Recently, we published an eBook with the help of #MIEExpert Emma Hicks, which looks at how OneNote can be used in the classroom to help teaching and learning. Chapter 5 looks at how OneNote creates a single digital space, providing a hassle free and accessible way to conduct peer assessment.

Recently, we published an eBook with the help of #MIEExpert Emma Hicks, which looks at how OneNote can be used in the classroom to help teaching and learning. Chapter 5 looks at how OneNote creates a single digital space, providing a hassle free and accessible way to conduct peer assessment.

Recently, we published an eBook with the help of #MIEExpert Emma Hicks, which looks at how OneNote can be used in the classroom to help teaching and learning. Chapter 5 looks at how OneNote creates a single digital space, providing a hassle free and accessible way to conduct peer assessment.

Hi,

Thanks for looking into this. :)

Today I am going to talk about how to completely uninstall / remove specific inbox appx against win10.

I have seen varies blogs and forum articles discussing how to do that.

But most of them are very partial, and will not work if you really follow that.

There is a very key point we may easily miss.

To completely uninstall / remove specific inbox APPX against win10, we need to:

Step 1. use the following power-shell cmdlet to list the exact package name of the unwanted appx.

Get-AppxPackage | Select Name, PackageFullName

Step 2. remove the appx for the current user, by doing this the appx won't appear on start menu:

Remove-AppxPackage -package <PackageName1>

Step 3. after running the cmdlets above, the appx is actually still staged/provisioned in OS. If a new user profile is created, the appx will still be installed for the user. Now, we need to remove the appx from OS perspective, next step is to run the following cmdlet to list the exact package name of the staged/provisioned appx.

Get-AppXProvisionedPackage -online

Step 4. remove the staged/provisioned appx:

Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -PackageName <PackageName2> -online

The very key thing here is <PackageName1> may sometimes differs from <PackageName2>.

For example,

AppxPackageName: Microsoft.Office.OneNote_17.6131.10051.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe
 
AppxProvisionedPackageName: Microsoft.Office.OneNote_2015_6131.10051.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe

Computing skills are intrinsically linked to science and on British Science Week digital day (Friday 11 March) education technology specialist and with the support of the Microsoft Educator Community ComputerXplorers will be delivering free Kodu sessions for children and CPD sessions as part of its annual Programming for Primaries awareness event.

ComputerXplorers established Programming for Primaries two years ago to shine the spotlight on resources available to help teachers introduce primary school age children to coding and we're delighted to be supporting them once again as they join forces with British Science Week.

Any initiative that educates children in the exciting application, depth and breadth of coding applications in the real world has got to be a good thing. Programming for Primaries helps make coding relevant and interesting to children today, so that they will understand what they can do with it in the lives they lead tomorrow.

FREE children's workshops and CPD sessions for teachers are available in areas of Kent, London, Bristol, Bath, Birmingham, Thames Valley, the Cotswolds, Surrey, Oxfordshire, Yorkshire, Scotland and South Wales. Places are filling up fast. For more information go to www.computerxplorers.co.uk

隨著4月9號的Imagine Cup微軟潛能創意盃台灣總決賽日日逼進，微軟學生大使也前進全台各大校園設置攤位宣傳，除了為招募更多菁英學生報名參賽，也讓更多的學生認識Imagine Cup提升其在校園的知名度，鼓勵更多台灣學生在「用科技改變世界」這個主題上貢獻一份心力。

同時，微軟學生大使也在全台各校的攤位上宣傳下一屆的微軟實習生招募。微軟學生大使（Microsoft Student Partners，簡稱MSP）是由美國總部發起的全球實習計畫，主要任務是推廣各種最新的科技技術給更多學生認識。在一年的實習期間，MSP除了能免費參與各項微軟提供的培訓課程與研討會外，實習結束後，還將獲得由美國總部頒發的國際證書。

攤位上除了有獨一無二的打卡版和MSP吉祥物─「波比」的等比例立牌讓大家一起合照同樂外，完成不同闖關互動如粉絲團按讚或打卡填問卷還可獲得微軟學生大使的專屬小禮物！

攤位活動將從2月底一路到3月11日，歡迎所有興趣加入微軟實習或參加微軟潛能創意盃的同學到現場詢問，不僅有熱情的微軟學生大使提供你更多詳細資訊，還能免費拿到限量小禮物喔！

全台巡迴攤位時間與地點

• 政治大學 2月26日(五) 11:00~14:00商學院
• 臺北科技大學 3月2日 (三) 11:00~14:00 人文廣場
• 銘傳大學 3月3日 (四) 11:00~14:00 S棟資訊管理大樓1樓
• 清華大學 3月7日 (一) 11:00~14:00 水木路口
• 交通大學 3月8日 (二) 11:00~14:00 小木屋旁
• 中山大學 3月9日 (三) 11:30~13:30 菩提樹廣場
• 台灣科技大學 3月10日 (四) 11:00~14:00 郵局前廣場
• 成功大學 3月11日 (五) 11:00~14:00 活動中心大草坪

北科擺攤照片

銘傳擺攤照片

Podemos criar um breve checklist sobre como validar a infraestrutura de um servidor SQL usando o Performance Monitor.

Artigo complementar: Checklist: Performance do Servidor (SQL)

Desafio: Analisando Servidor com Perfmon

A análise da infraestrutura sob a ótica do Windows é dividida nos seus principais recursos: CPU, memória, storage e rede.

CPU

Monitoração do consumo de CPU no servidor.

• Processor: %Processor Time: verificar se o consumo de CPU está abaixo de 80%. É importante manter uma margem de 10-20% para permitir um eventual pico de utilização.
• Processor: %Privileged Time: verificar se o consumo em Kernel Time está abaixo de 30%. Não faz sentido um servidor de banco de dados gastar mais tempo em Kernel executando tarefa de sistemas ao invés de executar as queries SQL.
• System: Processor Queue Length: monitorar esse valor ao longo do tempo e comparar com o consumo de CPU. Alto consumo de CPU associado a filas de processador indicam que existem processos externos afetando o desempenho do SQL Server.

Memória

Monitoração da memória disponível no SO e consumo interno da Kernel.

• Memory: Available MB: monitorar esse contador ao longo do tempo e garantir que ele está sempre acima de 100MB. Caso haja momentos em que esse indicador fique muito baixo, recomenda-se configurar ou diminuir o “Max Server Memory” do servidor SQL Server e garantir que sempre haja memória disponível.
• Memory: Pool Nonpaged Bytes: analisar se a quantidade de Nonpaged Pool se mantém constante ao longo dos dias ou se há indícios de memory leak. Isso pode indicar um problema em drivers de Kernel e afeta a estabilidade do SO.
• Memory: Pool Paged Bytes: analisar se a quantidade de Paged Pool se mantém constante ao longo dos dias ou se há indícios de memory leak. Isso pode indicar um problema em drivers de Kernel e afeta a estabilidade do SO.

Storage

A análise do storage foi detalhada no artigo Monitorando o Storage. O ideal é conduzir uma análise individualizada por volume do disco ao invés de consolidar em uma única análise.

A carga pode ser medida em IOPS. Altos valores de IOPS causam gargalos em discos mecânicos FC, SCSI, SAS, SATA.

• Disk Reads/sec: calcular o número de leituras em um disco de dados. Na teoria, essas leituras possuem característica aleatória e em blocos de 8Kb. No entanto, é comum encontrar servidores realizando table scan e causando leituras sequenciais e blocos maiores que 8Kb. Portanto, é possível determinar a natureza da leitura (aleatória ou sequencial) através do tamanho dos blocos de escrita (contador Disk Bytes/Read). Valores de referência:
  • 100 IOPS = Disco 7200 RPM
  • 150 IOPS = Disco 10k RPM
  • 175 IOPS = Disco 15k RPM
  • 10.000 IOPS = Disco SSD
• Disk Writes/sec: ignorar o número de escritas no disco de dados. Ignorar esse contador nos discos do tempdb: log e dados. Calcular o IOPS nos discos de log. Idealmente esse valor deve ficar abaixo de 200, embora seja aceitável atingir até 1000 IOPS. Normalmente as escritas são aceleradas através de um write-cache no storage.
• Disk Transfers/sec: soma dos IOPS de escrita e leitura. Utilizar esse contador quando precisar de uma análise simplificada sobre a carga.

A carga pode ser medida em MB/s. Altos valores na taxa de transferência causam gargalos nas interfaces de disco e cabos de interconexão

• Disk Read Bytes/sec: calcular a taxa de transferência de leitura. Não existe um limite para esse valor. Sugestão de
  • 20 MB/s: baixo
  • 100 MB/s: normal
  • 200 MB/s: alto (equivalente a Fiber Channel 2Gbit)
• Disk Write Bytes/sec: calcular a taxa de transferência de escrita. Entretanto, existem algumas considerações:
  • Disco de dados: fluxo de escrita é causado pelo processo de checkpoint, que pode aumentar a concorrência de escrita e afetar indiretamente a latência do storage
  • Disco de log: quase sempre a taxa de escrita é baixa (abaixo de 20MB/s) porque os pacotes são pequenos
• Disk Bytes/sec: soma da taxa de transferência de leitura e escrita. Utilizar esse contador quando precisar de uma análise simplificada sobre a carga.

A latência do disco é a principal medida em relação ao storage:

• Avg Disk Sec/Read: Validar se a latência do disco está dentro da expectativa. Em geral, adotam-se valores máximos de 50 a 100ms como tempo de respostas para o disco de dados. Uma sugestão de tempos:
  • <1ms : inacreditável
  • <3ms : excelente
  • <5ms : muito bom
  • <10ms : dentro do esperado
  • <20ms : razoável
  • <50ms : limite
  • >100ms : ruim
  • > 1 seg : contenção severa de disco
  • > 15 seg : problemas graves com o storage
• Avg Disk Sec/Write: Validar se a latência do disco está dentro da expectativa. Ignore esse valor para os discos de dados. Utilize esse contador para os discos de log com latências reduzidas:
  • <1ms : excelente
  • <3ms : bom
  • <5ms : razoável
  • <10ms : limite
  • >20ms : ruim
  • > 1 seg : contenção severa de disco
  • > 15 seg : problemas graves com o storage
• Avg Disk Sec/Transfer: Média ponderada entre os tempos de leitura e escrita. Utilizar esse contador quando precisar de uma análise simplificada sem a necessidade de olhar dois contadores (Read e Write) ao mesmo tempo.

Adicionalmente, pode ser incluído o contador de “outstanding I/O”.

• Current Disk Queue Length: corresponde ao número de requisições de I/O que estão ativas esperando por uma resposta do storage ou enfileiradas na HBA. Infelizmente esse contador é confundido com o “Avg Disk Queue Length”, que não possui o mesmo significado. Se o tempo de latência estiver adequado, é possível fazer o ajuste do parâmetro de “Queue Depth” da placa HBA. Dessa forma, o host pode aumentar o número de I/O enviados ao storage e diminuir a fila da HBA. Esse é um parâmetro específco por placa (ex: Emulex, QLogic, etc).

Rede

Monitoração do tráfego de rede.

• Bytes Received/sec: calcular a taxa de dados recebidos pela rede. Esse valor é sempre baixo, pois corresponde aos pacotes com comandos. A exceção é durante a recepção de cargas BCP. Valores de referência:
  • 5MB/s : normal
  • 10MB/s: alto
  • 100MB/s: muito alto (equivalente a uma placa Ethernet 1Gbit)
• Bytes Sent/sec: calcular a taxa de dados enviados pela rede. Esse valor é superior à quantidade de dados recebidos, pois corresponde ao conjunto de dados a ser retornado ao cliente.
  • 10MB/s : normal
  • 20MB/s : alto
  • 100MB/s: muito alto (equivalente a uma placa Ethernet 1Gbit)
• Bytes Total/sec: soma de dados recebidos e enviados pela rede. Utilizar esse contador quando precisar de uma análise simplificada do tráfego de rede.

Referência

Os demais artigos dessa série estão listados abaixo.

Artigo: Perfmon- Falso Sentido de Monitoração

Artigo: Os 7 Grandes Mitos do Perfmon:

• Parte 1: Buffer Cache Hit Ratio, Average Disk Queue Length e %Disk Busy
• Parte 2: Paging File:%Usage, Memory: Page Faults/sec e Memory: Pages/sec
• Parte 3: SQL Access Methods: Page Splits/sec, SQL Locks: Lock Waits/sec e SQL General Statistics: User Connections

Artigo: Contadores do Perfmon

Desafio: Analisando Servidor com Perfmon

Artigo: Monitorando com o Perfmon

• Perfmon: Monitorando o Buffer Manager
• Perfmon: Monitorando o Storage

Checklist

• Checklist: Performance do Servidor (Windows)
• Checklist: Performance do Servidor (SQL)
  

Microsoft are supporting Children United, a project founded by First News, Save The Children and Achievement for All to support the creation of the first world-wide digital community of children. Last week saw 6,500 children performing as part of the Voice in a Million annual flagship event at SSE Arena Wembley.

In a recent article on his blog, Premier Developer Consultant Razi Rais outlines the steps required to set up a developer environment instance of Active Directory Federation Services on the current Technical Preview (TP4) of Windows Server 2016.  Here’s a snippet of Razi’s article, be sure to follow the link to his blog for the full solution, including code samples:

Recently I’ve run into situations where I have to build a developer environment that needs Active Directory Federation Services [ADFS] running on Windows Server 2016 [currently in technical preview 4, hence w2k16-tp4,]. I am intentionally avoiding the term ADFS ‘v4’ which is really tempting but it’s about time to move away from these versions. From now on you can simply refer to it as ADFS running on w2k16. So, what I really needed is something that can be up and running in the fastest way possible. It’s really a pure developer setup focusing on saving time on installation and configuration so no server hardening, least privilege accounts or all those things that are absolutely mandatory for non-developer environments like production!

Read about the full solution here:

http://www.razibinrais.com/dev-install-adfs-windows-2016/

Optimized Nested Loops (or Batch Sort) is effectively an optimization aimed at minimizing I/O during a nested loop when the inner side table is large, regardless of it being parallelized or not.

The presence of this optimization in a given plan may not be very obvious when you look at an execution plan, given the sort itself is hidden, but you can see this by looking in the plan XML, and looking for the attribute Optimized, meaning the Nested Loop join may try to reorder the input rows to improve I/O performance. You can read more about optimized Nested Loops in Craig Freeman's blog.

We have encountered cases of performance issues where the root cause is tracked back to an extreme memory grant request from a query with these Batch Sorts. When the Optimizer uses a optimized Nested Loop join or "Batch Sort", the estimated used for memory grants can be much larger than the memory used for the operation.

The issue occurs when the outer table of the Nested Loop join has a predicate that filters the result to a small input, but the batch sort appears to be using an estimate for cardinality that is equivalent to the entire outer table. This can result in a perceived excessive memory grant which in a very concurrent server can have several side-effects, like OOM conditions, memory pressure for plan cache eviction, or unexpected RESOURCE_SEMAPHORE waits. We have seen how a single query that match this pattern can actually get several GB’s of granted memory on high-end machines (1TB+ RAM).

One option until now would be to disable this feature globally using Trace Flag 2340, as described in KB 2801413. However, in SQL Server 2016 RC0 we have changed the behavior to maintain the advantage of the optimization, but now the max grant limit is based on the available memory grant space. This improvement also translates into better scalability, in the sense more queries can be executed with a smaller memory footprint. We are looking at back porting this behavior to an upcoming SQL Server 2014 Service Pack, and as usual deliver added value to in-market versions.

You can see below the difference of granted memory for the same query (left is SQL Server 2016 RC0, right is SQL Server 2014). The ratio between granted memory and the max used memory is proportionally very large on the right side.

Pedro Lopes (@sqlpto) – Senior Program Manager

Teachers, students and schools have been doing some amazing things with Class Notebooks, and in many cases, changing the nature of the classroom with new interaction, feedback and collaboration models that were not possible before. The OneNote team has a history of working closely with teachers and schools to help solve classroom challenges. Class Notebooks came directly from working closely with teachers, listening to how they were using OneNote in the classroom and what they were hoping to be able to do more easily.

Teachers, students and schools have been doing some amazing things with Class Notebooks, and in many cases, changing the nature of the classroom with new interaction, feedback and collaboration models that were not possible before. The OneNote team has a history of working closely with teachers and schools to help solve classroom challenges. Class Notebooks came directly from working closely with teachers, listening to how they were using OneNote in the classroom and what they were hoping to be able to do more easily.

This chapter from Microsoft Word 2016 Step by Step guides you through procedures related to applying character and paragraph formatting, structuring content manually, creating and modifying lists, applying styles to text, and changing a document’s theme.

In this chapter

• Apply paragraph formatting
• Structure content manually
• Apply character formatting
• Create and modify lists
• Apply built-in styles to text
• Change the document theme

Practice files

For this chapter, use the practice files from the Word2016SBS\Ch04 folder. For practice file download instructions, see the introduction.

Documents contain text that conveys information to readers, but the appearance of the document content also conveys a message. You can provide structure and meaning by formatting the text in various ways. Word 2016 provides a variety of simple-to-use tools that you can use to apply sophisticated formatting and create a navigational structure.

In a short document or one that doesn’t require a complex navigational structure, you can easily format words and paragraphs so that key points stand out and the structure of your document is clear. You can achieve dramatic flair by applying predefined WordArt text effects. To keep the appearance of documents and other Microsoft Office files consistent, you can format document elements by applying predefined sets of formatting called styles. In addition, you can change the fonts, colors, and effects throughout a document with one click by applying a theme.

This chapter guides you through procedures related to applying character and paragraph formatting, structuring content manually, creating and modifying lists, applying styles to text, and changing a document’s theme.

Read the full chapter at the Microsoft Press Store.

This is a test

I have been programming in C and C++ since I was 15 years old. And no, I won’t tell you how long ago that was! I have always loved both languages, and still do, but when the first internal pre-releases of Visual Studio 2013 came out, I selected C# as my prime language. To be honest, I felt like a deserter!

When building and working on operating systems, C and C++ are the dominant languages, but when working with customers building line of business and cloud applications, most are using higher level languages like C#, JavaScript and Java. With that said, I would say that about 25% of customers I work with have some form of legacy C and C++ code in production and while it is often not exposed directly to the Internet, much of it sits right behind a web server. In other words, it’s still in the firing line of attackers. For example, some systems I have reviewed take a web request (ASP.NET, PHP etc.), turn the request data into a proprietary format and shoot it over a socket to a service or daemon written in C or C++ listening on a TCP socket. The C/C++ code then performs some parsing and queuing and shoots the request to a back end system which processes the data and returns the result back up the pipeline.

Of course, there are classes of systems that use C/C++ throughout. For example, many control systems use C/C++ for the core system and use higher level languages, such as C# and Java, for the management systems.

In short, there’s still a great deal of old, crusty C and C++ code out there that is directly or indirectly open to attack.

This code should be updated where possible to improve its security, but this should be done in a way that does not introduce regressions and requires very little engineering effort. I am not saying a customer should spend thousands of hours securing C and C++ code (some should, however!) but there are things that can be done that raise the security bar easily, and this means refactoring the code with an eye on security.

What’s Refactoring?

Refactoring is a process where code is improved in some way without changing how it functions. Refactoring examples including making code more legible or maintainable. The rest of this commentary focuses on refactoring C and C++ code so it is more secure and for C and C++ code, that means reducing the number of potential memory corruption issues in the code.

Memory corruption (also called memory safety) vulnerabilities have long been the bane of C and C++ code and every refactoring idea below attempts to reduce or mitigate many memory corruption issues.

Refactoring Idea #1 - Recompile and Relink

It really could not be simpler. The two main C/C++ toolsets in use today, Microsoft Visual C++ and Gnu gcc, add memory corruption defenses to the compiled and linked code. All you need to do is flip a few compiler and linker flags and the tools will add memory corruption defenses to resulting binary.

For Visual C++ the compiler flags are:

• /GS <More Info>

And the linker flags are:

• /dynamicbase <More Info>

• /nxcompat <More Info>

• /safeseh <More Info>

• /guard:cf <More Info>

The really good news is that for Visual C++ 2015, you don’t need to do anything other than recompiling and linking the code as these switches are enabled by default.

Also, add this to a commonly used header, such as stdafx.h

#pragma strict_gs_check(on)

For gcc, you should flip the following switches in the compiler and linker:

CFLAGS="-fPIE -fstack-protector-all"

LDFLAGS="-Wl,-z,now -Wl,-z,relro"

<More Info and More Info>

There is a “downside” to these changes – if there are memory corruption vulnerabilities in the code, there’s a good chance your code will fail if an issue is found during test or when the code is in production. I see this as a good thing because you just found a real security vulnerability with a nice, clean stack trace. Fix the code, the bug has probably been latent for decades and you never knew it.

Refactoring Idea #2 – Replace Insecure C Runtime Functions

There are many C runtime functions that we know are insecure because they don’t constrain how much memory is copied. At Microsoft we banned the use of these functions in new code. The Rogue’s Gallery includes:

• strcpy

• strcat

• sprintf

• strncpy

• strncat

• snprintf

• gets

And many, many more. You are wrong if you think I am going to suggest you dive into the code and manually replace these functions with safer versions. A better option, because we’re trying to keep the work as small as possible, is to have the compiler do the work for you when it can. I wrote about this many years ago. All you need to do is add this to a commonly used header file, such as stdafx.h, and then recompile the code:

#define _CRT_SECURE_CPP_OVERLOAD_STANDARD_NAMES 1

#define _CRT_SECURE_CPP_OVERLOAD_STANDARD_NAMES_MEMORY 1

For gcc, you can use these two settings which do a similar thing.

CFLAGS=" -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -Wformat"

Refactoring Idea #3 – Focused use of Static Analysis Tools

If you use Visual C++, compile with -analyze and fix any issue that relates to memory safety. We have tuned the tool to find issues with a high degree of confidence, so there should be few false positives.

In my opinion, no code should be check-in with these warnings:

C6001, C6002, C6029, C6054, C6059, C6063, C6064, C6066, C6067, C6101, C6200, C6201, C6255, C6320, C6383, C6385, C6386, C6411, C6412

John Carmack has some interesting things to say about the value of using /analyze.

Refactoring Idea #4 – Stretch a Little

This one is a little bit of work, as you’ll get build failures until you fix all the issues, but if you add this to a common header, it will deprecate the banned C runtime functions. After you have downloaded the header, the line to add is:

#include <banned.h>

If that’s a little too harsh, then at least fix all C4996 warnings; these are warnings that indicate banned functionality and the set is smaller than the list in banned.h.

Summary

The security purists out there are probably saying there is a lot more to do to old legacy C and C++ code than what I outlined and the purists are totally correct. But I would much rather see large swaths of C and C++ code be made somewhat more secure rather than having 0% of the C and C++ out there have nothing done to it. For those that want to go beyond this list, feel free to do so!

Join us at Microsoft Innovation Center, Lahore for a full day special Microsoft Azure event for Open Source developers on 17^th March, 2016. Please note that Registration is mandatory and due to the overwhelming interest in the event and limited seating capacity, we’ll confirm a selective few professional developers amongst those registered.

Microsoft Open Source Azure Conference is Free and intended for professional developers, by developers. The speakers include the author and a fellow MVP with other Developer Experience & Evangelism Group (DX) team. This special event will offer technical insights into a suite of Microsoft Azure services that are tailored and best suited for Open Source development. Here’s the brief agenda (subject to slight change),

Please join us for a special learning experience brought by Microsoft for student and startups developers in Karachi on 24^th March in Bahria University. Please note that Registration is mandatory and due to the overwhelming interest in the event and limited seating capacity, we’ll confirm a selective few amongst those registered.

The event will be delivered by Microsoft team and key community speakers. You’ll be walked through a broad range of services available on Azure for Free by Microsoft’s community speakers. This is one unique learning experience you wouldn’t want to miss.

Earlier this year we published a OneNote in Education eBook with the help of MIEExpert, Emma Hicks. This chapter looks at how OneNote provides a platform that allows feedback to be quick, varied and engaging, and is effective and visible throughout students work.