From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 1 14:42:08 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2011 15:42:08 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Having nothing better to do (yea right) Message-ID: <4E876D10.2060401@colbyconsulting.com> I installed Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 on my "new" laptop, including hooking up to source control. I pulled the main client projects into 2008 and then into 2010, whereupon 2010 insisted on converting the 2008 to 2010. It then occurred to me that if I saved it to source control I would be screwing up the 2008 code (which is the production version). I guess I need to store 2010 out as a new version, just to play with. We have much experience in VS 2008 but I have none in 2010 though Paul does. I also downloaded the XNA game studio 4.0 for VS 2010. I have been hankering for years to re-write the old Empire game from scratch in a modern environment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Empire_(video_game) I have played that game since the late 80s and amazingly, it still runs under Windows 2007. It was the grandpappy of most modern strategy war games and I play it to this day against the computer. Wouldn't it be cool to do it in C#, classes, sql server express as a data store, multi-player over the internet? I have only ever played it against another live person one time, when I played against my uncle on his Mac. I am convinced I am a better player than he, but he wiped the floor with me because, I believe, the rules (strategy tables) between the mac version and the pc version were sufficiently different. Playing against another person consisted of physically exchanging the computer between turns, very crude. Now days we could play against each other on different continents. Having nothing better to do... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 1 15:13:52 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:13:52 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] True Crypt whole disk encryption Message-ID: <4E877480.2080209@colbyconsulting.com> The last iteration with my laptop I used Windows Bit locker to perform a whole disk encryption. This time I am using Windows 7 Home Premium which does not include Bit locker. I had just about decided to use True Crypt anyway because with Bil Locker I was unable to mount the old hard disk on another computer to pull the old contents off onto the new disk. So when I installed Windows 7 I broke the disk into three partitions, a 6 gig for the swap file, 100 gig for the OS/programs and 400 gig for data. I then started Truecrypt and told it to go to work encrypting the whole thing and went to bed. In the morning... the computer had decided to sleep during the night (lazy thing!) and so it was only 25% finished. It took most of the day to finish encrypting the entire disk (all partitions) and so here I am. Having done that I decided to hang the truecrypt encrypted disk on another computer, put the old disk back in and push the disk contents out to the other disk. The other disk would not finish loading Windows with the truecrypt encrypted disk on it! It would start to load Windows (2008 server) and then apparently it ran into the true crypt disk and couldn't handle it. It just hung, never finished loading windows. In the end I told the bitlocker software to unencrypt the old disk, then hung that on another machine and put the truecrypt disk back in the laptop, and pulled everything into the new disk. Well not everything but you know what I mean. At least I can do that with the unencrypted disk drive. Things never work the way I envision them working. Truecrypt is not significantly slowing down the new disk. I do have to enter the password at the point where the bios tries to load windows, then off it goes. Not good for auto reboot after software updates... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 10:26:52 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:26:52 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server Message-ID: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> Is anyone using this? I installed VS 2010 on my "new" laptop (windows 7 installation) and now whenever I build a new solution it asks me to choose a team foundation server. Uh... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 10:34:59 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:34:59 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? Message-ID: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> And want to collaborate on a project of some sort? XNA GS is a really cool game development system, for the XBox obviously but it can also compile the game to run on PCs which is where I play since I don't own an XBox. I am thinking of doing a traffic light simulator just to have something somewhat simple to start with. If anyone else is interested in playing around in this environment you are welcome to join me in this or suggest some other project. I am / was into uControllers and one of the classes I took back in the late 80s had the students build a traffic light simulator with little LEDs to simulate a 4 way stop. For their purposes (teaching how to program a uController) that was all you did, turn the lights on and off in a logical consistent manner. I thought I would start with that and build a traffic light. It would take 3 or 4 to build an intersection. And take it from there. We could tie intersections together to sync the lights. Add vehicles to trigger the lights. Etc. But it would all start with a traffic light. Or what would *you* like to simulate in a game console? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From df.waters at comcast.net Sun Oct 2 10:32:54 2011 From: df.waters at comcast.net (Dan Waters) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 10:32:54 -0500 Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server In-Reply-To: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <001f01cc8118$8e4a1640$aade42c0$@comcast.net> Hi John, Ignore that (or search for how to get rid of it). TFS is only for actual teams. It's where a VS TFS is loaded onto a server machine, then when people log into their client VS the client app and the server app do some kind of communicating so that all the clients are up to date or get the same messages or something. It's like Outlook stand-alone vs. Outlook as a client for Exchange on a server. If you're not in a company, Exchange is useless. Dan -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2011 10:27 AM To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server Is anyone using this? I installed VS 2010 on my "new" laptop (windows 7 installation) and now whenever I build a new solution it asks me to choose a team foundation server. Uh... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From fuller.artful at gmail.com Sun Oct 2 11:32:34 2011 From: fuller.artful at gmail.com (Arthur Fuller) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 12:32:34 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? In-Reply-To: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: Daryl Hannah? Ok, I'll settle for Angelina Jolie. Or what would *you* like to simulate in a game console? > > -- > John W. Colby > Colby Consulting > ______________________________**_________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/**mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.**com > > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 12:54:53 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 13:54:53 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? In-Reply-To: References: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4E88A56D.7070400@colbyconsulting.com> Hmm.... Neither does it for me. But an interesting train of thought. We do have females on the list though and you might find yourself collaborating to simulate Hugh Jackman or something. John W. Colby Colby Consulting On 10/2/2011 12:32 PM, Arthur Fuller wrote: > Daryl Hannah? Ok, I'll settle for Angelina Jolie. > > Or what would *you* like to simulate in a game console? >> >> -- >> John W. Colby >> Colby Consulting >> ______________________________**_________________ >> dba-VB mailing list >> dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com >> http://databaseadvisors.com/**mailman/listinfo/dba-vb >> http://www.databaseadvisors.**com >> >> > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 12:55:12 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 13:55:12 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server In-Reply-To: <001f01cc8118$8e4a1640$aade42c0$@comcast.net> References: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> <001f01cc8118$8e4a1640$aade42c0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <4E88A580.5030704@colbyconsulting.com> That is kind of what I thought. John W. Colby Colby Consulting On 10/2/2011 11:32 AM, Dan Waters wrote: > Hi John, > > Ignore that (or search for how to get rid of it). TFS is only for actual > teams. It's where a VS TFS is loaded onto a server machine, then when > people log into their client VS the client app and the server app do some > kind of communicating so that all the clients are up to date or get the same > messages or something. > > It's like Outlook stand-alone vs. Outlook as a client for Exchange on a > server. If you're not in a company, Exchange is useless. > > Dan > > -----Original Message----- > From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com > [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby > Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2011 10:27 AM > To: VBA > Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server > > Is anyone using this? I installed VS 2010 on my "new" laptop (windows 7 > installation) and now whenever I build a new solution it asks me to choose a > team foundation server. > > Uh... > > > -- > John W. Colby > Colby Consulting > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From fuller.artful at gmail.com Sun Oct 2 18:35:01 2011 From: fuller.artful at gmail.com (Arthur Fuller) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 19:35:01 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? In-Reply-To: <4E88A56D.7070400@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> <4E88A56D.7070400@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: LOL.Hugh Jackman now there's a name to remember. A. On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 1:54 PM, jwcolby wrote: > Hmm.... Neither does it for me. But an interesting train of thought. We > do have females on the list though and you might find yourself collaborating > to simulate Hugh Jackman or something. >> >> >>> >> >> From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 21:16:40 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 22:16:40 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] I found this fascinating Message-ID: <4E891B08.7080700@colbyconsulting.com> Talk about efficient programming... http://www.xnaresources.com/default.asp?page=Tutorial:TileEngineSeries:1 What is a Tile Engine Early computer and video game systems had very, very (VERY) little memory - the original Nintendo Entertainment System had 2kb of RAM, and 2kb of video RAM, plus 284 bytes of memory for objects and color palettes. If we call this roughly 4.5kb of memory, my 4GB desktop PC has almost 1 million times the amount of memory the NES had to work with. The full display resolution on the NES was 256x240 pixels, and while our current bits-per-pixel standards don't apply to the NES, even at one bit per pixel (which isn't a good representation anyway) you have 7.5 kb of information just to fill up a single screen. So how do you build large game worlds when you don't have enough memory to hold a single screen? Lets look at another classic NES game: -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From john at winhaven.net Wed Oct 5 14:13:04 2011 From: john at winhaven.net (John Bartow) Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2011 14:13:04 -0500 Subject: [dba-VB] FW: The passing of Drew Wutka In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00c101cc8392$cf8ab660$6ea02320$@winhaven.net> Hello All, I have some sad news to share with you all. Long time lister and friend to many, Drew Wutka, passed away Monday. His friend, Ken, contacted me and a number of other board members to share this news with us because he knew that Drew participated on the DBA lists as he spoke of it often. A coworker walked by Drew's office he saw that he had his head on his desk and went in to check on him. The coworker found that he and no pulse. The paramedics were called and he was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. Ken will keep me apprised of the situation and I will pass it on to everyone as soon as he shares any further information. My deepest condolences to all of Drew's family and friends. John Bartow, President Database Advisors, Inc. Office: 920-582-7574 Mobile: 920-410-7574 From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Wed Oct 5 15:28:03 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:28:03 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] [dba-SQLServer] FW: The passing of Drew Wutka In-Reply-To: <010c01cc8396$44b530c0$ce1f9240$@winhaven.net> References: <00ab01cc8392$cec73f50$6c55bdf0$@winhaven.net> <010c01cc8396$44b530c0$ce1f9240$@winhaven.net> Message-ID: <4E8CBDD3.900@colbyconsulting.com> Man that will take your breath away. Drew was essentially one of our founding members. DatabaseAdvisors needs to formally express out condolences to the family. This is a sad day. John W. Colby Colby Consulting On 10/5/2011 3:37 PM, John Bartow wrote: > Ken will be keeping me apprised of any further info including next of kin. > I'll pass along anything I receive. > > Drew's daughter is only 12 so I'm sure we need to be careful on how we > communicate on this. > > -----Original Message----- > From: dba-sqlserver-bounces at databaseadvisors.com > [mailto:dba-sqlserver-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Steve > Erbach > Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2011 2:19 PM > To: Discussion concerning MS SQL Server > Subject: Re: [dba-SQLServer] FW: The passing of Drew Wutka > > John, > > Do you have contact info for his next of kin? > > Regards, > > Steve Erbach > Neenah, WI > > On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 2:13 PM, John Bartow wrote: > >> Hello All, >> >> I have some sad news to share with you all. >> >> >> >> Long time lister and friend to many, Drew Wutka, passed away Monday. >> >> >> >> His friend, Ken, contacted me and a number of other board members to >> share this news with us because he knew that Drew participated on the >> DBA lists as he spoke of it often. >> >> >> >> A coworker walked by Drew's office he saw that he had his head on his >> desk and went in to check on him. The coworker found that he and no >> pulse. The paramedics were called and he was taken to the hospital >> where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. >> >> >> >> Ken will keep me apprised of the situation and I will pass it on to >> everyone as soon as he shares any further information. >> >> >> >> My deepest condolences to all of Drew's family and friends. >> >> >> >> John Bartow, President >> >> Database Advisors, Inc. >> >> Office: 920-582-7574 >> >> Mobile: 920-410-7574 >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> dba-SQLServer mailing list >> dba-SQLServer at databaseadvisors.com >> http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-sqlserver >> http://www.databaseadvisors.com >> >> > > > -- > Regards, > > Steve Erbach > Neenah, WI > http://www.NeenahPolitics.com > http://www.TheTownCrank.com > _______________________________________________ > dba-SQLServer mailing list > dba-SQLServer at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-sqlserver > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > _______________________________________________ > dba-SQLServer mailing list > dba-SQLServer at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-sqlserver > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From john at winhaven.net Wed Oct 5 18:11:35 2011 From: john at winhaven.net (John Bartow) Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2011 18:11:35 -0500 Subject: [dba-VB] FW: Drew Wutka's Services In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <01b201cc83b4$214d2e80$63e78b80$@winhaven.net> Forwarded From Ken: I spoke with Drew's mom and told her the many wonderful and kind things you guys have written about Drew.? I told her I could forward them and she was excited, so I did in fact send them to her.? ? If you have anything you can share I am certain she and Hannah, and his Dad would love it.? Her email address is: nwutka at sbcglobal.com The following is the information relating to his services: Viewing at Turrentine Jackson Morrow I-75 and ridgeview Thursday 6-7 972-562-2601 Preston Meadow Lutheran 10:30 Friday after back to church for light lunch 972-618-2233 Please feel free to contact me and share this information as you deem necessary. Kenneth Van Huss ? VanGard Systems Office (214) 801-4357 ext 335 Fax??? (214) 299-8597 Cell??? (214) 243-5659 kvanhuss at airrsystem.com From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Mon Oct 10 01:15:57 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:15:57 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010 Demo Virtual Machine... Message-ID: <4D3A0180687B4AF8B4695CC635BAA56A@nant> Hi All -- In this article/blog entry: Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010 Demo Virtual Machine http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericwhite/archive/2010/07/16/writing-and-hosting-a-w eb-service-in-the-sharepoint-2010-demo-virtual-machine.aspx the author refers to a test virtual machine image with SharePoint 2010 configured: "My favorite way to develop/experiment/write about SharePoint 2010 is to use the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine. It is a great virtual machine - finely tuned, and has all of the necessary software installed, including SharePoint Server 2010, Visual Studio 2010, Office 2010, etc. I do on occasion build my own virtual machines when absolutely necessary, but I consider it a necessary evil, not something that I enjoy." The link directs to "http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=21099" but VM isn't available there for downloading. Do you know is it still available for free downloading from MS web site? (Was it a free download?) Thank you. -- Shamil From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Mon Oct 10 01:37:06 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:37:06 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010Demo Virtual Machine... In-Reply-To: <4D3A0180687B4AF8B4695CC635BAA56A@nant> References: <4D3A0180687B4AF8B4695CC635BAA56A@nant> Message-ID: <7360072243CB49A7909DE5AC1AC87336@nant> Hi All -- I have found this link related to the subject: Download Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Trial today http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ee424282 It looks good but it's "too much" - I just need a demo/trial VM with SharePoint 2010 Server configured to test some C#/OpenXML SDK/VBA + SharePoint coding. Is there SharePoint 2010 running in 32bit system environments? If not is it possible to run 64bit virtual machine on 32bit systems? - should be possible I guess, might be slow - no problem Thank you. -- Shamil -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Shamil Salakhetdinov Sent: 10 ??????? 2011 ?. 10:16 To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Cc: 'Discussion concerning Visual Basic and related programming issues.' Subject: [dba-VB] Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010Demo Virtual Machine... Hi All -- In this article/blog entry: Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010 Demo Virtual Machine http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericwhite/archive/2010/07/16/writing-and-hosting-a-w eb-service-in-the-sharepoint-2010-demo-virtual-machine.aspx the author refers to a test virtual machine image with SharePoint 2010 configured: "My favorite way to develop/experiment/write about SharePoint 2010 is to use the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine. It is a great virtual machine - finely tuned, and has all of the necessary software installed, including SharePoint Server 2010, Visual Studio 2010, Office 2010, etc. I do on occasion build my own virtual machines when absolutely necessary, but I consider it a necessary evil, not something that I enjoy." The link directs to "http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=21099" but VM isn't available there for downloading. Do you know is it still available for free downloading from MS web site? (Was it a free download?) Thank you. -- Shamil _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Mon Oct 10 06:36:15 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 07:36:15 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio Message-ID: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From Gustav at cactus.dk Mon Oct 10 07:33:58 2011 From: Gustav at cactus.dk (Gustav Brock) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:33:58 +0200 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio Message-ID: Hi John That's what I have done. Separate 2005/2008/2010 projects completely. If an project will have a second life on in 2010, I copy all source and then convert the copy. /gustav >>> jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com 10-10-2011 13:36 >>> All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Mon Oct 10 08:48:53 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:48:53 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio In-Reply-To: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: Hi John -- VS2010 SP1 is great and stable environment - just go for it. When migrating VS2008 projects to VS2010 I have got just committed upgraded sources to the same code repository (I use Mercurial) as a new version - you can always roll back but I didn't have any need in doing that rollback - and I have about 100 projects upgraded to VS2010 so far - no big issues, almost no issues.... Thank you. -- Shamil -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: 10 ??????? 2011 ?. 15:36 To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From bill_patten at embarqmail.com Mon Oct 10 11:11:33 2011 From: bill_patten at embarqmail.com (Bill Patten) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 09:11:33 -0700 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio In-Reply-To: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <7EB730114C2345DCA94B8C2B92A10F45@BPCS> John, I have been successful in going into the VS 2010 sln file and changing the the first 2 lines. 2008 Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 10.00 # Visual Studio 2008 2010 Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 11.00 # Visual Studio 2010 Perhaps it will work for you too. Bill -------------------------------------------------- From: "jwcolby" Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 4:36 AM To: "VBA" Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 15 09:09:07 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 10:09:07 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] On my ignorance and Inheritance Message-ID: <4E999403.8060708@colbyconsulting.com> I am writing a game in XNA and C#.Net. The purpose is simply to learn more about C#. One of the things I want to do with this is to learn inheritance. The game has visual objects with bitmaps / sprites. Each cell (screen location) in the game will have a hexagonal bitmap, such as terrain - forest, mountain, water and so forth. These bitmaps are contained in bitmap sheets with X/Y pointers into the sheets for loading the area of the sheet into the object. Obviously these cells are pretty simple and do not move. However another class of objects, military units, have a hex bitmap as well but also have attributes such as how much damage they inflict in combat, how much damage they can absorb before being destroyed etc. Before we go there, I will not be using NOSQL to process this stuff! ;) So it seems that I could do a cell class which holds a bitmap pointer and an x/y location pair. Then my military units could inherit from the cell since they need the attributes of the cell. Beyond that however things get gray. All military units have properties such damage inflicted / absorbed, but there are also properties specific to the military units. Land units cannot enter the water, ships cannot enter the land. Air units can fly over either. Things like that. So it feels like I build a "military unit" class, inheriting from cell, with the commonality of all military units. Then what? Three subclasses of Land, water, air? This is all pretty much new ground for me and I am excited to have such a clear cut reason to use inheritance. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From stuart at lexacorp.com.pg Sat Oct 15 18:23:24 2011 From: stuart at lexacorp.com.pg (Stuart McLachlan) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2011 09:23:24 +1000 Subject: [dba-VB] On my ignorance and Inheritance In-Reply-To: <4E999403.8060708@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E999403.8060708@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4E9A15EC.5903.EC67A0C@stuart.lexacorp.com.pg> In that situation, I'd also look at one Unit class and three interfaces iLand, iWater, iAir. (Now that you are finally getting into real classes that can do that sort of thing ) -- Stuart On 15 Oct 2011 at 10:09, jwcolby wrote: > So it seems that I could do a cell class which holds a bitmap pointer > and an x/y location pair. Then my military units could inherit from > the cell since they need the attributes of the cell. > > Beyond that however things get gray. All military units have > properties such damage inflicted / absorbed, but there are also > properties specific to the military units. Land units cannot enter > the water, ships cannot enter the land. Air units can fly over > either. Things like that. > > So it feels like I build a "military unit" class, inheriting from > cell, with the commonality of all military units. Then what? Three > subclasses of Land, water, air? > > This is all pretty much new ground for me and I am excited to have > such a clear cut reason to use inheritance. > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 15 22:52:01 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 23:52:01 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] For those in need Message-ID: <4E9A54E1.5020609@colbyconsulting.com> Who think my server is puny... http://www.nccs.gov/computing-resources/jaguar/access/ You too can do super computing. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Mon Oct 17 11:53:01 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:53:01 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods Message-ID: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> I have three supervisor classes. A ton of the code in each supervisor is common so I am refactoring the code to use inheritance. All that is cool until... I have a thread that each supervisor has. It is mtStart which starts a thread and that thread calls mStart. mtStart is literally identical in all three supervisors but mStart is not, each supervisor does a different job. So I am saying we have the thread itself in the base class and the mtStart in the base class but mStart in the derived class. But (to my knowledge) the base class cannot call mStart in the derived class. So how do I create the thread object in the base but the code run by the thread in the derived class? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From stuart at lexacorp.com.pg Mon Oct 17 17:12:38 2011 From: stuart at lexacorp.com.pg (Stuart McLachlan) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:12:38 +1000 Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods In-Reply-To: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4E9CA856.9519.17FEFC2@stuart.lexacorp.com.pg> Multiple interfaces with a single class rather than inheritance. Inheritance is great, but like classes in Access, it's not the solution to every problem. :-) -- Stuart On 17 Oct 2011 at 12:53, jwcolby wrote: > I have three supervisor classes. A ton of the code in each supervisor > is common so I am refactoring the code to use inheritance. All that > is cool until... > > I have a thread that each supervisor has. It is mtStart which starts > a thread and that thread calls mStart. mtStart is literally identical > in all three supervisors but mStart is not, each supervisor does a > different job. > > So I am saying we have the thread itself in the base class and the > mtStart in the base class but mStart in the derived class. But (to my > knowledge) the base class cannot call mStart in the derived class. So > how do I create the thread object in the base but the code run by the > thread in the derived class? > > -- > John W. Colby > Colby Consulting > > Reality is what refuses to go away > when you do not believe in it > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Sun Oct 23 11:13:50 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2011 20:13:50 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods In-Reply-To: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <6BD762430E014929969FC05AB970A9D8@nant> Hi John -- Virtual or abstract methods should help I suppose. Thank you. -- Shamil -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: 17 ??????? 2011 ?. 20:53 To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods I have three supervisor classes. A ton of the code in each supervisor is common so I am refactoring the code to use inheritance. All that is cool until... I have a thread that each supervisor has. It is mtStart which starts a thread and that thread calls mStart. mtStart is literally identical in all three supervisors but mStart is not, each supervisor does a different job. So I am saying we have the thread itself in the base class and the mtStart in the base class but mStart in the derived class. But (to my knowledge) the base class cannot call mStart in the derived class. So how do I create the thread object in the base but the code run by the thread in the derived class? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Mon Oct 24 21:32:47 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:32:47 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] DRAM errors and ECC Message-ID: <4EA61FCF.10203@colbyconsulting.com> http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Tue Oct 25 06:07:31 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:07:31 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Syncing Virtual Machines Message-ID: <4EA69873.7000104@colbyconsulting.com> I have a virtual machine server (Colby-VM) and last weekend I rebuilt that machine - new motherboard / memory in preparation for a faster CPU etc. I store all my stuff on a RAID array on a dedicated controller, and which survives nicely across upgrades so I got lazy and did not backup. (almost) Everything that could go wrong did and by the end of the experience I was sweating bullets about whether I was going to find one of my critical VMs. I did get all the VMs back, but this brought me to the question of how the pros migrate machines from server to server. My SQL Server (Azul) has Windows 2008 with Hyper-V installed and I am wondering how to cause a VM to be kept synced on two servers so that it can just fire up and go when the usual VM server has to be brought down. Hyper-V has an "export / import" but that takes a loooong time to perform. Is anyone out there involved in this stuff and do you have any answers to this problem? I would love to be able to just shut the machine down on one server and bring it up on the other. My impression is that it is possible to migrate without even shutting down the VM. How is this magic done? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Tue Oct 25 10:00:53 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 11:00:53 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] [dba-SQLServer] Syncing Virtual Machines In-Reply-To: <4EA6BC19.6080207@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4EA69873.7000104@colbyconsulting.com> <-3381981045989815633@unknownmsgid> <4EA6BC19.6080207@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4EA6CF25.1030809@colbyconsulting.com> I have to say that Microsoft's VM system is just unfriendly. I understand that this stuff is complicated but that is all the more reason for Microsoft to spend the time to make it easier. 1) I have no idea the "why" behind this stuff but you cannot simply select the xml file and "mount" a VM. 2) If you "export" a vm then it can be imported. 3) AFAICT you cannot export a vm while it is running. The export menu item simply isn't there. 4) The export fails to a share on another machine on the directory. 5) The accepted fix is to add "machine" to the objects that the share allows and then select the source machine. 6) "Machine" is not a selection (on my machine) so I can't do that. 7) Even for people who are able to and try that, it only works some of the time. 8) When it fails it gives a generic "means nothing except it didn't work" error message. 9) There is no "backup", you have to "register" Hyper-V with the backup service / role. 10) Doing that requires a somewhat extensive manual modification to the registry. 11) Even if you can, the backup process is almost impossible to make happen unless you are backing up to identical machines. Two hours later I am no closer to getting a real automated backup happening of my virtual machines. I am now copying the files themselves. As I have always done in the past, because I ran into this same brick wall every time. :( 12) Having done that I cannot simply mount it on the machine I am copying it to. I have to manually create the machine on that destination machine and start it. Can you say "Frankenstein monster"? VMS are just way cool technology. Until you have to maintain them. John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it >>> On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 7:07 AM, jwcolbywrote: >>> >>>> I have a virtual machine server (Colby-VM) and last weekend I rebuilt that >>>> machine - new motherboard / memory in preparation for a faster CPU etc. I >>>> store all my stuff on a RAID array on a dedicated controller, and which >>>> survives nicely across upgrades so I got lazy and did not backup. (almost) >>>> Everything that could go wrong did and by the end of the experience I was >>>> sweating bullets about whether I was going to find one of my critical VMs. >>>> >>>> From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 29 10:31:04 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 11:31:04 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class Message-ID: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> Awhile back I wrote about a RunState class we were developing to control starting and stopping long running processes and I thought I would provide an update. In our program we have processes which we start running and they stay running until we specifically stop them. These processes often start other processes etc. These processes need an interface for the parent to use to tell them to start and stop and then to be able to monitor the process to see what state it is in. We have developed a class which we use to control the "run state" (as we call it) of a process. Any class which is going to communicate a Start / Stop and a running / stopping / stopped kind of status uses this class. The class encapsulates a check box. There may or may not be a checkbox of course, often only the parent process is told to start / stop via a check box, but that parent process may have N sub processes that it can start and stop. The sub processes do not have a check box. So, we have a form with three processes which we can start running by checking a check box and which we can then then stop by unchecking the check box. When the check box is checked, an event fires. The RunState class sinks the events of the check box and sets its label to "Running". The Runstate class then does one of two things. The RunState class has an optional parameter in the constructor which tells it whether the Runstate parent is threaded or not. The run state class has a thread object which it can initialize. So if the RunState parent is threaded, the checkbox event sink creates the thread and the thread raises a Start event. If the Runstate parent is not threaded, then the checkbox event sink simply directly raises the same Start event. In either case the Runstate Start event is sunk in the parent class and the parent class does whatever it is designed to do. When the parent class finishes whatever it does, it calls the mStopped method of the RunState class telling the Runstate class that it is finished processing. This method sets the Runstate property to Stopped, updates the checkbox label (if any) to Stopped, and disconnects the thread object. If the check box is unchecked, the event is sunk and the runstate class sets the label to "Stopping". The runstate class raises an event telling the parent class to stop. When the parent of the RunState class cleans up and determines it is done with it's process, it calls RunState.MStopped just as in the discussion above. The objective of all this stuff is to provide an encapsulated and consistent way for processes to communicate with each other. I (the user) needed a way to start and stop processes via a user interface, and shut down those processes in a clean consistent manner. I have a form which provides the parent process a check box and a status list object. The process can be time consuming, it may be creating a table of a million records to output to disk and creating the file on disk. If I start this process, it cannot be terminated until the process reaches some defined point, IOW it cannot just be shut down in the middle of filling the table or writing the file to disk. Bu providing a process with an instance of this RunState class, a parent process can start a child process and monitor the progress. If needed the RunState class can provide a thread to the process and can also manage a check box, encapsulating and handling all of the crossthread delegate stuff required to write to the checkbox label. Just as an example of how we really use this RunState class, we have a system which validates addresses. The program consists of a single form with three sections, for three high level processes. The processes are Export / Address validation / import. We use a manager class which "owns" the three sections of the form. The manager class has three instances of the RunState class each of which communicates with the user via a checkbox. The manager has a collection of supervisors (jobs) which are in some state of completion. Each job can be partially or entirely exported to disk, processed through address validation and / or imported back in. Thus each job has an instance of the RunState class for each of the three processes. The manager class decides which jobs run and communicates with the job via the RunState class instances, telling a specific job (or jobs) to export, a specific job to Address Validate and a specific job (or jobs) to import. The Supervisor's RunState class instances allows the manager to start and stop the supervisors (jobs) and to determine that a job is stopped. When a job is running the program cannot close, and the form cannot close. When the manager determines that all jobs are in a stopped state the check box labels tell me (the user) that nothing is running and I can close the form and the program. This system is designed to run on my server 24/7. I do have to be logged in to run it since it has a user interface but basically I remote desktop in to the server, start the program, and then close the remote desktop session leaving my user logged in. The program just sits and runs. I have address validation jobs which are scheduled out in the future and the manager loads up all the jobs and just watches them. If a job becomes active, the manager starts it and monitors its completion through the various stages. Using the check boxes on the form I can shut the program down cleanly, even if it is in the middle of a long running operation. The RunState allows me to tell each section to stop and allows me to see when everything is stopped. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From accessd at shaw.ca Sat Oct 29 11:07:37 2011 From: accessd at shaw.ca (Jim Lawrence) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 09:07:37 -0700 Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class In-Reply-To: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <006B3904F71D401AB4BFC77F58F40375@creativesystemdesigns.com> It sounds very impressive as a piece of software that took months (years) to design and debug. I would assume you will be marketing this product soon. ;-) Question: is the application taking advantage of the new "parallelism" presented in VS 2010 or is it just using multi-threading? Jim -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2011 8:31 AM To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class Awhile back I wrote about a RunState class we were developing to control starting and stopping long running processes and I thought I would provide an update. In our program we have processes which we start running and they stay running until we specifically stop them. These processes often start other processes etc. These processes need an interface for the parent to use to tell them to start and stop and then to be able to monitor the process to see what state it is in. We have developed a class which we use to control the "run state" (as we call it) of a process. Any class which is going to communicate a Start / Stop and a running / stopping / stopped kind of status uses this class. The class encapsulates a check box. There may or may not be a checkbox of course, often only the parent process is told to start / stop via a check box, but that parent process may have N sub processes that it can start and stop. The sub processes do not have a check box. So, we have a form with three processes which we can start running by checking a check box and which we can then then stop by unchecking the check box. When the check box is checked, an event fires. The RunState class sinks the events of the check box and sets its label to "Running". The Runstate class then does one of two things. The RunState class has an optional parameter in the constructor which tells it whether the Runstate parent is threaded or not. The run state class has a thread object which it can initialize. So if the RunState parent is threaded, the checkbox event sink creates the thread and the thread raises a Start event. If the Runstate parent is not threaded, then the checkbox event sink simply directly raises the same Start event. In either case the Runstate Start event is sunk in the parent class and the parent class does whatever it is designed to do. When the parent class finishes whatever it does, it calls the mStopped method of the RunState class telling the Runstate class that it is finished processing. This method sets the Runstate property to Stopped, updates the checkbox label (if any) to Stopped, and disconnects the thread object. If the check box is unchecked, the event is sunk and the runstate class sets the label to "Stopping". The runstate class raises an event telling the parent class to stop. When the parent of the RunState class cleans up and determines it is done with it's process, it calls RunState.MStopped just as in the discussion above. The objective of all this stuff is to provide an encapsulated and consistent way for processes to communicate with each other. I (the user) needed a way to start and stop processes via a user interface, and shut down those processes in a clean consistent manner. I have a form which provides the parent process a check box and a status list object. The process can be time consuming, it may be creating a table of a million records to output to disk and creating the file on disk. If I start this process, it cannot be terminated until the process reaches some defined point, IOW it cannot just be shut down in the middle of filling the table or writing the file to disk. Bu providing a process with an instance of this RunState class, a parent process can start a child process and monitor the progress. If needed the RunState class can provide a thread to the process and can also manage a check box, encapsulating and handling all of the crossthread delegate stuff required to write to the checkbox label. Just as an example of how we really use this RunState class, we have a system which validates addresses. The program consists of a single form with three sections, for three high level processes. The processes are Export / Address validation / import. We use a manager class which "owns" the three sections of the form. The manager class has three instances of the RunState class each of which communicates with the user via a checkbox. The manager has a collection of supervisors (jobs) which are in some state of completion. Each job can be partially or entirely exported to disk, processed through address validation and / or imported back in. Thus each job has an instance of the RunState class for each of the three processes. The manager class decides which jobs run and communicates with the job via the RunState class instances, telling a specific job (or jobs) to export, a specific job to Address Validate and a specific job (or jobs) to import. The Supervisor's RunState class instances allows the manager to start and stop the supervisors (jobs) and to determine that a job is stopped. When a job is running the program cannot close, and the form cannot close. When the manager determines that all jobs are in a stopped state the check box labels tell me (the user) that nothing is running and I can close the form and the program. This system is designed to run on my server 24/7. I do have to be logged in to run it since it has a user interface but basically I remote desktop in to the server, start the program, and then close the remote desktop session leaving my user logged in. The program just sits and runs. I have address validation jobs which are scheduled out in the future and the manager loads up all the jobs and just watches them. If a job becomes active, the manager starts it and monitors its completion through the various stages. Using the check boxes on the form I can shut the program down cleanly, even if it is in the middle of a long running operation. The RunState allows me to tell each section to stop and allows me to see when everything is stopped. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 29 11:56:58 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 12:56:58 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class In-Reply-To: <006B3904F71D401AB4BFC77F58F40375@creativesystemdesigns.com> References: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> <006B3904F71D401AB4BFC77F58F40375@creativesystemdesigns.com> Message-ID: <4EAC305A.6020009@colbyconsulting.com> > Question: is the application taking advantage of the new "parallelism" presented in VS 2010 or is it just using multi-threading? LOL. "Just" multi-threading. Believe me I am thrilled with that. Threading and communications between processes running in threads can be a major PITA. The RunState class itself is a smallish class, not really a lot there. It never occurred to me to try and market the list cleaning system, and I really think it is too complex to do so. If I could get a high enough bandwidth I could market list cleaning as a service, using the system. What the program has really done is turned a completely manual process into an almost entirely automated process. I took on this client in late 2004. At that time I was entirely into Access and had never even touched SQl Server. The data was originally a single list of 65 million names. I built a server (single core, 4 gigs ram, Windows 2003 X32, SQL Server 2000 X32) and researched the vendor that I still use to do the address validation. I installed that software (Accuzip) and started learning how to do address validation. I had to process those 65 million addresses, and the first time I did it it took me about two weeks, 80 hours. Manual export of 60 million names into 2 million record chunks into CSV files, placing those files into an input directory of Accuzip and taking the finished files from the output directory and importing them back into SQL Server. Understand that I had no tools other than SQL Server itself and whatever it provides. I also had vastly underpowered servers. As I learned SQL Server I started building stored procedures out in SQL Server to automate the bcp out and bcp in. Then I built up stored procedures to loop and export and import the 2 million record chunks. It just slowly grew into an "automated process" but it was entirely in SQL Server which is not particularly "user friendly", either as a programming environment nor as a end user interface. But it worked. I eventually started trying to use Access to execute the existing stored procedures but that never really worked well. Access is single threaded and these processes could take a loooooong time with the hardware of the day. So Access would "lock up" as it waited for the stored procedures to finish. Remember the vastly underpowered servers! I really had an automation breakthrough when I went to the local community college in the fall semester 2009 and took a C# class, fall and spring semester. By the end of December I had started using C# to execute the existing stored procedures, there were somewhere around 30 of them. I started with getting the stored procedures in SQL Server to run in exactly the same order as when I manually executed them. Then I added reporting using nlog. Then I developed a status class to display status into a list control on a form. As pieces came together it became easier to refine the system. I also hired Paul as a part timer helping me write the code. From that point it was really something similar to the spiral development model. Take something that works and refine it, get it working, then refine it again etc. We didn't get to the manager / supervisor / threaded implementation until about 6 months ago, and we just went through another major cycle last week. For a long time the system worked but we would have problems that I would manually intervene to keep it running. I just had to have patience and remember where I came from. I have expanded from one list of 65 million addresses to about 8 lists with about 300 million addresses. Without the automation that the program provides I wouldn't be able to process this many addresses. As it is, even with the "manual interventions" I spend a few hours of actual labor to process these 8 lists. With this latest rewrite it is finally getting to a truly stable state where it just runs. I had communication issues between stages where if anything went wrong the process would stop processing a stage. The latest rewrite really simplified that inter-stage communication and allows each stage to reliably see when the previous stage finishes. In order to be in this business I am legally obligated to process all the addresses every 30 days. This program is the only thing that makes that possible at this scale. John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it On 10/29/2011 12:07 PM, Jim Lawrence wrote: > It sounds very impressive as a piece of software that took months (years) to > design and debug. I would assume you will be marketing this product soon. > ;-) > > Question: is the application taking advantage of the new "parallelism" > presented in VS 2010 or is it just using multi-threading? > > Jim > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 1 14:42:08 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2011 15:42:08 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Having nothing better to do (yea right) Message-ID: <4E876D10.2060401@colbyconsulting.com> I installed Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 on my "new" laptop, including hooking up to source control. I pulled the main client projects into 2008 and then into 2010, whereupon 2010 insisted on converting the 2008 to 2010. It then occurred to me that if I saved it to source control I would be screwing up the 2008 code (which is the production version). I guess I need to store 2010 out as a new version, just to play with. We have much experience in VS 2008 but I have none in 2010 though Paul does. I also downloaded the XNA game studio 4.0 for VS 2010. I have been hankering for years to re-write the old Empire game from scratch in a modern environment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Empire_(video_game) I have played that game since the late 80s and amazingly, it still runs under Windows 2007. It was the grandpappy of most modern strategy war games and I play it to this day against the computer. Wouldn't it be cool to do it in C#, classes, sql server express as a data store, multi-player over the internet? I have only ever played it against another live person one time, when I played against my uncle on his Mac. I am convinced I am a better player than he, but he wiped the floor with me because, I believe, the rules (strategy tables) between the mac version and the pc version were sufficiently different. Playing against another person consisted of physically exchanging the computer between turns, very crude. Now days we could play against each other on different continents. Having nothing better to do... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 1 15:13:52 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:13:52 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] True Crypt whole disk encryption Message-ID: <4E877480.2080209@colbyconsulting.com> The last iteration with my laptop I used Windows Bit locker to perform a whole disk encryption. This time I am using Windows 7 Home Premium which does not include Bit locker. I had just about decided to use True Crypt anyway because with Bil Locker I was unable to mount the old hard disk on another computer to pull the old contents off onto the new disk. So when I installed Windows 7 I broke the disk into three partitions, a 6 gig for the swap file, 100 gig for the OS/programs and 400 gig for data. I then started Truecrypt and told it to go to work encrypting the whole thing and went to bed. In the morning... the computer had decided to sleep during the night (lazy thing!) and so it was only 25% finished. It took most of the day to finish encrypting the entire disk (all partitions) and so here I am. Having done that I decided to hang the truecrypt encrypted disk on another computer, put the old disk back in and push the disk contents out to the other disk. The other disk would not finish loading Windows with the truecrypt encrypted disk on it! It would start to load Windows (2008 server) and then apparently it ran into the true crypt disk and couldn't handle it. It just hung, never finished loading windows. In the end I told the bitlocker software to unencrypt the old disk, then hung that on another machine and put the truecrypt disk back in the laptop, and pulled everything into the new disk. Well not everything but you know what I mean. At least I can do that with the unencrypted disk drive. Things never work the way I envision them working. Truecrypt is not significantly slowing down the new disk. I do have to enter the password at the point where the bios tries to load windows, then off it goes. Not good for auto reboot after software updates... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 10:26:52 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:26:52 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server Message-ID: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> Is anyone using this? I installed VS 2010 on my "new" laptop (windows 7 installation) and now whenever I build a new solution it asks me to choose a team foundation server. Uh... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 10:34:59 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:34:59 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? Message-ID: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> And want to collaborate on a project of some sort? XNA GS is a really cool game development system, for the XBox obviously but it can also compile the game to run on PCs which is where I play since I don't own an XBox. I am thinking of doing a traffic light simulator just to have something somewhat simple to start with. If anyone else is interested in playing around in this environment you are welcome to join me in this or suggest some other project. I am / was into uControllers and one of the classes I took back in the late 80s had the students build a traffic light simulator with little LEDs to simulate a 4 way stop. For their purposes (teaching how to program a uController) that was all you did, turn the lights on and off in a logical consistent manner. I thought I would start with that and build a traffic light. It would take 3 or 4 to build an intersection. And take it from there. We could tie intersections together to sync the lights. Add vehicles to trigger the lights. Etc. But it would all start with a traffic light. Or what would *you* like to simulate in a game console? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From df.waters at comcast.net Sun Oct 2 10:32:54 2011 From: df.waters at comcast.net (Dan Waters) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 10:32:54 -0500 Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server In-Reply-To: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <001f01cc8118$8e4a1640$aade42c0$@comcast.net> Hi John, Ignore that (or search for how to get rid of it). TFS is only for actual teams. It's where a VS TFS is loaded onto a server machine, then when people log into their client VS the client app and the server app do some kind of communicating so that all the clients are up to date or get the same messages or something. It's like Outlook stand-alone vs. Outlook as a client for Exchange on a server. If you're not in a company, Exchange is useless. Dan -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2011 10:27 AM To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server Is anyone using this? I installed VS 2010 on my "new" laptop (windows 7 installation) and now whenever I build a new solution it asks me to choose a team foundation server. Uh... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From fuller.artful at gmail.com Sun Oct 2 11:32:34 2011 From: fuller.artful at gmail.com (Arthur Fuller) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 12:32:34 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? In-Reply-To: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: Daryl Hannah? Ok, I'll settle for Angelina Jolie. Or what would *you* like to simulate in a game console? > > -- > John W. Colby > Colby Consulting > ______________________________**_________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/**mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.**com > > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 12:54:53 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 13:54:53 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? In-Reply-To: References: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4E88A56D.7070400@colbyconsulting.com> Hmm.... Neither does it for me. But an interesting train of thought. We do have females on the list though and you might find yourself collaborating to simulate Hugh Jackman or something. John W. Colby Colby Consulting On 10/2/2011 12:32 PM, Arthur Fuller wrote: > Daryl Hannah? Ok, I'll settle for Angelina Jolie. > > Or what would *you* like to simulate in a game console? >> >> -- >> John W. Colby >> Colby Consulting >> ______________________________**_________________ >> dba-VB mailing list >> dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com >> http://databaseadvisors.com/**mailman/listinfo/dba-vb >> http://www.databaseadvisors.**com >> >> > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 12:55:12 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 13:55:12 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server In-Reply-To: <001f01cc8118$8e4a1640$aade42c0$@comcast.net> References: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> <001f01cc8118$8e4a1640$aade42c0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <4E88A580.5030704@colbyconsulting.com> That is kind of what I thought. John W. Colby Colby Consulting On 10/2/2011 11:32 AM, Dan Waters wrote: > Hi John, > > Ignore that (or search for how to get rid of it). TFS is only for actual > teams. It's where a VS TFS is loaded onto a server machine, then when > people log into their client VS the client app and the server app do some > kind of communicating so that all the clients are up to date or get the same > messages or something. > > It's like Outlook stand-alone vs. Outlook as a client for Exchange on a > server. If you're not in a company, Exchange is useless. > > Dan > > -----Original Message----- > From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com > [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby > Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2011 10:27 AM > To: VBA > Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server > > Is anyone using this? I installed VS 2010 on my "new" laptop (windows 7 > installation) and now whenever I build a new solution it asks me to choose a > team foundation server. > > Uh... > > > -- > John W. Colby > Colby Consulting > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From fuller.artful at gmail.com Sun Oct 2 18:35:01 2011 From: fuller.artful at gmail.com (Arthur Fuller) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 19:35:01 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? In-Reply-To: <4E88A56D.7070400@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> <4E88A56D.7070400@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: LOL.Hugh Jackman now there's a name to remember. A. On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 1:54 PM, jwcolby wrote: > Hmm.... Neither does it for me. But an interesting train of thought. We > do have females on the list though and you might find yourself collaborating > to simulate Hugh Jackman or something. >> >> >>> >> >> From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 21:16:40 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 22:16:40 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] I found this fascinating Message-ID: <4E891B08.7080700@colbyconsulting.com> Talk about efficient programming... http://www.xnaresources.com/default.asp?page=Tutorial:TileEngineSeries:1 What is a Tile Engine Early computer and video game systems had very, very (VERY) little memory - the original Nintendo Entertainment System had 2kb of RAM, and 2kb of video RAM, plus 284 bytes of memory for objects and color palettes. If we call this roughly 4.5kb of memory, my 4GB desktop PC has almost 1 million times the amount of memory the NES had to work with. The full display resolution on the NES was 256x240 pixels, and while our current bits-per-pixel standards don't apply to the NES, even at one bit per pixel (which isn't a good representation anyway) you have 7.5 kb of information just to fill up a single screen. So how do you build large game worlds when you don't have enough memory to hold a single screen? Lets look at another classic NES game: -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From john at winhaven.net Wed Oct 5 14:13:04 2011 From: john at winhaven.net (John Bartow) Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2011 14:13:04 -0500 Subject: [dba-VB] FW: The passing of Drew Wutka In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00c101cc8392$cf8ab660$6ea02320$@winhaven.net> Hello All, I have some sad news to share with you all. Long time lister and friend to many, Drew Wutka, passed away Monday. His friend, Ken, contacted me and a number of other board members to share this news with us because he knew that Drew participated on the DBA lists as he spoke of it often. A coworker walked by Drew's office he saw that he had his head on his desk and went in to check on him. The coworker found that he and no pulse. The paramedics were called and he was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. Ken will keep me apprised of the situation and I will pass it on to everyone as soon as he shares any further information. My deepest condolences to all of Drew's family and friends. John Bartow, President Database Advisors, Inc. Office: 920-582-7574 Mobile: 920-410-7574 From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Wed Oct 5 15:28:03 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:28:03 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] [dba-SQLServer] FW: The passing of Drew Wutka In-Reply-To: <010c01cc8396$44b530c0$ce1f9240$@winhaven.net> References: <00ab01cc8392$cec73f50$6c55bdf0$@winhaven.net> <010c01cc8396$44b530c0$ce1f9240$@winhaven.net> Message-ID: <4E8CBDD3.900@colbyconsulting.com> Man that will take your breath away. Drew was essentially one of our founding members. DatabaseAdvisors needs to formally express out condolences to the family. This is a sad day. John W. Colby Colby Consulting On 10/5/2011 3:37 PM, John Bartow wrote: > Ken will be keeping me apprised of any further info including next of kin. > I'll pass along anything I receive. > > Drew's daughter is only 12 so I'm sure we need to be careful on how we > communicate on this. > > -----Original Message----- > From: dba-sqlserver-bounces at databaseadvisors.com > [mailto:dba-sqlserver-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Steve > Erbach > Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2011 2:19 PM > To: Discussion concerning MS SQL Server > Subject: Re: [dba-SQLServer] FW: The passing of Drew Wutka > > John, > > Do you have contact info for his next of kin? > > Regards, > > Steve Erbach > Neenah, WI > > On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 2:13 PM, John Bartow wrote: > >> Hello All, >> >> I have some sad news to share with you all. >> >> >> >> Long time lister and friend to many, Drew Wutka, passed away Monday. >> >> >> >> His friend, Ken, contacted me and a number of other board members to >> share this news with us because he knew that Drew participated on the >> DBA lists as he spoke of it often. >> >> >> >> A coworker walked by Drew's office he saw that he had his head on his >> desk and went in to check on him. The coworker found that he and no >> pulse. The paramedics were called and he was taken to the hospital >> where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. >> >> >> >> Ken will keep me apprised of the situation and I will pass it on to >> everyone as soon as he shares any further information. >> >> >> >> My deepest condolences to all of Drew's family and friends. >> >> >> >> John Bartow, President >> >> Database Advisors, Inc. >> >> Office: 920-582-7574 >> >> Mobile: 920-410-7574 >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> dba-SQLServer mailing list >> dba-SQLServer at databaseadvisors.com >> http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-sqlserver >> http://www.databaseadvisors.com >> >> > > > -- > Regards, > > Steve Erbach > Neenah, WI > http://www.NeenahPolitics.com > http://www.TheTownCrank.com > _______________________________________________ > dba-SQLServer mailing list > dba-SQLServer at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-sqlserver > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > _______________________________________________ > dba-SQLServer mailing list > dba-SQLServer at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-sqlserver > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From john at winhaven.net Wed Oct 5 18:11:35 2011 From: john at winhaven.net (John Bartow) Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2011 18:11:35 -0500 Subject: [dba-VB] FW: Drew Wutka's Services In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <01b201cc83b4$214d2e80$63e78b80$@winhaven.net> Forwarded From Ken: I spoke with Drew's mom and told her the many wonderful and kind things you guys have written about Drew.? I told her I could forward them and she was excited, so I did in fact send them to her.? ? If you have anything you can share I am certain she and Hannah, and his Dad would love it.? Her email address is: nwutka at sbcglobal.com The following is the information relating to his services: Viewing at Turrentine Jackson Morrow I-75 and ridgeview Thursday 6-7 972-562-2601 Preston Meadow Lutheran 10:30 Friday after back to church for light lunch 972-618-2233 Please feel free to contact me and share this information as you deem necessary. Kenneth Van Huss ? VanGard Systems Office (214) 801-4357 ext 335 Fax??? (214) 299-8597 Cell??? (214) 243-5659 kvanhuss at airrsystem.com From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Mon Oct 10 01:15:57 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:15:57 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010 Demo Virtual Machine... Message-ID: <4D3A0180687B4AF8B4695CC635BAA56A@nant> Hi All -- In this article/blog entry: Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010 Demo Virtual Machine http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericwhite/archive/2010/07/16/writing-and-hosting-a-w eb-service-in-the-sharepoint-2010-demo-virtual-machine.aspx the author refers to a test virtual machine image with SharePoint 2010 configured: "My favorite way to develop/experiment/write about SharePoint 2010 is to use the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine. It is a great virtual machine - finely tuned, and has all of the necessary software installed, including SharePoint Server 2010, Visual Studio 2010, Office 2010, etc. I do on occasion build my own virtual machines when absolutely necessary, but I consider it a necessary evil, not something that I enjoy." The link directs to "http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=21099" but VM isn't available there for downloading. Do you know is it still available for free downloading from MS web site? (Was it a free download?) Thank you. -- Shamil From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Mon Oct 10 01:37:06 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:37:06 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010Demo Virtual Machine... In-Reply-To: <4D3A0180687B4AF8B4695CC635BAA56A@nant> References: <4D3A0180687B4AF8B4695CC635BAA56A@nant> Message-ID: <7360072243CB49A7909DE5AC1AC87336@nant> Hi All -- I have found this link related to the subject: Download Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Trial today http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ee424282 It looks good but it's "too much" - I just need a demo/trial VM with SharePoint 2010 Server configured to test some C#/OpenXML SDK/VBA + SharePoint coding. Is there SharePoint 2010 running in 32bit system environments? If not is it possible to run 64bit virtual machine on 32bit systems? - should be possible I guess, might be slow - no problem Thank you. -- Shamil -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Shamil Salakhetdinov Sent: 10 ??????? 2011 ?. 10:16 To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Cc: 'Discussion concerning Visual Basic and related programming issues.' Subject: [dba-VB] Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010Demo Virtual Machine... Hi All -- In this article/blog entry: Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010 Demo Virtual Machine http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericwhite/archive/2010/07/16/writing-and-hosting-a-w eb-service-in-the-sharepoint-2010-demo-virtual-machine.aspx the author refers to a test virtual machine image with SharePoint 2010 configured: "My favorite way to develop/experiment/write about SharePoint 2010 is to use the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine. It is a great virtual machine - finely tuned, and has all of the necessary software installed, including SharePoint Server 2010, Visual Studio 2010, Office 2010, etc. I do on occasion build my own virtual machines when absolutely necessary, but I consider it a necessary evil, not something that I enjoy." The link directs to "http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=21099" but VM isn't available there for downloading. Do you know is it still available for free downloading from MS web site? (Was it a free download?) Thank you. -- Shamil _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Mon Oct 10 06:36:15 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 07:36:15 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio Message-ID: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From Gustav at cactus.dk Mon Oct 10 07:33:58 2011 From: Gustav at cactus.dk (Gustav Brock) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:33:58 +0200 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio Message-ID: Hi John That's what I have done. Separate 2005/2008/2010 projects completely. If an project will have a second life on in 2010, I copy all source and then convert the copy. /gustav >>> jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com 10-10-2011 13:36 >>> All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Mon Oct 10 08:48:53 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:48:53 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio In-Reply-To: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: Hi John -- VS2010 SP1 is great and stable environment - just go for it. When migrating VS2008 projects to VS2010 I have got just committed upgraded sources to the same code repository (I use Mercurial) as a new version - you can always roll back but I didn't have any need in doing that rollback - and I have about 100 projects upgraded to VS2010 so far - no big issues, almost no issues.... Thank you. -- Shamil -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: 10 ??????? 2011 ?. 15:36 To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From bill_patten at embarqmail.com Mon Oct 10 11:11:33 2011 From: bill_patten at embarqmail.com (Bill Patten) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 09:11:33 -0700 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio In-Reply-To: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <7EB730114C2345DCA94B8C2B92A10F45@BPCS> John, I have been successful in going into the VS 2010 sln file and changing the the first 2 lines. 2008 Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 10.00 # Visual Studio 2008 2010 Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 11.00 # Visual Studio 2010 Perhaps it will work for you too. Bill -------------------------------------------------- From: "jwcolby" Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 4:36 AM To: "VBA" Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 15 09:09:07 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 10:09:07 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] On my ignorance and Inheritance Message-ID: <4E999403.8060708@colbyconsulting.com> I am writing a game in XNA and C#.Net. The purpose is simply to learn more about C#. One of the things I want to do with this is to learn inheritance. The game has visual objects with bitmaps / sprites. Each cell (screen location) in the game will have a hexagonal bitmap, such as terrain - forest, mountain, water and so forth. These bitmaps are contained in bitmap sheets with X/Y pointers into the sheets for loading the area of the sheet into the object. Obviously these cells are pretty simple and do not move. However another class of objects, military units, have a hex bitmap as well but also have attributes such as how much damage they inflict in combat, how much damage they can absorb before being destroyed etc. Before we go there, I will not be using NOSQL to process this stuff! ;) So it seems that I could do a cell class which holds a bitmap pointer and an x/y location pair. Then my military units could inherit from the cell since they need the attributes of the cell. Beyond that however things get gray. All military units have properties such damage inflicted / absorbed, but there are also properties specific to the military units. Land units cannot enter the water, ships cannot enter the land. Air units can fly over either. Things like that. So it feels like I build a "military unit" class, inheriting from cell, with the commonality of all military units. Then what? Three subclasses of Land, water, air? This is all pretty much new ground for me and I am excited to have such a clear cut reason to use inheritance. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From stuart at lexacorp.com.pg Sat Oct 15 18:23:24 2011 From: stuart at lexacorp.com.pg (Stuart McLachlan) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2011 09:23:24 +1000 Subject: [dba-VB] On my ignorance and Inheritance In-Reply-To: <4E999403.8060708@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E999403.8060708@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4E9A15EC.5903.EC67A0C@stuart.lexacorp.com.pg> In that situation, I'd also look at one Unit class and three interfaces iLand, iWater, iAir. (Now that you are finally getting into real classes that can do that sort of thing ) -- Stuart On 15 Oct 2011 at 10:09, jwcolby wrote: > So it seems that I could do a cell class which holds a bitmap pointer > and an x/y location pair. Then my military units could inherit from > the cell since they need the attributes of the cell. > > Beyond that however things get gray. All military units have > properties such damage inflicted / absorbed, but there are also > properties specific to the military units. Land units cannot enter > the water, ships cannot enter the land. Air units can fly over > either. Things like that. > > So it feels like I build a "military unit" class, inheriting from > cell, with the commonality of all military units. Then what? Three > subclasses of Land, water, air? > > This is all pretty much new ground for me and I am excited to have > such a clear cut reason to use inheritance. > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 15 22:52:01 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 23:52:01 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] For those in need Message-ID: <4E9A54E1.5020609@colbyconsulting.com> Who think my server is puny... http://www.nccs.gov/computing-resources/jaguar/access/ You too can do super computing. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Mon Oct 17 11:53:01 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:53:01 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods Message-ID: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> I have three supervisor classes. A ton of the code in each supervisor is common so I am refactoring the code to use inheritance. All that is cool until... I have a thread that each supervisor has. It is mtStart which starts a thread and that thread calls mStart. mtStart is literally identical in all three supervisors but mStart is not, each supervisor does a different job. So I am saying we have the thread itself in the base class and the mtStart in the base class but mStart in the derived class. But (to my knowledge) the base class cannot call mStart in the derived class. So how do I create the thread object in the base but the code run by the thread in the derived class? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From stuart at lexacorp.com.pg Mon Oct 17 17:12:38 2011 From: stuart at lexacorp.com.pg (Stuart McLachlan) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:12:38 +1000 Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods In-Reply-To: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4E9CA856.9519.17FEFC2@stuart.lexacorp.com.pg> Multiple interfaces with a single class rather than inheritance. Inheritance is great, but like classes in Access, it's not the solution to every problem. :-) -- Stuart On 17 Oct 2011 at 12:53, jwcolby wrote: > I have three supervisor classes. A ton of the code in each supervisor > is common so I am refactoring the code to use inheritance. All that > is cool until... > > I have a thread that each supervisor has. It is mtStart which starts > a thread and that thread calls mStart. mtStart is literally identical > in all three supervisors but mStart is not, each supervisor does a > different job. > > So I am saying we have the thread itself in the base class and the > mtStart in the base class but mStart in the derived class. But (to my > knowledge) the base class cannot call mStart in the derived class. So > how do I create the thread object in the base but the code run by the > thread in the derived class? > > -- > John W. Colby > Colby Consulting > > Reality is what refuses to go away > when you do not believe in it > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Sun Oct 23 11:13:50 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2011 20:13:50 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods In-Reply-To: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <6BD762430E014929969FC05AB970A9D8@nant> Hi John -- Virtual or abstract methods should help I suppose. Thank you. -- Shamil -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: 17 ??????? 2011 ?. 20:53 To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods I have three supervisor classes. A ton of the code in each supervisor is common so I am refactoring the code to use inheritance. All that is cool until... I have a thread that each supervisor has. It is mtStart which starts a thread and that thread calls mStart. mtStart is literally identical in all three supervisors but mStart is not, each supervisor does a different job. So I am saying we have the thread itself in the base class and the mtStart in the base class but mStart in the derived class. But (to my knowledge) the base class cannot call mStart in the derived class. So how do I create the thread object in the base but the code run by the thread in the derived class? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Mon Oct 24 21:32:47 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:32:47 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] DRAM errors and ECC Message-ID: <4EA61FCF.10203@colbyconsulting.com> http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Tue Oct 25 06:07:31 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:07:31 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Syncing Virtual Machines Message-ID: <4EA69873.7000104@colbyconsulting.com> I have a virtual machine server (Colby-VM) and last weekend I rebuilt that machine - new motherboard / memory in preparation for a faster CPU etc. I store all my stuff on a RAID array on a dedicated controller, and which survives nicely across upgrades so I got lazy and did not backup. (almost) Everything that could go wrong did and by the end of the experience I was sweating bullets about whether I was going to find one of my critical VMs. I did get all the VMs back, but this brought me to the question of how the pros migrate machines from server to server. My SQL Server (Azul) has Windows 2008 with Hyper-V installed and I am wondering how to cause a VM to be kept synced on two servers so that it can just fire up and go when the usual VM server has to be brought down. Hyper-V has an "export / import" but that takes a loooong time to perform. Is anyone out there involved in this stuff and do you have any answers to this problem? I would love to be able to just shut the machine down on one server and bring it up on the other. My impression is that it is possible to migrate without even shutting down the VM. How is this magic done? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Tue Oct 25 10:00:53 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 11:00:53 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] [dba-SQLServer] Syncing Virtual Machines In-Reply-To: <4EA6BC19.6080207@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4EA69873.7000104@colbyconsulting.com> <-3381981045989815633@unknownmsgid> <4EA6BC19.6080207@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4EA6CF25.1030809@colbyconsulting.com> I have to say that Microsoft's VM system is just unfriendly. I understand that this stuff is complicated but that is all the more reason for Microsoft to spend the time to make it easier. 1) I have no idea the "why" behind this stuff but you cannot simply select the xml file and "mount" a VM. 2) If you "export" a vm then it can be imported. 3) AFAICT you cannot export a vm while it is running. The export menu item simply isn't there. 4) The export fails to a share on another machine on the directory. 5) The accepted fix is to add "machine" to the objects that the share allows and then select the source machine. 6) "Machine" is not a selection (on my machine) so I can't do that. 7) Even for people who are able to and try that, it only works some of the time. 8) When it fails it gives a generic "means nothing except it didn't work" error message. 9) There is no "backup", you have to "register" Hyper-V with the backup service / role. 10) Doing that requires a somewhat extensive manual modification to the registry. 11) Even if you can, the backup process is almost impossible to make happen unless you are backing up to identical machines. Two hours later I am no closer to getting a real automated backup happening of my virtual machines. I am now copying the files themselves. As I have always done in the past, because I ran into this same brick wall every time. :( 12) Having done that I cannot simply mount it on the machine I am copying it to. I have to manually create the machine on that destination machine and start it. Can you say "Frankenstein monster"? VMS are just way cool technology. Until you have to maintain them. John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it >>> On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 7:07 AM, jwcolbywrote: >>> >>>> I have a virtual machine server (Colby-VM) and last weekend I rebuilt that >>>> machine - new motherboard / memory in preparation for a faster CPU etc. I >>>> store all my stuff on a RAID array on a dedicated controller, and which >>>> survives nicely across upgrades so I got lazy and did not backup. (almost) >>>> Everything that could go wrong did and by the end of the experience I was >>>> sweating bullets about whether I was going to find one of my critical VMs. >>>> >>>> From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 29 10:31:04 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 11:31:04 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class Message-ID: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> Awhile back I wrote about a RunState class we were developing to control starting and stopping long running processes and I thought I would provide an update. In our program we have processes which we start running and they stay running until we specifically stop them. These processes often start other processes etc. These processes need an interface for the parent to use to tell them to start and stop and then to be able to monitor the process to see what state it is in. We have developed a class which we use to control the "run state" (as we call it) of a process. Any class which is going to communicate a Start / Stop and a running / stopping / stopped kind of status uses this class. The class encapsulates a check box. There may or may not be a checkbox of course, often only the parent process is told to start / stop via a check box, but that parent process may have N sub processes that it can start and stop. The sub processes do not have a check box. So, we have a form with three processes which we can start running by checking a check box and which we can then then stop by unchecking the check box. When the check box is checked, an event fires. The RunState class sinks the events of the check box and sets its label to "Running". The Runstate class then does one of two things. The RunState class has an optional parameter in the constructor which tells it whether the Runstate parent is threaded or not. The run state class has a thread object which it can initialize. So if the RunState parent is threaded, the checkbox event sink creates the thread and the thread raises a Start event. If the Runstate parent is not threaded, then the checkbox event sink simply directly raises the same Start event. In either case the Runstate Start event is sunk in the parent class and the parent class does whatever it is designed to do. When the parent class finishes whatever it does, it calls the mStopped method of the RunState class telling the Runstate class that it is finished processing. This method sets the Runstate property to Stopped, updates the checkbox label (if any) to Stopped, and disconnects the thread object. If the check box is unchecked, the event is sunk and the runstate class sets the label to "Stopping". The runstate class raises an event telling the parent class to stop. When the parent of the RunState class cleans up and determines it is done with it's process, it calls RunState.MStopped just as in the discussion above. The objective of all this stuff is to provide an encapsulated and consistent way for processes to communicate with each other. I (the user) needed a way to start and stop processes via a user interface, and shut down those processes in a clean consistent manner. I have a form which provides the parent process a check box and a status list object. The process can be time consuming, it may be creating a table of a million records to output to disk and creating the file on disk. If I start this process, it cannot be terminated until the process reaches some defined point, IOW it cannot just be shut down in the middle of filling the table or writing the file to disk. Bu providing a process with an instance of this RunState class, a parent process can start a child process and monitor the progress. If needed the RunState class can provide a thread to the process and can also manage a check box, encapsulating and handling all of the crossthread delegate stuff required to write to the checkbox label. Just as an example of how we really use this RunState class, we have a system which validates addresses. The program consists of a single form with three sections, for three high level processes. The processes are Export / Address validation / import. We use a manager class which "owns" the three sections of the form. The manager class has three instances of the RunState class each of which communicates with the user via a checkbox. The manager has a collection of supervisors (jobs) which are in some state of completion. Each job can be partially or entirely exported to disk, processed through address validation and / or imported back in. Thus each job has an instance of the RunState class for each of the three processes. The manager class decides which jobs run and communicates with the job via the RunState class instances, telling a specific job (or jobs) to export, a specific job to Address Validate and a specific job (or jobs) to import. The Supervisor's RunState class instances allows the manager to start and stop the supervisors (jobs) and to determine that a job is stopped. When a job is running the program cannot close, and the form cannot close. When the manager determines that all jobs are in a stopped state the check box labels tell me (the user) that nothing is running and I can close the form and the program. This system is designed to run on my server 24/7. I do have to be logged in to run it since it has a user interface but basically I remote desktop in to the server, start the program, and then close the remote desktop session leaving my user logged in. The program just sits and runs. I have address validation jobs which are scheduled out in the future and the manager loads up all the jobs and just watches them. If a job becomes active, the manager starts it and monitors its completion through the various stages. Using the check boxes on the form I can shut the program down cleanly, even if it is in the middle of a long running operation. The RunState allows me to tell each section to stop and allows me to see when everything is stopped. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From accessd at shaw.ca Sat Oct 29 11:07:37 2011 From: accessd at shaw.ca (Jim Lawrence) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 09:07:37 -0700 Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class In-Reply-To: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <006B3904F71D401AB4BFC77F58F40375@creativesystemdesigns.com> It sounds very impressive as a piece of software that took months (years) to design and debug. I would assume you will be marketing this product soon. ;-) Question: is the application taking advantage of the new "parallelism" presented in VS 2010 or is it just using multi-threading? Jim -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2011 8:31 AM To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class Awhile back I wrote about a RunState class we were developing to control starting and stopping long running processes and I thought I would provide an update. In our program we have processes which we start running and they stay running until we specifically stop them. These processes often start other processes etc. These processes need an interface for the parent to use to tell them to start and stop and then to be able to monitor the process to see what state it is in. We have developed a class which we use to control the "run state" (as we call it) of a process. Any class which is going to communicate a Start / Stop and a running / stopping / stopped kind of status uses this class. The class encapsulates a check box. There may or may not be a checkbox of course, often only the parent process is told to start / stop via a check box, but that parent process may have N sub processes that it can start and stop. The sub processes do not have a check box. So, we have a form with three processes which we can start running by checking a check box and which we can then then stop by unchecking the check box. When the check box is checked, an event fires. The RunState class sinks the events of the check box and sets its label to "Running". The Runstate class then does one of two things. The RunState class has an optional parameter in the constructor which tells it whether the Runstate parent is threaded or not. The run state class has a thread object which it can initialize. So if the RunState parent is threaded, the checkbox event sink creates the thread and the thread raises a Start event. If the Runstate parent is not threaded, then the checkbox event sink simply directly raises the same Start event. In either case the Runstate Start event is sunk in the parent class and the parent class does whatever it is designed to do. When the parent class finishes whatever it does, it calls the mStopped method of the RunState class telling the Runstate class that it is finished processing. This method sets the Runstate property to Stopped, updates the checkbox label (if any) to Stopped, and disconnects the thread object. If the check box is unchecked, the event is sunk and the runstate class sets the label to "Stopping". The runstate class raises an event telling the parent class to stop. When the parent of the RunState class cleans up and determines it is done with it's process, it calls RunState.MStopped just as in the discussion above. The objective of all this stuff is to provide an encapsulated and consistent way for processes to communicate with each other. I (the user) needed a way to start and stop processes via a user interface, and shut down those processes in a clean consistent manner. I have a form which provides the parent process a check box and a status list object. The process can be time consuming, it may be creating a table of a million records to output to disk and creating the file on disk. If I start this process, it cannot be terminated until the process reaches some defined point, IOW it cannot just be shut down in the middle of filling the table or writing the file to disk. Bu providing a process with an instance of this RunState class, a parent process can start a child process and monitor the progress. If needed the RunState class can provide a thread to the process and can also manage a check box, encapsulating and handling all of the crossthread delegate stuff required to write to the checkbox label. Just as an example of how we really use this RunState class, we have a system which validates addresses. The program consists of a single form with three sections, for three high level processes. The processes are Export / Address validation / import. We use a manager class which "owns" the three sections of the form. The manager class has three instances of the RunState class each of which communicates with the user via a checkbox. The manager has a collection of supervisors (jobs) which are in some state of completion. Each job can be partially or entirely exported to disk, processed through address validation and / or imported back in. Thus each job has an instance of the RunState class for each of the three processes. The manager class decides which jobs run and communicates with the job via the RunState class instances, telling a specific job (or jobs) to export, a specific job to Address Validate and a specific job (or jobs) to import. The Supervisor's RunState class instances allows the manager to start and stop the supervisors (jobs) and to determine that a job is stopped. When a job is running the program cannot close, and the form cannot close. When the manager determines that all jobs are in a stopped state the check box labels tell me (the user) that nothing is running and I can close the form and the program. This system is designed to run on my server 24/7. I do have to be logged in to run it since it has a user interface but basically I remote desktop in to the server, start the program, and then close the remote desktop session leaving my user logged in. The program just sits and runs. I have address validation jobs which are scheduled out in the future and the manager loads up all the jobs and just watches them. If a job becomes active, the manager starts it and monitors its completion through the various stages. Using the check boxes on the form I can shut the program down cleanly, even if it is in the middle of a long running operation. The RunState allows me to tell each section to stop and allows me to see when everything is stopped. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 29 11:56:58 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 12:56:58 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class In-Reply-To: <006B3904F71D401AB4BFC77F58F40375@creativesystemdesigns.com> References: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> <006B3904F71D401AB4BFC77F58F40375@creativesystemdesigns.com> Message-ID: <4EAC305A.6020009@colbyconsulting.com> > Question: is the application taking advantage of the new "parallelism" presented in VS 2010 or is it just using multi-threading? LOL. "Just" multi-threading. Believe me I am thrilled with that. Threading and communications between processes running in threads can be a major PITA. The RunState class itself is a smallish class, not really a lot there. It never occurred to me to try and market the list cleaning system, and I really think it is too complex to do so. If I could get a high enough bandwidth I could market list cleaning as a service, using the system. What the program has really done is turned a completely manual process into an almost entirely automated process. I took on this client in late 2004. At that time I was entirely into Access and had never even touched SQl Server. The data was originally a single list of 65 million names. I built a server (single core, 4 gigs ram, Windows 2003 X32, SQL Server 2000 X32) and researched the vendor that I still use to do the address validation. I installed that software (Accuzip) and started learning how to do address validation. I had to process those 65 million addresses, and the first time I did it it took me about two weeks, 80 hours. Manual export of 60 million names into 2 million record chunks into CSV files, placing those files into an input directory of Accuzip and taking the finished files from the output directory and importing them back into SQL Server. Understand that I had no tools other than SQL Server itself and whatever it provides. I also had vastly underpowered servers. As I learned SQL Server I started building stored procedures out in SQL Server to automate the bcp out and bcp in. Then I built up stored procedures to loop and export and import the 2 million record chunks. It just slowly grew into an "automated process" but it was entirely in SQL Server which is not particularly "user friendly", either as a programming environment nor as a end user interface. But it worked. I eventually started trying to use Access to execute the existing stored procedures but that never really worked well. Access is single threaded and these processes could take a loooooong time with the hardware of the day. So Access would "lock up" as it waited for the stored procedures to finish. Remember the vastly underpowered servers! I really had an automation breakthrough when I went to the local community college in the fall semester 2009 and took a C# class, fall and spring semester. By the end of December I had started using C# to execute the existing stored procedures, there were somewhere around 30 of them. I started with getting the stored procedures in SQL Server to run in exactly the same order as when I manually executed them. Then I added reporting using nlog. Then I developed a status class to display status into a list control on a form. As pieces came together it became easier to refine the system. I also hired Paul as a part timer helping me write the code. From that point it was really something similar to the spiral development model. Take something that works and refine it, get it working, then refine it again etc. We didn't get to the manager / supervisor / threaded implementation until about 6 months ago, and we just went through another major cycle last week. For a long time the system worked but we would have problems that I would manually intervene to keep it running. I just had to have patience and remember where I came from. I have expanded from one list of 65 million addresses to about 8 lists with about 300 million addresses. Without the automation that the program provides I wouldn't be able to process this many addresses. As it is, even with the "manual interventions" I spend a few hours of actual labor to process these 8 lists. With this latest rewrite it is finally getting to a truly stable state where it just runs. I had communication issues between stages where if anything went wrong the process would stop processing a stage. The latest rewrite really simplified that inter-stage communication and allows each stage to reliably see when the previous stage finishes. In order to be in this business I am legally obligated to process all the addresses every 30 days. This program is the only thing that makes that possible at this scale. John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it On 10/29/2011 12:07 PM, Jim Lawrence wrote: > It sounds very impressive as a piece of software that took months (years) to > design and debug. I would assume you will be marketing this product soon. > ;-) > > Question: is the application taking advantage of the new "parallelism" > presented in VS 2010 or is it just using multi-threading? > > Jim > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 1 14:42:08 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2011 15:42:08 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Having nothing better to do (yea right) Message-ID: <4E876D10.2060401@colbyconsulting.com> I installed Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 on my "new" laptop, including hooking up to source control. I pulled the main client projects into 2008 and then into 2010, whereupon 2010 insisted on converting the 2008 to 2010. It then occurred to me that if I saved it to source control I would be screwing up the 2008 code (which is the production version). I guess I need to store 2010 out as a new version, just to play with. We have much experience in VS 2008 but I have none in 2010 though Paul does. I also downloaded the XNA game studio 4.0 for VS 2010. I have been hankering for years to re-write the old Empire game from scratch in a modern environment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Empire_(video_game) I have played that game since the late 80s and amazingly, it still runs under Windows 2007. It was the grandpappy of most modern strategy war games and I play it to this day against the computer. Wouldn't it be cool to do it in C#, classes, sql server express as a data store, multi-player over the internet? I have only ever played it against another live person one time, when I played against my uncle on his Mac. I am convinced I am a better player than he, but he wiped the floor with me because, I believe, the rules (strategy tables) between the mac version and the pc version were sufficiently different. Playing against another person consisted of physically exchanging the computer between turns, very crude. Now days we could play against each other on different continents. Having nothing better to do... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 1 15:13:52 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:13:52 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] True Crypt whole disk encryption Message-ID: <4E877480.2080209@colbyconsulting.com> The last iteration with my laptop I used Windows Bit locker to perform a whole disk encryption. This time I am using Windows 7 Home Premium which does not include Bit locker. I had just about decided to use True Crypt anyway because with Bil Locker I was unable to mount the old hard disk on another computer to pull the old contents off onto the new disk. So when I installed Windows 7 I broke the disk into three partitions, a 6 gig for the swap file, 100 gig for the OS/programs and 400 gig for data. I then started Truecrypt and told it to go to work encrypting the whole thing and went to bed. In the morning... the computer had decided to sleep during the night (lazy thing!) and so it was only 25% finished. It took most of the day to finish encrypting the entire disk (all partitions) and so here I am. Having done that I decided to hang the truecrypt encrypted disk on another computer, put the old disk back in and push the disk contents out to the other disk. The other disk would not finish loading Windows with the truecrypt encrypted disk on it! It would start to load Windows (2008 server) and then apparently it ran into the true crypt disk and couldn't handle it. It just hung, never finished loading windows. In the end I told the bitlocker software to unencrypt the old disk, then hung that on another machine and put the truecrypt disk back in the laptop, and pulled everything into the new disk. Well not everything but you know what I mean. At least I can do that with the unencrypted disk drive. Things never work the way I envision them working. Truecrypt is not significantly slowing down the new disk. I do have to enter the password at the point where the bios tries to load windows, then off it goes. Not good for auto reboot after software updates... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 10:26:52 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:26:52 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server Message-ID: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> Is anyone using this? I installed VS 2010 on my "new" laptop (windows 7 installation) and now whenever I build a new solution it asks me to choose a team foundation server. Uh... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 10:34:59 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:34:59 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? Message-ID: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> And want to collaborate on a project of some sort? XNA GS is a really cool game development system, for the XBox obviously but it can also compile the game to run on PCs which is where I play since I don't own an XBox. I am thinking of doing a traffic light simulator just to have something somewhat simple to start with. If anyone else is interested in playing around in this environment you are welcome to join me in this or suggest some other project. I am / was into uControllers and one of the classes I took back in the late 80s had the students build a traffic light simulator with little LEDs to simulate a 4 way stop. For their purposes (teaching how to program a uController) that was all you did, turn the lights on and off in a logical consistent manner. I thought I would start with that and build a traffic light. It would take 3 or 4 to build an intersection. And take it from there. We could tie intersections together to sync the lights. Add vehicles to trigger the lights. Etc. But it would all start with a traffic light. Or what would *you* like to simulate in a game console? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From df.waters at comcast.net Sun Oct 2 10:32:54 2011 From: df.waters at comcast.net (Dan Waters) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 10:32:54 -0500 Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server In-Reply-To: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <001f01cc8118$8e4a1640$aade42c0$@comcast.net> Hi John, Ignore that (or search for how to get rid of it). TFS is only for actual teams. It's where a VS TFS is loaded onto a server machine, then when people log into their client VS the client app and the server app do some kind of communicating so that all the clients are up to date or get the same messages or something. It's like Outlook stand-alone vs. Outlook as a client for Exchange on a server. If you're not in a company, Exchange is useless. Dan -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2011 10:27 AM To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server Is anyone using this? I installed VS 2010 on my "new" laptop (windows 7 installation) and now whenever I build a new solution it asks me to choose a team foundation server. Uh... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From fuller.artful at gmail.com Sun Oct 2 11:32:34 2011 From: fuller.artful at gmail.com (Arthur Fuller) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 12:32:34 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? In-Reply-To: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: Daryl Hannah? Ok, I'll settle for Angelina Jolie. Or what would *you* like to simulate in a game console? > > -- > John W. Colby > Colby Consulting > ______________________________**_________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/**mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.**com > > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 12:54:53 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 13:54:53 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? In-Reply-To: References: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4E88A56D.7070400@colbyconsulting.com> Hmm.... Neither does it for me. But an interesting train of thought. We do have females on the list though and you might find yourself collaborating to simulate Hugh Jackman or something. John W. Colby Colby Consulting On 10/2/2011 12:32 PM, Arthur Fuller wrote: > Daryl Hannah? Ok, I'll settle for Angelina Jolie. > > Or what would *you* like to simulate in a game console? >> >> -- >> John W. Colby >> Colby Consulting >> ______________________________**_________________ >> dba-VB mailing list >> dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com >> http://databaseadvisors.com/**mailman/listinfo/dba-vb >> http://www.databaseadvisors.**com >> >> > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 12:55:12 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 13:55:12 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server In-Reply-To: <001f01cc8118$8e4a1640$aade42c0$@comcast.net> References: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> <001f01cc8118$8e4a1640$aade42c0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <4E88A580.5030704@colbyconsulting.com> That is kind of what I thought. John W. Colby Colby Consulting On 10/2/2011 11:32 AM, Dan Waters wrote: > Hi John, > > Ignore that (or search for how to get rid of it). TFS is only for actual > teams. It's where a VS TFS is loaded onto a server machine, then when > people log into their client VS the client app and the server app do some > kind of communicating so that all the clients are up to date or get the same > messages or something. > > It's like Outlook stand-alone vs. Outlook as a client for Exchange on a > server. If you're not in a company, Exchange is useless. > > Dan > > -----Original Message----- > From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com > [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby > Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2011 10:27 AM > To: VBA > Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server > > Is anyone using this? I installed VS 2010 on my "new" laptop (windows 7 > installation) and now whenever I build a new solution it asks me to choose a > team foundation server. > > Uh... > > > -- > John W. Colby > Colby Consulting > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From fuller.artful at gmail.com Sun Oct 2 18:35:01 2011 From: fuller.artful at gmail.com (Arthur Fuller) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 19:35:01 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? In-Reply-To: <4E88A56D.7070400@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> <4E88A56D.7070400@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: LOL.Hugh Jackman now there's a name to remember. A. On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 1:54 PM, jwcolby wrote: > Hmm.... Neither does it for me. But an interesting train of thought. We > do have females on the list though and you might find yourself collaborating > to simulate Hugh Jackman or something. >> >> >>> >> >> From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 21:16:40 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 22:16:40 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] I found this fascinating Message-ID: <4E891B08.7080700@colbyconsulting.com> Talk about efficient programming... http://www.xnaresources.com/default.asp?page=Tutorial:TileEngineSeries:1 What is a Tile Engine Early computer and video game systems had very, very (VERY) little memory - the original Nintendo Entertainment System had 2kb of RAM, and 2kb of video RAM, plus 284 bytes of memory for objects and color palettes. If we call this roughly 4.5kb of memory, my 4GB desktop PC has almost 1 million times the amount of memory the NES had to work with. The full display resolution on the NES was 256x240 pixels, and while our current bits-per-pixel standards don't apply to the NES, even at one bit per pixel (which isn't a good representation anyway) you have 7.5 kb of information just to fill up a single screen. So how do you build large game worlds when you don't have enough memory to hold a single screen? Lets look at another classic NES game: -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From john at winhaven.net Wed Oct 5 14:13:04 2011 From: john at winhaven.net (John Bartow) Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2011 14:13:04 -0500 Subject: [dba-VB] FW: The passing of Drew Wutka In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00c101cc8392$cf8ab660$6ea02320$@winhaven.net> Hello All, I have some sad news to share with you all. Long time lister and friend to many, Drew Wutka, passed away Monday. His friend, Ken, contacted me and a number of other board members to share this news with us because he knew that Drew participated on the DBA lists as he spoke of it often. A coworker walked by Drew's office he saw that he had his head on his desk and went in to check on him. The coworker found that he and no pulse. The paramedics were called and he was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. Ken will keep me apprised of the situation and I will pass it on to everyone as soon as he shares any further information. My deepest condolences to all of Drew's family and friends. John Bartow, President Database Advisors, Inc. Office: 920-582-7574 Mobile: 920-410-7574 From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Wed Oct 5 15:28:03 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:28:03 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] [dba-SQLServer] FW: The passing of Drew Wutka In-Reply-To: <010c01cc8396$44b530c0$ce1f9240$@winhaven.net> References: <00ab01cc8392$cec73f50$6c55bdf0$@winhaven.net> <010c01cc8396$44b530c0$ce1f9240$@winhaven.net> Message-ID: <4E8CBDD3.900@colbyconsulting.com> Man that will take your breath away. Drew was essentially one of our founding members. DatabaseAdvisors needs to formally express out condolences to the family. This is a sad day. John W. Colby Colby Consulting On 10/5/2011 3:37 PM, John Bartow wrote: > Ken will be keeping me apprised of any further info including next of kin. > I'll pass along anything I receive. > > Drew's daughter is only 12 so I'm sure we need to be careful on how we > communicate on this. > > -----Original Message----- > From: dba-sqlserver-bounces at databaseadvisors.com > [mailto:dba-sqlserver-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Steve > Erbach > Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2011 2:19 PM > To: Discussion concerning MS SQL Server > Subject: Re: [dba-SQLServer] FW: The passing of Drew Wutka > > John, > > Do you have contact info for his next of kin? > > Regards, > > Steve Erbach > Neenah, WI > > On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 2:13 PM, John Bartow wrote: > >> Hello All, >> >> I have some sad news to share with you all. >> >> >> >> Long time lister and friend to many, Drew Wutka, passed away Monday. >> >> >> >> His friend, Ken, contacted me and a number of other board members to >> share this news with us because he knew that Drew participated on the >> DBA lists as he spoke of it often. >> >> >> >> A coworker walked by Drew's office he saw that he had his head on his >> desk and went in to check on him. The coworker found that he and no >> pulse. The paramedics were called and he was taken to the hospital >> where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. >> >> >> >> Ken will keep me apprised of the situation and I will pass it on to >> everyone as soon as he shares any further information. >> >> >> >> My deepest condolences to all of Drew's family and friends. >> >> >> >> John Bartow, President >> >> Database Advisors, Inc. >> >> Office: 920-582-7574 >> >> Mobile: 920-410-7574 >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> dba-SQLServer mailing list >> dba-SQLServer at databaseadvisors.com >> http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-sqlserver >> http://www.databaseadvisors.com >> >> > > > -- > Regards, > > Steve Erbach > Neenah, WI > http://www.NeenahPolitics.com > http://www.TheTownCrank.com > _______________________________________________ > dba-SQLServer mailing list > dba-SQLServer at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-sqlserver > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > _______________________________________________ > dba-SQLServer mailing list > dba-SQLServer at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-sqlserver > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From john at winhaven.net Wed Oct 5 18:11:35 2011 From: john at winhaven.net (John Bartow) Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2011 18:11:35 -0500 Subject: [dba-VB] FW: Drew Wutka's Services In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <01b201cc83b4$214d2e80$63e78b80$@winhaven.net> Forwarded From Ken: I spoke with Drew's mom and told her the many wonderful and kind things you guys have written about Drew.? I told her I could forward them and she was excited, so I did in fact send them to her.? ? If you have anything you can share I am certain she and Hannah, and his Dad would love it.? Her email address is: nwutka at sbcglobal.com The following is the information relating to his services: Viewing at Turrentine Jackson Morrow I-75 and ridgeview Thursday 6-7 972-562-2601 Preston Meadow Lutheran 10:30 Friday after back to church for light lunch 972-618-2233 Please feel free to contact me and share this information as you deem necessary. Kenneth Van Huss ? VanGard Systems Office (214) 801-4357 ext 335 Fax??? (214) 299-8597 Cell??? (214) 243-5659 kvanhuss at airrsystem.com From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Mon Oct 10 01:15:57 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:15:57 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010 Demo Virtual Machine... Message-ID: <4D3A0180687B4AF8B4695CC635BAA56A@nant> Hi All -- In this article/blog entry: Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010 Demo Virtual Machine http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericwhite/archive/2010/07/16/writing-and-hosting-a-w eb-service-in-the-sharepoint-2010-demo-virtual-machine.aspx the author refers to a test virtual machine image with SharePoint 2010 configured: "My favorite way to develop/experiment/write about SharePoint 2010 is to use the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine. It is a great virtual machine - finely tuned, and has all of the necessary software installed, including SharePoint Server 2010, Visual Studio 2010, Office 2010, etc. I do on occasion build my own virtual machines when absolutely necessary, but I consider it a necessary evil, not something that I enjoy." The link directs to "http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=21099" but VM isn't available there for downloading. Do you know is it still available for free downloading from MS web site? (Was it a free download?) Thank you. -- Shamil From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Mon Oct 10 01:37:06 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:37:06 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010Demo Virtual Machine... In-Reply-To: <4D3A0180687B4AF8B4695CC635BAA56A@nant> References: <4D3A0180687B4AF8B4695CC635BAA56A@nant> Message-ID: <7360072243CB49A7909DE5AC1AC87336@nant> Hi All -- I have found this link related to the subject: Download Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Trial today http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ee424282 It looks good but it's "too much" - I just need a demo/trial VM with SharePoint 2010 Server configured to test some C#/OpenXML SDK/VBA + SharePoint coding. Is there SharePoint 2010 running in 32bit system environments? If not is it possible to run 64bit virtual machine on 32bit systems? - should be possible I guess, might be slow - no problem Thank you. -- Shamil -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Shamil Salakhetdinov Sent: 10 ??????? 2011 ?. 10:16 To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Cc: 'Discussion concerning Visual Basic and related programming issues.' Subject: [dba-VB] Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010Demo Virtual Machine... Hi All -- In this article/blog entry: Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010 Demo Virtual Machine http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericwhite/archive/2010/07/16/writing-and-hosting-a-w eb-service-in-the-sharepoint-2010-demo-virtual-machine.aspx the author refers to a test virtual machine image with SharePoint 2010 configured: "My favorite way to develop/experiment/write about SharePoint 2010 is to use the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine. It is a great virtual machine - finely tuned, and has all of the necessary software installed, including SharePoint Server 2010, Visual Studio 2010, Office 2010, etc. I do on occasion build my own virtual machines when absolutely necessary, but I consider it a necessary evil, not something that I enjoy." The link directs to "http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=21099" but VM isn't available there for downloading. Do you know is it still available for free downloading from MS web site? (Was it a free download?) Thank you. -- Shamil _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Mon Oct 10 06:36:15 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 07:36:15 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio Message-ID: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From Gustav at cactus.dk Mon Oct 10 07:33:58 2011 From: Gustav at cactus.dk (Gustav Brock) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:33:58 +0200 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio Message-ID: Hi John That's what I have done. Separate 2005/2008/2010 projects completely. If an project will have a second life on in 2010, I copy all source and then convert the copy. /gustav >>> jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com 10-10-2011 13:36 >>> All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Mon Oct 10 08:48:53 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:48:53 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio In-Reply-To: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: Hi John -- VS2010 SP1 is great and stable environment - just go for it. When migrating VS2008 projects to VS2010 I have got just committed upgraded sources to the same code repository (I use Mercurial) as a new version - you can always roll back but I didn't have any need in doing that rollback - and I have about 100 projects upgraded to VS2010 so far - no big issues, almost no issues.... Thank you. -- Shamil -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: 10 ??????? 2011 ?. 15:36 To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From bill_patten at embarqmail.com Mon Oct 10 11:11:33 2011 From: bill_patten at embarqmail.com (Bill Patten) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 09:11:33 -0700 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio In-Reply-To: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <7EB730114C2345DCA94B8C2B92A10F45@BPCS> John, I have been successful in going into the VS 2010 sln file and changing the the first 2 lines. 2008 Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 10.00 # Visual Studio 2008 2010 Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 11.00 # Visual Studio 2010 Perhaps it will work for you too. Bill -------------------------------------------------- From: "jwcolby" Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 4:36 AM To: "VBA" Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 15 09:09:07 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 10:09:07 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] On my ignorance and Inheritance Message-ID: <4E999403.8060708@colbyconsulting.com> I am writing a game in XNA and C#.Net. The purpose is simply to learn more about C#. One of the things I want to do with this is to learn inheritance. The game has visual objects with bitmaps / sprites. Each cell (screen location) in the game will have a hexagonal bitmap, such as terrain - forest, mountain, water and so forth. These bitmaps are contained in bitmap sheets with X/Y pointers into the sheets for loading the area of the sheet into the object. Obviously these cells are pretty simple and do not move. However another class of objects, military units, have a hex bitmap as well but also have attributes such as how much damage they inflict in combat, how much damage they can absorb before being destroyed etc. Before we go there, I will not be using NOSQL to process this stuff! ;) So it seems that I could do a cell class which holds a bitmap pointer and an x/y location pair. Then my military units could inherit from the cell since they need the attributes of the cell. Beyond that however things get gray. All military units have properties such damage inflicted / absorbed, but there are also properties specific to the military units. Land units cannot enter the water, ships cannot enter the land. Air units can fly over either. Things like that. So it feels like I build a "military unit" class, inheriting from cell, with the commonality of all military units. Then what? Three subclasses of Land, water, air? This is all pretty much new ground for me and I am excited to have such a clear cut reason to use inheritance. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From stuart at lexacorp.com.pg Sat Oct 15 18:23:24 2011 From: stuart at lexacorp.com.pg (Stuart McLachlan) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2011 09:23:24 +1000 Subject: [dba-VB] On my ignorance and Inheritance In-Reply-To: <4E999403.8060708@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E999403.8060708@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4E9A15EC.5903.EC67A0C@stuart.lexacorp.com.pg> In that situation, I'd also look at one Unit class and three interfaces iLand, iWater, iAir. (Now that you are finally getting into real classes that can do that sort of thing ) -- Stuart On 15 Oct 2011 at 10:09, jwcolby wrote: > So it seems that I could do a cell class which holds a bitmap pointer > and an x/y location pair. Then my military units could inherit from > the cell since they need the attributes of the cell. > > Beyond that however things get gray. All military units have > properties such damage inflicted / absorbed, but there are also > properties specific to the military units. Land units cannot enter > the water, ships cannot enter the land. Air units can fly over > either. Things like that. > > So it feels like I build a "military unit" class, inheriting from > cell, with the commonality of all military units. Then what? Three > subclasses of Land, water, air? > > This is all pretty much new ground for me and I am excited to have > such a clear cut reason to use inheritance. > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 15 22:52:01 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 23:52:01 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] For those in need Message-ID: <4E9A54E1.5020609@colbyconsulting.com> Who think my server is puny... http://www.nccs.gov/computing-resources/jaguar/access/ You too can do super computing. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Mon Oct 17 11:53:01 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:53:01 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods Message-ID: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> I have three supervisor classes. A ton of the code in each supervisor is common so I am refactoring the code to use inheritance. All that is cool until... I have a thread that each supervisor has. It is mtStart which starts a thread and that thread calls mStart. mtStart is literally identical in all three supervisors but mStart is not, each supervisor does a different job. So I am saying we have the thread itself in the base class and the mtStart in the base class but mStart in the derived class. But (to my knowledge) the base class cannot call mStart in the derived class. So how do I create the thread object in the base but the code run by the thread in the derived class? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From stuart at lexacorp.com.pg Mon Oct 17 17:12:38 2011 From: stuart at lexacorp.com.pg (Stuart McLachlan) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:12:38 +1000 Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods In-Reply-To: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4E9CA856.9519.17FEFC2@stuart.lexacorp.com.pg> Multiple interfaces with a single class rather than inheritance. Inheritance is great, but like classes in Access, it's not the solution to every problem. :-) -- Stuart On 17 Oct 2011 at 12:53, jwcolby wrote: > I have three supervisor classes. A ton of the code in each supervisor > is common so I am refactoring the code to use inheritance. All that > is cool until... > > I have a thread that each supervisor has. It is mtStart which starts > a thread and that thread calls mStart. mtStart is literally identical > in all three supervisors but mStart is not, each supervisor does a > different job. > > So I am saying we have the thread itself in the base class and the > mtStart in the base class but mStart in the derived class. But (to my > knowledge) the base class cannot call mStart in the derived class. So > how do I create the thread object in the base but the code run by the > thread in the derived class? > > -- > John W. Colby > Colby Consulting > > Reality is what refuses to go away > when you do not believe in it > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Sun Oct 23 11:13:50 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2011 20:13:50 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods In-Reply-To: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <6BD762430E014929969FC05AB970A9D8@nant> Hi John -- Virtual or abstract methods should help I suppose. Thank you. -- Shamil -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: 17 ??????? 2011 ?. 20:53 To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods I have three supervisor classes. A ton of the code in each supervisor is common so I am refactoring the code to use inheritance. All that is cool until... I have a thread that each supervisor has. It is mtStart which starts a thread and that thread calls mStart. mtStart is literally identical in all three supervisors but mStart is not, each supervisor does a different job. So I am saying we have the thread itself in the base class and the mtStart in the base class but mStart in the derived class. But (to my knowledge) the base class cannot call mStart in the derived class. So how do I create the thread object in the base but the code run by the thread in the derived class? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Mon Oct 24 21:32:47 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:32:47 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] DRAM errors and ECC Message-ID: <4EA61FCF.10203@colbyconsulting.com> http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Tue Oct 25 06:07:31 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:07:31 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Syncing Virtual Machines Message-ID: <4EA69873.7000104@colbyconsulting.com> I have a virtual machine server (Colby-VM) and last weekend I rebuilt that machine - new motherboard / memory in preparation for a faster CPU etc. I store all my stuff on a RAID array on a dedicated controller, and which survives nicely across upgrades so I got lazy and did not backup. (almost) Everything that could go wrong did and by the end of the experience I was sweating bullets about whether I was going to find one of my critical VMs. I did get all the VMs back, but this brought me to the question of how the pros migrate machines from server to server. My SQL Server (Azul) has Windows 2008 with Hyper-V installed and I am wondering how to cause a VM to be kept synced on two servers so that it can just fire up and go when the usual VM server has to be brought down. Hyper-V has an "export / import" but that takes a loooong time to perform. Is anyone out there involved in this stuff and do you have any answers to this problem? I would love to be able to just shut the machine down on one server and bring it up on the other. My impression is that it is possible to migrate without even shutting down the VM. How is this magic done? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Tue Oct 25 10:00:53 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 11:00:53 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] [dba-SQLServer] Syncing Virtual Machines In-Reply-To: <4EA6BC19.6080207@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4EA69873.7000104@colbyconsulting.com> <-3381981045989815633@unknownmsgid> <4EA6BC19.6080207@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4EA6CF25.1030809@colbyconsulting.com> I have to say that Microsoft's VM system is just unfriendly. I understand that this stuff is complicated but that is all the more reason for Microsoft to spend the time to make it easier. 1) I have no idea the "why" behind this stuff but you cannot simply select the xml file and "mount" a VM. 2) If you "export" a vm then it can be imported. 3) AFAICT you cannot export a vm while it is running. The export menu item simply isn't there. 4) The export fails to a share on another machine on the directory. 5) The accepted fix is to add "machine" to the objects that the share allows and then select the source machine. 6) "Machine" is not a selection (on my machine) so I can't do that. 7) Even for people who are able to and try that, it only works some of the time. 8) When it fails it gives a generic "means nothing except it didn't work" error message. 9) There is no "backup", you have to "register" Hyper-V with the backup service / role. 10) Doing that requires a somewhat extensive manual modification to the registry. 11) Even if you can, the backup process is almost impossible to make happen unless you are backing up to identical machines. Two hours later I am no closer to getting a real automated backup happening of my virtual machines. I am now copying the files themselves. As I have always done in the past, because I ran into this same brick wall every time. :( 12) Having done that I cannot simply mount it on the machine I am copying it to. I have to manually create the machine on that destination machine and start it. Can you say "Frankenstein monster"? VMS are just way cool technology. Until you have to maintain them. John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it >>> On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 7:07 AM, jwcolbywrote: >>> >>>> I have a virtual machine server (Colby-VM) and last weekend I rebuilt that >>>> machine - new motherboard / memory in preparation for a faster CPU etc. I >>>> store all my stuff on a RAID array on a dedicated controller, and which >>>> survives nicely across upgrades so I got lazy and did not backup. (almost) >>>> Everything that could go wrong did and by the end of the experience I was >>>> sweating bullets about whether I was going to find one of my critical VMs. >>>> >>>> From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 29 10:31:04 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 11:31:04 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class Message-ID: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> Awhile back I wrote about a RunState class we were developing to control starting and stopping long running processes and I thought I would provide an update. In our program we have processes which we start running and they stay running until we specifically stop them. These processes often start other processes etc. These processes need an interface for the parent to use to tell them to start and stop and then to be able to monitor the process to see what state it is in. We have developed a class which we use to control the "run state" (as we call it) of a process. Any class which is going to communicate a Start / Stop and a running / stopping / stopped kind of status uses this class. The class encapsulates a check box. There may or may not be a checkbox of course, often only the parent process is told to start / stop via a check box, but that parent process may have N sub processes that it can start and stop. The sub processes do not have a check box. So, we have a form with three processes which we can start running by checking a check box and which we can then then stop by unchecking the check box. When the check box is checked, an event fires. The RunState class sinks the events of the check box and sets its label to "Running". The Runstate class then does one of two things. The RunState class has an optional parameter in the constructor which tells it whether the Runstate parent is threaded or not. The run state class has a thread object which it can initialize. So if the RunState parent is threaded, the checkbox event sink creates the thread and the thread raises a Start event. If the Runstate parent is not threaded, then the checkbox event sink simply directly raises the same Start event. In either case the Runstate Start event is sunk in the parent class and the parent class does whatever it is designed to do. When the parent class finishes whatever it does, it calls the mStopped method of the RunState class telling the Runstate class that it is finished processing. This method sets the Runstate property to Stopped, updates the checkbox label (if any) to Stopped, and disconnects the thread object. If the check box is unchecked, the event is sunk and the runstate class sets the label to "Stopping". The runstate class raises an event telling the parent class to stop. When the parent of the RunState class cleans up and determines it is done with it's process, it calls RunState.MStopped just as in the discussion above. The objective of all this stuff is to provide an encapsulated and consistent way for processes to communicate with each other. I (the user) needed a way to start and stop processes via a user interface, and shut down those processes in a clean consistent manner. I have a form which provides the parent process a check box and a status list object. The process can be time consuming, it may be creating a table of a million records to output to disk and creating the file on disk. If I start this process, it cannot be terminated until the process reaches some defined point, IOW it cannot just be shut down in the middle of filling the table or writing the file to disk. Bu providing a process with an instance of this RunState class, a parent process can start a child process and monitor the progress. If needed the RunState class can provide a thread to the process and can also manage a check box, encapsulating and handling all of the crossthread delegate stuff required to write to the checkbox label. Just as an example of how we really use this RunState class, we have a system which validates addresses. The program consists of a single form with three sections, for three high level processes. The processes are Export / Address validation / import. We use a manager class which "owns" the three sections of the form. The manager class has three instances of the RunState class each of which communicates with the user via a checkbox. The manager has a collection of supervisors (jobs) which are in some state of completion. Each job can be partially or entirely exported to disk, processed through address validation and / or imported back in. Thus each job has an instance of the RunState class for each of the three processes. The manager class decides which jobs run and communicates with the job via the RunState class instances, telling a specific job (or jobs) to export, a specific job to Address Validate and a specific job (or jobs) to import. The Supervisor's RunState class instances allows the manager to start and stop the supervisors (jobs) and to determine that a job is stopped. When a job is running the program cannot close, and the form cannot close. When the manager determines that all jobs are in a stopped state the check box labels tell me (the user) that nothing is running and I can close the form and the program. This system is designed to run on my server 24/7. I do have to be logged in to run it since it has a user interface but basically I remote desktop in to the server, start the program, and then close the remote desktop session leaving my user logged in. The program just sits and runs. I have address validation jobs which are scheduled out in the future and the manager loads up all the jobs and just watches them. If a job becomes active, the manager starts it and monitors its completion through the various stages. Using the check boxes on the form I can shut the program down cleanly, even if it is in the middle of a long running operation. The RunState allows me to tell each section to stop and allows me to see when everything is stopped. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From accessd at shaw.ca Sat Oct 29 11:07:37 2011 From: accessd at shaw.ca (Jim Lawrence) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 09:07:37 -0700 Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class In-Reply-To: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <006B3904F71D401AB4BFC77F58F40375@creativesystemdesigns.com> It sounds very impressive as a piece of software that took months (years) to design and debug. I would assume you will be marketing this product soon. ;-) Question: is the application taking advantage of the new "parallelism" presented in VS 2010 or is it just using multi-threading? Jim -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2011 8:31 AM To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class Awhile back I wrote about a RunState class we were developing to control starting and stopping long running processes and I thought I would provide an update. In our program we have processes which we start running and they stay running until we specifically stop them. These processes often start other processes etc. These processes need an interface for the parent to use to tell them to start and stop and then to be able to monitor the process to see what state it is in. We have developed a class which we use to control the "run state" (as we call it) of a process. Any class which is going to communicate a Start / Stop and a running / stopping / stopped kind of status uses this class. The class encapsulates a check box. There may or may not be a checkbox of course, often only the parent process is told to start / stop via a check box, but that parent process may have N sub processes that it can start and stop. The sub processes do not have a check box. So, we have a form with three processes which we can start running by checking a check box and which we can then then stop by unchecking the check box. When the check box is checked, an event fires. The RunState class sinks the events of the check box and sets its label to "Running". The Runstate class then does one of two things. The RunState class has an optional parameter in the constructor which tells it whether the Runstate parent is threaded or not. The run state class has a thread object which it can initialize. So if the RunState parent is threaded, the checkbox event sink creates the thread and the thread raises a Start event. If the Runstate parent is not threaded, then the checkbox event sink simply directly raises the same Start event. In either case the Runstate Start event is sunk in the parent class and the parent class does whatever it is designed to do. When the parent class finishes whatever it does, it calls the mStopped method of the RunState class telling the Runstate class that it is finished processing. This method sets the Runstate property to Stopped, updates the checkbox label (if any) to Stopped, and disconnects the thread object. If the check box is unchecked, the event is sunk and the runstate class sets the label to "Stopping". The runstate class raises an event telling the parent class to stop. When the parent of the RunState class cleans up and determines it is done with it's process, it calls RunState.MStopped just as in the discussion above. The objective of all this stuff is to provide an encapsulated and consistent way for processes to communicate with each other. I (the user) needed a way to start and stop processes via a user interface, and shut down those processes in a clean consistent manner. I have a form which provides the parent process a check box and a status list object. The process can be time consuming, it may be creating a table of a million records to output to disk and creating the file on disk. If I start this process, it cannot be terminated until the process reaches some defined point, IOW it cannot just be shut down in the middle of filling the table or writing the file to disk. Bu providing a process with an instance of this RunState class, a parent process can start a child process and monitor the progress. If needed the RunState class can provide a thread to the process and can also manage a check box, encapsulating and handling all of the crossthread delegate stuff required to write to the checkbox label. Just as an example of how we really use this RunState class, we have a system which validates addresses. The program consists of a single form with three sections, for three high level processes. The processes are Export / Address validation / import. We use a manager class which "owns" the three sections of the form. The manager class has three instances of the RunState class each of which communicates with the user via a checkbox. The manager has a collection of supervisors (jobs) which are in some state of completion. Each job can be partially or entirely exported to disk, processed through address validation and / or imported back in. Thus each job has an instance of the RunState class for each of the three processes. The manager class decides which jobs run and communicates with the job via the RunState class instances, telling a specific job (or jobs) to export, a specific job to Address Validate and a specific job (or jobs) to import. The Supervisor's RunState class instances allows the manager to start and stop the supervisors (jobs) and to determine that a job is stopped. When a job is running the program cannot close, and the form cannot close. When the manager determines that all jobs are in a stopped state the check box labels tell me (the user) that nothing is running and I can close the form and the program. This system is designed to run on my server 24/7. I do have to be logged in to run it since it has a user interface but basically I remote desktop in to the server, start the program, and then close the remote desktop session leaving my user logged in. The program just sits and runs. I have address validation jobs which are scheduled out in the future and the manager loads up all the jobs and just watches them. If a job becomes active, the manager starts it and monitors its completion through the various stages. Using the check boxes on the form I can shut the program down cleanly, even if it is in the middle of a long running operation. The RunState allows me to tell each section to stop and allows me to see when everything is stopped. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 29 11:56:58 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 12:56:58 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class In-Reply-To: <006B3904F71D401AB4BFC77F58F40375@creativesystemdesigns.com> References: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> <006B3904F71D401AB4BFC77F58F40375@creativesystemdesigns.com> Message-ID: <4EAC305A.6020009@colbyconsulting.com> > Question: is the application taking advantage of the new "parallelism" presented in VS 2010 or is it just using multi-threading? LOL. "Just" multi-threading. Believe me I am thrilled with that. Threading and communications between processes running in threads can be a major PITA. The RunState class itself is a smallish class, not really a lot there. It never occurred to me to try and market the list cleaning system, and I really think it is too complex to do so. If I could get a high enough bandwidth I could market list cleaning as a service, using the system. What the program has really done is turned a completely manual process into an almost entirely automated process. I took on this client in late 2004. At that time I was entirely into Access and had never even touched SQl Server. The data was originally a single list of 65 million names. I built a server (single core, 4 gigs ram, Windows 2003 X32, SQL Server 2000 X32) and researched the vendor that I still use to do the address validation. I installed that software (Accuzip) and started learning how to do address validation. I had to process those 65 million addresses, and the first time I did it it took me about two weeks, 80 hours. Manual export of 60 million names into 2 million record chunks into CSV files, placing those files into an input directory of Accuzip and taking the finished files from the output directory and importing them back into SQL Server. Understand that I had no tools other than SQL Server itself and whatever it provides. I also had vastly underpowered servers. As I learned SQL Server I started building stored procedures out in SQL Server to automate the bcp out and bcp in. Then I built up stored procedures to loop and export and import the 2 million record chunks. It just slowly grew into an "automated process" but it was entirely in SQL Server which is not particularly "user friendly", either as a programming environment nor as a end user interface. But it worked. I eventually started trying to use Access to execute the existing stored procedures but that never really worked well. Access is single threaded and these processes could take a loooooong time with the hardware of the day. So Access would "lock up" as it waited for the stored procedures to finish. Remember the vastly underpowered servers! I really had an automation breakthrough when I went to the local community college in the fall semester 2009 and took a C# class, fall and spring semester. By the end of December I had started using C# to execute the existing stored procedures, there were somewhere around 30 of them. I started with getting the stored procedures in SQL Server to run in exactly the same order as when I manually executed them. Then I added reporting using nlog. Then I developed a status class to display status into a list control on a form. As pieces came together it became easier to refine the system. I also hired Paul as a part timer helping me write the code. From that point it was really something similar to the spiral development model. Take something that works and refine it, get it working, then refine it again etc. We didn't get to the manager / supervisor / threaded implementation until about 6 months ago, and we just went through another major cycle last week. For a long time the system worked but we would have problems that I would manually intervene to keep it running. I just had to have patience and remember where I came from. I have expanded from one list of 65 million addresses to about 8 lists with about 300 million addresses. Without the automation that the program provides I wouldn't be able to process this many addresses. As it is, even with the "manual interventions" I spend a few hours of actual labor to process these 8 lists. With this latest rewrite it is finally getting to a truly stable state where it just runs. I had communication issues between stages where if anything went wrong the process would stop processing a stage. The latest rewrite really simplified that inter-stage communication and allows each stage to reliably see when the previous stage finishes. In order to be in this business I am legally obligated to process all the addresses every 30 days. This program is the only thing that makes that possible at this scale. John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it On 10/29/2011 12:07 PM, Jim Lawrence wrote: > It sounds very impressive as a piece of software that took months (years) to > design and debug. I would assume you will be marketing this product soon. > ;-) > > Question: is the application taking advantage of the new "parallelism" > presented in VS 2010 or is it just using multi-threading? > > Jim > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 1 14:42:08 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2011 15:42:08 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Having nothing better to do (yea right) Message-ID: <4E876D10.2060401@colbyconsulting.com> I installed Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 on my "new" laptop, including hooking up to source control. I pulled the main client projects into 2008 and then into 2010, whereupon 2010 insisted on converting the 2008 to 2010. It then occurred to me that if I saved it to source control I would be screwing up the 2008 code (which is the production version). I guess I need to store 2010 out as a new version, just to play with. We have much experience in VS 2008 but I have none in 2010 though Paul does. I also downloaded the XNA game studio 4.0 for VS 2010. I have been hankering for years to re-write the old Empire game from scratch in a modern environment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Empire_(video_game) I have played that game since the late 80s and amazingly, it still runs under Windows 2007. It was the grandpappy of most modern strategy war games and I play it to this day against the computer. Wouldn't it be cool to do it in C#, classes, sql server express as a data store, multi-player over the internet? I have only ever played it against another live person one time, when I played against my uncle on his Mac. I am convinced I am a better player than he, but he wiped the floor with me because, I believe, the rules (strategy tables) between the mac version and the pc version were sufficiently different. Playing against another person consisted of physically exchanging the computer between turns, very crude. Now days we could play against each other on different continents. Having nothing better to do... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 1 15:13:52 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:13:52 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] True Crypt whole disk encryption Message-ID: <4E877480.2080209@colbyconsulting.com> The last iteration with my laptop I used Windows Bit locker to perform a whole disk encryption. This time I am using Windows 7 Home Premium which does not include Bit locker. I had just about decided to use True Crypt anyway because with Bil Locker I was unable to mount the old hard disk on another computer to pull the old contents off onto the new disk. So when I installed Windows 7 I broke the disk into three partitions, a 6 gig for the swap file, 100 gig for the OS/programs and 400 gig for data. I then started Truecrypt and told it to go to work encrypting the whole thing and went to bed. In the morning... the computer had decided to sleep during the night (lazy thing!) and so it was only 25% finished. It took most of the day to finish encrypting the entire disk (all partitions) and so here I am. Having done that I decided to hang the truecrypt encrypted disk on another computer, put the old disk back in and push the disk contents out to the other disk. The other disk would not finish loading Windows with the truecrypt encrypted disk on it! It would start to load Windows (2008 server) and then apparently it ran into the true crypt disk and couldn't handle it. It just hung, never finished loading windows. In the end I told the bitlocker software to unencrypt the old disk, then hung that on another machine and put the truecrypt disk back in the laptop, and pulled everything into the new disk. Well not everything but you know what I mean. At least I can do that with the unencrypted disk drive. Things never work the way I envision them working. Truecrypt is not significantly slowing down the new disk. I do have to enter the password at the point where the bios tries to load windows, then off it goes. Not good for auto reboot after software updates... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 10:26:52 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:26:52 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server Message-ID: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> Is anyone using this? I installed VS 2010 on my "new" laptop (windows 7 installation) and now whenever I build a new solution it asks me to choose a team foundation server. Uh... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 10:34:59 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:34:59 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? Message-ID: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> And want to collaborate on a project of some sort? XNA GS is a really cool game development system, for the XBox obviously but it can also compile the game to run on PCs which is where I play since I don't own an XBox. I am thinking of doing a traffic light simulator just to have something somewhat simple to start with. If anyone else is interested in playing around in this environment you are welcome to join me in this or suggest some other project. I am / was into uControllers and one of the classes I took back in the late 80s had the students build a traffic light simulator with little LEDs to simulate a 4 way stop. For their purposes (teaching how to program a uController) that was all you did, turn the lights on and off in a logical consistent manner. I thought I would start with that and build a traffic light. It would take 3 or 4 to build an intersection. And take it from there. We could tie intersections together to sync the lights. Add vehicles to trigger the lights. Etc. But it would all start with a traffic light. Or what would *you* like to simulate in a game console? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From df.waters at comcast.net Sun Oct 2 10:32:54 2011 From: df.waters at comcast.net (Dan Waters) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 10:32:54 -0500 Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server In-Reply-To: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <001f01cc8118$8e4a1640$aade42c0$@comcast.net> Hi John, Ignore that (or search for how to get rid of it). TFS is only for actual teams. It's where a VS TFS is loaded onto a server machine, then when people log into their client VS the client app and the server app do some kind of communicating so that all the clients are up to date or get the same messages or something. It's like Outlook stand-alone vs. Outlook as a client for Exchange on a server. If you're not in a company, Exchange is useless. Dan -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2011 10:27 AM To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server Is anyone using this? I installed VS 2010 on my "new" laptop (windows 7 installation) and now whenever I build a new solution it asks me to choose a team foundation server. Uh... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From fuller.artful at gmail.com Sun Oct 2 11:32:34 2011 From: fuller.artful at gmail.com (Arthur Fuller) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 12:32:34 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? In-Reply-To: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: Daryl Hannah? Ok, I'll settle for Angelina Jolie. Or what would *you* like to simulate in a game console? > > -- > John W. Colby > Colby Consulting > ______________________________**_________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/**mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.**com > > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 12:54:53 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 13:54:53 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? In-Reply-To: References: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4E88A56D.7070400@colbyconsulting.com> Hmm.... Neither does it for me. But an interesting train of thought. We do have females on the list though and you might find yourself collaborating to simulate Hugh Jackman or something. John W. Colby Colby Consulting On 10/2/2011 12:32 PM, Arthur Fuller wrote: > Daryl Hannah? Ok, I'll settle for Angelina Jolie. > > Or what would *you* like to simulate in a game console? >> >> -- >> John W. Colby >> Colby Consulting >> ______________________________**_________________ >> dba-VB mailing list >> dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com >> http://databaseadvisors.com/**mailman/listinfo/dba-vb >> http://www.databaseadvisors.**com >> >> > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 12:55:12 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 13:55:12 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server In-Reply-To: <001f01cc8118$8e4a1640$aade42c0$@comcast.net> References: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> <001f01cc8118$8e4a1640$aade42c0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <4E88A580.5030704@colbyconsulting.com> That is kind of what I thought. John W. Colby Colby Consulting On 10/2/2011 11:32 AM, Dan Waters wrote: > Hi John, > > Ignore that (or search for how to get rid of it). TFS is only for actual > teams. It's where a VS TFS is loaded onto a server machine, then when > people log into their client VS the client app and the server app do some > kind of communicating so that all the clients are up to date or get the same > messages or something. > > It's like Outlook stand-alone vs. Outlook as a client for Exchange on a > server. If you're not in a company, Exchange is useless. > > Dan > > -----Original Message----- > From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com > [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby > Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2011 10:27 AM > To: VBA > Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server > > Is anyone using this? I installed VS 2010 on my "new" laptop (windows 7 > installation) and now whenever I build a new solution it asks me to choose a > team foundation server. > > Uh... > > > -- > John W. Colby > Colby Consulting > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From fuller.artful at gmail.com Sun Oct 2 18:35:01 2011 From: fuller.artful at gmail.com (Arthur Fuller) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 19:35:01 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? In-Reply-To: <4E88A56D.7070400@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> <4E88A56D.7070400@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: LOL.Hugh Jackman now there's a name to remember. A. On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 1:54 PM, jwcolby wrote: > Hmm.... Neither does it for me. But an interesting train of thought. We > do have females on the list though and you might find yourself collaborating > to simulate Hugh Jackman or something. >> >> >>> >> >> From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 21:16:40 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 22:16:40 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] I found this fascinating Message-ID: <4E891B08.7080700@colbyconsulting.com> Talk about efficient programming... http://www.xnaresources.com/default.asp?page=Tutorial:TileEngineSeries:1 What is a Tile Engine Early computer and video game systems had very, very (VERY) little memory - the original Nintendo Entertainment System had 2kb of RAM, and 2kb of video RAM, plus 284 bytes of memory for objects and color palettes. If we call this roughly 4.5kb of memory, my 4GB desktop PC has almost 1 million times the amount of memory the NES had to work with. The full display resolution on the NES was 256x240 pixels, and while our current bits-per-pixel standards don't apply to the NES, even at one bit per pixel (which isn't a good representation anyway) you have 7.5 kb of information just to fill up a single screen. So how do you build large game worlds when you don't have enough memory to hold a single screen? Lets look at another classic NES game: -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From john at winhaven.net Wed Oct 5 14:13:04 2011 From: john at winhaven.net (John Bartow) Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2011 14:13:04 -0500 Subject: [dba-VB] FW: The passing of Drew Wutka In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00c101cc8392$cf8ab660$6ea02320$@winhaven.net> Hello All, I have some sad news to share with you all. Long time lister and friend to many, Drew Wutka, passed away Monday. His friend, Ken, contacted me and a number of other board members to share this news with us because he knew that Drew participated on the DBA lists as he spoke of it often. A coworker walked by Drew's office he saw that he had his head on his desk and went in to check on him. The coworker found that he and no pulse. The paramedics were called and he was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. Ken will keep me apprised of the situation and I will pass it on to everyone as soon as he shares any further information. My deepest condolences to all of Drew's family and friends. John Bartow, President Database Advisors, Inc. Office: 920-582-7574 Mobile: 920-410-7574 From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Wed Oct 5 15:28:03 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:28:03 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] [dba-SQLServer] FW: The passing of Drew Wutka In-Reply-To: <010c01cc8396$44b530c0$ce1f9240$@winhaven.net> References: <00ab01cc8392$cec73f50$6c55bdf0$@winhaven.net> <010c01cc8396$44b530c0$ce1f9240$@winhaven.net> Message-ID: <4E8CBDD3.900@colbyconsulting.com> Man that will take your breath away. Drew was essentially one of our founding members. DatabaseAdvisors needs to formally express out condolences to the family. This is a sad day. John W. Colby Colby Consulting On 10/5/2011 3:37 PM, John Bartow wrote: > Ken will be keeping me apprised of any further info including next of kin. > I'll pass along anything I receive. > > Drew's daughter is only 12 so I'm sure we need to be careful on how we > communicate on this. > > -----Original Message----- > From: dba-sqlserver-bounces at databaseadvisors.com > [mailto:dba-sqlserver-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Steve > Erbach > Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2011 2:19 PM > To: Discussion concerning MS SQL Server > Subject: Re: [dba-SQLServer] FW: The passing of Drew Wutka > > John, > > Do you have contact info for his next of kin? > > Regards, > > Steve Erbach > Neenah, WI > > On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 2:13 PM, John Bartow wrote: > >> Hello All, >> >> I have some sad news to share with you all. >> >> >> >> Long time lister and friend to many, Drew Wutka, passed away Monday. >> >> >> >> His friend, Ken, contacted me and a number of other board members to >> share this news with us because he knew that Drew participated on the >> DBA lists as he spoke of it often. >> >> >> >> A coworker walked by Drew's office he saw that he had his head on his >> desk and went in to check on him. The coworker found that he and no >> pulse. The paramedics were called and he was taken to the hospital >> where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. >> >> >> >> Ken will keep me apprised of the situation and I will pass it on to >> everyone as soon as he shares any further information. >> >> >> >> My deepest condolences to all of Drew's family and friends. >> >> >> >> John Bartow, President >> >> Database Advisors, Inc. >> >> Office: 920-582-7574 >> >> Mobile: 920-410-7574 >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> dba-SQLServer mailing list >> dba-SQLServer at databaseadvisors.com >> http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-sqlserver >> http://www.databaseadvisors.com >> >> > > > -- > Regards, > > Steve Erbach > Neenah, WI > http://www.NeenahPolitics.com > http://www.TheTownCrank.com > _______________________________________________ > dba-SQLServer mailing list > dba-SQLServer at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-sqlserver > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > _______________________________________________ > dba-SQLServer mailing list > dba-SQLServer at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-sqlserver > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From john at winhaven.net Wed Oct 5 18:11:35 2011 From: john at winhaven.net (John Bartow) Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2011 18:11:35 -0500 Subject: [dba-VB] FW: Drew Wutka's Services In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <01b201cc83b4$214d2e80$63e78b80$@winhaven.net> Forwarded From Ken: I spoke with Drew's mom and told her the many wonderful and kind things you guys have written about Drew.? I told her I could forward them and she was excited, so I did in fact send them to her.? ? If you have anything you can share I am certain she and Hannah, and his Dad would love it.? Her email address is: nwutka at sbcglobal.com The following is the information relating to his services: Viewing at Turrentine Jackson Morrow I-75 and ridgeview Thursday 6-7 972-562-2601 Preston Meadow Lutheran 10:30 Friday after back to church for light lunch 972-618-2233 Please feel free to contact me and share this information as you deem necessary. Kenneth Van Huss ? VanGard Systems Office (214) 801-4357 ext 335 Fax??? (214) 299-8597 Cell??? (214) 243-5659 kvanhuss at airrsystem.com From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Mon Oct 10 01:15:57 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:15:57 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010 Demo Virtual Machine... Message-ID: <4D3A0180687B4AF8B4695CC635BAA56A@nant> Hi All -- In this article/blog entry: Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010 Demo Virtual Machine http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericwhite/archive/2010/07/16/writing-and-hosting-a-w eb-service-in-the-sharepoint-2010-demo-virtual-machine.aspx the author refers to a test virtual machine image with SharePoint 2010 configured: "My favorite way to develop/experiment/write about SharePoint 2010 is to use the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine. It is a great virtual machine - finely tuned, and has all of the necessary software installed, including SharePoint Server 2010, Visual Studio 2010, Office 2010, etc. I do on occasion build my own virtual machines when absolutely necessary, but I consider it a necessary evil, not something that I enjoy." The link directs to "http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=21099" but VM isn't available there for downloading. Do you know is it still available for free downloading from MS web site? (Was it a free download?) Thank you. -- Shamil From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Mon Oct 10 01:37:06 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:37:06 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010Demo Virtual Machine... In-Reply-To: <4D3A0180687B4AF8B4695CC635BAA56A@nant> References: <4D3A0180687B4AF8B4695CC635BAA56A@nant> Message-ID: <7360072243CB49A7909DE5AC1AC87336@nant> Hi All -- I have found this link related to the subject: Download Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Trial today http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ee424282 It looks good but it's "too much" - I just need a demo/trial VM with SharePoint 2010 Server configured to test some C#/OpenXML SDK/VBA + SharePoint coding. Is there SharePoint 2010 running in 32bit system environments? If not is it possible to run 64bit virtual machine on 32bit systems? - should be possible I guess, might be slow - no problem Thank you. -- Shamil -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Shamil Salakhetdinov Sent: 10 ??????? 2011 ?. 10:16 To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Cc: 'Discussion concerning Visual Basic and related programming issues.' Subject: [dba-VB] Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010Demo Virtual Machine... Hi All -- In this article/blog entry: Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010 Demo Virtual Machine http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericwhite/archive/2010/07/16/writing-and-hosting-a-w eb-service-in-the-sharepoint-2010-demo-virtual-machine.aspx the author refers to a test virtual machine image with SharePoint 2010 configured: "My favorite way to develop/experiment/write about SharePoint 2010 is to use the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine. It is a great virtual machine - finely tuned, and has all of the necessary software installed, including SharePoint Server 2010, Visual Studio 2010, Office 2010, etc. I do on occasion build my own virtual machines when absolutely necessary, but I consider it a necessary evil, not something that I enjoy." The link directs to "http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=21099" but VM isn't available there for downloading. Do you know is it still available for free downloading from MS web site? (Was it a free download?) Thank you. -- Shamil _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Mon Oct 10 06:36:15 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 07:36:15 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio Message-ID: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From Gustav at cactus.dk Mon Oct 10 07:33:58 2011 From: Gustav at cactus.dk (Gustav Brock) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:33:58 +0200 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio Message-ID: Hi John That's what I have done. Separate 2005/2008/2010 projects completely. If an project will have a second life on in 2010, I copy all source and then convert the copy. /gustav >>> jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com 10-10-2011 13:36 >>> All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Mon Oct 10 08:48:53 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:48:53 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio In-Reply-To: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: Hi John -- VS2010 SP1 is great and stable environment - just go for it. When migrating VS2008 projects to VS2010 I have got just committed upgraded sources to the same code repository (I use Mercurial) as a new version - you can always roll back but I didn't have any need in doing that rollback - and I have about 100 projects upgraded to VS2010 so far - no big issues, almost no issues.... Thank you. -- Shamil -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: 10 ??????? 2011 ?. 15:36 To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From bill_patten at embarqmail.com Mon Oct 10 11:11:33 2011 From: bill_patten at embarqmail.com (Bill Patten) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 09:11:33 -0700 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio In-Reply-To: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <7EB730114C2345DCA94B8C2B92A10F45@BPCS> John, I have been successful in going into the VS 2010 sln file and changing the the first 2 lines. 2008 Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 10.00 # Visual Studio 2008 2010 Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 11.00 # Visual Studio 2010 Perhaps it will work for you too. Bill -------------------------------------------------- From: "jwcolby" Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 4:36 AM To: "VBA" Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 15 09:09:07 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 10:09:07 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] On my ignorance and Inheritance Message-ID: <4E999403.8060708@colbyconsulting.com> I am writing a game in XNA and C#.Net. The purpose is simply to learn more about C#. One of the things I want to do with this is to learn inheritance. The game has visual objects with bitmaps / sprites. Each cell (screen location) in the game will have a hexagonal bitmap, such as terrain - forest, mountain, water and so forth. These bitmaps are contained in bitmap sheets with X/Y pointers into the sheets for loading the area of the sheet into the object. Obviously these cells are pretty simple and do not move. However another class of objects, military units, have a hex bitmap as well but also have attributes such as how much damage they inflict in combat, how much damage they can absorb before being destroyed etc. Before we go there, I will not be using NOSQL to process this stuff! ;) So it seems that I could do a cell class which holds a bitmap pointer and an x/y location pair. Then my military units could inherit from the cell since they need the attributes of the cell. Beyond that however things get gray. All military units have properties such damage inflicted / absorbed, but there are also properties specific to the military units. Land units cannot enter the water, ships cannot enter the land. Air units can fly over either. Things like that. So it feels like I build a "military unit" class, inheriting from cell, with the commonality of all military units. Then what? Three subclasses of Land, water, air? This is all pretty much new ground for me and I am excited to have such a clear cut reason to use inheritance. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From stuart at lexacorp.com.pg Sat Oct 15 18:23:24 2011 From: stuart at lexacorp.com.pg (Stuart McLachlan) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2011 09:23:24 +1000 Subject: [dba-VB] On my ignorance and Inheritance In-Reply-To: <4E999403.8060708@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E999403.8060708@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4E9A15EC.5903.EC67A0C@stuart.lexacorp.com.pg> In that situation, I'd also look at one Unit class and three interfaces iLand, iWater, iAir. (Now that you are finally getting into real classes that can do that sort of thing ) -- Stuart On 15 Oct 2011 at 10:09, jwcolby wrote: > So it seems that I could do a cell class which holds a bitmap pointer > and an x/y location pair. Then my military units could inherit from > the cell since they need the attributes of the cell. > > Beyond that however things get gray. All military units have > properties such damage inflicted / absorbed, but there are also > properties specific to the military units. Land units cannot enter > the water, ships cannot enter the land. Air units can fly over > either. Things like that. > > So it feels like I build a "military unit" class, inheriting from > cell, with the commonality of all military units. Then what? Three > subclasses of Land, water, air? > > This is all pretty much new ground for me and I am excited to have > such a clear cut reason to use inheritance. > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 15 22:52:01 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 23:52:01 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] For those in need Message-ID: <4E9A54E1.5020609@colbyconsulting.com> Who think my server is puny... http://www.nccs.gov/computing-resources/jaguar/access/ You too can do super computing. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Mon Oct 17 11:53:01 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:53:01 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods Message-ID: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> I have three supervisor classes. A ton of the code in each supervisor is common so I am refactoring the code to use inheritance. All that is cool until... I have a thread that each supervisor has. It is mtStart which starts a thread and that thread calls mStart. mtStart is literally identical in all three supervisors but mStart is not, each supervisor does a different job. So I am saying we have the thread itself in the base class and the mtStart in the base class but mStart in the derived class. But (to my knowledge) the base class cannot call mStart in the derived class. So how do I create the thread object in the base but the code run by the thread in the derived class? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From stuart at lexacorp.com.pg Mon Oct 17 17:12:38 2011 From: stuart at lexacorp.com.pg (Stuart McLachlan) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:12:38 +1000 Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods In-Reply-To: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4E9CA856.9519.17FEFC2@stuart.lexacorp.com.pg> Multiple interfaces with a single class rather than inheritance. Inheritance is great, but like classes in Access, it's not the solution to every problem. :-) -- Stuart On 17 Oct 2011 at 12:53, jwcolby wrote: > I have three supervisor classes. A ton of the code in each supervisor > is common so I am refactoring the code to use inheritance. All that > is cool until... > > I have a thread that each supervisor has. It is mtStart which starts > a thread and that thread calls mStart. mtStart is literally identical > in all three supervisors but mStart is not, each supervisor does a > different job. > > So I am saying we have the thread itself in the base class and the > mtStart in the base class but mStart in the derived class. But (to my > knowledge) the base class cannot call mStart in the derived class. So > how do I create the thread object in the base but the code run by the > thread in the derived class? > > -- > John W. Colby > Colby Consulting > > Reality is what refuses to go away > when you do not believe in it > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Sun Oct 23 11:13:50 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2011 20:13:50 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods In-Reply-To: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <6BD762430E014929969FC05AB970A9D8@nant> Hi John -- Virtual or abstract methods should help I suppose. Thank you. -- Shamil -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: 17 ??????? 2011 ?. 20:53 To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods I have three supervisor classes. A ton of the code in each supervisor is common so I am refactoring the code to use inheritance. All that is cool until... I have a thread that each supervisor has. It is mtStart which starts a thread and that thread calls mStart. mtStart is literally identical in all three supervisors but mStart is not, each supervisor does a different job. So I am saying we have the thread itself in the base class and the mtStart in the base class but mStart in the derived class. But (to my knowledge) the base class cannot call mStart in the derived class. So how do I create the thread object in the base but the code run by the thread in the derived class? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Mon Oct 24 21:32:47 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:32:47 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] DRAM errors and ECC Message-ID: <4EA61FCF.10203@colbyconsulting.com> http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Tue Oct 25 06:07:31 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:07:31 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Syncing Virtual Machines Message-ID: <4EA69873.7000104@colbyconsulting.com> I have a virtual machine server (Colby-VM) and last weekend I rebuilt that machine - new motherboard / memory in preparation for a faster CPU etc. I store all my stuff on a RAID array on a dedicated controller, and which survives nicely across upgrades so I got lazy and did not backup. (almost) Everything that could go wrong did and by the end of the experience I was sweating bullets about whether I was going to find one of my critical VMs. I did get all the VMs back, but this brought me to the question of how the pros migrate machines from server to server. My SQL Server (Azul) has Windows 2008 with Hyper-V installed and I am wondering how to cause a VM to be kept synced on two servers so that it can just fire up and go when the usual VM server has to be brought down. Hyper-V has an "export / import" but that takes a loooong time to perform. Is anyone out there involved in this stuff and do you have any answers to this problem? I would love to be able to just shut the machine down on one server and bring it up on the other. My impression is that it is possible to migrate without even shutting down the VM. How is this magic done? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Tue Oct 25 10:00:53 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 11:00:53 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] [dba-SQLServer] Syncing Virtual Machines In-Reply-To: <4EA6BC19.6080207@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4EA69873.7000104@colbyconsulting.com> <-3381981045989815633@unknownmsgid> <4EA6BC19.6080207@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4EA6CF25.1030809@colbyconsulting.com> I have to say that Microsoft's VM system is just unfriendly. I understand that this stuff is complicated but that is all the more reason for Microsoft to spend the time to make it easier. 1) I have no idea the "why" behind this stuff but you cannot simply select the xml file and "mount" a VM. 2) If you "export" a vm then it can be imported. 3) AFAICT you cannot export a vm while it is running. The export menu item simply isn't there. 4) The export fails to a share on another machine on the directory. 5) The accepted fix is to add "machine" to the objects that the share allows and then select the source machine. 6) "Machine" is not a selection (on my machine) so I can't do that. 7) Even for people who are able to and try that, it only works some of the time. 8) When it fails it gives a generic "means nothing except it didn't work" error message. 9) There is no "backup", you have to "register" Hyper-V with the backup service / role. 10) Doing that requires a somewhat extensive manual modification to the registry. 11) Even if you can, the backup process is almost impossible to make happen unless you are backing up to identical machines. Two hours later I am no closer to getting a real automated backup happening of my virtual machines. I am now copying the files themselves. As I have always done in the past, because I ran into this same brick wall every time. :( 12) Having done that I cannot simply mount it on the machine I am copying it to. I have to manually create the machine on that destination machine and start it. Can you say "Frankenstein monster"? VMS are just way cool technology. Until you have to maintain them. John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it >>> On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 7:07 AM, jwcolbywrote: >>> >>>> I have a virtual machine server (Colby-VM) and last weekend I rebuilt that >>>> machine - new motherboard / memory in preparation for a faster CPU etc. I >>>> store all my stuff on a RAID array on a dedicated controller, and which >>>> survives nicely across upgrades so I got lazy and did not backup. (almost) >>>> Everything that could go wrong did and by the end of the experience I was >>>> sweating bullets about whether I was going to find one of my critical VMs. >>>> >>>> From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 29 10:31:04 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 11:31:04 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class Message-ID: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> Awhile back I wrote about a RunState class we were developing to control starting and stopping long running processes and I thought I would provide an update. In our program we have processes which we start running and they stay running until we specifically stop them. These processes often start other processes etc. These processes need an interface for the parent to use to tell them to start and stop and then to be able to monitor the process to see what state it is in. We have developed a class which we use to control the "run state" (as we call it) of a process. Any class which is going to communicate a Start / Stop and a running / stopping / stopped kind of status uses this class. The class encapsulates a check box. There may or may not be a checkbox of course, often only the parent process is told to start / stop via a check box, but that parent process may have N sub processes that it can start and stop. The sub processes do not have a check box. So, we have a form with three processes which we can start running by checking a check box and which we can then then stop by unchecking the check box. When the check box is checked, an event fires. The RunState class sinks the events of the check box and sets its label to "Running". The Runstate class then does one of two things. The RunState class has an optional parameter in the constructor which tells it whether the Runstate parent is threaded or not. The run state class has a thread object which it can initialize. So if the RunState parent is threaded, the checkbox event sink creates the thread and the thread raises a Start event. If the Runstate parent is not threaded, then the checkbox event sink simply directly raises the same Start event. In either case the Runstate Start event is sunk in the parent class and the parent class does whatever it is designed to do. When the parent class finishes whatever it does, it calls the mStopped method of the RunState class telling the Runstate class that it is finished processing. This method sets the Runstate property to Stopped, updates the checkbox label (if any) to Stopped, and disconnects the thread object. If the check box is unchecked, the event is sunk and the runstate class sets the label to "Stopping". The runstate class raises an event telling the parent class to stop. When the parent of the RunState class cleans up and determines it is done with it's process, it calls RunState.MStopped just as in the discussion above. The objective of all this stuff is to provide an encapsulated and consistent way for processes to communicate with each other. I (the user) needed a way to start and stop processes via a user interface, and shut down those processes in a clean consistent manner. I have a form which provides the parent process a check box and a status list object. The process can be time consuming, it may be creating a table of a million records to output to disk and creating the file on disk. If I start this process, it cannot be terminated until the process reaches some defined point, IOW it cannot just be shut down in the middle of filling the table or writing the file to disk. Bu providing a process with an instance of this RunState class, a parent process can start a child process and monitor the progress. If needed the RunState class can provide a thread to the process and can also manage a check box, encapsulating and handling all of the crossthread delegate stuff required to write to the checkbox label. Just as an example of how we really use this RunState class, we have a system which validates addresses. The program consists of a single form with three sections, for three high level processes. The processes are Export / Address validation / import. We use a manager class which "owns" the three sections of the form. The manager class has three instances of the RunState class each of which communicates with the user via a checkbox. The manager has a collection of supervisors (jobs) which are in some state of completion. Each job can be partially or entirely exported to disk, processed through address validation and / or imported back in. Thus each job has an instance of the RunState class for each of the three processes. The manager class decides which jobs run and communicates with the job via the RunState class instances, telling a specific job (or jobs) to export, a specific job to Address Validate and a specific job (or jobs) to import. The Supervisor's RunState class instances allows the manager to start and stop the supervisors (jobs) and to determine that a job is stopped. When a job is running the program cannot close, and the form cannot close. When the manager determines that all jobs are in a stopped state the check box labels tell me (the user) that nothing is running and I can close the form and the program. This system is designed to run on my server 24/7. I do have to be logged in to run it since it has a user interface but basically I remote desktop in to the server, start the program, and then close the remote desktop session leaving my user logged in. The program just sits and runs. I have address validation jobs which are scheduled out in the future and the manager loads up all the jobs and just watches them. If a job becomes active, the manager starts it and monitors its completion through the various stages. Using the check boxes on the form I can shut the program down cleanly, even if it is in the middle of a long running operation. The RunState allows me to tell each section to stop and allows me to see when everything is stopped. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From accessd at shaw.ca Sat Oct 29 11:07:37 2011 From: accessd at shaw.ca (Jim Lawrence) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 09:07:37 -0700 Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class In-Reply-To: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <006B3904F71D401AB4BFC77F58F40375@creativesystemdesigns.com> It sounds very impressive as a piece of software that took months (years) to design and debug. I would assume you will be marketing this product soon. ;-) Question: is the application taking advantage of the new "parallelism" presented in VS 2010 or is it just using multi-threading? Jim -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2011 8:31 AM To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class Awhile back I wrote about a RunState class we were developing to control starting and stopping long running processes and I thought I would provide an update. In our program we have processes which we start running and they stay running until we specifically stop them. These processes often start other processes etc. These processes need an interface for the parent to use to tell them to start and stop and then to be able to monitor the process to see what state it is in. We have developed a class which we use to control the "run state" (as we call it) of a process. Any class which is going to communicate a Start / Stop and a running / stopping / stopped kind of status uses this class. The class encapsulates a check box. There may or may not be a checkbox of course, often only the parent process is told to start / stop via a check box, but that parent process may have N sub processes that it can start and stop. The sub processes do not have a check box. So, we have a form with three processes which we can start running by checking a check box and which we can then then stop by unchecking the check box. When the check box is checked, an event fires. The RunState class sinks the events of the check box and sets its label to "Running". The Runstate class then does one of two things. The RunState class has an optional parameter in the constructor which tells it whether the Runstate parent is threaded or not. The run state class has a thread object which it can initialize. So if the RunState parent is threaded, the checkbox event sink creates the thread and the thread raises a Start event. If the Runstate parent is not threaded, then the checkbox event sink simply directly raises the same Start event. In either case the Runstate Start event is sunk in the parent class and the parent class does whatever it is designed to do. When the parent class finishes whatever it does, it calls the mStopped method of the RunState class telling the Runstate class that it is finished processing. This method sets the Runstate property to Stopped, updates the checkbox label (if any) to Stopped, and disconnects the thread object. If the check box is unchecked, the event is sunk and the runstate class sets the label to "Stopping". The runstate class raises an event telling the parent class to stop. When the parent of the RunState class cleans up and determines it is done with it's process, it calls RunState.MStopped just as in the discussion above. The objective of all this stuff is to provide an encapsulated and consistent way for processes to communicate with each other. I (the user) needed a way to start and stop processes via a user interface, and shut down those processes in a clean consistent manner. I have a form which provides the parent process a check box and a status list object. The process can be time consuming, it may be creating a table of a million records to output to disk and creating the file on disk. If I start this process, it cannot be terminated until the process reaches some defined point, IOW it cannot just be shut down in the middle of filling the table or writing the file to disk. Bu providing a process with an instance of this RunState class, a parent process can start a child process and monitor the progress. If needed the RunState class can provide a thread to the process and can also manage a check box, encapsulating and handling all of the crossthread delegate stuff required to write to the checkbox label. Just as an example of how we really use this RunState class, we have a system which validates addresses. The program consists of a single form with three sections, for three high level processes. The processes are Export / Address validation / import. We use a manager class which "owns" the three sections of the form. The manager class has three instances of the RunState class each of which communicates with the user via a checkbox. The manager has a collection of supervisors (jobs) which are in some state of completion. Each job can be partially or entirely exported to disk, processed through address validation and / or imported back in. Thus each job has an instance of the RunState class for each of the three processes. The manager class decides which jobs run and communicates with the job via the RunState class instances, telling a specific job (or jobs) to export, a specific job to Address Validate and a specific job (or jobs) to import. The Supervisor's RunState class instances allows the manager to start and stop the supervisors (jobs) and to determine that a job is stopped. When a job is running the program cannot close, and the form cannot close. When the manager determines that all jobs are in a stopped state the check box labels tell me (the user) that nothing is running and I can close the form and the program. This system is designed to run on my server 24/7. I do have to be logged in to run it since it has a user interface but basically I remote desktop in to the server, start the program, and then close the remote desktop session leaving my user logged in. The program just sits and runs. I have address validation jobs which are scheduled out in the future and the manager loads up all the jobs and just watches them. If a job becomes active, the manager starts it and monitors its completion through the various stages. Using the check boxes on the form I can shut the program down cleanly, even if it is in the middle of a long running operation. The RunState allows me to tell each section to stop and allows me to see when everything is stopped. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 29 11:56:58 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 12:56:58 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class In-Reply-To: <006B3904F71D401AB4BFC77F58F40375@creativesystemdesigns.com> References: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> <006B3904F71D401AB4BFC77F58F40375@creativesystemdesigns.com> Message-ID: <4EAC305A.6020009@colbyconsulting.com> > Question: is the application taking advantage of the new "parallelism" presented in VS 2010 or is it just using multi-threading? LOL. "Just" multi-threading. Believe me I am thrilled with that. Threading and communications between processes running in threads can be a major PITA. The RunState class itself is a smallish class, not really a lot there. It never occurred to me to try and market the list cleaning system, and I really think it is too complex to do so. If I could get a high enough bandwidth I could market list cleaning as a service, using the system. What the program has really done is turned a completely manual process into an almost entirely automated process. I took on this client in late 2004. At that time I was entirely into Access and had never even touched SQl Server. The data was originally a single list of 65 million names. I built a server (single core, 4 gigs ram, Windows 2003 X32, SQL Server 2000 X32) and researched the vendor that I still use to do the address validation. I installed that software (Accuzip) and started learning how to do address validation. I had to process those 65 million addresses, and the first time I did it it took me about two weeks, 80 hours. Manual export of 60 million names into 2 million record chunks into CSV files, placing those files into an input directory of Accuzip and taking the finished files from the output directory and importing them back into SQL Server. Understand that I had no tools other than SQL Server itself and whatever it provides. I also had vastly underpowered servers. As I learned SQL Server I started building stored procedures out in SQL Server to automate the bcp out and bcp in. Then I built up stored procedures to loop and export and import the 2 million record chunks. It just slowly grew into an "automated process" but it was entirely in SQL Server which is not particularly "user friendly", either as a programming environment nor as a end user interface. But it worked. I eventually started trying to use Access to execute the existing stored procedures but that never really worked well. Access is single threaded and these processes could take a loooooong time with the hardware of the day. So Access would "lock up" as it waited for the stored procedures to finish. Remember the vastly underpowered servers! I really had an automation breakthrough when I went to the local community college in the fall semester 2009 and took a C# class, fall and spring semester. By the end of December I had started using C# to execute the existing stored procedures, there were somewhere around 30 of them. I started with getting the stored procedures in SQL Server to run in exactly the same order as when I manually executed them. Then I added reporting using nlog. Then I developed a status class to display status into a list control on a form. As pieces came together it became easier to refine the system. I also hired Paul as a part timer helping me write the code. From that point it was really something similar to the spiral development model. Take something that works and refine it, get it working, then refine it again etc. We didn't get to the manager / supervisor / threaded implementation until about 6 months ago, and we just went through another major cycle last week. For a long time the system worked but we would have problems that I would manually intervene to keep it running. I just had to have patience and remember where I came from. I have expanded from one list of 65 million addresses to about 8 lists with about 300 million addresses. Without the automation that the program provides I wouldn't be able to process this many addresses. As it is, even with the "manual interventions" I spend a few hours of actual labor to process these 8 lists. With this latest rewrite it is finally getting to a truly stable state where it just runs. I had communication issues between stages where if anything went wrong the process would stop processing a stage. The latest rewrite really simplified that inter-stage communication and allows each stage to reliably see when the previous stage finishes. In order to be in this business I am legally obligated to process all the addresses every 30 days. This program is the only thing that makes that possible at this scale. John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it On 10/29/2011 12:07 PM, Jim Lawrence wrote: > It sounds very impressive as a piece of software that took months (years) to > design and debug. I would assume you will be marketing this product soon. > ;-) > > Question: is the application taking advantage of the new "parallelism" > presented in VS 2010 or is it just using multi-threading? > > Jim > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 1 14:42:08 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2011 15:42:08 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Having nothing better to do (yea right) Message-ID: <4E876D10.2060401@colbyconsulting.com> I installed Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 on my "new" laptop, including hooking up to source control. I pulled the main client projects into 2008 and then into 2010, whereupon 2010 insisted on converting the 2008 to 2010. It then occurred to me that if I saved it to source control I would be screwing up the 2008 code (which is the production version). I guess I need to store 2010 out as a new version, just to play with. We have much experience in VS 2008 but I have none in 2010 though Paul does. I also downloaded the XNA game studio 4.0 for VS 2010. I have been hankering for years to re-write the old Empire game from scratch in a modern environment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Empire_(video_game) I have played that game since the late 80s and amazingly, it still runs under Windows 2007. It was the grandpappy of most modern strategy war games and I play it to this day against the computer. Wouldn't it be cool to do it in C#, classes, sql server express as a data store, multi-player over the internet? I have only ever played it against another live person one time, when I played against my uncle on his Mac. I am convinced I am a better player than he, but he wiped the floor with me because, I believe, the rules (strategy tables) between the mac version and the pc version were sufficiently different. Playing against another person consisted of physically exchanging the computer between turns, very crude. Now days we could play against each other on different continents. Having nothing better to do... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 1 15:13:52 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:13:52 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] True Crypt whole disk encryption Message-ID: <4E877480.2080209@colbyconsulting.com> The last iteration with my laptop I used Windows Bit locker to perform a whole disk encryption. This time I am using Windows 7 Home Premium which does not include Bit locker. I had just about decided to use True Crypt anyway because with Bil Locker I was unable to mount the old hard disk on another computer to pull the old contents off onto the new disk. So when I installed Windows 7 I broke the disk into three partitions, a 6 gig for the swap file, 100 gig for the OS/programs and 400 gig for data. I then started Truecrypt and told it to go to work encrypting the whole thing and went to bed. In the morning... the computer had decided to sleep during the night (lazy thing!) and so it was only 25% finished. It took most of the day to finish encrypting the entire disk (all partitions) and so here I am. Having done that I decided to hang the truecrypt encrypted disk on another computer, put the old disk back in and push the disk contents out to the other disk. The other disk would not finish loading Windows with the truecrypt encrypted disk on it! It would start to load Windows (2008 server) and then apparently it ran into the true crypt disk and couldn't handle it. It just hung, never finished loading windows. In the end I told the bitlocker software to unencrypt the old disk, then hung that on another machine and put the truecrypt disk back in the laptop, and pulled everything into the new disk. Well not everything but you know what I mean. At least I can do that with the unencrypted disk drive. Things never work the way I envision them working. Truecrypt is not significantly slowing down the new disk. I do have to enter the password at the point where the bios tries to load windows, then off it goes. Not good for auto reboot after software updates... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 10:26:52 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:26:52 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server Message-ID: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> Is anyone using this? I installed VS 2010 on my "new" laptop (windows 7 installation) and now whenever I build a new solution it asks me to choose a team foundation server. Uh... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 10:34:59 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:34:59 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? Message-ID: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> And want to collaborate on a project of some sort? XNA GS is a really cool game development system, for the XBox obviously but it can also compile the game to run on PCs which is where I play since I don't own an XBox. I am thinking of doing a traffic light simulator just to have something somewhat simple to start with. If anyone else is interested in playing around in this environment you are welcome to join me in this or suggest some other project. I am / was into uControllers and one of the classes I took back in the late 80s had the students build a traffic light simulator with little LEDs to simulate a 4 way stop. For their purposes (teaching how to program a uController) that was all you did, turn the lights on and off in a logical consistent manner. I thought I would start with that and build a traffic light. It would take 3 or 4 to build an intersection. And take it from there. We could tie intersections together to sync the lights. Add vehicles to trigger the lights. Etc. But it would all start with a traffic light. Or what would *you* like to simulate in a game console? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From df.waters at comcast.net Sun Oct 2 10:32:54 2011 From: df.waters at comcast.net (Dan Waters) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 10:32:54 -0500 Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server In-Reply-To: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <001f01cc8118$8e4a1640$aade42c0$@comcast.net> Hi John, Ignore that (or search for how to get rid of it). TFS is only for actual teams. It's where a VS TFS is loaded onto a server machine, then when people log into their client VS the client app and the server app do some kind of communicating so that all the clients are up to date or get the same messages or something. It's like Outlook stand-alone vs. Outlook as a client for Exchange on a server. If you're not in a company, Exchange is useless. Dan -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2011 10:27 AM To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server Is anyone using this? I installed VS 2010 on my "new" laptop (windows 7 installation) and now whenever I build a new solution it asks me to choose a team foundation server. Uh... -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From fuller.artful at gmail.com Sun Oct 2 11:32:34 2011 From: fuller.artful at gmail.com (Arthur Fuller) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 12:32:34 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? In-Reply-To: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: Daryl Hannah? Ok, I'll settle for Angelina Jolie. Or what would *you* like to simulate in a game console? > > -- > John W. Colby > Colby Consulting > ______________________________**_________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/**mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.**com > > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 12:54:53 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 13:54:53 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? In-Reply-To: References: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4E88A56D.7070400@colbyconsulting.com> Hmm.... Neither does it for me. But an interesting train of thought. We do have females on the list though and you might find yourself collaborating to simulate Hugh Jackman or something. John W. Colby Colby Consulting On 10/2/2011 12:32 PM, Arthur Fuller wrote: > Daryl Hannah? Ok, I'll settle for Angelina Jolie. > > Or what would *you* like to simulate in a game console? >> >> -- >> John W. Colby >> Colby Consulting >> ______________________________**_________________ >> dba-VB mailing list >> dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com >> http://databaseadvisors.com/**mailman/listinfo/dba-vb >> http://www.databaseadvisors.**com >> >> > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 12:55:12 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 13:55:12 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server In-Reply-To: <001f01cc8118$8e4a1640$aade42c0$@comcast.net> References: <4E8882BC.60707@colbyconsulting.com> <001f01cc8118$8e4a1640$aade42c0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <4E88A580.5030704@colbyconsulting.com> That is kind of what I thought. John W. Colby Colby Consulting On 10/2/2011 11:32 AM, Dan Waters wrote: > Hi John, > > Ignore that (or search for how to get rid of it). TFS is only for actual > teams. It's where a VS TFS is loaded onto a server machine, then when > people log into their client VS the client app and the server app do some > kind of communicating so that all the clients are up to date or get the same > messages or something. > > It's like Outlook stand-alone vs. Outlook as a client for Exchange on a > server. If you're not in a company, Exchange is useless. > > Dan > > -----Original Message----- > From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com > [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby > Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2011 10:27 AM > To: VBA > Subject: [dba-VB] Team foundation server > > Is anyone using this? I installed VS 2010 on my "new" laptop (windows 7 > installation) and now whenever I build a new solution it asks me to choose a > team foundation server. > > Uh... > > > -- > John W. Colby > Colby Consulting > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From fuller.artful at gmail.com Sun Oct 2 18:35:01 2011 From: fuller.artful at gmail.com (Arthur Fuller) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 19:35:01 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Is anyone interested in XNA Game Studio? In-Reply-To: <4E88A56D.7070400@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E8884A3.3080505@colbyconsulting.com> <4E88A56D.7070400@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: LOL.Hugh Jackman now there's a name to remember. A. On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 1:54 PM, jwcolby wrote: > Hmm.... Neither does it for me. But an interesting train of thought. We > do have females on the list though and you might find yourself collaborating > to simulate Hugh Jackman or something. >> >> >>> >> >> From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sun Oct 2 21:16:40 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2011 22:16:40 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] I found this fascinating Message-ID: <4E891B08.7080700@colbyconsulting.com> Talk about efficient programming... http://www.xnaresources.com/default.asp?page=Tutorial:TileEngineSeries:1 What is a Tile Engine Early computer and video game systems had very, very (VERY) little memory - the original Nintendo Entertainment System had 2kb of RAM, and 2kb of video RAM, plus 284 bytes of memory for objects and color palettes. If we call this roughly 4.5kb of memory, my 4GB desktop PC has almost 1 million times the amount of memory the NES had to work with. The full display resolution on the NES was 256x240 pixels, and while our current bits-per-pixel standards don't apply to the NES, even at one bit per pixel (which isn't a good representation anyway) you have 7.5 kb of information just to fill up a single screen. So how do you build large game worlds when you don't have enough memory to hold a single screen? Lets look at another classic NES game: -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From john at winhaven.net Wed Oct 5 14:13:04 2011 From: john at winhaven.net (John Bartow) Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2011 14:13:04 -0500 Subject: [dba-VB] FW: The passing of Drew Wutka In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00c101cc8392$cf8ab660$6ea02320$@winhaven.net> Hello All, I have some sad news to share with you all. Long time lister and friend to many, Drew Wutka, passed away Monday. His friend, Ken, contacted me and a number of other board members to share this news with us because he knew that Drew participated on the DBA lists as he spoke of it often. A coworker walked by Drew's office he saw that he had his head on his desk and went in to check on him. The coworker found that he and no pulse. The paramedics were called and he was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. Ken will keep me apprised of the situation and I will pass it on to everyone as soon as he shares any further information. My deepest condolences to all of Drew's family and friends. John Bartow, President Database Advisors, Inc. Office: 920-582-7574 Mobile: 920-410-7574 From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Wed Oct 5 15:28:03 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:28:03 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] [dba-SQLServer] FW: The passing of Drew Wutka In-Reply-To: <010c01cc8396$44b530c0$ce1f9240$@winhaven.net> References: <00ab01cc8392$cec73f50$6c55bdf0$@winhaven.net> <010c01cc8396$44b530c0$ce1f9240$@winhaven.net> Message-ID: <4E8CBDD3.900@colbyconsulting.com> Man that will take your breath away. Drew was essentially one of our founding members. DatabaseAdvisors needs to formally express out condolences to the family. This is a sad day. John W. Colby Colby Consulting On 10/5/2011 3:37 PM, John Bartow wrote: > Ken will be keeping me apprised of any further info including next of kin. > I'll pass along anything I receive. > > Drew's daughter is only 12 so I'm sure we need to be careful on how we > communicate on this. > > -----Original Message----- > From: dba-sqlserver-bounces at databaseadvisors.com > [mailto:dba-sqlserver-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Steve > Erbach > Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2011 2:19 PM > To: Discussion concerning MS SQL Server > Subject: Re: [dba-SQLServer] FW: The passing of Drew Wutka > > John, > > Do you have contact info for his next of kin? > > Regards, > > Steve Erbach > Neenah, WI > > On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 2:13 PM, John Bartow wrote: > >> Hello All, >> >> I have some sad news to share with you all. >> >> >> >> Long time lister and friend to many, Drew Wutka, passed away Monday. >> >> >> >> His friend, Ken, contacted me and a number of other board members to >> share this news with us because he knew that Drew participated on the >> DBA lists as he spoke of it often. >> >> >> >> A coworker walked by Drew's office he saw that he had his head on his >> desk and went in to check on him. The coworker found that he and no >> pulse. The paramedics were called and he was taken to the hospital >> where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. >> >> >> >> Ken will keep me apprised of the situation and I will pass it on to >> everyone as soon as he shares any further information. >> >> >> >> My deepest condolences to all of Drew's family and friends. >> >> >> >> John Bartow, President >> >> Database Advisors, Inc. >> >> Office: 920-582-7574 >> >> Mobile: 920-410-7574 >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> dba-SQLServer mailing list >> dba-SQLServer at databaseadvisors.com >> http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-sqlserver >> http://www.databaseadvisors.com >> >> > > > -- > Regards, > > Steve Erbach > Neenah, WI > http://www.NeenahPolitics.com > http://www.TheTownCrank.com > _______________________________________________ > dba-SQLServer mailing list > dba-SQLServer at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-sqlserver > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > _______________________________________________ > dba-SQLServer mailing list > dba-SQLServer at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-sqlserver > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From john at winhaven.net Wed Oct 5 18:11:35 2011 From: john at winhaven.net (John Bartow) Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2011 18:11:35 -0500 Subject: [dba-VB] FW: Drew Wutka's Services In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <01b201cc83b4$214d2e80$63e78b80$@winhaven.net> Forwarded From Ken: I spoke with Drew's mom and told her the many wonderful and kind things you guys have written about Drew.? I told her I could forward them and she was excited, so I did in fact send them to her.? ? If you have anything you can share I am certain she and Hannah, and his Dad would love it.? Her email address is: nwutka at sbcglobal.com The following is the information relating to his services: Viewing at Turrentine Jackson Morrow I-75 and ridgeview Thursday 6-7 972-562-2601 Preston Meadow Lutheran 10:30 Friday after back to church for light lunch 972-618-2233 Please feel free to contact me and share this information as you deem necessary. Kenneth Van Huss ? VanGard Systems Office (214) 801-4357 ext 335 Fax??? (214) 299-8597 Cell??? (214) 243-5659 kvanhuss at airrsystem.com From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Mon Oct 10 01:15:57 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:15:57 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010 Demo Virtual Machine... Message-ID: <4D3A0180687B4AF8B4695CC635BAA56A@nant> Hi All -- In this article/blog entry: Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010 Demo Virtual Machine http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericwhite/archive/2010/07/16/writing-and-hosting-a-w eb-service-in-the-sharepoint-2010-demo-virtual-machine.aspx the author refers to a test virtual machine image with SharePoint 2010 configured: "My favorite way to develop/experiment/write about SharePoint 2010 is to use the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine. It is a great virtual machine - finely tuned, and has all of the necessary software installed, including SharePoint Server 2010, Visual Studio 2010, Office 2010, etc. I do on occasion build my own virtual machines when absolutely necessary, but I consider it a necessary evil, not something that I enjoy." The link directs to "http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=21099" but VM isn't available there for downloading. Do you know is it still available for free downloading from MS web site? (Was it a free download?) Thank you. -- Shamil From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Mon Oct 10 01:37:06 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:37:06 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010Demo Virtual Machine... In-Reply-To: <4D3A0180687B4AF8B4695CC635BAA56A@nant> References: <4D3A0180687B4AF8B4695CC635BAA56A@nant> Message-ID: <7360072243CB49A7909DE5AC1AC87336@nant> Hi All -- I have found this link related to the subject: Download Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Trial today http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ee424282 It looks good but it's "too much" - I just need a demo/trial VM with SharePoint 2010 Server configured to test some C#/OpenXML SDK/VBA + SharePoint coding. Is there SharePoint 2010 running in 32bit system environments? If not is it possible to run 64bit virtual machine on 32bit systems? - should be possible I guess, might be slow - no problem Thank you. -- Shamil -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Shamil Salakhetdinov Sent: 10 ??????? 2011 ?. 10:16 To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Cc: 'Discussion concerning Visual Basic and related programming issues.' Subject: [dba-VB] Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010Demo Virtual Machine... Hi All -- In this article/blog entry: Writing and Hosting a Web Service in the SharePoint 2010 Demo Virtual Machine http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericwhite/archive/2010/07/16/writing-and-hosting-a-w eb-service-in-the-sharepoint-2010-demo-virtual-machine.aspx the author refers to a test virtual machine image with SharePoint 2010 configured: "My favorite way to develop/experiment/write about SharePoint 2010 is to use the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine. It is a great virtual machine - finely tuned, and has all of the necessary software installed, including SharePoint Server 2010, Visual Studio 2010, Office 2010, etc. I do on occasion build my own virtual machines when absolutely necessary, but I consider it a necessary evil, not something that I enjoy." The link directs to "http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=21099" but VM isn't available there for downloading. Do you know is it still available for free downloading from MS web site? (Was it a free download?) Thank you. -- Shamil _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Mon Oct 10 06:36:15 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 07:36:15 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio Message-ID: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From Gustav at cactus.dk Mon Oct 10 07:33:58 2011 From: Gustav at cactus.dk (Gustav Brock) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:33:58 +0200 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio Message-ID: Hi John That's what I have done. Separate 2005/2008/2010 projects completely. If an project will have a second life on in 2010, I copy all source and then convert the copy. /gustav >>> jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com 10-10-2011 13:36 >>> All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Mon Oct 10 08:48:53 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:48:53 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio In-Reply-To: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: Hi John -- VS2010 SP1 is great and stable environment - just go for it. When migrating VS2008 projects to VS2010 I have got just committed upgraded sources to the same code repository (I use Mercurial) as a new version - you can always roll back but I didn't have any need in doing that rollback - and I have about 100 projects upgraded to VS2010 so far - no big issues, almost no issues.... Thank you. -- Shamil -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: 10 ??????? 2011 ?. 15:36 To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From bill_patten at embarqmail.com Mon Oct 10 11:11:33 2011 From: bill_patten at embarqmail.com (Bill Patten) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 09:11:33 -0700 Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio In-Reply-To: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E92D8AF.9070000@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <7EB730114C2345DCA94B8C2B92A10F45@BPCS> John, I have been successful in going into the VS 2010 sln file and changing the the first 2 lines. 2008 Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 10.00 # Visual Studio 2008 2010 Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 11.00 # Visual Studio 2010 Perhaps it will work for you too. Bill -------------------------------------------------- From: "jwcolby" Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 4:36 AM To: "VBA" Subject: [dba-VB] VisualSVN - two versions of Visual Studio All of my real projects are developed in VS 2008. I am evaluating VS2010. When I load a VS 2008 into VS 2010 it converts it to 2010. Obviously I cannot just write it back (upload any changes) or I pollute the source and it will no longer work in VS 2008. Has anyone done this before? Do I simply branch the source into a 2010 branch? It kind of feels like I should have an entire 2010 repository. Any suggestions? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 15 09:09:07 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 10:09:07 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] On my ignorance and Inheritance Message-ID: <4E999403.8060708@colbyconsulting.com> I am writing a game in XNA and C#.Net. The purpose is simply to learn more about C#. One of the things I want to do with this is to learn inheritance. The game has visual objects with bitmaps / sprites. Each cell (screen location) in the game will have a hexagonal bitmap, such as terrain - forest, mountain, water and so forth. These bitmaps are contained in bitmap sheets with X/Y pointers into the sheets for loading the area of the sheet into the object. Obviously these cells are pretty simple and do not move. However another class of objects, military units, have a hex bitmap as well but also have attributes such as how much damage they inflict in combat, how much damage they can absorb before being destroyed etc. Before we go there, I will not be using NOSQL to process this stuff! ;) So it seems that I could do a cell class which holds a bitmap pointer and an x/y location pair. Then my military units could inherit from the cell since they need the attributes of the cell. Beyond that however things get gray. All military units have properties such damage inflicted / absorbed, but there are also properties specific to the military units. Land units cannot enter the water, ships cannot enter the land. Air units can fly over either. Things like that. So it feels like I build a "military unit" class, inheriting from cell, with the commonality of all military units. Then what? Three subclasses of Land, water, air? This is all pretty much new ground for me and I am excited to have such a clear cut reason to use inheritance. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From stuart at lexacorp.com.pg Sat Oct 15 18:23:24 2011 From: stuart at lexacorp.com.pg (Stuart McLachlan) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2011 09:23:24 +1000 Subject: [dba-VB] On my ignorance and Inheritance In-Reply-To: <4E999403.8060708@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E999403.8060708@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4E9A15EC.5903.EC67A0C@stuart.lexacorp.com.pg> In that situation, I'd also look at one Unit class and three interfaces iLand, iWater, iAir. (Now that you are finally getting into real classes that can do that sort of thing ) -- Stuart On 15 Oct 2011 at 10:09, jwcolby wrote: > So it seems that I could do a cell class which holds a bitmap pointer > and an x/y location pair. Then my military units could inherit from > the cell since they need the attributes of the cell. > > Beyond that however things get gray. All military units have > properties such damage inflicted / absorbed, but there are also > properties specific to the military units. Land units cannot enter > the water, ships cannot enter the land. Air units can fly over > either. Things like that. > > So it feels like I build a "military unit" class, inheriting from > cell, with the commonality of all military units. Then what? Three > subclasses of Land, water, air? > > This is all pretty much new ground for me and I am excited to have > such a clear cut reason to use inheritance. > From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 15 22:52:01 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 23:52:01 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] For those in need Message-ID: <4E9A54E1.5020609@colbyconsulting.com> Who think my server is puny... http://www.nccs.gov/computing-resources/jaguar/access/ You too can do super computing. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Mon Oct 17 11:53:01 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:53:01 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods Message-ID: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> I have three supervisor classes. A ton of the code in each supervisor is common so I am refactoring the code to use inheritance. All that is cool until... I have a thread that each supervisor has. It is mtStart which starts a thread and that thread calls mStart. mtStart is literally identical in all three supervisors but mStart is not, each supervisor does a different job. So I am saying we have the thread itself in the base class and the mtStart in the base class but mStart in the derived class. But (to my knowledge) the base class cannot call mStart in the derived class. So how do I create the thread object in the base but the code run by the thread in the derived class? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From stuart at lexacorp.com.pg Mon Oct 17 17:12:38 2011 From: stuart at lexacorp.com.pg (Stuart McLachlan) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:12:38 +1000 Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods In-Reply-To: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4E9CA856.9519.17FEFC2@stuart.lexacorp.com.pg> Multiple interfaces with a single class rather than inheritance. Inheritance is great, but like classes in Access, it's not the solution to every problem. :-) -- Stuart On 17 Oct 2011 at 12:53, jwcolby wrote: > I have three supervisor classes. A ton of the code in each supervisor > is common so I am refactoring the code to use inheritance. All that > is cool until... > > I have a thread that each supervisor has. It is mtStart which starts > a thread and that thread calls mStart. mtStart is literally identical > in all three supervisors but mStart is not, each supervisor does a > different job. > > So I am saying we have the thread itself in the base class and the > mtStart in the base class but mStart in the derived class. But (to my > knowledge) the base class cannot call mStart in the derived class. So > how do I create the thread object in the base but the code run by the > thread in the derived class? > > -- > John W. Colby > Colby Consulting > > Reality is what refuses to go away > when you do not believe in it > _______________________________________________ > dba-VB mailing list > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb > http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > From shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru Sun Oct 23 11:13:50 2011 From: shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru (Shamil Salakhetdinov) Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2011 20:13:50 +0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods In-Reply-To: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4E9C5D6D.7000708@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <6BD762430E014929969FC05AB970A9D8@nant> Hi John -- Virtual or abstract methods should help I suppose. Thank you. -- Shamil -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: 17 ??????? 2011 ?. 20:53 To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] Inheritance and derived methods I have three supervisor classes. A ton of the code in each supervisor is common so I am refactoring the code to use inheritance. All that is cool until... I have a thread that each supervisor has. It is mtStart which starts a thread and that thread calls mStart. mtStart is literally identical in all three supervisors but mStart is not, each supervisor does a different job. So I am saying we have the thread itself in the base class and the mtStart in the base class but mStart in the derived class. But (to my knowledge) the base class cannot call mStart in the derived class. So how do I create the thread object in the base but the code run by the thread in the derived class? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Mon Oct 24 21:32:47 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:32:47 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] DRAM errors and ECC Message-ID: <4EA61FCF.10203@colbyconsulting.com> http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Tue Oct 25 06:07:31 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:07:31 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Syncing Virtual Machines Message-ID: <4EA69873.7000104@colbyconsulting.com> I have a virtual machine server (Colby-VM) and last weekend I rebuilt that machine - new motherboard / memory in preparation for a faster CPU etc. I store all my stuff on a RAID array on a dedicated controller, and which survives nicely across upgrades so I got lazy and did not backup. (almost) Everything that could go wrong did and by the end of the experience I was sweating bullets about whether I was going to find one of my critical VMs. I did get all the VMs back, but this brought me to the question of how the pros migrate machines from server to server. My SQL Server (Azul) has Windows 2008 with Hyper-V installed and I am wondering how to cause a VM to be kept synced on two servers so that it can just fire up and go when the usual VM server has to be brought down. Hyper-V has an "export / import" but that takes a loooong time to perform. Is anyone out there involved in this stuff and do you have any answers to this problem? I would love to be able to just shut the machine down on one server and bring it up on the other. My impression is that it is possible to migrate without even shutting down the VM. How is this magic done? -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Tue Oct 25 10:00:53 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 11:00:53 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] [dba-SQLServer] Syncing Virtual Machines In-Reply-To: <4EA6BC19.6080207@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4EA69873.7000104@colbyconsulting.com> <-3381981045989815633@unknownmsgid> <4EA6BC19.6080207@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <4EA6CF25.1030809@colbyconsulting.com> I have to say that Microsoft's VM system is just unfriendly. I understand that this stuff is complicated but that is all the more reason for Microsoft to spend the time to make it easier. 1) I have no idea the "why" behind this stuff but you cannot simply select the xml file and "mount" a VM. 2) If you "export" a vm then it can be imported. 3) AFAICT you cannot export a vm while it is running. The export menu item simply isn't there. 4) The export fails to a share on another machine on the directory. 5) The accepted fix is to add "machine" to the objects that the share allows and then select the source machine. 6) "Machine" is not a selection (on my machine) so I can't do that. 7) Even for people who are able to and try that, it only works some of the time. 8) When it fails it gives a generic "means nothing except it didn't work" error message. 9) There is no "backup", you have to "register" Hyper-V with the backup service / role. 10) Doing that requires a somewhat extensive manual modification to the registry. 11) Even if you can, the backup process is almost impossible to make happen unless you are backing up to identical machines. Two hours later I am no closer to getting a real automated backup happening of my virtual machines. I am now copying the files themselves. As I have always done in the past, because I ran into this same brick wall every time. :( 12) Having done that I cannot simply mount it on the machine I am copying it to. I have to manually create the machine on that destination machine and start it. Can you say "Frankenstein monster"? VMS are just way cool technology. Until you have to maintain them. John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it >>> On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 7:07 AM, jwcolbywrote: >>> >>>> I have a virtual machine server (Colby-VM) and last weekend I rebuilt that >>>> machine - new motherboard / memory in preparation for a faster CPU etc. I >>>> store all my stuff on a RAID array on a dedicated controller, and which >>>> survives nicely across upgrades so I got lazy and did not backup. (almost) >>>> Everything that could go wrong did and by the end of the experience I was >>>> sweating bullets about whether I was going to find one of my critical VMs. >>>> >>>> From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 29 10:31:04 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 11:31:04 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class Message-ID: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> Awhile back I wrote about a RunState class we were developing to control starting and stopping long running processes and I thought I would provide an update. In our program we have processes which we start running and they stay running until we specifically stop them. These processes often start other processes etc. These processes need an interface for the parent to use to tell them to start and stop and then to be able to monitor the process to see what state it is in. We have developed a class which we use to control the "run state" (as we call it) of a process. Any class which is going to communicate a Start / Stop and a running / stopping / stopped kind of status uses this class. The class encapsulates a check box. There may or may not be a checkbox of course, often only the parent process is told to start / stop via a check box, but that parent process may have N sub processes that it can start and stop. The sub processes do not have a check box. So, we have a form with three processes which we can start running by checking a check box and which we can then then stop by unchecking the check box. When the check box is checked, an event fires. The RunState class sinks the events of the check box and sets its label to "Running". The Runstate class then does one of two things. The RunState class has an optional parameter in the constructor which tells it whether the Runstate parent is threaded or not. The run state class has a thread object which it can initialize. So if the RunState parent is threaded, the checkbox event sink creates the thread and the thread raises a Start event. If the Runstate parent is not threaded, then the checkbox event sink simply directly raises the same Start event. In either case the Runstate Start event is sunk in the parent class and the parent class does whatever it is designed to do. When the parent class finishes whatever it does, it calls the mStopped method of the RunState class telling the Runstate class that it is finished processing. This method sets the Runstate property to Stopped, updates the checkbox label (if any) to Stopped, and disconnects the thread object. If the check box is unchecked, the event is sunk and the runstate class sets the label to "Stopping". The runstate class raises an event telling the parent class to stop. When the parent of the RunState class cleans up and determines it is done with it's process, it calls RunState.MStopped just as in the discussion above. The objective of all this stuff is to provide an encapsulated and consistent way for processes to communicate with each other. I (the user) needed a way to start and stop processes via a user interface, and shut down those processes in a clean consistent manner. I have a form which provides the parent process a check box and a status list object. The process can be time consuming, it may be creating a table of a million records to output to disk and creating the file on disk. If I start this process, it cannot be terminated until the process reaches some defined point, IOW it cannot just be shut down in the middle of filling the table or writing the file to disk. Bu providing a process with an instance of this RunState class, a parent process can start a child process and monitor the progress. If needed the RunState class can provide a thread to the process and can also manage a check box, encapsulating and handling all of the crossthread delegate stuff required to write to the checkbox label. Just as an example of how we really use this RunState class, we have a system which validates addresses. The program consists of a single form with three sections, for three high level processes. The processes are Export / Address validation / import. We use a manager class which "owns" the three sections of the form. The manager class has three instances of the RunState class each of which communicates with the user via a checkbox. The manager has a collection of supervisors (jobs) which are in some state of completion. Each job can be partially or entirely exported to disk, processed through address validation and / or imported back in. Thus each job has an instance of the RunState class for each of the three processes. The manager class decides which jobs run and communicates with the job via the RunState class instances, telling a specific job (or jobs) to export, a specific job to Address Validate and a specific job (or jobs) to import. The Supervisor's RunState class instances allows the manager to start and stop the supervisors (jobs) and to determine that a job is stopped. When a job is running the program cannot close, and the form cannot close. When the manager determines that all jobs are in a stopped state the check box labels tell me (the user) that nothing is running and I can close the form and the program. This system is designed to run on my server 24/7. I do have to be logged in to run it since it has a user interface but basically I remote desktop in to the server, start the program, and then close the remote desktop session leaving my user logged in. The program just sits and runs. I have address validation jobs which are scheduled out in the future and the manager loads up all the jobs and just watches them. If a job becomes active, the manager starts it and monitors its completion through the various stages. Using the check boxes on the form I can shut the program down cleanly, even if it is in the middle of a long running operation. The RunState allows me to tell each section to stop and allows me to see when everything is stopped. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it From accessd at shaw.ca Sat Oct 29 11:07:37 2011 From: accessd at shaw.ca (Jim Lawrence) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 09:07:37 -0700 Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class In-Reply-To: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> References: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> Message-ID: <006B3904F71D401AB4BFC77F58F40375@creativesystemdesigns.com> It sounds very impressive as a piece of software that took months (years) to design and debug. I would assume you will be marketing this product soon. ;-) Question: is the application taking advantage of the new "parallelism" presented in VS 2010 or is it just using multi-threading? Jim -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2011 8:31 AM To: VBA Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class Awhile back I wrote about a RunState class we were developing to control starting and stopping long running processes and I thought I would provide an update. In our program we have processes which we start running and they stay running until we specifically stop them. These processes often start other processes etc. These processes need an interface for the parent to use to tell them to start and stop and then to be able to monitor the process to see what state it is in. We have developed a class which we use to control the "run state" (as we call it) of a process. Any class which is going to communicate a Start / Stop and a running / stopping / stopped kind of status uses this class. The class encapsulates a check box. There may or may not be a checkbox of course, often only the parent process is told to start / stop via a check box, but that parent process may have N sub processes that it can start and stop. The sub processes do not have a check box. So, we have a form with three processes which we can start running by checking a check box and which we can then then stop by unchecking the check box. When the check box is checked, an event fires. The RunState class sinks the events of the check box and sets its label to "Running". The Runstate class then does one of two things. The RunState class has an optional parameter in the constructor which tells it whether the Runstate parent is threaded or not. The run state class has a thread object which it can initialize. So if the RunState parent is threaded, the checkbox event sink creates the thread and the thread raises a Start event. If the Runstate parent is not threaded, then the checkbox event sink simply directly raises the same Start event. In either case the Runstate Start event is sunk in the parent class and the parent class does whatever it is designed to do. When the parent class finishes whatever it does, it calls the mStopped method of the RunState class telling the Runstate class that it is finished processing. This method sets the Runstate property to Stopped, updates the checkbox label (if any) to Stopped, and disconnects the thread object. If the check box is unchecked, the event is sunk and the runstate class sets the label to "Stopping". The runstate class raises an event telling the parent class to stop. When the parent of the RunState class cleans up and determines it is done with it's process, it calls RunState.MStopped just as in the discussion above. The objective of all this stuff is to provide an encapsulated and consistent way for processes to communicate with each other. I (the user) needed a way to start and stop processes via a user interface, and shut down those processes in a clean consistent manner. I have a form which provides the parent process a check box and a status list object. The process can be time consuming, it may be creating a table of a million records to output to disk and creating the file on disk. If I start this process, it cannot be terminated until the process reaches some defined point, IOW it cannot just be shut down in the middle of filling the table or writing the file to disk. Bu providing a process with an instance of this RunState class, a parent process can start a child process and monitor the progress. If needed the RunState class can provide a thread to the process and can also manage a check box, encapsulating and handling all of the crossthread delegate stuff required to write to the checkbox label. Just as an example of how we really use this RunState class, we have a system which validates addresses. The program consists of a single form with three sections, for three high level processes. The processes are Export / Address validation / import. We use a manager class which "owns" the three sections of the form. The manager class has three instances of the RunState class each of which communicates with the user via a checkbox. The manager has a collection of supervisors (jobs) which are in some state of completion. Each job can be partially or entirely exported to disk, processed through address validation and / or imported back in. Thus each job has an instance of the RunState class for each of the three processes. The manager class decides which jobs run and communicates with the job via the RunState class instances, telling a specific job (or jobs) to export, a specific job to Address Validate and a specific job (or jobs) to import. The Supervisor's RunState class instances allows the manager to start and stop the supervisors (jobs) and to determine that a job is stopped. When a job is running the program cannot close, and the form cannot close. When the manager determines that all jobs are in a stopped state the check box labels tell me (the user) that nothing is running and I can close the form and the program. This system is designed to run on my server 24/7. I do have to be logged in to run it since it has a user interface but basically I remote desktop in to the server, start the program, and then close the remote desktop session leaving my user logged in. The program just sits and runs. I have address validation jobs which are scheduled out in the future and the manager loads up all the jobs and just watches them. If a job becomes active, the manager starts it and monitors its completion through the various stages. Using the check boxes on the form I can shut the program down cleanly, even if it is in the middle of a long running operation. The RunState allows me to tell each section to stop and allows me to see when everything is stopped. -- John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com From jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sat Oct 29 11:56:58 2011 From: jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com (jwcolby) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 12:56:58 -0400 Subject: [dba-VB] Run state class In-Reply-To: <006B3904F71D401AB4BFC77F58F40375@creativesystemdesigns.com> References: <4EAC1C38.50709@colbyconsulting.com> <006B3904F71D401AB4BFC77F58F40375@creativesystemdesigns.com> Message-ID: <4EAC305A.6020009@colbyconsulting.com> > Question: is the application taking advantage of the new "parallelism" presented in VS 2010 or is it just using multi-threading? LOL. "Just" multi-threading. Believe me I am thrilled with that. Threading and communications between processes running in threads can be a major PITA. The RunState class itself is a smallish class, not really a lot there. It never occurred to me to try and market the list cleaning system, and I really think it is too complex to do so. If I could get a high enough bandwidth I could market list cleaning as a service, using the system. What the program has really done is turned a completely manual process into an almost entirely automated process. I took on this client in late 2004. At that time I was entirely into Access and had never even touched SQl Server. The data was originally a single list of 65 million names. I built a server (single core, 4 gigs ram, Windows 2003 X32, SQL Server 2000 X32) and researched the vendor that I still use to do the address validation. I installed that software (Accuzip) and started learning how to do address validation. I had to process those 65 million addresses, and the first time I did it it took me about two weeks, 80 hours. Manual export of 60 million names into 2 million record chunks into CSV files, placing those files into an input directory of Accuzip and taking the finished files from the output directory and importing them back into SQL Server. Understand that I had no tools other than SQL Server itself and whatever it provides. I also had vastly underpowered servers. As I learned SQL Server I started building stored procedures out in SQL Server to automate the bcp out and bcp in. Then I built up stored procedures to loop and export and import the 2 million record chunks. It just slowly grew into an "automated process" but it was entirely in SQL Server which is not particularly "user friendly", either as a programming environment nor as a end user interface. But it worked. I eventually started trying to use Access to execute the existing stored procedures but that never really worked well. Access is single threaded and these processes could take a loooooong time with the hardware of the day. So Access would "lock up" as it waited for the stored procedures to finish. Remember the vastly underpowered servers! I really had an automation breakthrough when I went to the local community college in the fall semester 2009 and took a C# class, fall and spring semester. By the end of December I had started using C# to execute the existing stored procedures, there were somewhere around 30 of them. I started with getting the stored procedures in SQL Server to run in exactly the same order as when I manually executed them. Then I added reporting using nlog. Then I developed a status class to display status into a list control on a form. As pieces came together it became easier to refine the system. I also hired Paul as a part timer helping me write the code. From that point it was really something similar to the spiral development model. Take something that works and refine it, get it working, then refine it again etc. We didn't get to the manager / supervisor / threaded implementation until about 6 months ago, and we just went through another major cycle last week. For a long time the system worked but we would have problems that I would manually intervene to keep it running. I just had to have patience and remember where I came from. I have expanded from one list of 65 million addresses to about 8 lists with about 300 million addresses. Without the automation that the program provides I wouldn't be able to process this many addresses. As it is, even with the "manual interventions" I spend a few hours of actual labor to process these 8 lists. With this latest rewrite it is finally getting to a truly stable state where it just runs. I had communication issues between stages where if anything went wrong the process would stop processing a stage. The latest rewrite really simplified that inter-stage communication and allows each stage to reliably see when the previous stage finishes. In order to be in this business I am legally obligated to process all the addresses every 30 days. This program is the only thing that makes that possible at this scale. John W. Colby Colby Consulting Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it On 10/29/2011 12:07 PM, Jim Lawrence wrote: > It sounds very impressive as a piece of software that took months (years) to > design and debug. I would assume you will be marketing this product soon. > ;-) > > Question: is the application taking advantage of the new "parallelism" > presented in VS 2010 or is it just using multi-threading? > > Jim >