software for development, test or demonstration
purposes, only the users are licensed*
*and there is no need for a corresponding license for the actual server
systems running SQL Server software in*
*this case.*
*[...]*
*
*
Now, can I assign such a licence to a public test/utc environment we use to
test the application before going into production. The application is a
website accessible over the internet but will NOT be used for any
production use. It's purely for testing, staging, utc and performance
testing.

Thanks,
Corneliu

Re: Parallet.ForEach

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

David/Greg,

Ihe IEnumerable is not an issue with Parallel.ForEach. The PFX library will
look for few other interfaces for your object and decide the partitioning
strategy based on that.
There are multiple paritioners that will be picked up based on your source:
Range (used for IList), Chunk (used for IEnumerable - it's slow as it has
to wait for each object to partition), Stripe (optional), Hash (for joins).
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pfxteam/archive/2007/12/02/6558579.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pfxteam/archive/2011/11/11/10235999.aspx

You can write your own custom partitioners if you know how the data is
structured and can optimize the partition allocation.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd560853.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd997411.aspx






On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 3:46 PM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

  1. Don't use IEnumerable and Parallel.ForEach, ListT is much faster.


 I don't have the bigger picture here, but IEnumerable and Parallel.ForEach
 go together like pancakes and ice cream. I'm even getting into the habit
 these days of making public methods that return collections prefer to
 return IEnumerableT. This means I have the freedom to consume them in
 parallel processing.

 Albahari's book C# in a Nutshell discusses parallel processing in general
 in chapter 23, and the Parallel class in particular over 7 dense pages.
 Richter covers the general subject in chapter 26 with 5 pages on Parallel.
 I'm pretty sure all your issues will be clarified in these pages and
 they're a really good read.

 Cheers,
 Greg

Re: Parallet.ForEach

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Here is a very good (but very old) presentation about the PFX:
http://blogesh.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/getting-the-most-out-of-pfx.pptx
Slide 33 has the partitioning details.


On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 4:45 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea
corne...@acorns.com.auwrote:

 David/Greg,

 Ihe IEnumerable is not an issue with Parallel.ForEach. The PFX library
 will look for few other interfaces for your object and decide the
 partitioning strategy based on that.
 There are multiple paritioners that will be picked up based on your source:
 Range (used for IList), Chunk (used for IEnumerable - it's slow as it has
 to wait for each object to partition), Stripe (optional), Hash (for joins).
 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pfxteam/archive/2007/12/02/6558579.aspx
 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pfxteam/archive/2011/11/11/10235999.aspx

 You can write your own custom partitioners if you know how the data is
 structured and can optimize the partition allocation.
 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd560853.aspx
 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd997411.aspx






 On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 3:46 PM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

  1. Don't use IEnumerable and Parallel.ForEach, ListT is much faster.


 I don't have the bigger picture here, but IEnumerable and
 Parallel.ForEach go together like pancakes and ice cream. I'm even getting
 into the habit these days of making public methods that return collections
 prefer to return IEnumerableT. This means I have the freedom to consume
 them in parallel processing.

 Albahari's book C# in a Nutshell discusses parallel processing in general
 in chapter 23, and the Parallel class in particular over 7 dense pages.
 Richter covers the general subject in chapter 26 with 5 pages on Parallel.
 I'm pretty sure all your issues will be clarified in these pages and
 they're a really good read.

 Cheers,
 Greg

Re: Message Queing

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

I have SQL in the loop but I'd like to avoid it this time :) Sorry Greg.


On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 5:04 PM, Dave Walker rangitat...@gmail.com wrote:

 +1 for rabbit we have a massive investment in it and works great.
 On 21 Jun 2013 03:00, Nathan Chere nathan.ch...@saiglobal.com wrote:

  RabbitMQ works great.

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Corneliu I. Tusnea
 *Sent:* Friday, 21 June 2013 11:48 AM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Message Queing

 ** **

 Hi,

 ** **

 Anyone can recommend a good message queuing system that works well with
 .Net?

 I'm only aware of ActiveMQ and MSMQ. I know ActiveMQ is Java based and I
 want to stay away from MSMQ as previous experiences were not that positive.
 

 ** **

 Azure is not an option as I need this to run internally.

 ** **

 Thanks,

 Corneliu.

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 Click here https://www.mailcontrol.com/sr/MZbqvYs5QwJvpeaetUwhCQ== to
 report this email as spam.


 This message has been scanned for malware by Websense. www.websense.com

Re: Site for suggestions to Surface Hardware (like Connect)?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Why would you need an insert key?
You can either Remap the Resharper Shortcut (ReSharper_Generate is the name
of the command)
Or you can remap a key from the keyboard using SharpKeys (free via
Codeplex) http://sharpkeys.codeplex.com/


On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 10:00 AM, Neil Young neildavidyo...@gmail.comwrote:

 Hi Everyone,

 Slightly off topic (but I am developing a Windows 8 Store App on the
 surface Pro - so for me quite on topic).

 Does anyone know if there is an official site like Connect for the Dev
 tools where we can request features etc for the Surface hardware?  I had a
 quick web search and other than the forums that MS host for this couldn't
 see anything much.

 I finally managed to track down a type cover after I bought my surface (a
 story in itself), and was on the train this morning starting to write some
 code with it in anger and found out there is no Insert key.  Alt+Insert in
 Resharper world for me creates new files - which is very ingrained in my
 psyche these days.

 So I'm trying to put in a official request that they add this as a
 keyboard shortcut like they have for others here -
 http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/hardware-and-drivers/touch-cover-typing

 Thanks and have a good weeked.

 Neil.

Re: .Net based Email Newsletter

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Why build? Why not use a proper newsletter system? MailChimp or any of the
other million existing ones?
They are very good.
They can also give you some deliverability and open rate reports which can
tell you if your newsletter have any value or they are simply money spend
delivering noise.
They can also handle all the spam, take care of reputation and handle the
unsubscribe process.
And I think it's cheaper to use such a service than spend days/weeks/months
to build it :)

My 2 cents.


On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 10:10 AM, ifum...@gmail.com wrote:

 We used telerik editor to achieve this...and you could use something like
 mailbee to do the bulk email

 ** **

 Anthony

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Iain Carlin
 *Sent:* Thursday, 13 June 2013 10:02 AM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* .Net based Email Newsletter

 ** **

 G'day all,

 We're looking for a solution to create a HTML newsletter with images and
 text that can be bulk emailed via SMTP to a list sourced from our 'CRM'.

 We'd prefer something .Net based as that fits with everything else we have.

 Has anyone got any recommendations?

 Cheers,

 Iain

Re: .Net based Email Newsletter

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Also,
Depending on what CRM system you have you might be able to integrate it
with MailChimp in no time.
Mailchimp has heaps of connectors to the most popular CRM systems either
directly or through partners shamelesspluglike www.OneSaas.com - my own
product/shamelessplug.

Re: Lightweight database

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

I'm using siaqodb (http://siaqodb.com/) which is a lightweight
.Net object database and I'm very happy with it.
Very fast and dead easy to use linq syntax.


On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 12:42 AM, a...@nomscon.com wrote:

 I have to admit that I have not used it. But I have been following it for
 a while and looks promising.

 Sterling NoSQL OODB for .NET 4.0
 http://sterling.codeplex.com/


 I've also just came across UnQLite, an embedded NoSQL (Key/Value store and
 Document-store) database engine, http://www.unqlite.org/ that looks
 interesting, but doesn't seem to have managed code wrappers yet. Reminds me
 of SQLite, but you know, without the SQL and BSD 2-clause instead of Public
 Domain ;)


 - Original Message -
 Subject: Lightweight database
 From: Greg Keogh g...@mira.net
 Date: 6/3/13 10:24 pm
 To: ozDotNet ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com

 Folks, an app has just grown with a new feature that needs to store  of
 users, jobs and reports and the joins between them, If I was using
 SQLite it would be 3 tables with joins. However, rather than use SQLite
 this time I'd like to consider an alternative that's even more lightweight
 to setup and use. The app does not currently use any database technology
 and the guys managing the project are actually scared of them.

 Can anyone recommend an in-process database (not necessarily relational!)
 that is has a friendly managed API, small footprint, not too
 complicated and is easy to get going? I know this is a lot to ask, but
 there may be some NoSQL options around that I'm not aware of. The most
 important issues for me are: (1) *Minimal dependencies* (2) *Simple
 managed API*.

 I'm running a few web searches now for such things, and I can see Redis,
 Mongo, Couch, Raven, db4o, Cassandra, Eloquera, Lucene, and the list goes
 on and on. There are too many choices and it would take many days of hard
 slog to work out which one would be suitable. So perhaps someone has
 already been through this process?!

 I've been tempted many times over the last 10 years to write a pure
 managed single-file database with indexes, and nothing much else (no
 transactions, no client-server, no schemas, etc). However, I decided to
 leave it to the experts, and it looks like there are too many of them, and
 they all over-engineer their works.

 Cheers,
 Greg K

Re: Windows forgetting app passwords

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Google said they do:
http://www.google.com.au/policies/privacy/frameworks/
*As described in our Safe Harbor
certificationhttp://safeharbor.export.gov/companyinfo.aspx?id=16626,
we comply with the US-EU Safe Harbor Framework and the US-Swiss Safe Harbor
Framework as set forth by the US Department of Commerce regarding the
collection, use and retention of personal information from European Union
member countries and Switzerland. Google has certified that it adheres to
the relevant Safe Harbor Privacy Principles. To learn more about the Safe
Harbor program, and to view Google’s certification, please visit the Safe
Harbor website http://export.gov/safeharbor/.*
I like the relevant in there. Not sure exactly what it means.

Other's say they don't:
http://safegov.org/2013/4/4/european-safe-harbor-non-compliance-could-have-us-consequences
 FTC enforcement can be costly, including requirements for companies to
allow independent monitoring of its privacy compliance for 20 years.  So,
connecting the dots:  EU regulators have declared Google in violation of
key privacy principles (and other cloud powerhouses are already, or soon
will be, in the EU’s sights); such companies certify compliance with these
principles in order to export data to the United States; and the EU
regulators, *at least in the case of Google, have implicitly found these
compliance certifications to be untrue.*





On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 10:40 AM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Google Drive: *They own your data*:


 This is really scary. Was someone talking about this a couple of months
 ago and pointed out that Microsoft SkyDrive has a similar policy? Is this a
 violation of International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles: US and EU
 rules about protection of personal data? Or are these vendors/facilities
 immune to this?

 All non-trivial files I put in Rackspace or SkyDrive are zipped with
 strong encryption. I am unable to do the same with my Gmail contents as I
 presume it's all stored in plaintext somewhere and they can search and
 index it. I hope they don't use, publish, distribute, etc our emails.

 Greg K

Re: 1300 Number

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Matt,

We get 30-50+ calls a day from various local/national/mobiles and even on a
plan like AllTel with free local, 5.7c long distance and 6.7 mobile (which
it's the cheapest I could find on the market) we still incur some serious
charges.
Hosting my own Asterix means I'm using my bandwidth and it all depends on
my connection to my office which I'm not very excited to do as 30% of my
team is remote (Woolongong, Rio, India, Europe).
Hosting my own Asterix in the cloud would cost me yet again few $ plus the
maintenance costs/administration costs.
If I cost my own time at just $100/h, 1h a month to maintain, install,
review, upgrade, patch, reconfigure costs me more than a cloud hosted
VirtualPBX. I'm done with self-hosting.

The reason I want everything routed through Skype at the end of the day is
because we are so spread and use so many devices that all have skype out of
the box.

Regards,
Corneliu.




On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 4:14 PM, Matt li...@icsoft.com.au wrote:

 Serious question: what reason would you not want to host your own Asterisk
 box?

 We have a 1300 number from Optus costing $24 per month (+calls) and pay
 OnTheNet (http://www.onthenet.com.au/**personal-adsl/personal-**
 prepaid-voiphttp://www.onthenet.com.au/personal-adsl/personal-prepaid-voip)
 $20 for a prepaid VOIP credit that lasts a year (or 200 local/national
 calls). Never been offline, very reliable and have POTS backup if needed).

 We use WXC (http://www.wxc.co.nz) for an NZ phone number, $15 or so per
 month. There are too many US VOIP providers to mention. I don't have a UK
 phone number so I don't know who to use there.

 We use pbxinaflash (pbxinaflash.com) Asterisk with a nice tailored
 professional Australian voice prompter that we paid $150 for and it all
 runs from a vmware image on any box (even runs on a raspberry pi if you
 want) and took about 1 hour to set up.

 HTH Matthew




 On 23/04/13 12:05, Corneliu I. Tusnea wrote:

 Hi,

 Could I get some recommendations for hosting our 1300 number?
 At the moment I'm with AllTel and their cost is quite acceptable but I'm
 thinking of finding a cheaper provider.

 PS Also, any recommendations for a VirtualPBX system? Preferably
 something cloud hosted, that can route numbers for US, AU, NZ, UK and also
 if possible work with Skype :)
 I'm testing Zaplee which I have to say it's quite nice.

 Thanks,
 Corneliu.

1300 Number

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi,

Could I get some recommendations for hosting our 1300 number?
At the moment I'm with AllTel and their cost is quite acceptable but I'm
thinking of finding a cheaper provider.

PS Also, any recommendations for a VirtualPBX system? Preferably something
cloud hosted, that can route numbers for US, AU, NZ, UK and also if
possible work with Skype :)
I'm testing Zaplee which I have to say it's quite nice.

Thanks,
Corneliu.

Commercial Source Code Licence

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi,

I have for our app few PHP plugins that we distribute that work in
combination with our application.
I need to add some licence information to these plugins but I'm not sure
what would be a valid licence to allow users to change it if they need to
make it work with our service but not redistribute it or use it for any
other purposes/apps.

The GPL/MIT/.. they all seem driven towards open-source ...

Regards,
Corneliu.

Re: MVC4 URLs

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Good question, I'm not sure :)


On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 12:18 PM, Greg Low (GregLow.com)
g...@greglow.comwrote:

 Hi Corneliu,

 ** **

 Yes, I had thought about constructing it based on the host, the protocol,
 and the action requirements. However, if the app was installed in a virtual
 directory below the root of the site, I’m presuming that wouldn’t work.***
 *

 ** **

 Regards,

 ** **

 Greg

 ** **

 Dr Greg Low

 ** **

 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913fax
 

 SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Corneliu I. Tusnea
 *Sent:* Friday, 12 April 2013 10:02 PM

 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: MVC4 URLs

 ** **

 Greg,

 ** **

 Instead of using the AbsolutUri and changing it look at the
 HttpContext.Requst.Url.Host and add the Url.Action.

 However I'd strongly recommend you look at
 HttpContext.Request.Headers[host] and take the part before the : just
 in case your side responds to various host names.

 Eg.. subdomain1.site.com and subdomain2.site.com

 ** **

 I'm sure you can push that into a nice extension method like Tony's one.**
 **

 ** **

 Regards,

 Corneliu. 

 ** **

 On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 9:26 PM, Tony McGee tmc...@pacific.net.au wrote:
 

 A problem with using string replace is that if your absolute path is /
 (site root /Home/Index), the URI gets mangled,
 i.e.  
 http:www.example.com/SomeController/SomeActionhttp://www.example.com/SomeController/SomeAction

 I'd be tempted to create an extension method on UrlHelper to hide some of
 the ugliness:

 public static class UrlHelperExtensions
 {
 public static string AbsoluteAction(this UrlHelper helper, string
 actionName, string controllerName)
 {
 string absUri =
 helper.RequestContext.HttpContext.Request.Url.AbsoluteUri;
 string urlPath =
 helper.RequestContext.HttpContext.Request.Url.PathAndQuery;
 return absUri.Substring(0, absUri.Length - urlPath.Length) +
 helper.Action(actionName, controllerName);
 }
 }

 then in your controller:

 string returnURI = Url.AbsoluteAction(SomeAction,SomeController);*
 ***




 On 12/04/2013 18:51, Greg Low (GregLow.com) wrote:

 Hi Nathan/Dave, 

  

 This seems to work but seems ugly:

  

 string returnURI =
 HttpContext.Request.Url.AbsoluteUri.Replace(HttpContext.Request.Url.AbsolutePath,)
 

 + Url.Action(SomeAction, SomeController);

  

 I need to generate it based on where the site is deployed but it needs to
 be a full URL as it’s passed to a callback function on another site.

  

 Regards,

  

 Greg

  

 Dr Greg Low

  

 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913fax
 

 SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com

  

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [
 mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On
 Behalf Of *Dave Walker
 *Sent:* Friday, 12 April 2013 5:43 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: MVC4 URLs

  

 We use a helper extension method to wrap as have configurable cdn esp. for
 images and other static resources. Was the only way we found we could do
 it. Extra complexity for us is we wrap a SquishIt bundle up as well to turn
 on/off minification and combination of files.


 On 12 Apr 2013, at 08:32, Nathan Schultz milish...@gmail.com wrote:

 Instead of using Url.Action, couldn't you just write your own a href?***
 *

  

 On 12 April 2013 11:17, Greg Low (GregLow.com) g...@greglow.com wrote:**
 **

 Hi Folks,

  

 In MVC4, in the code for a controller, what’s the best way to calculate
 the fully qualified URL for a particular action?

  

 Eg: If I use 

  

 Url.Action(“SomeAction”,”SomeController”)

  

 The intellisense for Action says “gets a fully qualified URL”. However
 what I get back is:

  

 /SomeController/SomeAction

  

 What I want is:

  

 http://www.whateversiteIhit.com/SomeController/SomeActionhttp://www.somesite.com/SomeController/SomeAction
 

  

 As I need to pass it to an external callback.

  

 What’s the best way to do that?

  

 Regards,

  

 Greg

  

 Dr Greg Low

 CEO and Principal Mentor

 *SQL Down Under*

 SQL Server MVP and Microsoft Regional Director

 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913fax
 

 Web: www.sqldownunder.com

 * *

  

  

 ** **

 ** **

Re: Open Source development and authenticode

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Comodo: $166.95
http://www.comodo.com/business-security/code-signing-certificates/code-signing.php

But I bought mine through Ksoftware which is a reseller of comodo:
http://codesigning.ksoftware.net/

$95/year ..

Corneliu.



On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 5:11 PM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 I received a free code signing certificate from Thawte a few years ago,
 valid for 2 years, valued around $600US. I can't remember all the details
 now, but there was a bit of misery involved in getting it installed and
 working and I had to make some delicate adjustments to my build processes
 to use the certificate. I remember receiving incoprehensible problems that
 drove me nearly insane (again) when importing and managing the certificate
 and using the signtool.exe utility. It was fun to see a signed app finally
 come out, but the extra work was not worth for my case where I don't
 publish my own commercial software. I publish lots of free demo apps and
 code, but there no use in signing that sort of thing, in fact you have to
 keep your certificate private and secret and not give it to other
 developers. Then the person installing the signed software has to go
 through steps (that I've forgotten) to say they trust your certficate and
 it's not a magically simple as you expect. So overall, as a single
 contractor developer, I found a real certificate is of little practical use
 and lots of suffering.

 Greg Keogh

 P.S. I just found some of my old batch files that run makecert and
 signtool. They used to work of course years ago, but now I'm getting The
 signer's certificate is not valid for signing even though it all looks
 good when viewed in certmgr.msc. Lord knows, I give up immediately as I
 have enough outstanding problems.




 On 15 April 2013 15:16, Katherine Moss katherine.m...@gordon.edu wrote:

 Hi guys,
 I've been arguing with myself about this for a while.  I'm progressing in
 my .net development learning with C#, and I'm pretty dang sure I'm going to
 be catching on soon.  I had some ideas for the open source community,
 clearly both for the experience, for the privilege of working with people
 who develop for the sheer fun of it while producing quality software at the
 same time.  And with that comes authenticode issues; where to get a
 certificate that's not $10,000.  Because I know that even in the free and
 open source world trust is still an issue, however there are no open source
 or community-based certification authorities, or at least none that offer
 code signing.  I've noticed a lot that most open source projects don't
 actually have a cert issued by a trusted publisher, and that hasn't stopped
 me from running the application (most of these have come from the CodePlex
 forge, and I cannot remember which ones they are), and I will even bravely
 add self-signed certificates to my root store for those Windows 8 Modern
 apps that people want to keep away from the Draconian, super-restricted
 environment that Microsoft's Tiled World has become.   So, is it that
 important?  I mean, how seriously do you take the warnings about
 self-signed certificates?  How worth is paying inordinate amounts of money
 for a code signing certificate in an open source project when you can
 easily make one and get your users and loyal followers to trust you
 directly instead of some ding dong head that is getting paid to say, yes,
 this software is issued and signed by so and so?  Anyway, opinions would be
 good; I'd love to hear what real developers have to say about this.

Re: Open Source development and authenticode

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Katherine,

I'm used to be pragmatic and use the technology that delivers at time the
fastest result in the shortest time. Yes, powershell would have been just
given I would have the experience. Right now all my bat does is copy few
files around and call the signtool.exe and mage.exe tool several times with
a bunch of parameters. I doubt powershell would have any added benefit or
would have made the file any shorter :)

The image was just a screenshot of the Certification Path for the
certificate:
USERTrust  COMODO Code Signing CS2  OneSaas's COMODO CA Limited ID




On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 11:16 AM, Katherine Moss
katherine.m...@gordon.eduwrote:

  Why use a bat file when you could accomplish the same thing with a
 PowerShell script or at least use the newer .cmd extension?  It’s not 2000
 anymore LOL.  And remember, you have to describe in words what an image is
 for me since I cannot see them, remember?  

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdottnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Corneliu I. Tusnea
 *Sent:* Monday, April 15, 2013 7:31 PM

 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: Open Source development and authenticode

 ** **

 You need to install an intermediary certificate on your box but not on the
 target machine. The installation is straight forward.

 This is the chain for my cert

 [image: Inline image 1]

 I think it's an easy process once you get the hang of it. I now have a
 .bat file that signs my published files. Took 1/2 day to build it but it's
 done and it works ...

 ** **

 ** **

 ** **

 On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 9:42 PM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

  Comodo: $166.95


 http://www.comodo.com/business-security/code-signing-certificates/code-signing.php
 But I bought mine through Ksoftware which is a reseller of comodo:

 http://codesigning.ksoftware.net/
 $95/year ..

   

 But did you have trouble getting the certificates recognised? I remember
 at some point I had to import some extra root certificates into Windows to
 get my Thawte Premium Server CA cert recognised, which wasted a bit of time
 and meant that other users would unpredictably have the problem.

  

 Greg K

 ** **

image001.png

Re: MVC4 URLs

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Greg,

Instead of using the AbsolutUri and changing it look at the
HttpContext.Requst.Url.Host and add the Url.Action.
However I'd strongly recommend you look at
HttpContext.Request.Headers[host] and take the part before the : just
in case your side responds to various host names.
Eg.. subdomain1.site.com and subdomain2.site.com

I'm sure you can push that into a nice extension method like Tony's one.

Regards,
Corneliu.


On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 9:26 PM, Tony McGee tmc...@pacific.net.au wrote:

  A problem with using string replace is that if your absolute path is /
 (site root /Home/Index), the URI gets mangled,
 i.e.  http:www.example.com/SomeController/SomeAction

 I'd be tempted to create an extension method on UrlHelper to hide some of
 the ugliness:

 public static class UrlHelperExtensions
 {
 public static string AbsoluteAction(this UrlHelper helper, string
 actionName, string controllerName)
 {
 string absUri =
 helper.RequestContext.HttpContext.Request.Url.AbsoluteUri;
 string urlPath =
 helper.RequestContext.HttpContext.Request.Url.PathAndQuery;
 return absUri.Substring(0, absUri.Length - urlPath.Length) +
 helper.Action(actionName, controllerName);
 }
 }

 then in your controller:

 string returnURI = Url.AbsoluteAction(SomeAction,SomeController);



 On 12/04/2013 18:51, Greg Low (GregLow.com) wrote:

  Hi Nathan/Dave, 

 ** **

 This seems to work but seems ugly:

 ** **

 string returnURI =
 HttpContext.Request.Url.AbsoluteUri.Replace(HttpContext.Request.Url.AbsolutePath,
 ) 

 + Url.Action(SomeAction, SomeController);

 ** **

 I need to generate it based on where the site is deployed but it needs to
 be a full URL as it’s passed to a callback function on another site.

 ** **

 Regards,

 ** **

 Greg

 ** **

 Dr Greg Low

 ** **

 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913fax
 

 SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [
 mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On
 Behalf Of *Dave Walker
 *Sent:* Friday, 12 April 2013 5:43 PM
 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: MVC4 URLs

 ** **

 We use a helper extension method to wrap as have configurable cdn esp. for
 images and other static resources. Was the only way we found we could do
 it. Extra complexity for us is we wrap a SquishIt bundle up as well to turn
 on/off minification and combination of files.


 On 12 Apr 2013, at 08:32, Nathan Schultz milish...@gmail.com wrote:

  Instead of using Url.Action, couldn't you just write your own a href?**
 **

 ** **

 On 12 April 2013 11:17, Greg Low (GregLow.com) g...@greglow.com wrote:**
 **

  Hi Folks,

  

 In MVC4, in the code for a controller, what’s the best way to calculate
 the fully qualified URL for a particular action?

  

 Eg: If I use 

  

 Url.Action(“SomeAction”,”SomeController”)

  

 The intellisense for Action says “gets a fully qualified URL”. However
 what I get back is:

  

 /SomeController/SomeAction

  

 What I want is:

  

 http://www.whateversiteIhit.com/SomeController/SomeActionhttp://www.somesite.com/SomeController/SomeAction
 

  

 As I need to pass it to an external callback.

  

 What’s the best way to do that?

  

 Regards,

  

 Greg

  

 Dr Greg Low

 CEO and Principal Mentor

 *SQL Down Under*

 SQL Server MVP and Microsoft Regional Director

 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 
 4913%2B61%203%208676%204913fax
 

 Web: www.sqldownunder.com

 * *

  

  ** **

Hosted/Cloud VirtualPBX that works with Skype

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi,

Anyone had any experience with any Cloud VirtualPBX service that can work
with Skype?
As skype removed the option to Transfer Calls I'm looking getting a pbx
that still works with Skype.

I've checked http://www.zaplee.com and looks very promising having all the
functionality I need and a prety good price. I might even save some good
money.

Thoughts?

Regards,
Corneliu.

Skype: Call Transfer removed?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Anyone has any idea why Microsoft decided to remove the Call Transfer
feature in Skype?

They just alienated every business customer possible and if this just a
move to force us to move to Lync then they are very very stupid :(((
https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA1241/how-can-i-transfer-a-call

Corneliu

Office365 ?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Hi,

Anyone tried Office365 + Lync?
Is it worth it? Is it only available via Telstra or can I buy it in other
ways? How is customer support and what is the quality of Lync vs Skype?

Thanks,
Corneliu.

Re: Office365 ?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

on prem ... I don't understand that term anymore :)


On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 10:43 AM, David Connors da...@connors.com wrote:

 I don't think cloudy Lync does telephony/mediation server stuff. That
 significantly reduces Lync's usefulness.

 We have Lync on prem at Codify with all the meeting place stuff set up
 with 1300 number dial in for meetings etc. Once you have that working
 properly with Outlook appointments, you cannot imagine life without it.

 David Connors
 da...@connors.com | M +61 417 189 363
 Download my v-card: https://www.codify.com/cards/davidconnors
 Follow me on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/davidconnors
 Connect with me on LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/davidjohnconnors


 On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 10:36 AM, Preet Sangha preetsan...@gmail.comwrote:

 There was some issue with Lync, not getting messages offline or similar -
 but I can't remember the details. I'll ask the boys when they get back from
 lunch.


 On 12 April 2013 12:34, Preet Sangha preetsan...@gmail.com wrote:

 Use it for our company. Excellent. Onenote (sharepoint) , and Exchange
 are the biz!

 Lync never offered much to us.

 We skype between offices (US, NZ and UK), lync offered nothing much over
 this.

 Sorry don't know about AU offerings.


 On 12 April 2013 12:18, Corneliu I. Tusnea corne...@acorns.com.auwrote:

 Hi,

 Anyone tried Office365 + Lync?
 Is it worth it? Is it only available via Telstra or can I buy it in
 other ways? How is customer support and what is the quality of Lync vs
 Skype?

 Thanks,
 Corneliu.




 --
 regards,
 Preet, Overlooking the Ocean, Auckland




 --
 regards,
 Preet, Overlooking the Ocean, Auckland

Re: [OT] Surface RT or Surface Pro?

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Yes, but by the time .Net developers started to use WebServices everyone
else moved on to REST as they figured out WS were bloody hard to use,
incompatible between platforms, heavyweight, hard to upgrade and generally
a pain in the *** to develop against :)
Now everyone is talking lightweight REST + JSON and we just managed finally
to get that in the WebApi ...


On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 2:53 PM, Tom Rutter therut...@gmail.com wrote:

 Wasn't the original intent for .net to be for creating web services?


 On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 3:47 AM, Katherine Moss katherine.m...@gordon.edu
  wrote:

  Then why are the  majority rather than the  minority of windows 8
 modern apps (I hate that term when talking about computers and servers,
 belongs on a mobile phone), nearly all written in pure HTML5 and JS?
 Where’s the C# or VB in them?  And touting HTML5 and JS more than the .net
 framework sounds more like a kill-off rather than an enhancement.  

 ** **

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Arjang Assadi
 *Sent:* Wednesday, April 10, 2013 6:12 AM

 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: [OT] Surface RT or Surface Pro?

 ** **

 Not taken over but augmented with, .net still reigns supreme, js and html
 allow one to rich the poorest of places in terms of OS and framework.
 Knowing knockout, backbone etc. is a must for any .net programmer.

 ** **

 On 10 April 2013 19:15, Bec Carter bec.usern...@gmail.com wrote:

 .net taken over by html and js? Haha looks like the pendulum is swinging
 back again

 ** **

 On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 4:57 AM, Katherine Moss 
 katherine.m...@gordon.edu wrote:

 I disagree, still.  WPF was expanded for instance, from versions 4.0 to
 4.5 of the .net framework significantly from what I can tell from MSDN.
 And besides, since Windows 8 modern apps are so limited in their feature
 set compared to what we know currently today, I sort of consider Microsoft
 a little crazy for thinking that everyone’s going to accept less than what
 they have now.  And that’s what scares me about the “Gemini” update for
 Office coming in the future since in order to metro-ize Office completely,
 according to sources of Mary Joe Fowley on All About Microsoft over at
 ZDNet, she says that what people are telling her is that the update will be
 a subset of the current feature set.  And that’s what gets me; what about
 enthusiasts who need more than just a Fisher Price version?  What if we
 want all of the cool features?  What is Microsoft telling us to do, never
 move on because they are interested in depleting stuff?  

 And then in terms of .net being taken over by HTML and JavaScript?  How
 much more 1990’s can you get?  Come on, jees.  I’ll never accept a version
 of Windows or it’s successors without .net installed and living in some
 form.  

  

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Scott Barnes
 *Sent:* Monday, April 08, 2013 11:27 PM


 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: [OT] Surface RT or Surface Pro?

  

 Its legacy simply because no investment will be put into it. Windows XP
 is legacy even though I still see people inside a Fortune 500 company right
 now using at as a desktop OS. 

  

 Silverlight/WPF concepts and IP were consolidated and rehydrated into the
 Windows 8 XAML runtime so in a way Legacy would also imply that the vNext
 is the new and the older version are the old (just like Silverlight 2 is
 legacy vs Silverlight 4). The problem is Microsoft didn't understand what
 the notion of a messaging framework is in terms of Marketing and so they
 left that part out creating this whole conversation right now around Legacy
 true/false.

 Its also legacy because of the uncertainty in a lot of
 enterprise/companies around the AS-IS futures they've in turn suspended
 investment or looking to shift to a HTML5 deployment model or are open to
 new ideas around next bets. That's not to say a new project isnt created
 every 5secs in WPF/SL today... it's just not advertised and creates this
 whole is it alive or isnt it question.


 

 ---
 Regards,
 Scott Barnes
 http://www.riagenic.com

  

 On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 2:55 AM, Katherine Moss katherine.m...@gordon.edu
 wrote:

 I don’t know why people keep calling stuff like WPF and Win32/64
 applications “old and legacy”.  I still see people using WPF all the time,
 so obviously it’s still got some spirit in it.  

  

 *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:
 ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Arjang Assadi
 *Sent:* Monday, April 08, 2013 2:14 AM


 *To:* ozDotNet
 *Subject:* Re: [OT] Surface RT or Surface Pro?

  

 RT totally rocks, since I got it haven't put it down, it is just pure
 awesome.

 It is light, app switching and screen splitting are so easy.

  

 Since I got one I cant remember a day I didn't have it in my 

Re: occasionally connected application design problem

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Greg,

I'm sure the SQL guys will tell you about some magical tool that can do
all of this for you hands free and without any headaches (fingers crossed)
but my take would be the good old REST API model.

1. For every Table have two columns LastUpdated, LastUploaded and
LastDownloaded. Every change you do locally you update the LastUpdated to
UTC now (never use local times!)
2. Keep a table with the sync status of each table where all you need to
store is the TableName, LastUploaded and LastDownloaded.
3. Have a background thread that tries to monitor for network events
(don't continuously try to ping your server as your'll burn the battery of
those devices).
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/64975/Detect-Internet-Network-Availability
4. When you have connectivity all you need to do is select top 100 from
each table where LastUpdatd for the Status for the table  LastUpdated of
the row.
(I don't know if I make sense but basically you want to select all the rows
that were changed since point of your LastUpdated in your Status table).
You then try to push those back to your server. For every row that made
it to the server you update the LastUploaded to UtcNow or even better I
would update it to the time just before you started the sync.
5. You do the reverse for downloading data. You ask the server for all
changes since your LastDownload. Once all the changes were received, you
update your own LastDownload.
With a bit of reflection and some clear naming conventions you could code
all of this generically enough that you can simply run it on your database
disregarding the number of tables  columns.

I'm now going to let the SQL guys deliver their magical tool :)

Regards,
Corneliu.




On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 8:41 PM, Greg Harris harris.gre...@gmail.comwrote:

 Dear People,


 I need some help to get some good ideas for a design issue I am facing…


 The application will be geographically dispersed and only occasionally
 connected to the internet with a slow / unreliable connection.

 The users at remote branch offices are doing daily data entry to their own
 local databases (probably SQL express databases).

 On a periodic basis the remote branch offices need to synchronise data
 with head office (probably a full SQL database).

 Most (99%) of data will travel from the remote branch offices the head
 office some reference data may travel back to the remote branch office.


 There are a couple of design ideas that I have had:


 SQL Server Replication: (
 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms151198.aspx) I do not know how
 well this will work on wires that are of such poor quality.  Also how easy
 (hard) it will be to support remotely.


 Program based updates: Have a program running in the background at each
 site attempting connection with head office transferring data.  All rows
 would have a transferred status flag, that would be set once successful
 transfer has been acknowledged.


 File extracts: Once an hour produce a text file (with check sum) of all
 data entered in the last hour, background job copies file to head office
 server which will then apply updates to head office server.


 Please share with me and the group what design ideas and experiences you
 have had that worked well and the ones you would avoid if faced with the
 same design decision again today.


 Many thanks

 Greg Harris

Skywards (Emirates) sent me my password back in clear text

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

This is one of those OMG, there are still websites keeping passwords in
clear text moments but Skywards happily sent me back my password in clear
text.

Anyone knows anyone in Skywards that I can get their a*** kicked for this?

http://tinypic.com/r/10ds11y/6

[image: Inline image 1]

Regards,
Corneliu.
image.png

Re: Encryption

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Stephen,

Except using DAPI (which you know the issues) you are pretty much in a
situation where any solution you pick can be reverse engineered by someone
with enough access level.

The next best way of doing it is to encrypt using a X.509 certificate.
Generate a certificate with a private key, register the certificate in the
Service Account of the account running your website and only give read
write for the PrivateKey to the user running your website or service. Your
service/website can then safely encrypt/decrypt passwords on request.
You then REALLY want to do the followings:
1. Audit EVERY request to see a password in clear-text by an Admin so in
case something does go wrong and someone is using someone else's password
there is a clear trace that the person HAD access to the password.
I would turn that Audit to the level where you also SIGN every audited line
in the database and/or add an encrypted version of the audited message that
can again, only be decrypted with your certificate.
This would allow you to prove that someone accessed someone elses password
and if they try to clear/change their trace you'd have a proof they tried
that.
2. Make sure when you register the certificate the key is not exportable
(so someone else can't take the key and decrypt your db).
3. Lock the hell out of that machine and any access to the certificate or
the password required to use the certificate or the password of the
service/web user running your service.
You really want to be 99.% sure that someone can't make a small test
app that loads the cert and decrypts all your password.
4. Leave as many traces of the Request for clear password by XXX as
possible to make it (close to) impossible for someone to get the passwords
without leaving a trace :)
5. Make it clear in the application where the users enter/create passwords
that their passwords COULD be exposed or visible to administrators. I would
never enter a password in such a scenario or I would use a dumb password
(123..9) as I would know it's not secure.

I know I'm a bit freaked out by this and frankly, I would NEVER allow this
in any of my projects. The dangers and risks are massive (why in the world
would anyone ever need to know someone else's password)
You see every day massive data leaks of passwords from big companies and
this is exactly how they happen, because some d** a manager decides
that view password is a valid use case.

So again, there should NEVER be a real reason to see the password or
someone else :)

Maybe propose an alternative (e.g. the way Credit Cards work). If they want
to see the password to help the users remember then (dumb reason) then
keep the password hashed+salt so irreversible but keep a password hint
that you generate automatically and you only include the first and the last
character so if my password is MyCoolPassword123 you'd keep in the hint
column M*3.
That should be enough for most scenarios for people to See the password
and help them remember it.

Regards,
Corneliu.

PS If you need some help in convincing managers that exposing passwords
is a bad bad bad thing just give me a call and Im happy to talk to them.
Or just ask them how they will deal with an administrator that will
accidentally expose that the password of your CEO as the name of his
mistress? (been there, saw that)






On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 2:56 PM, Stephen Price step...@perthprojects.comwrote:

 Thanks all. I found the CryptoStream class and an example of its use...
 Unfortunately that raised the question of Ok, so now where do we store our
 key in the app, so that no one can pull it out and use it, except for the
 app.
 At which point the answer was, why didn't you research this before
 suggesting it? Ok, lets go back to plain text passwords.
 I did suggest password hashes, but they are one way and the requirement is
 that an Admin can read them. I think I lost.

 Not real impressed with teh ProtectedData class encrypting it per
 machine/user. I didn't realise until another developer tried to use it and
 the penny dropped. Encrypted egg on my face. doh! Last time I did this
 stuff was years ago and I think I was dealing with the Cryptography
 namespace. I remember a key and an iv (salt right?) but not sure how we
 kept the key safe.
 I imagine if the key was to be put into an XML file that is encrypted
 (here we go again!!) then the assembly would need to be signed to keep it
 safe?

 Good link that Thomas, thanks. Might forward it to the boss so he sees how
 simple encryption is. (NOT)


 On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 10:50 AM, Jason Roberts jasi...@yahoo.co.ukwrote:

 Hi, yeah sounds like a key to the encryption / decryption is probably
 what you want assuming there are multiple boxes and/or you want option to
 scale out. I think you can just use the stuff in the Cryptography
 namespace. Just bear in mind that securing the keys will be important. But
 it would be better to use a one way hash (salted) and just let admins reset
 the password, 

Re: Crypto hash in a Parallel.ForEach

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Wal,

That does not really work properly. You have to dispose the object as well
plus (I've tried it) every now and then it hits some odd error.
I don't think [ThreadStatic] is safe to use with Parallel.ForEach.

Corneliu,.



On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 10:45 PM, Wallace Turner
wallace.tur...@gmail.comwrote:

 It should work fine... the following code does what its supposed to do :)

 [ThreadStatic]
 private static object _hasher;


 var items = Enumerable.Range(1, 50);

 Parallel.ForEach(items, (i, state) =
 {
 if (_hasher == null)
 {
 _hasher = new object();
 Console.WriteLine(new hasher for thread  +
 Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId);
 }
 Console.WriteLine(i +   +
 Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId);

 });


 On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 7:37 PM, Wallace Turner 
 wallace.tur...@gmail.comwrote:

 attribute your hasher with [ThreadStatic] ?  (and obviously move the init
 check into the loop which would only be done once per thread)

 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.threadstaticattribute.aspx


 On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 7:00 PM, Corneliu I. Tusnea 
 corne...@acorns.com.au wrote:

 I hit exactly the same issue with calculating hashes. I don't think it's
 threadsafe to do it. Just initialize it in each thread. I found the
 performance to be acceptable (at least for my use).
 However if you do find a better way I'd like to know :)


 On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 8:38 PM, mike smith meski...@gmail.com wrote:

 SOme of the stuff around here about TLS?

 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6sby1byh.aspx


 On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 7:25 PM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote:

 Folks, I can't remember if I've asked about this before. I think I
 year ago when I hit this I gave up and worked around it ... but now I want
 it solved!

 I have a Parallel.ForEach loop over EnumerateFiles which is blazing
 fast, but then I added to code to make an MD5 hash of the files and it 
 dies
 because of Hash not valid for use in specified state. I have a single
 static MD5 hasher which lives for the life of the app, but calling it from
 many threads is not allowed.

 I have a suspicion there is an overload of Parallel.ForEach that
 allows each thread to start/use/finish its own resources. In theory I need
 each thread needs to make its own MD5 and dispose at the end. There are so
 many overloads in the Threading Tasks namespace that I'm confused at first
 and I'll have to plod through Jeffrey Richter's book overnight to find a
 possible example.

 Are there any Task ninjas out there who know how to do this sort of
 thing?

 Greg K

 P.S. I just went to pat the cat and on the way back I picked up
 Richter's CLR via C# and I found a skeleton example on page 742 where he
 adds up the sizes of all files in a folder. However, the example is very
 terse and I'll need to stare at it for a while to grok it. I will need to
 check that this example behaves consistently under all conditions such as
 cancellation, unhandled crash, etc. If I find anything useful I'll let you
 know.




 --
 Meski

http://courteous.ly/aAOZcv

 Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. Sure,
 you'll get it, but it's going to be rough - Adam Hills

Re: Transcription software

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

Ask Hanselman .. he is always transcripting his recordings. I think he is
using an actual person (elance, taskarmy) for few cents an hour.


On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 1:26 PM, Greg Low (GregLow.com) g...@greglow.comwrote:

 Hi Folks,

 ** **

 Anyone know if there’s anything better than Dragon for transcription
 software? 

 ** **

 Regards,

 ** **

 Greg

 ** **

 Dr Greg Low

 CEO and Principal Mentor

 *SQL Down Under***

 SQL Server MVP and Microsoft Regional Director

 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913fax
 

 Web: www.sqldownunder.com

 * *

 ** **

Re: Managing databases

[Corneliu I. Tusnea]

We are using a system system and we use DBUP on top of it to help us deploy
to production environments.


On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 10:36 AM, Stuart Kinnear stu...@skproactive.comwrote:

 Over the holiday break I thought I might research how we can improve our
 approach.  What systems have you or your organisations adopted  to keep it
 all under control , and are they successful?