I am working in a company who is using TFS'12 for keeping track of PDF versions. The problem is that they are running out of space VERY quickly. I suppose this is because TFS use SQL Server and SQL Server treats every pdf as a BLOB object.
The question is: is it possible to use TFS for doing version control on files that do not contain code (images, pdfs, videos, etc)?
It is quite possible to use TFS for this purpose. Make sure that the space situation is due to increase in data space, not log space.
Related
Need to use older version of RTF without overwriting the MS Word version
Hi
I have a system that was developed in VB6 (Shortly to be rewritten in VB.NET) which uses rtf documents saved from MS Word 2002 which I scan to isolate certain details and change them. The user now wants to upgrade to MS Word 2010 but this causes problems within my system because it uses a later version of RTF. Is there any way that I can take the .DOC or .DOCX inputs and run them through an earlier version of RTF? I do not mind the fact that it will drop some functionality.
Regards
Mac
You could use DocX to read the data you need directly or possibly down-convert the documents.
You might need to make the DLL COM-visible (DocX source code is available on GitHub) or write a wrapper DLL that is COM-visible so this can be used in VB6.
This approach should save you time when you rewrite the app in VB.NET.
I'm looking for a way I can bulk update media items currently with Sitecore Powershell, but happy to here of any other suggestions.
I need a way of swapping out the blob value of a Sitecore media item for another media item. Is this even possible with Sitecore Powershell?
With 4.0 updated this week there will be a great way to do this using the new Remoting module functionality that Michael added as part of this issue. If you cannot hang on for a few more days feel free to contact me directly and I can pass the release binaries earlier.
I wouldn't honestly send remote files to server with the previous implementations as the files were going through serious serialization/deserialization in the process.
However if your files are already on the server there is another way that ingests files from the server file system into the media library that you can check out in a gist I've written a while back here.
InterWorks has a Workbook SDK as part of its Power Tools for Tableau product. Does anyone know how they are able to do this? The SDK can access a workbook without Tableau Server so I don't think it's the JavaScript or REST API.
A Tableau workbook (.twb) file is in XML format. The structure may change between versions, but is relatively straight forward to follow. Most Tableau file formats are also XML. The formats ending in an x (like .twbx) are zipped directories that contain the XML file along with other files.
This means it is not too tough to read information from these XML files, or even modify them. I've edited them by hand in rare cases. Usually there is a better choice than hacking the XML internals, but you can. Just backup your file first, and don't expect Tableau support to help you if it leads to strange behavior on your workbook.
In addition to the Interworks SDK (which is a COTS product), Chris Gerrard published a free Ruby library for accessing Tableau workbooks https://rubygems.org/gems/twb (or gem install twb) and released the source on github https://github.com/ChrisGerrard/TWB, along with a few (but not all of) the scripts he's written that use the twb classes https://github.com/ChrisGerrard/TableauToolsRuby.
Chris gives some useful examples and scripts on his blog Tableau Friction, including this clever article on automatically documenting the relationships among calculated fields
http://tableaufriction.blogspot.com/2015/02/more-calculated-field-analysis-fields.html
Using twb, you can write simple Ruby scripts easily to look at workbook structure. Since Tableau can change the format when they release new versions of the software, using the SDK or twb Ruby gem could isolate your scripts from changes to the format.
Tableau has also released a Document API that supports a modest number common changes to workbooks - so you can write a script to say, update the connection string on a set of workbooks.
So you have at least four choices:
Use Interworks SDK and tools that come with support, documentation and a price tag.
Use the free open source twb library, and either reuse existing Ruby scripts or develop the ones you need. And hopefully contribute the source if you extend.
Roll your own XML parsing scripts.
Use the Tableau Document API if it supports your use case. https://github.com/tableau/document-api-python
In all cases, do backups and be prepared for some adjustments when Tableau releases a major or minor version update. Patch releases are pretty safe.
Word has come from upon high to standardize our SCM system. And upon the clay tablets was written Clear Case.
I am reaching out to anyone who is actually using this configuration - to get best practices, hints and tips, war stories, anything...
The Sybase Source Control newsgroup only gives back the sound of crickets.
We currently have a boatload of actively maintained Powerbuilder 11.5 and EAServer 5.5 systems - so version-ing at the PBL library file level is NOT an option.
And it will be a long, long time before we go to the newest version 12 - which removes the PBL file and uses text files and works as a Visual-Studio plug-in.
I've always used the following pattern
_work.pbl
_last_minute_changes.pbl
1.pbl
2.pbl
3.pbl
...
I export the objects from 1,2,3... and check them into clearcase. I set up a nightly build using PowerGen to do a bootstrap import to a network share. I use a script to pull those pbl's down into my view. I check an object out of clearcase and import it into my _work.pbl. Make my changes, export it and check it into clearcase. A trigger then fires a CI build that imports the object into the _last_minute_changes.pbl and regenerates it against the previous nights pbl's and then archives it to a network share.
I then refresh my view from the share using the script and delete the object from my work.pbl. When it comes time to deploy we run a script that takes the sync'd pbl's and turns them into pbd's.
I used this process for a team of over 100+ powerbuilder developers in 4 states and it woked really well for us. Our application had over 12,000 objects and we never had any problems.
I do use ClearCase, but not directly with PowerBuilder projects.
The ClearCase manual has:
an extensive section on PowerBuilder integration,
and a couple of technotes, including a "
Getting started with PowerBuilder and ClearCase Integration" document.
The Sybase infocenter (11.5) mentions settings affecting source controls.
PowerBuilder projects or not, I recommend:
snapshot views for all development activities
dynamic views for consultation purposes (you can very well have both: one dynamic view to test your config spec, and one snapshot view to reuse the same tested config spec and actually copy the files locally)
CC Vob servers (for hosting the repositories) should be on a LAN. If there are on a WAN, then use CCRC (a RCP client communicating through web with a Web ClearCase Server which, in turn will communicate with the Vob servers on the same LAN)
CC View servers on a LAN (each client should manage its own view server)
I used ClearCase and PowerBuilder at a previous job.
We were using the IDE-integrated source control, and had it setup so that the individual objects were saved in clearcase as raw text objects (.sro, .srw, etc). I was not the one that exported the objects so unfortunately I can't give details, but I think PB can do at least some of that for you. Anyway, with this configuration when we checked in a file from PB, the IDE would automatically check the .srX file into ClearCase. This is the configuration you need, so that you can view the history of your changes using the ClearCase tools.
We also used PowerGen to automatically create PBL's using the source files in ClearCase. This is also a process you want to set up. Previously to this process we had to manually check the PBL's into source control (!!). I strongly advise against you doing this - otherwise you cannot truly guarantee that the .srX files and the PBL's are in sync.
Anyway, that's a brief summary. Let me know if there's anything you would like me to clarify, and I'll do my best. Good luck!
I am the Source Code Control Administrator and I have been using ClearCase and PowerBuilder together (using the IDE integration) for about 7 years. We have the PBL objects (.srw, .sru, etc) exported and in ClearCase. The PBLs are not in ClearCase. We also use PowerGen for regeneration instead of GLV because of GLVs issues with more complex systems.
ClearCase integrates beautifully with PowerBuilder (we are usign 9 and we are doing an ROI on the upgrade to 12).
Search IBM's website for "Getting started with PowerBuilder and ClearCase.pdf". That contains some very good information.
Using online interfaces to a version control system is a nice way to have a published location for the most recent versions of code. For example, I have a LaTeX package here (which is released to CTAN whenever changes are verified to actually work):
http://github.com/wspr/pstool/tree/master
The package itself is derived from a single file (in this case, pstool.tex) which, when processed, produces the documentation, the readme, the installer file, and the actual files that make up the package as it is used by LaTeX.
In order to make it easy for users who want to download this stuff, I include all of the derived files mentioned above in the repository itself as well as the master file pstool.tex. This means that I'll have double the number of changes every time I commit because the package file pstool.sty is a generated subset of the master file.
Is this a perversion of version control?
#Jon Limjap raised a good point:
Is there another way for you to publish your generated files elsewhere for download, instead of relying on your version control to be your download server?
That's really the crux of the matter in this case. Yes, released versions of the package can be obtained from elsewhere. So it does really make more sense to only version the non-generated files.
On the other hand, #Madir's comment that:
the convenience, which is real and repeated, outweighs cost, which is borne behind the scenes
is also rather pertinent in that if a user finds a bug and I fix it immediately, they can then head over to the repository and grab the file that's necessary for them to continue working without having to run any "installation" steps.
And this, I think, is the more important use case for my particular set of projects.
We don't version files that can be automatically generated using scripts included in the repository itself. The reason for this is that after a checkout, these files can be rebuild with a single click or command. In our projects we always try to make this as easy as possible, and thus preventing the need for versioning these files.
One scenario I can imagine where this could be useful if 'tagging' specific releases of a product, for use in a production environment (or any non-development environment) where tools required for generating the output might not be available.
We also use targets in our build scripts that can create and upload archives with a released version of our products. This can be uploaded to a production server, or a HTTP server for downloading by users of your products.
I am using Tortoise SVN for small system ASP.NET development. Most code is interpreted ASPX, but there are around a dozen binary DLLs generated by a manual compile step. Whilst it doesn't make a lot of sense to have these source-code versioned in theory, it certainly makes it convenient to ensure they are correctly mirrored from the development environment onto the production system (one click). Also - in case of disaster - the rollback to the previous step is again one click in SVN.
So I bit the bullet and included them in the SVN archive - the convenience, which is real and repeated, outweighs cost, which is borne behind the scenes.
Not necessarily, although best practices for source control advise that you do not include generated files, for obvious reasons.
Is there another way for you to publish your generated files elsewhere for download, instead of relying on your version control to be your download server?
Normally, derived files should not be stored in version control. In your case, you could build a release procedure that created a tarball that includes the derived files.
As you say, keeping the derived files in version control only increases the amount of noise you have to deal with.
In some cases we do, but it's more of a sysadmin type of use case, where the generated files (say, DNS zone files built from a script) have intrinsic interest in their own right, and the revision control is more linear audit trail than branching-and-tagging source control.