Odata on Mobile Devices

OData (Open Data Protocol) is a web protocol for querying and updating data, which can be freely incorporated in various kind of data access applications. OData makes it quite simple and flexible to use by applying and building upon existing well-defined technologies such as HTTP, XML, AtomPub, and JSON. WCF Data Services (formerly known as ADO.NET Data Services) is a well-encapsulated component for creating OData services based on the Microsoft .NET Framework platform. It also provides a client library with which you can easily build client applications that consume OData services. In addition to WCF Data Services, there are many other components or libraries, which make OData completely available to the non-.NET or even non-Microsoft world.

In this article by Steven Cheng, author of OData Programming Cookbook for .NET Developers, we will cover:

• Accessing OData service with OData WP7 client library
• Creating Panorama-style, data-driven Windows Phone applications with OData
• Using HTML5 and OData to build native Windows Phone applications

Using Maps in your Windows Phone App

Maps provide a great visual experience for location-based services. Maps are now a default feature on most smartphones as they provide a good graphical overview of information (usually geotagged data) around the user's location.

With custom pin markers and directions, maps also help users navigate to their destination easily. Most importantly maps give the user a feeling that "This place is around the next block, north from where I am standing," so decision-making happens quickly for the user.

In this article by Zeeshan Chawdhary, author of Windows Phone 7.5: Building Location-aware Applications we shall cover the following topics:

• Understanding map geometry
• Overview of Windows Bing Maps Silverlight Control
• Using maps in your Windows Phone application – Hello Maps
• Using pushpins with maps
• Custom map pushpins
• Handling pushpin events
• Working with Bing Maps geocoding and reverse geocoding services
• Overview of Launchers and Choosers
• Using directions with Bing Maps directions task
• Performing local searches with BingMapsTask

Mastering the Newer Prezi Features

Prezi is a tool for delivering presentations in a linear or non-linear format. This cloud-based software enables users to structure presentations on an infinite canvass in a way that is much more engaging and visually stimulating to the audience.

In this article by Russell Anderson-Williams, author of Mastering Prezi for Business Presentations, we'll cover:

• Templates
• Shapes
• Drawings
• Text editor
• The plus button
• Grouping
• The play button

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Performance Tuning: Implementing Physical Database Structure

Your database performance heavily depends on how you have physically placed your database objects and how you have configured your disk subsystem. Designing the physical layout of your database correctly is the key factor to improve the performance of your database queries and thus the performance of your database. However, the correct decision on a physical design structure of the database depends on the available hardware resources that you might have. This includes the number of processors, RAM, and storage resources, such as how many ,disks or RAID controllers you might have in your database environment. The best thing while designing physical layout of the database is to have multiple physical disks for your database. If you configure your database in such a way that it spreads across multiple disks, it can benefit from parallel I/O operations.

The following are some of the decisions that influence your database performance:

• Where do you place data files?
• Where do you place log files?
• Where do you place large objects?
• Where do you place indexes?
• Where do you place the tempdb database?

You can control the physical location of database objects within the database by using files and filegroups.

In this article by Ritesh Shah and Bihag Thaker, co-authors of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Performance Tuning Cookbook, we will learn how to best design the physical structure of the database on your disk subsystem when you have enough available hardware resources, such as multiple processors and multiple physical disks.

Business Intelligence and Data Warehouse Solution - Architecture and Design

Setting the foundation of your business intelligence and data warehouse solution is key to the project. By making specific architecture and design decisions, you will be required to build the solution in a particular way. It is essential to understand some of the different architectural options and how they will affect your design, before you begin the development effort.

Making a mistake at the architecture and design stage of the project will have many ramifications in the form of rework and additional time, cost, and expense. Business intelligence and data warehouse projects have been around for many years, and there is a wealth of best practice information available, which is a great place to begin your project.

In this article by John Heaton, author of Business Intelligence Cookbook: A Project Lifecycle Approach Using Oracle Technology, we will review some of the key architecture and design issues that should be addressed by the project. Specifically, we will cover:

• Choosing your database type
• Defining your database layout
• Selecting the Third Normal Form or a Dimensional model

Installing and Configuring Drupal

Drupal 7 is a modern Content Management System famed for its flexibility and power. Using Drupal you can easily create custom functionality that would otherwise have to be purchased in many of the other leading CMSs

In this article by Dylan James, author of the book Drupal 7 Cookbook, we will explore the process of setting up a Drupal website. We will see how to install the offcial Drupal 7 release and also how to install third-party Drupal distributions which are preconfigured in a variety of ways.

Following the installation, we will move on to the installation of third-party modules and then how your site can be configured to provide a site search form.

The article culminates with a recipe on setting up Drupal multi-site where two Drupal sites are configured to run from the same core files.

Setting up the Basics for a Drupal Multilingual site: Languages and UI Translation

Drupal's default installation is in English. But, as you'll soon see, it can be configured to handle other languages as well. Creating a multilingual website expands your audience, and studies have shown that users are more likely to buy products and services on a website when content is presented in their native language. Coupled with the fact that there are many more non-English native speakers than English native speakers, you should see the full value of creating a site that supports other languages.

This article by Kristen Pol, author of Drupal 7 Multilingual Sites starts with setting up a test site. Once the site is ready, we'll add several new languages and configure language detection so that we can view each language using different URLs. With the detection in place, we will enable a switcher block to easily navigate between each language.

After the language settings are done, we'll move on to translating the Drupal interface. First we will translate manually by grabbing files from localize.drupal.org, and then we'll configure the site for automatic updates. Once the contributed translations are in place, we will learn how to add and change translated UI strings as well as how to contribute these translations back to the Drupal community. The last part of the interface translation section deals with changing English strings and reusing strings on other sites.