pretty printing - Page 103

Facebook call back function with timeout

- by Dirty Bird Design

So I've been getting my ass kicked pretty good with Facebook's moving target of an API. I need to display some hidden content after a person clicks 'like' on a landing page. I can somewhat get this to work, when the user clicks 'like' the normal fb dialogue appears and then goes away immediately and content is displayed. I have 'achieved' this with the following js. <script> FB.Event.subscribe('edge.create', function(href, widget) { document.getElementById('goodies').style.display = "block"; document.getElementById('fb-content').style.display= "block"; document.getElementById('copy').style.display = "none"; }); </script> I cannot find any documentation about a callback event after someone hits "post to facebook" or after the dialogue closes, only afte they hit like. How would I incorporate a setTimeout function into this to give people some time to fill out the fb dialogue? thanks. If anyone has a better way to do this I'm all ears. This is for a business page and I cannot seem to add an app to get an app ID anymore so the API is pretty useless to me at this point. Also, if the url to be liked is a fb page, the callbacks don't seem to fire. Other code used: <html xmlns:fb="http://ogp.me/ns/fb#"> <div id="fb-root"></div> <script>(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); </script> <fb:like href="onlynonfburl.com" send="false" layout="button_count" width="450" show_faces="false" font="arial"></fb:like>

Read the article

Should I really use a UITableView in this situation?

- by mystify

Imagine you have a view like this: At the top, there is an UISegmentedControl with two segments. It functions like a tab. Pressing one segment will activate this particular content below that UISegmentedControl. Below the UISegmentedControl are some switches. These modify the way how the content should be rendered. And finally, below those switches, there's a table. Imagine a table not in sense of UITableView, but just what it really is: A table. It shows little messages like twitter messages or chat messages for example, one below the other. Like you know it from skype and other chats. Basically they're just rows with some formatting. A label, some image views, some lines, a background. Pretty basic. The data comes from an array. No core data. The whole thing including the segmented control and setup switches must be scrollable. So what I did is: I put all this stuff in an UIScrollView. Now I have to make the decision if I would use a UITableView inside there for that table part, or if I would just print a lot of rows on to the scroll view (with -drawRect:). But some problems stick in my head: Can I put a UITableView inside a UIScrollView? I assume this makes a lot of problems. I don't want that the table part is separately scrollable. Again imagine that view: First there are some basic choice things (segmented control, switches). Then there comes the table. When you scroll, the whole thing scrolls. That's mainly because this first part with the settings can be pretty big, so you would want to scroll it away. The next thing is: Can I customize UITableView in such a way, that it consists of two parts? One for that settings part, and one for the actual data to display?

Read the article

Can a Java HashMap's size() be out of sync with its actual entries' size ?

- by trix

I have a Java HashMap called statusCountMap. Calling size() results in 30. But if I count the entries manually, it's 31 This is in one of my TestNG unit tests. These results below are from Eclipse's Display window (type code - highlight - hit Display Result of Evaluating Selected Text). statusCountMap.size() (int) 30 statusCountMap.keySet().size() (int) 30 statusCountMap.values().size() (int) 30 statusCountMap (java.util.HashMap) {40534-INACTIVE=2, 40526-INACTIVE=1, 40528-INACTIVE=1, 40492-INACTIVE=3, 40492-TOTAL=4, 40513-TOTAL=6, 40532-DRAFT=4, 40524-TOTAL=7, 40526-DRAFT=2, 40528-ACTIVE=1, 40524-DRAFT=2, 40515-ACTIVE=1, 40513-DRAFT=4, 40534-DRAFT=1, 40514-TOTAL=3, 40529-DRAFT=4, 40515-TOTAL=3, 40492-ACTIVE=1, 40528-TOTAL=4, 40514-DRAFT=2, 40526-TOTAL=3, 40524-INACTIVE=2, 40515-DRAFT=2, 40514-ACTIVE=1, 40534-TOTAL=3, 40513-ACTIVE=2, 40528-DRAFT=2, 40532-TOTAL=4, 40524-ACTIVE=3, 40529-ACTIVE=1, 40529-TOTAL=5} statusCountMap.entrySet().size() (int) 30 What gives ? Anyone has experienced this ? I'm pretty sure statusCountMap is not being modified at this point. There are 2 methods (lets call them methodA and methodB) that modify statusCountMap concurrently, by repeatedly calling incrementCountInMap. private void incrementCountInMap(Map map, Long id, String qualifier) { String key = id + "-" + qualifier; if (map.get(key) == null) { map.put(key, 0); } synchronized (map) { map.put(key, map.get(key).intValue() + 1); } } methodD is where I'm getting the issue. methodD has a TestNG @dependsOnMethods = { "methodA", "methodB" } so when methodD is executing, statusCountMap is pretty much static already. I'm mentioning this because it might be a bug in TestNG. I'm using Sun JDK 1.6.0_24. TestNG is testng-5.9-jdk15.jar Hmmm ... after rereading my post, could it be because of concurrent execution of outside-of-synchronized-block map.get(key) == null & map.put(key,0) that's causing this issue ?

Read the article

Append to the end of a Char array in C++

- by Taylor Huston

Is there a command that can append one array of char onto another? Something that would theoretically work like this: //array1 has already been set to "The dog jumps " //array2 has already been set to "over the log" append(array2,array1); cout << array1; //would output "The dog jumps over the log"; This is a pretty easy function to make I would think, I am just surprised there isn't a built in command for it. *Edit I should have been more clear, I didn't mean changing the size of the array. If array1 was set to 50 characters, but was only using 10 of them, you would still have 40 characters to work with. I was thinking an automatic command that would essentially do: //assuming array1 has 10 characters but was declared with 25 and array2 has 5 characters int i=10; int z=0; do{ array1[i] = array2[z]; ++i; ++z; }while(array[z] != '\0'); I am pretty sure that syntax would work, or something similar.

Read the article

detection of 'flush tables with read lock' in php

- by theduke0

I would like to know from my application if a myisam table can accept writes (i.e. not locked). If an exception is thrown, everything is fine as I can catch this and log the failed statement to a file. However, if a 'flush tables with read lock' command has been issued (possibly for backup), the query I send will pretty much hang out forever. If one table is locked at a time, insert delayed works well. But when this global lock is applied, my query just waits. The query I run is an insert statement. If this statement fails or hangs, user experience is degraded. I need a way to send the query to the server and forget about it (pretty much). Does anyone have any suggestions on how to deal with this? -set a query timeout? -run asyncronous request and allow for the lock to expire while application continues? -fork my php process? Please let me know if I can provide and clarification or details.

Read the article

Yet another question about C++ books..

- by suicideducky

Intro rant Hey all, so after just over a year of browsing I decided it's time to ask a question for myself, it's sadly similar to many that have been asked before. I'm 18, am studying towards a BSc in Comp SCi and have been programming 'on and off' for about 6 years now, after wrestling with C++ for a bit then stumbling upon (and reading cover to cover) "Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++" by the great man himself I feel pretty comfortable with C++, I am almost finished writing my first open source program in C++ (a mediawiki parser, http://code.google.com/p/apertium-mediawiki/). I have decided I want to really get to know the power of C++, get familiar with some of its 'darker' corners and also delve into game programming, at this point I am rather keen on the book "Essential 3D Game Programming: with C++ and OpenGL" (released 24 may '10), I would also like to get 1 or 2 other books on 'general C++' that I can read cover to cover during my spare time. At this point I am pretty open to suggestions I would like something in the intermediate/advanced zone, some books I am rather keen on include: The C++ Standard Library: A tutorial and reference, C++ Template, the complete guide, and Modern C++ Design: Generic Programming and Design Patterns Applied Thanks in advance.

Read the article

How to document an existing small web site (web application), inside and out?

- by Ricket

We have a "web application" which has been developed over the past 7 months. The problem is, it was not really documented. The requirements consisted of a small bulleted list from the initial meeting 7 months ago (it's more of a "goals" statement than software requirements). It has collected a number of features which stemmed from small verbal or chat discussions. The developer is leaving very soon. He wrote the entire thing himself and he knows all of the quirks and underlying rules to each page, but nobody else really knows much more than the user interface side of it; which of course is the easy part, as it's made to be intuitive to the user. But if someone needs to repair or add a feature to it, the entire thing is a black box. The code has some minimal comments, and of course the good thing about web applications is that the address bar points you in the right direction towards fixing a problem or upgrading a page. But how should the developer go about documenting this web application? He is a bit lost as far as where to begin. As developers, how do you completely document your web applications for other developers, maintainers, and administrative-level users? What approach do you use, where do you start, do you have a template? An idea of magnitude: it uses PHP, MySQL and jQuery. It has about 20-30 main (frontend) files, along with about 15 included files and a couple folders of some assets. So overall it's a pretty small application. It interfaces with 7 MySQL tables, each one well-named, so I think the database end is pretty self-explanatory. There is a config.inc.php file with definitions of consts like the MySQL user details, some from/to emails, and URLs which PHP uses to insert into emails and pages (relative and absolute paths, basiecally). There is some AJAX via jQuery. Please comment if there is any other information that would help you help me and I will be glad to edit it in.

Read the article

Maximized MFC window has dead region at the top

- by John Calsbeek

I'm trying to make a MFC window fullscreen whenever it is maximized. This window is being used to draw OpenGL content. So far it works fine—it fills the entire screen with the exception of the taskbar—but there's a dead black region at the top of the screen, 62 pixels in height. It's pretty darn close to the height of the Windows 7 taskbar, but it pretty much stays the same regardless of if the taskbar is on autohide or on a different side of the screen. When I get a CWind::OnSize callback, the height that is given is 988, which is 62 pixels short of the actual screen height (1050). I've tried to manually set the window height to 1050 with SetWindowPos, I've tried to give Windows the screen dimensions in CWnd::OnGetMinMaxInfo, and I've tried to give the screen dimensions to glViewport instead of the 988 pixels that I'm being given. None of these seem to work. I'm accomplishing the fullscreening with a call to… ModifyStyle(0, WS_MINIMIZEBOX | WS_MAXIMIZEBOX | WS_SYSMENU | WS_CAPTION | WS_POPUP, 0); …in the SIZE_MAXIMIZED CWnd::OnSize callback, which works fine, except for this dead region. I don't know if it's an OpenGL thing or a Win32 thing or a MFC thing. The GetClientRect function for my window reports the false 988 height. The same OpenGL rendering code works fine in my Mac OS X build. Curiously enough, I have gotten the dead region to move around a bit when I play with the taskbar (autohiding it, moving it around the screen, etc.). I've gotten the dead area to shrink to about half—not sure if the other half went to the bottom of the window or not.

Read the article

What considerations should be made when creating a reporting framework for a business?

- by Andrew Dunaway

It's a pretty classic problem. The company I work for has numerous business reports that are used to track sales, data feeds, and various other metrics. Of course this also means that there is a conglomerate of disparate frameworks, ASP.net pages, and areas where these reports can be found. There have been some attempts at consolidating these into a single entity, but nothing has stuck yet. Since this is a common problem, and I am sure solved innumerable times, I wanted to see what others have done. For the most part these can be boiled down to the following pieces: A SQL query against our database to gather data A presentation of data, generally in a data grid Filtering that can vary based on data types and the business needs Some way to organize the reports, a single drop down gets long and unmanageable quickly A method to download data to alter further, perhaps a csv file My first thought was to create a framework in Silverlight with Linq to Sql. Mainly just because I like it and want to play with it which probably is not the best reason. I also thought the controls grant a lot of functionality like sorting, dragging columns, etc. I was also curious about the printing in Silverlight 4. Which brings me around to my original question, what is the best way to do this? Is there a package out there I can just buy that will do it for me? The Silverlight approach seems pretty easy, after it's setup and templated, but maybe it's a bad idea and I can learn from someone else?

Read the article

What's the difference between UI development and front-end development?

- by Nick Lowman

I'm a front-end developer and really enjoy jQuery and JavaScript. I've built a lot a websites, done some good jQuery work and built a few JavaScript based applications and would really like to get in UI development. Or so I thought. I guessed it would be pretty similar to what I already do except maybe a little more JavaScript heavy but when I looked into it all the job specs said I needed to know about Scrum or Agile development, knowledge of testing frameworks and a good knowledge of JavaScript frameworks and custom events. So, from the specs I get the idea that a UI developer is actually a dedicated JavaScript developer. Is that the case? I understand (with much help from the users on stackoverflow), about JavaScript OO, inheritance, closures, custom events, debugging in Firefox or Aptana etc, and the people I work with seem to think I pretty OK at what I do but clearly my knowledge is not good enough to go for UI jobs. If anyone could tell me a little more about UI development and if there are any good resources for learning about it I would be most grateful as I couldn't find much on the internet.

Read the article

C# Reflection StackTrack get value

- by John

I'm making pretty heavy use of reflection in my current project to greatly simplify communication between my controllers and the wcf services. What I want to do now is to obtain a value from the Session within an object that has no direct access to HttpSessionStateBase (IE: Not a controller). For example, a ViewModel. I could pass it in or pass a reference to it etc. but that is not optimal in my situation. Since everything comes from a Controller at some point in my scenario I can do the following to walk the sack to the controller where the call originated, pretty simple stuff: var trace = new System.Diagnostics.StackTrace(); foreach (var frame in trace.GetFrames()) { var type = frame.GetMethod().DeclaringType; var prop = type.GetProperty("Session"); if(prop != null) { // not sure about this part... var value = prop.GetValue(type, null); break; } } The trouble here is that I can't seem to work out how to get the "instance" of the controller or the Session property so that I can read from it.

Read the article

Implementing comparision operators via 'tuple' and 'tie', a good idea?

- by Xeo

(Note: tuple and tie can be taken from Boost or C++11.) When writing small structs with only two elements, I sometimes tend to choose a std::pair, as all important stuff is already done for that datatype, like operator< for strict-weak-ordering. The downsides though are the pretty much useless variable names. Even if I myself created that typedef, I won't remember 2 days later what first and what second exactly was, especially if they are both of the same type. This gets even worse for more than two members, as nesting pairs pretty much sucks. The other option for that is a tuple, either from Boost or C++11, but that doesn't really look any nicer and clearer. So I go back to writing the structs myself, including any needed comparision operators. Since especially the operator< can be quite cumbersome, I thought of circumventing this whole mess by just relying on the operations defined for tuple: Example of operator<, e.g. for strict-weak-ordering: bool operator<(MyStruct const& lhs, MyStruct const& rhs){ return std::tie(lhs.one_member, lhs.another, lhs.yet_more) < std::tie(rhs.one_member, rhs.another, rhs.yet_more); } (tie makes a tuple of T& references from the passed arguments.) Edit: The suggestion from @DeadMG to privately inherit from tuple isn't a bad one, but it got quite some drawbacks: If the operators are free-standing (possibly friends), I need to inherit publicly With casting, my functions / operators (operator= specifically) can be easily bypassed With the tie solution, I can leave out certain members if they don't matter for the ordering Are there any drawbacks in this implementation that I need to consider?

Read the article

Retrieving the first picture with a HTML parser

- by justin01

Hey guys, (Not a native english speaker) I'm doing a personal project in PHP in which I use the Simple HTML Parser to parse the HTML of a given URL and retrieve the first image in a DIV that have a specific ID or class (maincontent, content, main, wrapper, etc. - it's all in an array) and ignore ads. The goal is to take this image and make a thumbnail with it, pretty much like on Digg and others. I thought everything was working fine until I tried my script with the website Snopes ("http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/luckycoyote.asp" <- this page more exactly). The source of the first image it gets is: " graphics/luckycoyote1.jpg ". So far, to correct this problem I created a little function that gets the domain name of the given URL and insert it before the IMG's source attribute. So for sites like Snopes.com, it gives me: "http://www.snopes.com/graphics/luckycoyote1.jpg" ... while the real URL for this image is "http://www.snopes.com*/photos/animals/graphics/luckycoyote1.jpg*" (or, more precisely: " http://graphics1.snopes.com/photos/animals/graphics/luckycoyote1.jpg " - note the subdomain here). So my main question is: how can I externally/dynamically retrieve the full URL address of an image ("absolute path") when I am only given the "relative path"? I'm pretty sure this is possible, since when I paste the link in Facebook's "What are you doing?" field for example, it gives me the correct path to the image while on the website, the source of the image is only (example) "image/photo/example.jpg". Thank you for your time.

Read the article

Write a completely fluid HTML page (using '%' instead of 'px' for EVERY element height/width)

- by barak manos

I am designing my HTML pages to be completely fluid: For every element in the mark-up (HTML), I am using 'style="height:%;width:%"' (instead of 'style="height:*px;width:*px"'). This approach seems to work pretty well, except for when changing the window measurements, in which case, the web page elements change their position and end up "on top of each other". I have come up with a pretty good run-time (java-script) solution to that: var elements = document.getElementsByTagName("*"); for (var i=0; i < elements.length; i++) { if (elements[i].style.height) elements[i].style.height = elements[i].offsetHeight+"px"; if (elements[i].style.width ) elements[i].style.width = elements[i].offsetWidth +"px"; } The only problem remaining is, that if the user opens up the website by entering the URL into a non-maximized window, then the page fits that portion of the window. Then, when maximizing the window, the page remains in its previous measurements. So in essence, I have solved the initial problem (when changing the window measurements), but only when the window is initially in its maximum size. Any ideas on how to tackle this problem? (given that I would like to keep my "% page-design" as is).

Read the article

(Java) Is there a type of object that can handle anything from primitives to arrays?

- by Michael

I'm pretty new to Java, so I'm hoping one of you guys knows how to do this. I'm having the user specify both the type and value of arguments, in any XML-like way, to be passed to methods that are external to my application. Example: javac myAppsName externalJavaClass methodofExternalClass [parameters] Of course, to find the proper method, we have to have the proper parameter types as the method may be overloaded and that's the only way to tell the difference between the different versions. Parameters are currently formatted in this manner: (type)value(/type), e.g. (int)71(/int) (string)This is my string that I'm passing as a parameter!(/string) I parse them, getting the constructor for whatever type is indicated, then execute that constructor by running its method, newInstance(<String value>), loading the new instance into an Object. This works fine and dandy, but as we all know, some methods take arrays, or even multi-dimensional arrays. I could handle the argument formatting like so: (array)(array)(int)0(/int)(int)1(/int)(/array)(array)(int)2(/int)(int)3(/int)(/array)(/array)... or perhaps even better... {{(int)0(/int)(int)1(/int)}{(int)2(/int)(int)3(/int)}}. The question is, how can this be implemented? Do I have to start wrapping everything in an Object[] array so I can handle primitives, etc. as argObj[0], but load an array as I normally would? (Unfortunately, I would have to make it an Object[][] array if I wanted to support two-dimensional arrays. This implementation wouldn't be very pretty.)

Read the article

One controller with multiple models? Am I doing this correctly?

- by user363243

My web app, up until this point, has been fairly straight forward. I have Users, Contacts, Appointments and a few other things to manage. All of these are easy - it's just one model per section so I just did a scaffold for each, then modified the scaffolded code to fit my need. Pretty easy... Unfortunately I am having a problem on this next section because I want the 'Financials' section of my app to be more in depth than the other sections which I simply scaffolded. For example, when the user clicks the 'Contacts' link on the navigation bar, it just shows a list of contacts, pretty straight forward and is in line with the scaffold. However, when the user clicks the 'Financials' link on the navigation bar, I want to show the bank accounts on the left of the page and a few of the transactions on the right. So the financials tab will basically work with data from two models: transactions and bank_accounts. I think I should make the models (transactions & bank_accounts) and then make a controller called Financials, then I can query the models from the Financials controller and display the pages in app/views/financials/ Am I correct in this app layout? I have never worked with more than the basics of scaffolding so I want to ensure I get this right! Thank you!

Read the article

Drop down menu going under #main div background in IE 7/8/9

- by Adrift

Here is the link to the domain http://linenwoods.com I am working on. I am going to fit the navigation list items on the header, but when the drop down menu is implemented I'm pretty sure it'll go under the #main div like you see currently. Is there any easy way fix to this? I couldn't find anything related to this from a google search .. was hoping someone could help me out. Below is the relevant CSS .. I tried playing around with z-index with no luck as I was told IE8 renders it strangely. If you have the time please follow the link with IE and leave a response .. I am trying to be as cross-browser compatible as possible and already am at a pretty pathetic start. Any help would be appreciated :) body { background-image:url('Background1.jpg'); background-position: center; height: 100%; margin: 0; padding: 0; opacity: 0.8; filter: alpha(opacity=80); } #main { width : 1010px; height: 1315px; background-color: white; margin-top: 15px; filter: alpha(opacity=80); } header { width: 1010px; height: 230px; background-color: white; margin: 0 auto; margin-top: 15px; filter: alpha(opacity=80); } footer { width: 1010px; height: 230px; background-color: white; margin: 15px 0 15px 0; filter: alpha(opacity=80); }

Read the article

Using JSON.NET for dynamic JSON parsing

- by Rick Strahl

With the release of ASP.NET Web API as part of .NET 4.5 and MVC 4.0, JSON.NET has effectively pushed out the .NET native serializers to become the default serializer for Web API. JSON.NET is vastly more flexible than the built in DataContractJsonSerializer or the older JavaScript serializer. The DataContractSerializer in particular has been very problematic in the past because it can't deal with untyped objects for serialization - like values of type object, or anonymous types which are quite common these days. The JavaScript Serializer that came before it actually does support non-typed objects for serialization but it can't do anything with untyped data coming in from JavaScript and it's overall model of extensibility was pretty limited (JavaScript Serializer is what MVC uses for JSON responses). JSON.NET provides a robust JSON serializer that has both high level and low level components, supports binary JSON, JSON contracts, Xml to JSON conversion, LINQ to JSON and many, many more features than either of the built in serializers. ASP.NET Web API now uses JSON.NET as its default serializer and is now pulled in as a NuGet dependency into Web API projects, which is great. Dynamic JSON Parsing One of the features that I think is getting ever more important is the ability to serialize and deserialize arbitrary JSON content dynamically - that is without mapping the JSON captured directly into a .NET type as DataContractSerializer or the JavaScript Serializers do. Sometimes it isn't possible to map types due to the differences in languages (think collections, dictionaries etc), and other times you simply don't have the structures in place or don't want to create them to actually import the data. If this topic sounds familiar - you're right! I wrote about dynamic JSON parsing a few months back before JSON.NET was added to Web API and when Web API and the System.Net HttpClient libraries included the System.Json classes like JsonObject and JsonArray. With the inclusion of JSON.NET in Web API these classes are now obsolete and didn't ship with Web API or the client libraries. I re-linked my original post to this one. In this post I'll discus JToken, JObject and JArray which are the dynamic JSON objects that make it very easy to create and retrieve JSON content on the fly without underlying types. Why Dynamic JSON? So, why Dynamic JSON parsing rather than strongly typed parsing? Since applications are interacting more and more with third party services it becomes ever more important to have easy access to those services with easy JSON parsing. Sometimes it just makes lot of sense to pull just a small amount of data out of large JSON document received from a service, because the third party service isn't directly related to your application's logic most of the time - and it makes little sense to map the entire service structure in your application. For example, recently I worked with the Google Maps Places API to return information about businesses close to me (or rather the app's) location. The Google API returns a ton of information that my application had no interest in - all I needed was few values out of the data. Dynamic JSON parsing makes it possible to map this data, without having to map the entire API to a C# data structure. Instead I could pull out the three or four values I needed from the API and directly store it on my business entities that needed to receive the data - no need to map the entire Maps API structure. Getting JSON.NET The easiest way to use JSON.NET is to grab it via NuGet and add it as a reference to your project. You can add it to your project with: PM> Install-Package Newtonsoft.Json From the Package Manager Console or by using Manage NuGet Packages in your project References. As mentioned if you're using ASP.NET Web API or MVC 4 JSON.NET will be automatically added to your project. Alternately you can also go to the CodePlex site and download the latest version including source code: http://json.codeplex.com/ Creating JSON on the fly with JObject and JArray Let's start with creating some JSON on the fly. It's super easy to create a dynamic object structure with any of the JToken derived JSON.NET objects. The most common JToken derived classes you are likely to use are JObject and JArray. JToken implements IDynamicMetaProvider and so uses the dynamic keyword extensively to make it intuitive to create object structures and turn them into JSON via dynamic object syntax. Here's an example of creating a music album structure with child songs using JObject for the base object and songs and JArray for the actual collection of songs:[TestMethod] public void JObjectOutputTest() { // strong typed instance var jsonObject = new JObject(); // you can explicitly add values here using class interface jsonObject.Add("Entered", DateTime.Now); // or cast to dynamic to dynamically add/read properties dynamic album = jsonObject; album.AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; album.Artist = "AC/DC"; album.YearReleased = 1976; album.Songs = new JArray() as dynamic; dynamic song = new JObject(); song.SongName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; song.SongLength = "4:11"; album.Songs.Add(song); song = new JObject(); song.SongName = "Love at First Feel"; song.SongLength = "3:10"; album.Songs.Add(song); Console.WriteLine(album.ToString()); } This produces a complete JSON structure: { "Entered": "2012-08-18T13:26:37.7137482-10:00", "AlbumName": "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", "Artist": "AC/DC", "YearReleased": 1976, "Songs": [ { "SongName": "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", "SongLength": "4:11" }, { "SongName": "Love at First Feel", "SongLength": "3:10" } ] } Notice that JSON.NET does a nice job formatting the JSON, so it's easy to read and paste into blog posts :-). JSON.NET includes a bunch of configuration options that control how JSON is generated. Typically the defaults are just fine, but you can override with the JsonSettings object for most operations. The important thing about this code is that there's no explicit type used for holding the values to serialize to JSON. Rather the JSON.NET objects are the containers that receive the data as I build up my JSON structure dynamically, simply by adding properties. This means this code can be entirely driven at runtime without compile time restraints of structure for the JSON output. Here I use JObject to create a album 'object' and immediately cast it to dynamic. JObject() is kind of similar in behavior to ExpandoObject in that it allows you to add properties by simply assigning to them. Internally, JObject values are stored in pseudo collections of key value pairs that are exposed as properties through the IDynamicMetaObject interface exposed in JSON.NET's JToken base class. For objects the syntax is very clean - you add simple typed values as properties. For objects and arrays you have to explicitly create new JObject or JArray, cast them to dynamic and then add properties and items to them. Always remember though these values are dynamic - which means no Intellisense and no compiler type checking. It's up to you to ensure that the names and values you create are accessed consistently and without typos in your code. Note that you can also access the JObject instance directly (not as dynamic) and get access to the underlying JObject type. This means you can assign properties by string, which can be useful for fully data driven JSON generation from other structures. Below you can see both styles of access next to each other:// strong type instance var jsonObject = new JObject(); // you can explicitly add values here jsonObject.Add("Entered", DateTime.Now); // expando style instance you can just 'use' properties dynamic album = jsonObject; album.AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; JContainer (the base class for JObject and JArray) is a collection so you can also iterate over the properties at runtime easily:foreach (var item in jsonObject) { Console.WriteLine(item.Key + " " + item.Value.ToString()); } The functionality of the JSON objects are very similar to .NET's ExpandObject and if you used it before, you're already familiar with how the dynamic interfaces to the JSON objects works. Importing JSON with JObject.Parse() and JArray.Parse() The JValue structure supports importing JSON via the Parse() and Load() methods which can read JSON data from a string or various streams respectively. Essentially JValue includes the core JSON parsing to turn a JSON string into a collection of JsonValue objects that can be then referenced using familiar dynamic object syntax. Here's a simple example:public void JValueParsingTest() { var jsonString = @"{""Name"":""Rick"",""Company"":""West Wind"", ""Entered"":""2012-03-16T00:03:33.245-10:00""}"; dynamic json = JValue.Parse(jsonString); // values require casting string name = json.Name; string company = json.Company; DateTime entered = json.Entered; Assert.AreEqual(name, "Rick"); Assert.AreEqual(company, "West Wind"); } The JSON string represents an object with three properties which is parsed into a JObject class and cast to dynamic. Once cast to dynamic I can then go ahead and access the object using familiar object syntax. Note that the actual values - json.Name, json.Company, json.Entered - are actually of type JToken and I have to cast them to their appropriate types first before I can do type comparisons as in the Asserts at the end of the test method. This is required because of the way that dynamic types work which can't determine the type based on the method signature of the Assert.AreEqual(object,object) method. I have to either assign the dynamic value to a variable as I did above, or explicitly cast ( (string) json.Name) in the actual method call. The JSON structure can be much more complex than this simple example. Here's another example of an array of albums serialized to JSON and then parsed through with JsonValue():[TestMethod] public void JsonArrayParsingTest() { var jsonString = @"[ { ""Id"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""AlbumName"": ""Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"", ""Artist"": ""AC/DC"", ""YearReleased"": 1976, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2810521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61kTaH-uZBL._AA115_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/…ASIN=B00008BXJ4"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"", ""SongLength"": ""4:11"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Love at First Feel"", ""SongLength"": ""3:10"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Big Balls"", ""SongLength"": ""2:38"" } ] }, { ""Id"": ""7b919432"", ""AlbumName"": ""End of the Silence"", ""Artist"": ""Henry Rollins Band"", ""YearReleased"": 1992, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2800521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FO3rb1tuL._SL160_AA160_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/End-Silence-Rollins-Band/dp/B0000040OX/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1302232195&sr=8-5"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""7b919432"", ""SongName"": ""Low Self Opinion"", ""SongLength"": ""5:24"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""7b919432"", ""SongName"": ""Grip"", ""SongLength"": ""4:51"" } ] } ]"; JArray jsonVal = JArray.Parse(jsonString) as JArray; dynamic albums = jsonVal; foreach (dynamic album in albums) { Console.WriteLine(album.AlbumName + " (" + album.YearReleased.ToString() + ")"); foreach (dynamic song in album.Songs) { Console.WriteLine("\t" + song.SongName); } } Console.WriteLine(albums[0].AlbumName); Console.WriteLine(albums[0].Songs[1].SongName); } JObject and JArray in ASP.NET Web API Of course these types also work in ASP.NET Web API controller methods. If you want you can accept parameters using these object or return them back to the server. The following contrived example receives dynamic JSON input, and then creates a new dynamic JSON object and returns it based on data from the first:[HttpPost] public JObject PostAlbumJObject(JObject jAlbum) { // dynamic input from inbound JSON dynamic album = jAlbum; // create a new JSON object to write out dynamic newAlbum = new JObject(); // Create properties on the new instance // with values from the first newAlbum.AlbumName = album.AlbumName + " New"; newAlbum.NewProperty = "something new"; newAlbum.Songs = new JArray(); foreach (dynamic song in album.Songs) { song.SongName = song.SongName + " New"; newAlbum.Songs.Add(song); } return newAlbum; } The raw POST request to the server looks something like this: POST http://localhost/aspnetwebapi/samples/PostAlbumJObject HTTP/1.1User-Agent: FiddlerContent-type: application/jsonHost: localhostContent-Length: 88 {AlbumName: "Dirty Deeds",Songs:[ { SongName: "Problem Child"},{ SongName: "Squealer"}]} and the output that comes back looks like this: { "AlbumName": "Dirty Deeds New", "NewProperty": "something new", "Songs": [ { "SongName": "Problem Child New" }, { "SongName": "Squealer New" } ]} The original values are echoed back with something extra appended to demonstrate that we're working with a new object. When you receive or return a JObject, JValue, JToken or JArray instance in a Web API method, Web API ignores normal content negotiation and assumes your content is going to be received and returned as JSON, so effectively the parameter and result type explicitly determines the input and output format which is nice. Dynamic to Strong Type Mapping You can also map JObject and JArray instances to a strongly typed object, so you can mix dynamic and static typing in the same piece of code. Using the 2 Album jsonString shown earlier, the code below takes an array of albums and picks out only a single album and casts that album to a static Album instance.[TestMethod] public void JsonParseToStrongTypeTest() { JArray albums = JArray.Parse(jsonString) as JArray; // pick out one album JObject jalbum = albums[0] as JObject; // Copy to a static Album instance Album album = jalbum.ToObject<Album>(); Assert.IsNotNull(album); Assert.AreEqual(album.AlbumName,jalbum.Value<string>("AlbumName")); Assert.IsTrue(album.Songs.Count > 0); } This is pretty damn useful for the scenario I mentioned earlier - you can read a large chunk of JSON and dynamically walk the property hierarchy down to the item you want to access, and then either access the specific item dynamically (as shown earlier) or map a part of the JSON to a strongly typed object. That's very powerful if you think about it - it leaves you in total control to decide what's dynamic and what's static. Strongly typed JSON Parsing With all this talk of dynamic let's not forget that JSON.NET of course also does strongly typed serialization which is drop dead easy. Here's a simple example on how to serialize and deserialize an object with JSON.NET:[TestMethod] public void StronglyTypedSerializationTest() { // Demonstrate deserialization from a raw string var album = new Album() { AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", Artist = "AC/DC", Entered = DateTime.Now, YearReleased = 1976, Songs = new List<Song>() { new Song() { SongName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", SongLength = "4:11" }, new Song() { SongName = "Love at First Feel", SongLength = "3:10" } } }; // serialize to string string json2 = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(album,Formatting.Indented); Console.WriteLine(json2); // make sure we can serialize back var album2 = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Album>(json2); Assert.IsNotNull(album2); Assert.IsTrue(album2.AlbumName == "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"); Assert.IsTrue(album2.Songs.Count == 2); } JsonConvert is a high level static class that wraps lower level functionality, but you can also use the JsonSerializer class, which allows you to serialize/parse to and from streams. It's a little more work, but gives you a bit more control. The functionality available is easy to discover with Intellisense, and that's good because there's not a lot in the way of documentation that's actually useful. Summary JSON.NET is a pretty complete JSON implementation with lots of different choices for JSON parsing from dynamic parsing to static serialization, to complex querying of JSON objects using LINQ. It's good to see this open source library getting integrated into .NET, and pushing out the old and tired stock .NET parsers so that we finally have a bit more flexibility - and extensibility - in our JSON parsing. Good to go! Resources Sample Test Project http://json.codeplex.com/© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET Web Api AJAX Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

Read the article

Guide to reduce TFS database growth using the Test Attachment Cleaner

- by terje

Recently there has been several reports on TFS databases growing too fast and growing too big. Notable this has been observed when one has started to use more features of the Testing system. Also, the TFS 2010 handles test results differently from TFS 2008, and this leads to more data stored in the TFS databases. As a consequence of this there has been released some tools to remove unneeded data in the database, and also some fixes to correct for bugs which has been found and corrected during this process. Further some preventive practices and maintenance rules should be adopted. A lot of people have blogged about this, among these are: Anu’s very important blog post here describes both the problem and solutions to handle it. She describes both the Test Attachment Cleaner tool, and also some QFE/CU releases to fix some underlying bugs which prevented the tool from being fully effective. Brian Harry’s blog post here describes the problem too This forum thread describes the problem with some solution hints. Ravi Shanker’s blog post here describes best practices on solving this (TBP) Grant Holidays blogpost here describes strategies to use the Test Attachment Cleaner both to detect space problems and how to rectify them. The problem can be divided into the following areas: Publishing of test results from builds Publishing of manual test results and their attachments in particular Publishing of deployment binaries for use during a test run Bugs in SQL server preventing total cleanup of data (All the published data above is published into the TFS database as attachments.) The test results will include all data being collected during the run. Some of this data can grow rather large, like IntelliTrace logs and video recordings. Also the pushing of binaries which happen for automated test runs, including tests run during a build using code coverage which will include all the files in the deployment folder, contributes a lot to the size of the attached data. In order to handle this systematically, I have set up a 3-stage process: Find out if you have a database space issue Set up your TFS server to minimize potential database issues If you have the “problem”, clean up the database and otherwise keep it clean Analyze the data Are your database( s) growing ? Are unused test results growing out of proportion ? To find out about this you need to query your TFS database for some of the information, and use the Test Attachment Cleaner (TAC) to obtain some more detailed information. If you don’t have too many databases you can use the SQL Server reports from within the Management Studio to analyze the database and table sizes. Or, you can use a set of queries . I find queries often faster to use because I can tweak them the way I want them. But be aware that these queries are non-documented and non-supported and may change when the product team wants to change them. If you have multiple Project Collections, find out which might have problems: (Disclaimer: The queries below work on TFS 2010. They will not work on Dev-11, since the table structure have been changed. I will try to update them for Dev-11 when it is released.) Open a SQL Management Studio session onto the SQL Server where you have your TFS Databases. Use the query below to find the Project Collection databases and their sizes, in descending size order. use master select DB_NAME(database_id) AS DBName, (size/128) SizeInMB FROM sys.master_files where type=0 and substring(db_name(database_id),1,4)='Tfs_' and DB_NAME(database_id)<>'Tfs_Configuration' order by size desc Doing this on one of our SQL servers gives the following results: It is pretty easy to see on which collection to start the work Find out which tables are possibly too large Keep a special watch out for the Tfs_Attachment table. Use the script at the bottom of Grant’s blog to find the table sizes in descending size order. In our case we got this result: From Grant’s blog we learnt that the tbl_Content is in the Version Control category, so the major only big issue we have here is the tbl_AttachmentContent. Find out which team projects have possibly too large attachments In order to use the TAC to find and eventually delete attachment data we need to find out which team projects have these attachments. The team project is a required parameter to the TAC. Use the following query to find this, replace the collection database name with whatever applies in your case: use Tfs_DefaultCollection select p.projectname, sum(a.compressedlength)/1024/1024 as sizeInMB from dbo.tbl_Attachment as a inner join tbl_testrun as tr on a.testrunid=tr.testrunid inner join tbl_project as p on p.projectid=tr.projectid group by p.projectname order by sum(a.compressedlength) desc In our case we got this result (had to remove some names), out of more than 100 team projects accumulated over quite some years: As can be seen here it is pretty obvious the “Byggtjeneste – Projects” are the main team project to take care of, with the ones on lines 2-4 as the next ones. Check which attachment types takes up the most space It can be nice to know which attachment types takes up the space, so run the following query: use Tfs_DefaultCollection select a.attachmenttype, sum(a.compressedlength)/1024/1024 as sizeInMB from dbo.tbl_Attachment as a inner join tbl_testrun as tr on a.testrunid=tr.testrunid inner join tbl_project as p on p.projectid=tr.projectid group by a.attachmenttype order by sum(a.compressedlength) desc We then got this result: From this it is pretty obvious that the problem here is the binary files, as also mentioned in Anu’s blog. Check which file types, by their extension, takes up the most space Run the following query use Tfs_DefaultCollection select SUBSTRING(filename,len(filename)-CHARINDEX('.',REVERSE(filename))+2,999)as Extension, sum(compressedlength)/1024 as SizeInKB from tbl_Attachment group by SUBSTRING(filename,len(filename)-CHARINDEX('.',REVERSE(filename))+2,999) order by sum(compressedlength) desc This gives a result like this: Now you should have collected enough information to tell you what to do – if you got to do something, and some of the information you need in order to set up your TAC settings file, both for a cleanup and for scheduled maintenance later. Get your TFS server and environment properly set up Even if you have got the problem or if have yet not got the problem, you should ensure the TFS server is set up so that the risk of getting into this problem is minimized. To ensure this you should install the following set of updates and components. The assumption is that your TFS Server is at SP1 level. Install the QFE for KB2608743 – which also contains detailed instructions on its use, download from here. The QFE changes the default settings to not upload deployed binaries, which are used in automated test runs. Binaries will still be uploaded if: Code coverage is enabled in the test settings. You change the UploadDeploymentItem to true in the testsettings file. Be aware that this might be reset back to false by another user which haven't installed this QFE. The hotfix should be installed to The build servers (the build agents) The machine hosting the Test Controller Local development computers (Visual Studio) Local test computers (MTM) It is not required to install it to the TFS Server, test agents or the build controller – it has no effect on these programs. If you use the SQL Server 2008 R2 you should also install the CU 10 (or later). This CU fixes a potential problem of hanging “ghost” files. This seems to happen only in certain trigger situations, but to ensure it doesn’t bite you, it is better to make sure this CU is installed. There is no such CU for SQL Server 2008 pre-R2 Work around: If you suspect hanging ghost files, they can be – with some mental effort, deduced from the ghost counters using the following SQL query: use master SELECT DB_NAME(database_id) as 'database',OBJECT_NAME(object_id) as 'objectname', index_type_desc,ghost_record_count,version_ghost_record_count,record_count,avg_record_size_in_bytes FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats (DB_ID(N'<DatabaseName>'), OBJECT_ID(N'<TableName>'), NULL, NULL , 'DETAILED') The problem is a stalled ghost cleanup process. Restarting the SQL server after having stopped all components that depends on it, like the TFS Server and SPS services – that is all applications that connect to the SQL server. Then restart the SQL server, and finally start up all dependent processes again. (I would guess a complete server reboot would do the trick too.) After this the ghost cleanup process will run properly again. The fix will come in the next CU cycle for SQL Server R2 SP1. The R2 pre-SP1 and R2 SP1 have separate maintenance cycles, and are maintained individually. Each have its own set of CU’s. When it comes I will add the link here to that CU. The "hanging ghost file” issue came up after one have run the TAC, and deleted enourmes amount of data. The SQL Server can get into this hanging state (without the QFE) in certain cases due to this. And of course, install and set up the Test Attachment Cleaner command line power tool. This should be done following some guidelines from Ravi Shanker: “When you run TAC, ensure that you are deleting small chunks of data at regular intervals (say run TAC every night at 3AM to delete data that is between age 730 to 731 days) – this will ensure that small amounts of data are being deleted and SQL ghosted record cleanup can catch up with the number of deletes performed. “ This rule minimizes the risk of the ghosted hang problem to occur, and further makes it easier for the SQL server ghosting process to work smoothly. “Run DBCC SHRINKDB post the ghosted records are cleaned up to physically reclaim the space on the file system” This is the last step in a 3 step process of removing SQL server data. First they are logically deleted. Then they are cleaned out by the ghosting process, and finally removed using the shrinkdb command. Cleaning out the attachments The TAC is run from the command line using a set of parameters and controlled by a settingsfile. The parameters point out a server uri including the team project collection and also point at a specific team project. So in order to run this for multiple team projects regularly one has to set up a script to run the TAC multiple times, once for each team project. When you install the TAC there is a very useful readme file in the same directory. When the deployment binaries are published to the TFS server, ALL items are published up from the deployment folder. That often means much more files than you would assume are necessary. This is a brute force technique. It works, but you need to take care when cleaning up. Grant has shown how their settings file looks in his blog post, removing all attachments older than 180 days , as long as there are no active workitems connected to them. This setting can be useful to clean out all items, both in a clean-up once operation, and in a general There are two scenarios we need to consider: Cleaning up an existing overgrown database Maintaining a server to avoid an overgrown database using scheduled TAC 1. Cleaning up a database which has grown too big due to these attachments. This job is a “Once” job. We do this once and then move on to make sure it won’t happen again, by taking the actions in 2) below. In this scenario you should only consider the large files. Your goal should be to simply reduce the size, and don’t bother about the smaller stuff. That can be left a scheduled TAC cleanup ( 2 below). Here you can use a very general settings file, and just remove the large attachments, or you can choose to remove any old items. Grant’s settings file is an example of the last one. A settings file to remove only large attachments could look like this:  <DeletionCriteria> <TestRun /> <Attachment> <SizeInMB GreaterThan="10" /> </Attachment> </DeletionCriteria> Or like this: If you want only to remove dll’s and pdb’s about that size, add an Extensions-section. Without that section, all extensions will be deleted.  <DeletionCriteria> <TestRun /> <Attachment> <SizeInMB GreaterThan="10" /> <Extensions> <Include value="dll" /> <Include value="pdb" /> </Extensions> </Attachment> </DeletionCriteria> Before you start up your scheduled maintenance, you should clear out all older items. 2. Scheduled maintenance using the TAC If you run a schedule every night, and remove old items, and also remove them in small batches. It is important to run this often, like every night, in order to keep the number of deleted items low. That way the SQL ghost process works better. One approach could be to delete all items older than some number of days, let’s say 180 days. This could be combined with restricting it to keep attachments with active or resolved bugs. Doing this every night ensures that only small amounts of data is deleted.  <DeletionCriteria> <TestRun> <AgeInDays OlderThan="180" /> </TestRun> <Attachment /> <LinkedBugs> <Exclude state="Active" /> <Exclude state="Resolved"/> </LinkedBugs> </DeletionCriteria> In my experience there are projects which are left with active or resolved workitems, akthough no further work is done. It can be wise to have a cleanup process with no restrictions on linked bugs at all. Note that you then have to remove the whole LinkedBugs section. A approach which could work better here is to do a two step approach, use the schedule above to with no LinkedBugs as a sweeper cleaning task taking away all data older than you could care about. Then have another scheduled TAC task to take out more specifically attachments that you are not likely to use. This task could be much more specific, and based on your analysis clean out what you know is troublesome data.  <DeletionCriteria> <TestRun > <AgeInDays OlderThan="30" /> </TestRun> <Attachment> <SizeInMB GreaterThan="10" /> <Extensions> <Include value="iTrace"/> <Include value="dll"/> <Include value="pdb"/> <Include value="wmv"/> </Extensions> </Attachment> <LinkedBugs> <Exclude state="Active" /> <Exclude state="Resolved" /> </LinkedBugs> </DeletionCriteria> The readme document for the TAC says that it recognizes “internal” extensions, but it does recognize any extension. To run the tool do the following command: tcmpt attachmentcleanup /collection:your_tfs_collection_url /teamproject:your_team_project /settingsfile:path_to_settingsfile /outputfile:%temp%/teamproject.tcmpt.log /mode:delete Shrinking the database You could run a shrink database command after the TAC has run in cases where there are a lot of data being deleted. In this case you SHOULD do it, to free up all that space. But, after the shrink operation you should do a rebuild indexes, since the shrink operation will leave the database in a very fragmented state, which will reduce performance. Note that you need to rebuild indexes, reorganizing is not enough. For smaller amounts of data you should NOT shrink the database, since the data will be reused by the SQL server when it need to add more records. In fact, it is regarded as a bad practice to shrink the database regularly. So on a daily maintenance schedule you should NOT shrink the database. To shrink the database you do a DBCC SHRINKDATABASE command, and then follow up with a DBCC INDEXDEFRAG afterwards. I find the easiest way to do this is to create a SQL Maintenance plan including the Shrink Database Task and the Rebuild Index Task and just execute it when you need to do this.

Read the article

Creating a dynamic proxy generator – Part 1 – Creating the Assembly builder, Module builder and cach

- by SeanMcAlinden

I’ve recently started a project with a few mates to learn the ins and outs of Dependency Injection, AOP and a number of other pretty crucial patterns of development as we’ve all been using these patterns for a while but have relied totally on third part solutions to do the magic. We thought it would be interesting to really get into the details by rolling our own IoC container and hopefully learn a lot on the way, and you never know, we might even create an excellent framework. The open source project is called Rapid IoC and is hosted at http://rapidioc.codeplex.com/ One of the most interesting tasks for me is creating the dynamic proxy generator for enabling Aspect Orientated Programming (AOP). In this series of articles, I’m going to track each step I take for creating the dynamic proxy generator and I’ll try my best to explain what everything means - mainly as I’ll be using Reflection.Emit to emit a fair amount of intermediate language code (IL) to create the proxy types at runtime which can be a little taxing to read. It’s worth noting that building the proxy is without a doubt going to be slightly painful so I imagine there will be plenty of areas I’ll need to change along the way. Anyway lets get started… Part 1 - Creating the Assembly builder, Module builder and caching mechanism Part 1 is going to be a really nice simple start, I’m just going to start by creating the assembly, module and type caches. The reason we need to create caches for the assembly, module and types is simply to save the overhead of recreating proxy types that have already been generated, this will be one of the important steps to ensure that the framework is fast… kind of important as we’re calling the IoC container ‘Rapid’ – will be a little bit embarrassing if we manage to create the slowest framework. The Assembly builder The assembly builder is what is used to create an assembly at runtime, we’re going to have two overloads, one will be for the actual use of the proxy generator, the other will be mainly for testing purposes as it will also save the assembly so we can use Reflector to examine the code that has been created. Here’s the code: DynamicAssemblyBuilder using System; using System.Reflection; using System.Reflection.Emit; namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Assembly { /// <summary> /// Class for creating an assembly builder. /// </summary> internal static class DynamicAssemblyBuilder { #region Create /// <summary> /// Creates an assembly builder. /// </summary> /// <param name="assemblyName">Name of the assembly.</param> public static AssemblyBuilder Create(string assemblyName) { AssemblyName name = new AssemblyName(assemblyName); AssemblyBuilder assembly = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.DefineDynamicAssembly( name, AssemblyBuilderAccess.Run); DynamicAssemblyCache.Add(assembly); return assembly; } /// <summary> /// Creates an assembly builder and saves the assembly to the passed in location. /// </summary> /// <param name="assemblyName">Name of the assembly.</param> /// <param name="filePath">The file path.</param> public static AssemblyBuilder Create(string assemblyName, string filePath) { AssemblyName name = new AssemblyName(assemblyName); AssemblyBuilder assembly = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.DefineDynamicAssembly( name, AssemblyBuilderAccess.RunAndSave, filePath); DynamicAssemblyCache.Add(assembly); return assembly; } #endregion } } So hopefully the above class is fairly explanatory, an AssemblyName is created using the passed in string for the actual name of the assembly. An AssemblyBuilder is then constructed with the current AppDomain and depending on the overload used, it is either just run in the current context or it is set up ready for saving. It is then added to the cache. DynamicAssemblyCache using System.Reflection.Emit; using Rapid.DynamicProxy.Exceptions; using Rapid.DynamicProxy.Resources.Exceptions; namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Assembly { /// <summary> /// Cache for storing the dynamic assembly builder. /// </summary> internal static class DynamicAssemblyCache { #region Declarations private static object syncRoot = new object(); internal static AssemblyBuilder Cache = null; #endregion #region Adds a dynamic assembly to the cache. /// <summary> /// Adds a dynamic assembly builder to the cache. /// </summary> /// <param name="assemblyBuilder">The assembly builder.</param> public static void Add(AssemblyBuilder assemblyBuilder) { lock (syncRoot) { Cache = assemblyBuilder; } } #endregion #region Gets the cached assembly /// <summary> /// Gets the cached assembly builder. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static AssemblyBuilder Get { get { lock (syncRoot) { if (Cache != null) { return Cache; } } throw new RapidDynamicProxyAssertionException(AssertionResources.NoAssemblyInCache); } } #endregion } } The cache is simply a static property that will store the AssemblyBuilder (I know it’s a little weird that I’ve made it public, this is for testing purposes, I know that’s a bad excuse but hey…) There are two methods for using the cache – Add and Get, these just provide thread safe access to the cache. The Module Builder The module builder is required as the create proxy classes will need to live inside a module within the assembly. Here’s the code: DynamicModuleBuilder using System.Reflection.Emit; using Rapid.DynamicProxy.Assembly; namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Module { /// <summary> /// Class for creating a module builder. /// </summary> internal static class DynamicModuleBuilder { /// <summary> /// Creates a module builder using the cached assembly. /// </summary> public static ModuleBuilder Create() { string assemblyName = DynamicAssemblyCache.Get.GetName().Name; ModuleBuilder moduleBuilder = DynamicAssemblyCache.Get.DefineDynamicModule (assemblyName, string.Format("{0}.dll", assemblyName)); DynamicModuleCache.Add(moduleBuilder); return moduleBuilder; } } } As you can see, the module builder is created on the assembly that lives in the DynamicAssemblyCache, the module is given the assembly name and also a string representing the filename if the assembly is to be saved. It is then added to the DynamicModuleCache. DynamicModuleCache using System.Reflection.Emit; using Rapid.DynamicProxy.Exceptions; using Rapid.DynamicProxy.Resources.Exceptions; namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Module { /// <summary> /// Class for storing the module builder. /// </summary> internal static class DynamicModuleCache { #region Declarations private static object syncRoot = new object(); internal static ModuleBuilder Cache = null; #endregion #region Add /// <summary> /// Adds a dynamic module builder to the cache. /// </summary> /// <param name="moduleBuilder">The module builder.</param> public static void Add(ModuleBuilder moduleBuilder) { lock (syncRoot) { Cache = moduleBuilder; } } #endregion #region Get /// <summary> /// Gets the cached module builder. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static ModuleBuilder Get { get { lock (syncRoot) { if (Cache != null) { return Cache; } } throw new RapidDynamicProxyAssertionException(AssertionResources.NoModuleInCache); } } #endregion } } The DynamicModuleCache is very similar to the assembly cache, it is simply a statically stored module with thread safe Add and Get methods. The DynamicTypeCache To end off this post, I’m going to create the cache for storing the generated proxy classes. I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about the type of collection I should use to store the types and have finally decided that for the time being I’m going to use a generic dictionary. This may change when I can actually performance test the proxy generator but the time being I think it makes good sense in theory, mainly as it pretty much maintains it’s performance with varying numbers of items – almost constant (0)1. Plus I won’t ever need to loop through the items which is not the dictionaries strong point. Here’s the code as it currently stands: DynamicTypeCache using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Security.Cryptography; using System.Text; namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Types { /// <summary> /// Cache for storing proxy types. /// </summary> internal static class DynamicTypeCache { #region Declarations static object syncRoot = new object(); public static Dictionary<string, Type> Cache = new Dictionary<string, Type>(); #endregion /// <summary> /// Adds a proxy to the type cache. /// </summary> /// <param name="type">The type.</param> /// <param name="proxy">The proxy.</param> public static void AddProxyForType(Type type, Type proxy) { lock (syncRoot) { Cache.Add(GetHashCode(type.AssemblyQualifiedName), proxy); } } /// <summary> /// Tries the type of the get proxy for. /// </summary> /// <param name="type">The type.</param> /// <returns></returns> public static Type TryGetProxyForType(Type type) { lock (syncRoot) { Type proxyType; Cache.TryGetValue(GetHashCode(type.AssemblyQualifiedName), out proxyType); return proxyType; } } #region Private Methods private static string GetHashCode(string fullName) { SHA1CryptoServiceProvider provider = new SHA1CryptoServiceProvider(); Byte[] buffer = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(fullName); Byte[] hash = provider.ComputeHash(buffer, 0, buffer.Length); return Convert.ToBase64String(hash); } #endregion } } As you can see, there are two public methods, one for adding to the cache and one for getting from the cache. Hopefully they should be clear enough, the Get is a TryGet as I do not want the dictionary to throw an exception if a proxy doesn’t exist within the cache. Other than that I’ve decided to create a key using the SHA1CryptoServiceProvider, this may change but my initial though is the SHA1 algorithm is pretty fast to put together using the provider and it is also very unlikely to have any hashing collisions. (there are some maths behind how unlikely this is – here’s the wiki if you’re interested http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA_hash_functions) Anyway, that’s the end of part 1 – although I haven’t started any of the fun stuff (by fun I mean hairpulling, teeth grating Relfection.Emit style fun), I’ve got the basis of the DynamicProxy in place so all we have to worry about now is creating the types, interceptor classes, method invocation information classes and finally a really nice fluent interface that will abstract all of the hard-core craziness away and leave us with a lightning fast, easy to use AOP framework. Hope you find the series interesting. All of the source code can be viewed and/or downloaded at our codeplex site - http://rapidioc.codeplex.com/ Kind Regards, Sean.

Read the article

Setting up and using Bing Translate API Service for Machine Translation

- by Rick Strahl

Last week I spent quite a bit of time trying to set up the Bing Translate API service. I can honestly say this was one of the most screwed up developer experiences I've had in a long while - specifically related to the byzantine sign up process that Microsoft has in place. Not only is it nearly impossible to find decent documentation on the required signup process, some of the links in the docs are just plain wrong, and some of the account pages you need to access the actual account information once signed up are not linked anywhere from the administration UI. To make things even harder is the fact that the APIs changed a while back, with a completely new authentication scheme that's described and not directly linked documentation topic also made for a very frustrating search experience. It's a bummer that this is the case too, because the actual API itself is easy to use and works very well - fast and reasonably accurate (as accurate as you can expect machine translation to be). But the sign up process is a pain in the ass doubtlessly leaving many people giving up in frustration. In this post I'll try to hit all the points needed to set up to use the Bing Translate API in one place since such a document seems to be missing from Microsoft. Hopefully the API folks at Microsoft will get their shit together and actually provide this sort of info on their site… Signing Up The first step required is to create a Windows Azure MarketPlace account. Go to: https://datamarket.azure.com/ Sign in with your Windows Live Id If you don't have an account you will be taken to a registration page which you have to fill out. Follow the links and complete the registration. Once you're signed in you can start adding services. Click on the Data Link on the main page Select Microsoft Translator from the list This adds the Microsoft Bing Translator to your services. Pricing The page shows the pricing matrix and the free service which provides 2 megabytes for translations a month for free. Prices go up steeply from there. Pricing is determined by actual bytes of the result translations used. Max translations are 1000 characters so at minimum this means you get around 2000 translations a month for free. However most translations are probable much less so you can expect larger number of translations to go through. For testing or low volume translations this should be just fine. Once signed up there are no further instructions and you're left in limbo on the MS site. Register your Application Once you've created the Data association with Translator the next step is registering your application. To do this you need to access your developer account. Go to https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications/register Provide a ClientId, which is effectively the unique string identifier for your application (not your customer id!) Provide your name The client secret was auto-created and this becomes your 'password' For the redirect url provide any https url: https://microsoft.com works Give this application a description of your choice so you can identify it in the list of apps Now, once you've registered your application, keep track of the ClientId and ClientSecret - those are the two keys you need to authenticate before you can call the Translate API. Oddly the applications page is hidden from the Azure Portal UI. I couldn't find a direct link from anywhere on the site back to this page where I can examine my developer application keys. To find them you can go to: https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications You can come back here to look at your registered applications and pick up the ClientID and ClientSecret. Fun eh? But we're now ready to actually call the API and do some translating. Using the Bing Translate API The good news is that after this signup hell, using the API is pretty straightforward. To use the translation API you'll need to actually use two services: You need to call an authentication API service first, before you can call the actual translator API. These two APIs live on different domains, and the authentication API returns JSON data while the translator service returns XML. So much for consistency. Authentication The first step is authentication. The service uses oAuth authentication with a bearer token that has to be passed to the translator API. The authentication call retrieves the oAuth token that you can then use with the translate API call. The bearer token has a short 10 minute life time, so while you can cache it for successive calls, the token can't be cached for long periods. This means for Web backend requests you typically will have to authenticate each time unless you build a more elaborate caching scheme that takes the timeout into account (perhaps using the ASP.NET Cache object). For low volume operations you can probably get away with simply calling the auth API for every translation you do. To call the Authentication API use code like this:/// /// Retrieves an oAuth authentication token to be used on the translate /// API request. The result string needs to be passed as a bearer token /// to the translate API. /// /// You can find client ID and Secret (or register a new one) at: /// https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications/ /// /// The client ID of your application /// The client secret or password /// public string GetBingAuthToken(string clientId = null, string clientSecret = null) { string authBaseUrl = https://datamarket.accesscontrol.windows.net/v2/OAuth2-13; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(clientId) || string.IsNullOrEmpty(clientSecret)) { ErrorMessage = Resources.Resources.Client_Id_and_Client_Secret_must_be_provided; return null; } var postData = string.Format("grant_type=client_credentials&client_id={0}" + "&client_secret={1}" + "&scope=http://api.microsofttranslator.com", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(clientId), HttpUtility.UrlEncode(clientSecret)); // POST Auth data to the oauth API string res, token; try { var web = new WebClient(); web.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8; res = web.UploadString(authBaseUrl, postData); } catch (Exception ex) { ErrorMessage = ex.GetBaseException().Message; return null; } var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); var auth = ser.Deserialize<BingAuth>(res); if (auth == null) return null; token = auth.access_token; return token; } private class BingAuth { public string token_type { get; set; } public string access_token { get; set; } } This code basically takes the client id and secret and posts it at the oAuth endpoint which returns a JSON string. Here I use the JavaScript serializer to deserialize the JSON into a custom object I created just for deserialization. You can also use JSON.NET and dynamic deserialization if you are already using JSON.NET in your app in which case you don't need the extra type. In my library that houses this component I don't, so I just rely on the built in serializer. The auth method returns a long base64 encoded string which can be used as a bearer token in the translate API call. Translation Once you have the authentication token you can use it to pass to the translate API. The auth token is passed as an Authorization header and the value is prefixed with a 'Bearer ' prefix for the string. Here's what the simple Translate API call looks like:/// /// Uses the Bing API service to perform translation /// Bing can translate up to 1000 characters. /// /// Requires that you provide a CLientId and ClientSecret /// or set the configuration values for these two. /// /// More info on setup: /// http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/ /// /// Text to translate /// Two letter culture name /// Two letter culture name /// Pass an access token retrieved with GetBingAuthToken. /// If not passed the default keys from .config file are used if any /// public string TranslateBing(string text, string fromCulture, string toCulture, string accessToken = null) { string serviceUrl = "http://api.microsofttranslator.com/V2/Http.svc/Translate"; if (accessToken == null) { accessToken = GetBingAuthToken(); if (accessToken == null) return null; } string res; try { var web = new WebClient(); web.Headers.Add("Authorization", "Bearer " + accessToken); string ct = "text/plain"; string postData = string.Format("?text={0}&from={1}&to={2}&contentType={3}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(text), fromCulture, toCulture, HttpUtility.UrlEncode(ct)); web.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8; res = web.DownloadString(serviceUrl + postData); } catch (Exception e) { ErrorMessage = e.GetBaseException().Message; return null; } // result is a single XML Element fragment var doc = new XmlDocument(); doc.LoadXml(res); return doc.DocumentElement.InnerText; } The first of this code deals with ensuring the auth token exists. You can either pass the token into the method manually or let the method automatically retrieve the auth code on its own. In my case I'm using this inside of a Web application and in that situation I simply need to re-authenticate every time as there's no convenient way to manage the lifetime of the auth cookie. The auth token is added as an Authorization HTTP header prefixed with 'Bearer ' and attached to the request. The text to translate, the from and to language codes and a result format are passed on the query string of this HTTP GET request against the Translate API. The translate API returns an XML string which contains a single element with the translated string. Using the Wrapper Methods It should be pretty obvious how to use these two methods but here are a couple of test methods that demonstrate the two usage scenarios:[TestMethod] public void TranslateBingWithAuthTest() { var translate = new TranslationServices(); string clientId = DbResourceConfiguration.Current.BingClientId; string clientSecret = DbResourceConfiguration.Current.BingClientSecret; string auth = translate.GetBingAuthToken(clientId, clientSecret); Assert.IsNotNull(auth); string text = translate.TranslateBing("Hello World we're back home!", "en", "de",auth); Assert.IsNotNull(text, translate.ErrorMessage); Console.WriteLine(text); } [TestMethod] public void TranslateBingIntegratedTest() { var translate = new TranslationServices(); string text = translate.TranslateBing("Hello World we're back home!","en","de"); Assert.IsNotNull(text, translate.ErrorMessage); Console.WriteLine(text); } Other API Methods The Translate API has a number of methods available and this one is the simplest one but probably also the most common one that translates a single string. You can find additional methods for this API here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff512419.aspx Soap and AJAX APIs are also available and documented on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd576287.aspx These links will be your starting points for calling other methods in this API. Dual Interface I've talked about my database driven localization provider here in the past, and it's for this tool that I added the Bing localization support. Basically I have a localization administration form that allows me to translate individual strings right out of the UI, using both Google and Bing APIs: As you can see in this example, the results from Google and Bing can vary quite a bit - in this case Google is stumped while Bing actually generated a valid translation. At other times it's the other way around - it's pretty useful to see multiple translations at the same time. Here I can choose from one of the values and driectly embed them into the translated text field. Lost in Translation There you have it. As I mentioned using the API once you have all the bureaucratic crap out of the way calling the APIs is fairly straight forward and reasonably fast, even if you have to call the Auth API for every call. Hopefully this post will help out a few of you trying to navigate the Microsoft bureaucracy, at least until next time Microsoft upends everything and introduces new ways to sign up again. Until then - happy translating… Related Posts Translation method Source on Github Translating with Google Translate without Google API Keys Creating a data-driven ASP.NET Resource Provider© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in Localization ASP.NET .NET Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

Read the article

Ops Center 12c - Provisioning Solaris Using a Card-Based NIC

- by scottdickson

It's been a long time since last I added something here, but having some conversations this last week, I got inspired to update things. I've been spending a lot of time with Ops Center for managing and installing systems these days. So, I suspect a number of my upcoming posts will be in that area. Today, I want to look at how to provision Solaris using Ops Center when your network is not connected to one of the built-in NICs. We'll talk about how this can work for both Solaris 10 and Solaris 11, since they are pretty similar. In both cases, WANboot is a key piece of the story. Here's what I want to do: I have a Sun Fire T2000 server with a Quad-GbE nxge card installed. The only network is connected to port 2 on that card rather than the built-in network interfaces. I want to install Solaris on it across the network, either Solaris 10 or Solaris 11. I have met with a lot of customers lately who have a similar architecture. Usually, they have T4-4 servers with the network connected via 10GbE connections. Add to this mix the fact that I use Ops Center to manage the systems in my lab, so I really would like to add this to Ops Center. If possible, I would like this to be completely hands free. I can't quite do that yet. Close, but not quite. WANBoot or Old-Style NetBoot? When a system is installed from the network, it needs some help getting the process rolling. It has to figure out what its network configuration (IP address, gateway, etc.) ought to be. It needs to figure out what server is going to help it boot and install, and it needs the instructions for the installation. There are two different ways to bootstrap an installation of Solaris on SPARC across the network. The old way uses a broadcast of RARP or more recently DHCP to obtain the IP configuration and the rest of the information needed. The second is to explicitly configure this information in the OBP and use WANBoot for installation WANBoot has a number of benefits over broadcast-based installation: it is not restricted to a single subnet; it does not require special DHCP configuration or DHCP helpers; it uses standard HTTP and HTTPS protocols which traverse firewalls much more easily than NFS-based package installation. But, WANBoot is not available on really old hardware and WANBoot requires the use o Flash Archives in Solaris 10. Still, for many people, this is a great approach. As it turns out, WANBoot is necessary if you plan to install using a NIC on a card rather than a built-in NIC. Identifying Which Network Interface to Use One of the trickiest aspects to this process, and the one that actually requires manual intervention to set up, is identifying how the OBP and Solaris refer to the NIC that we want to use to boot. The OBP already has device aliases configured for the built-in NICs called net, net0, net1, net2, net3. The device alias net typically points to net0 so that when you issue the command "boot net -v install", it uses net0 for the boot. Our task is to figure out the network instance for the NIC we want to use. We will need to get to the OBP console of the system we want to install in order to figure out what the network should be called. I will presume you know how to get to the ok prompt. Once there, we have to see what networks the OBP sees and identify which one is associated with our NIC using the OBP command show-nets. SunOS Release 5.11 Version 11.0 64-bit Copyright (c) 1983, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. {4} ok banner Sun Fire T200, No Keyboard Copyright (c) 1998, 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. OpenBoot 4.30.4.b, 32640 MB memory available, Serial #69057548. Ethernet address 0:14:4f:1d:bc:c, Host ID: 841dbc0c. {4} ok show-nets a) /pci@7c0/pci@0/pci@2/network@0,1 b) /pci@7c0/pci@0/pci@2/network@0 c) /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,3 d) /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2 e) /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,1 f) /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0 g) /pci@780/pci@0/pci@1/network@0,1 h) /pci@780/pci@0/pci@1/network@0 q) NO SELECTION Enter Selection, q to quit: d /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2 has been selected. Type ^Y ( Control-Y ) to insert it in the command line. e.g. ok nvalias mydev ^Y for creating devalias mydev for /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2 {4} ok devalias ... net3 /pci@7c0/pci@0/pci@2/network@0,1 net2 /pci@7c0/pci@0/pci@2/network@0 net1 /pci@780/pci@0/pci@1/network@0,1 net0 /pci@780/pci@0/pci@1/network@0 net /pci@780/pci@0/pci@1/network@0 ... name aliases By looking at the devalias and the show-nets output, we can see that our Quad-GbE card must be the device nodes starting with /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0. The cable for our network is plugged into the 3rd slot, so the device address for our network must be /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2. With that, we can create a device alias for our network interface. Naming the device alias may take a little bit of trial and error, especially in Solaris 11 where the device alias seems to matter more with the new virtualized network stack. So far in my testing, since this is the "next" network interface to be used, I have found success in naming it net4, even though it's a NIC in the middle of a card that might, by rights, be called net6 (assuming the 0th interface on the card is the next interface identified by Solaris and this is the 3rd interface on the card). So, we will call it net4. We need to assign a device alias to it: {4} ok nvalias net4 /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2 {4} ok devalias net4 /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2 ... We also may need to have the MAC for this particular interface, so let's get it, too. To do this, we go to the device and interrogate its properties. {4} ok cd /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2 {4} ok .properties assigned-addresses 82060210 00000000 03000000 00000000 01000000 82060218 00000000 00320000 00000000 00008000 82060220 00000000 00328000 00000000 00008000 82060230 00000000 00600000 00000000 00100000 local-mac-address 00 21 28 20 42 92 phy-type mif ... From this, we can see that the MAC for this interface is 00:21:28:20:42:92. We will need this later. This is all we need to do at the OBP. Now, we can configure Ops Center to use this interface. Network Boot in Solaris 10 Solaris 10 turns out to be a little simpler than Solaris 11 for this sort of a network boot. Since WANBoot in Solaris 10 fetches a specified In order to install the system using Ops Center, it is necessary to create a OS Provisioning profile and its corresponding plan. I am going to presume that you already know how to do this within Ops Center 12c and I will just cover the differences between a regular profile and a profile that can use an alternate interface. Create a OS Provisioning profile for Solaris 10 as usual. However, when you specify the network resources for the primary network, click on the name of the NIC, probably GB_0, and rename it to GB_N/netN, where N is the instance number you used previously in creating the device alias. This is where the trial and error may come into play. You may need to try a few instance numbers before you, the OBP, and Solaris all agree on the instance number. Mark this as the boot network. For Solaris 10, you ought to be able to then apply the OS Provisioning profile to the server and it should install using that interface. And if you put your cards in the same slots and plug the networks into the same NICs, this profile is reusable across multiple servers. Why This Works If you watch the console as Solaris boots during the OSP process, Ops Center is going to look for the device alias netN. Since WANBoot requires a device alias called just net, Ops Center uses the value of your netN device alias and assigns that device to the net alias. That means that boot net will automatically use this device. Very cool! Here's a trace from the console as Ops Center provisions a server: Sun Sun Fire T200, No KeyboardCopyright (c) 1998, 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.OpenBoot 4.30.4.b, 32640 MB memory available, Serial #69057548.Ethernet address 0:14:4f:1d:bc:c, Host ID: 841dbc0c.auto-boot? = false{0} ok {0} ok printenv network-boot-argumentsnetwork-boot-arguments = host-ip=10.140.204.234,router-ip=10.140.204.1,subnet-mask=255.255.254.0,hostname=atl-sewr-52,client-id=0100144F1DBC0C,file=http://10.140.204.22:5555/cgi-bin/wanboot-cgi{0} ok {0} ok devalias net net /pci@780/pci@0/pci@1/network@0{0} ok devalias net4 net4 /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2{0} ok devalias net /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2{0} ok setenv network-boot-arguments host-ip=10.140.204.234,router-ip=10.140.204.1,subnet-mask=255.255.254.0,hostname=atl-sewr-52,client-id=0100144F1DBC0C,file=http://10.140.204.22:8004/cgi-bin/wanboot-cginetwork-boot-arguments = host-ip=10.140.204.234,router-ip=10.140.204.1,subnet-mask=255.255.254.0,hostname=atl-sewr-52,client-id=0100144F1DBC0C,file=http://10.140.204.22:8004/cgi-bin/wanboot-cgi{0} ok {0} ok boot net - installBoot device: /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2 File and args: - install/pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2: 1000 Mbps link up<time unavailable> wanboot info: WAN boot messages->console<time unavailable> wanboot info: configuring /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2 See what happened? Ops Center looked for the network device alias called net4 that we specified in the profile, took the value from it, and made it the net device alias for the boot. Pretty cool! WANBoot and Solaris 11 Solaris 11 requires an additional step since the Automated Installer in Solaris 11 uses the MAC address of the network to figure out which manifest to use for system installation. In order to make sure this is available, we have to take an extra step to associate the MAC of the NIC on the card with the host. So, in addition to creating the device alias like we did above, we also have to declare to Ops Center that the host has this new MAC. Declaring the NIC Start out by discovering the hardware as usual. Once you have discovered it, take a look under the Connectivity tab to see what networks it has discovered. In the case of this system, it shows the 4 built-in networks, but not the networks on the additional cards. These are not directly visible to the system controller. In order to add the additional network interface to the hardware asset, it is necessary to Declare it. We will declare that we have a server with this additional NIC, but we will also specify the existing GB_0 network so that Ops Center can associate the right resources together. The GB_0 acts as sort of a key to tie our new declaration to the old system already discovered. Go to the Assets tab, select All Assets, and then in the Actions tab, select Add Asset. Rather than going through a discovery this time, we will manually declare a new asset. When we declare it, we will give the hostname, IP address, system model that match those that have already been discovered. Then, we will declare both GB_0 with its existing MAC and the new GB_4 with its MAC. Remember that we collected the MAC for GB_4 when we created its device alias. After you declare the asset, you will see the new NIC in the connectivity tab for the asset. You will notice that only the NICs you listed when you declared it are seen now. If you want Ops Center to see all of the existing NICs as well as the additional one, declare them as well. Add the other GB_1, GB_2, GB_3 links and their MACs just as you did GB_0 and GB_4. Installing the OS Once you have declared the asset, you can create an OS Provisioning profile for Solaris 11 in the same way that you did for Solaris 10. The only difference from any other provisioning profile you might have created already is the network to use for installation. Again, use GB_N/netN where N is the interface number you used for your device alias and in your declaration. And away you go. When the system boots from the network, the automated installer (AI) is able to see which system manifest to use, based on the new MAC that was associated, and the system gets installed. {0} ok {0} ok printenv network-boot-argumentsnetwork-boot-arguments = host-ip=10.140.204.234,router-ip=10.140.204.1,subnet-mask=255.255.254.0,hostname=atl-sewr-52,client-id=01002128204292,file=http://10.140.204.22:5555/cgi-bin/wanboot-cgi{0} ok {0} ok devalias net net /pci@780/pci@0/pci@1/network@0{0} ok devalias net4 net4 /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2{0} ok devalias net /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2{0} ok setenv network-boot-arguments host-ip=10.140.204.234,router-ip=10.140.204.1,subnet-mask=255.255.254.0,hostname=atl-sewr-52,client-id=01002128204292,file=http://10.140.204.22:5555/cgi-bin/wanboot-cginetwork-boot-arguments = host-ip=10.140.204.234,router-ip=10.140.204.1,subnet-mask=255.255.254.0,hostname=atl-sewr-52,client-id=01002128204292,file=http://10.140.204.22:5555/cgi-bin/wanboot-cgi{0} ok {0} ok boot net - installBoot device: /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2 File and args: - install/pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2: 1000 Mbps link up<time unavailable> wanboot info: WAN boot messages->console<time unavailable> wanboot info: configuring /pci@780/pci@0/pci@8/network@0,2...SunOS Release 5.11 Version 11.0 64-bitCopyright (c) 1983, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.Remounting root read/writeProbing for device nodes ...Preparing network image for useDownloading solaris.zlib--2012-02-17 15:10:17-- http://10.140.204.22:5555/var/js/AI/sparc//solaris.zlibConnecting to 10.140.204.22:5555... connected.HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OKLength: 126752256 (121M) [text/plain]Saving to: `/tmp/solaris.zlib'100%[======================================>] 126,752,256 28.6M/s in 4.4s 2012-02-17 15:10:21 (27.3 MB/s) - `/tmp/solaris.zlib' saved [126752256/126752256] Conclusion So, why go to all of this trouble? More and more, I find that customers are wiring their data center to only use higher speed networks - 10GbE only to the hosts. Some customers are moving aggressively toward consolidated networks combining storage and network on CNA NICs. All of this means that network-based provisioning cannot rely exclusively on the built-in network interfaces. So, it's important to be able to provision a system using other than the built-in networks. Turns out, that this is pretty straight-forward for both Solaris 10 and Solaris 11 and fits into the Ops Center deployment process quite nicely. Hopefully, you will be able to use this as you build out your own private cloud solutions with Ops Center.

Read the article

Code Contracts: Unit testing contracted code

- by DigiMortal

Code contracts and unit tests are not replacements for each other. They both have different purpose and different nature. It does not matter if you are using code contracts or not – you still have to write tests for your code. In this posting I will show you how to unit test code with contracts. In my previous posting about code contracts I showed how to avoid ContractExceptions that are defined in code contracts runtime and that are not accessible for us in design time. This was one step further to make my randomizer testable. In this posting I will complete the mission. Problems with current code This is my current code. public class Randomizer { public static int GetRandomFromRangeContracted(int min, int max) { Contract.Requires<ArgumentOutOfRangeException>( min < max, "Min must be less than max" ); Contract.Ensures( Contract.Result<int>() >= min && Contract.Result<int>() <= max, "Return value is out of range" ); var rnd = new Random(); return rnd.Next(min, max); } } As you can see this code has some problems: randomizer class is static and cannot be instantiated. We cannot move this class between components if we need to, GetRandomFromRangeContracted() is not fully testable because we cannot currently affect random number generator output and therefore we cannot test post-contract. Now let’s solve these problems. Making randomizer testable As a first thing I made Randomizer to be class that must be instantiated. This is simple thing to do. Now let’s solve the problem with Random class. To make Randomizer testable I define IRandomGenerator interface and RandomGenerator class. The public constructor of Randomizer accepts IRandomGenerator as argument. public interface IRandomGenerator { int Next(int min, int max); } public class RandomGenerator : IRandomGenerator { private Random _random = new Random(); public int Next(int min, int max) { return _random.Next(min, max); } } And here is our Randomizer after total make-over. public class Randomizer { private IRandomGenerator _generator; private Randomizer() { _generator = new RandomGenerator(); } public Randomizer(IRandomGenerator generator) { _generator = generator; } public int GetRandomFromRangeContracted(int min, int max) { Contract.Requires<ArgumentOutOfRangeException>( min < max, "Min must be less than max" ); Contract.Ensures( Contract.Result<int>() >= min && Contract.Result<int>() <= max, "Return value is out of range" ); return _generator.Next(min, max); } } It seems to be inconvenient to instantiate Randomizer now but you can always use DI/IoC containers and break compiled dependencies between the components of your system. Writing tests for randomizer IRandomGenerator solved problem with testing post-condition. Now it is time to write tests for Randomizer class. Writing tests for contracted code is not easy. The main problem is still ContractException that we are not able to access. Still it is the main exception we get as soon as contracts fail. Although pre-conditions are able to throw exceptions with type we want we cannot do much when post-conditions will fail. We have to use Contract.ContractFailed event and this event is called for every contract failure. This way we find ourselves in situation where supporting well input interface makes it impossible to support output interface well and vice versa. ContractFailed is nasty hack and it works pretty weird way. Although documentation sais that ContractFailed is good choice for testing contracts it is still pretty painful. As a last chance I got tests working almost normally when I wrapped them up. Can you remember similar solution from the times of Visual Studio 2008 unit tests? Cannot understand how Microsoft was able to mess up testing again. [TestClass] public class RandomizerTest { private Mock<IRandomGenerator> _randomMock; private Randomizer _randomizer; private string _lastContractError; public TestContext TestContext { get; set; } public RandomizerTest() { Contract.ContractFailed += (sender, e) => { e.SetHandled(); e.SetUnwind(); throw new Exception(e.FailureKind + ": " + e.Message); }; } [TestInitialize()] public void RandomizerTestInitialize() { _randomMock = new Mock<IRandomGenerator>(); _randomizer = new Randomizer(_randomMock.Object); _lastContractError = string.Empty; } #region InputInterfaceTests [TestMethod] [ExpectedException(typeof(Exception))] public void GetRandomFromRangeContracted_should_throw_exception_when_min_is_not_less_than_max() { try { _randomizer.GetRandomFromRangeContracted(100, 10); } catch (Exception ex) { throw new Exception(string.Empty, ex); } } [TestMethod] [ExpectedException(typeof(Exception))] public void GetRandomFromRangeContracted_should_throw_exception_when_min_is_equal_to_max() { try { _randomizer.GetRandomFromRangeContracted(10, 10); } catch (Exception ex) { throw new Exception(string.Empty, ex); } } [TestMethod] public void GetRandomFromRangeContracted_should_work_when_min_is_less_than_max() { int minValue = 10; int maxValue = 100; int returnValue = 50; _randomMock.Setup(r => r.Next(minValue, maxValue)) .Returns(returnValue) .Verifiable(); var result = _randomizer.GetRandomFromRangeContracted(minValue, maxValue); _randomMock.Verify(); Assert.AreEqual<int>(returnValue, result); } #endregion #region OutputInterfaceTests [TestMethod] [ExpectedException(typeof(Exception))] public void GetRandomFromRangeContracted_should_throw_exception_when_return_value_is_less_than_min() { int minValue = 10; int maxValue = 100; int returnValue = 7; _randomMock.Setup(r => r.Next(10, 100)) .Returns(returnValue) .Verifiable(); try { _randomizer.GetRandomFromRangeContracted(minValue, maxValue); } catch (Exception ex) { throw new Exception(string.Empty, ex); } _randomMock.Verify(); } [TestMethod] [ExpectedException(typeof(Exception))] public void GetRandomFromRangeContracted_should_throw_exception_when_return_value_is_more_than_max() { int minValue = 10; int maxValue = 100; int returnValue = 102; _randomMock.Setup(r => r.Next(10, 100)) .Returns(returnValue) .Verifiable(); try { _randomizer.GetRandomFromRangeContracted(minValue, maxValue); } catch (Exception ex) { throw new Exception(string.Empty, ex); } _randomMock.Verify(); } #endregion } Although these tests are pretty awful and contain hacks we are at least able now to make sure that our code works as expected. Here is the test list after running these tests. Conclusion Code contracts are very new stuff in Visual Studio world and as young technology it has some problems – like all other new bits and bytes in the world. As you saw then making our contracted code testable is easy only to the point when pre-conditions are considered. When we start dealing with post-conditions we will end up with hacked tests. I hope that future versions of code contracts will solve error handling issues the way that testing of contracted code will be easier than it is right now.

Read the article

Prepping a conference

- by Laurent Bugnion

I have had the chance to talk at many conferences these past few years, and came up with a way to prepare them which works really well for me. Most importantly, it would make it quite easy to overcome an emergency (for example if my laptop would suddenly lose data). The whole code as well as the slides and other documents are in the cloud. I also use source control for my demos, so that I always have the latest and the greatest, but also a history of changes I made to my demos. Finally I have a system of code snippets which works great, and I often had very positive remarks from the audience regarding that. Putting everything in the cloud The one thing I used to be the most scared of was a sudden crash of my laptop, and being unable to restore in time for a conference. Most conferences ask speakers to send slides a few days (or weeks…) in advance, but let's face it, we all have last minute changes to our talks and I always come in the conference with updated slides that I pass to the management team. The answer to that dilemma used to be working off memory sticks, and that worked not bad. However last year I started putting all the documents relating to a conference in a DropBox folder, and that works great too. Obviously DropBox works only if you have connectivity, so if I for instance update slides while on an international flight, I cannot save to the cloud. The obvious answer to that is to backup everything on a memory stick… but I have to admit, I have been trusting my luck and working off my laptop HD and then synching everything to the cloud after landing. Of course on some US national flights you get WiFi on board, so in that case it is even simpler :) Usually after the conference is done, I remove the files from DropBox and copy them to their "final destination". They are backed up from there to BackBlaze, the great online backup service I am using routinely (I currently have about 90GB of data in BackBlaze). Outlining the presentations I like to have a written outline of my presentations written somewhere. I keep it simple, just write the various sections of the presentation with timing. I guess it is a remnant of the time when I was a private pilot, and using checklists for flight preparation. For example: Demo about designability 15' (0:37) Switch to Blend Open MainPage.xaml Create a DataTemplate ... Here I can immediately see during the presentation if I am taking too much time for my demo (0:37 is where I need to be when I am done with this section of the presentation, and 15' is the time that this particular section takes). I keep these sections reasonable, I don't detail every step of the preparation. Typically I have one such section for every 10-15 minutes of my talks. Yes, I am timing my presentations. I keep adjusting these numbers when I rehearse, and this really helps to feel more confident during the presentations. This is especially important for presentations that are long, like my MIX11 demo which clocked at 57 minutes (I had a lot of stuff to show…). Such presentations are risky, because if anything goes wrong, you will have to cut stuff, so the answer to that is: Rehearse, rehearse and when you're done rehearsing, rehearse a little more. I also have a "Preparation" section where I outline what I need to do before a presentation. For instance: Preparation Reboot in VHD Make sure MSN and Twitter are not running. Open VS10 and load demo Open Blend and load demo Run the WP7 emulator ... I typically start preparing my laptop an hour before the talk, starting everything I need to start and then putting my laptop to sleep. Saving and printing the outline, Timing Printing is a real problem because it is really hard to find a printer at most conference venues, and also quite hard in hotels. To solve that, I simply write everything in OneNote (synched to the cloud, now you start to know what I like ;) and then I print it to a PDF (I use CutePDFWriter) that I save to my Kindle. During the presentation, I read the outline off the Kindle (I mostly just need a quick check to see how I am timing). For timing during the presentation, I use the free tool ChronoGPS on my Windows Phone 7, but of course any phone these days has a clock/chrono application. In some conferences, they even have timers that the presenters can see, but they tend to count down and I prefer to count up… so I just use my own :) Source control for demos For demos, I create a separate folder and use Mercurial as source control. Mercurial has the huge advantage (over SVN or TFS) to work offline too, so I can commit while on a plane, and all the history is saved. Then when I have connectivity I push everything to the cloud (I am using the fantastic Trunksapp.com for my private repositories). Here too the obvious downside is the risk of losing my last changes if my laptop crashes before I can push to the cloud, and here too the obvious answer would be to work from a memory stick… though I have to admit I didn't do that lately (except when I was writing Silverlight 4 Unleashed, where I was really paranoid…) And code snippets? I am one of these presenters who hates to type in front of an audience. I can type really fast (writing two books has this advantage, it really teaches you to touch type and be fast at it) but in the context of an audience, on a stage where it is often damn cold (an issue I had a lot in past conferences, air conditioning can freeze your fingers and make it really hard to type), it doesn't work as well. I don't know for you, but I really dislike seeing a presentation where the speaker uses the backspace key more often than others ;) To solve that, I like to have my code ready in snippets, and drag them to the screen. Then I can spend time explaining each code snippet, while highlighting portions of the code (always highlight what you talk about, the audience often doesn't even see the cursor and doesn't know where you are on the screen!) Over the years I have used various solutions for code snippets, and now I have one which works really well… if you take a few precautions! I use the Visual Studio Toolbox. Preparing the code snippets You can store code snippets in the Toolbox for anything, XAML, C# etc. I arrange the snippets in the order in which I need them, which is a great way to remember what comes next in the presentation. I also separate them by topic, to make it easier to find them, for example when I switch to the slides and then back to the code. Remember that no matter how experienced you are, you will feel more nervous on stage than while you are preparing, so any way to make it easier for you is going to be beneficial to the audience. To store a code snippet, I do the following: Open the final demo that you want to show to the audience in Visual Studio. In your code, select a snippet of code that you want to explain in particular. Make sure that the Visual Studio Toolbox is open (menu View, Toolbox or Ctrl-Alt-X). Drag the selected snippet from the code window to the toolbox. (if needed) drag the snippet to the correct location (for example between two other code snippets so that you can access it as you speak through the demo). Right click on the snippet and select Rename Item from the context menu. Select a meaningful name. For me I use the following conventions: If it is a method, I use the method's name. If it is not a whole method, I use a descriptive name. If it is the content of a method (i.e. the body only, without the method's signature), I use "-> MethodName". This reminds me during the presentation that this is only the body, and that I need to insert that into an existing signature. This is the case, for instance, when I use Visual Studio to automatically generate the members of an interface’s implementation; then I only need to insert my snippet inside the generated method body. Saving the snippets This is the most important!! It happened to me a few times that VS10 lost its settings. When that happens, the snippets are lost too! Yeah that really sucks, especially (as it happened once) when this is the case about an hour before a talk… Stress and sweat follows, not good conditions to start a talk in front of an audience believe me. Thankfully, saving snippets is really easy with the following steps: Select the menu Tools, Import and Export Settings. Select Export selected environment settings and press Next. Uncheck All Settings. Then expand General Settings and select Toolbox (only!). Press Next. Select your source control folder and save under a meaningful name (for instance Snippets.vssettings). Commit to source control and push to the cloud. By the way, this also has the advantage of applying source control to the snippets file (which is an XML file), so you get history for free on that file! Reimporting the snippets If VS loses its settings and you need to reimport the snippets, this can be done super easily and very fast. Make sure that the Toolbox is empty. When you import snippets, they are merged with existing ones, they do not replace the content of the Toolbox. Unless merging is really what you want, make sure that your Toolbox is clean before you import, it is really easier. Select the menu Tools, Import and Export Settings. Select Import selected environment settings and press Next. Select No, just import new settings and press Next. Press Browse and select the Snippets.vssettings file. Press Finish. Et voila, all your snippets appear again in the Toolbox. Whew, the worst was averted and you can start your demo without sweating! (I had to do that once literally 5 minutes before the start of a demo, while my laptop was already hooked to the projector, and it went just fine). What about special tools? When using special tools (for example beta versions of tools you have an early access to), or a special configuration of your laptop, things can get tricky because you cannot really be sure that you will get a laptop with the same tools and the same configuration at the conference. To solve that, I use the following precautions: I make my demos from a Virtual Hard Disk. The great John Papa made a very easy-to-follow web page where he explains how to create a VHD and install Win7 to it. This gives you the full power of your laptop (as fast as booting from the metal). For me, I have a basic configuration that I saved on a USB harddrive (Win7 plus drivers, basic settings for desktop, folder options, taskbar etc) and Visual Studio 2010 SP1 on it. When preparing, I start by copying this "basis VHD" to my laptop. I install additional tools and configurations. I save the VHD back to the USB harddrive in a different folder. This would allow me to reinstall my demo environment quite fast, for example in case of harddrive failure. Replace the harddrive, copy the VHD to it, configure the BCD and you can start. Unfortunately this only works if the laptop itself still works. In the worst case of total failure, my security is to back all the installers up: The installers I use are synched on all my laptops and backed up to BackBlaze. If the worst happens and my laptop is absolutely broken, I can download the installer from BackBlaze and install on another laptop. This of course takes some time, and if that happens 5 minutes before a presentation, well… I don't have an answer to that, except of course crossing my fingers. Still, all that gives me additional security. Conclusion Remember folks, talking to an audience, large or small, will make you nervous. Just ask Scott Hanselman :) The goal here is to create the best possible conditions for you, and to create an environment where everything is saved and easy to restore, where everything is well known and provides you with additional confidence. The cooler you feel before the presentation (and during ;)), the better your presentation will be. Here too, the goal is to provide the best user experience you can have, which in turn will make it more enjoyable for your audience! Happy presenting :) Laurent Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

Read the article

Down Tools Week Cometh: Kissing Goodbye to CVs/Resumes and Cover Letters

- by Bart Read

I haven't blogged about what I'm doing in my (not so new) temporary role as Red Gate's technical recruiter, mostly because it's been routine, business as usual stuff, and because I've been trying to understand the role by doing it. I think now though the time has come to get a little more radical, so I'm going to tell you why I want to largely eliminate CVs/resumes and cover letters from the application process for some of our technical roles, and why I think that might be a good thing for candidates (and for us). I have a terrible confession to make, or at least it's a terrible confession for a recruiter: I don't really like CV sifting, or reading cover letters, and, unless I've misread the mood around here, neither does anybody else. It's dull, it's time-consuming, and it's somewhat soul destroying because, when all is said and done, you're being paid to be incredibly judgemental about people based on relatively little information. I feel like I've dirtied myself by saying that - I mean, after all, it's a core part of my job - but it sucks, it really does. (And, of course, the truth is I'm still a software engineer at heart, and I'm always looking for ways to do things better.) On the flip side, I've never met anyone who likes writing their CV. It takes hours and hours of faffing around and massaging it into shape, and the whole process is beset by a gnawing anxiety, frustration, and insecurity. All you really want is a chance to demonstrate your skills - not just talk about them - and how do you do that in a CV or cover letter? Often the best candidates will include samples of their work (a portfolio, screenshots, links to websites, product downloads, etc.), but sometimes this isn't possible, or may not be appropriate, or you just don't think you're allowed because of what your school/university careers service has told you (more commonly an issue with grads, obviously). And what are we actually trying to find out about people with all of this? I think the common criteria are actually pretty basic: Smart Gets things done (thanks for these two Joel) Not an a55hole* (sorry, have to get around Simple Talk's swear filter - and thanks to Professor Robert I. Sutton for this one) *Of course, everyone has off days, and I don't honestly think we're too worried about somebody being a bit grumpy every now and again. We can do a bit better than this in the context of the roles I'm talking about: we can be more specific about what "gets things done" means, at least in part. For software engineers and interns, the non-exhaustive meaning of "gets things done" is: Excellent coder For test engineers, the non-exhaustive meaning of "gets things done" is: Good at finding problems in software Competent coder Team player, etc., to me, are covered by "not an a55hole". I don't expect people to be the life and soul of the party, or a wild extrovert - that's not what team player means, and it's not what "not an a55hole" means. Some of our best technical staff are quiet, introverted types, but they're still pleasant to work with. My problem is that I don't think the initial sift really helps us find out whether people are smart and get things done with any great efficacy. It's better than nothing, for sure, but it's not as good as it could be. It's also contentious, and potentially unfair/inequitable - if you want to get an idea of what I mean by this, check out the background information section at the bottom. Before I go any further, let's look at the Red Gate recruitment process for technical staff* as it stands now: (LOTS of) People apply for jobs. All these applications go through a brutal process of manual sifting, which eliminates between 75 and 90% of them, depending upon the role, and the time of year**. Depending upon the role, those who pass the sift will be sent an assessment or telescreened. For the purposes of this blog post I'm only interested in those that are sent some sort of programming assessment, or bug hunt. This means software engineers, test engineers, and software interns, which are the roles for which I receive the most applications. The telescreen tends to be reserved for project or product managers. Those that pass the assessment are invited in for first interview. This interview is mostly about assessing their technical skills***, although we're obviously on the look out for cultural fit red flags as well. If the first interview goes well we'll invite candidates back for a second interview. This is where team/cultural fit is really scoped out. We also use this interview to dive more deeply into certain areas of their skillset, and explore any concerns that may have come out of the first interview (these obviously won't have been serious or obvious enough to cause a rejection at that point, but are things we do need to look into before we'd consider making an offer). We might subsequently invite them in for lunch before we make them an offer. This tends to happen when we're recruiting somebody for a specific team and we'd like them to meet all the people they'll be working with directly. It's not an interview per se, but can prove pivotal if they don't gel with the team. Anyone who's made it this far will receive an offer from us. *We have a slightly quirky definition of "technical staff" as it relates to the technical recruiter role here. It includes software engineers, test engineers, software interns, user experience specialists, technical authors, project managers, product managers, and development managers, but does not include product support or information systems roles. **For example, the quality of graduate applicants overall noticeably drops as the academic year wears on, which is not to say that by now there aren't still stars in there, just that they're fewer and further between. ***Some organisations prefer to assess for team fit first, but I think assessing technical skills is a more effective initial filter - if they're the nicest person in the world, but can't cut a line of code they're not going to work out. Now, as I suggested in the title, Red Gate's Down Tools Week is upon us once again - next week in fact - and I had proposed as a project that we refactor and automate the first stage of marking our programming assessments. Marking assessments, and in fact organising the marking of them, is a somewhat time-consuming process, and we receive many assessment solutions that just don't make the cut, for whatever reason. Whilst I don't think it's possible to fully automate marking, I do think it ought to be possible to run a suite of automated tests over each candidate's solution to see whether or not it behaves correctly and, if it does, move on to a manual stage where we examine the code for structure, decomposition, style, readability, maintainability, etc. Obviously it's possible to use tools to generate potentially helpful metrics for some of these indices as well. This would obviously reduce the marking workload, and would provide candidates with quicker feedback about whether they've been successful - though I do wonder if waiting a tactful interval before sending a (nicely written) rejection might be wise. I duly scrawled out a picture of my ideal process, which looked like this: The problem is, as soon as I'd roughed it out, I realised that fundamentally it wasn't an ideal process at all, which explained the gnawing feeling of cognitive dissonance I'd been wrestling with all week, whilst I'd been trying to find time to do this. Here's what I mean. Automated assessment marking, and the associated infrastructure around that, makes it much easier for us to deal with large numbers of assessments. This means we can be much more permissive about who we send assessments out to or, in other words, we can give more candidates the opportunity to really demonstrate their skills to us. And this leads to a question: why not give everyone the opportunity to demonstrate their skills, to show that they're smart and can get things done? (Two or three of us even discussed this in the down tools week hustings earlier this week.) And isn't this a lot simpler than the alternative we'd been considering? (FYI, this was automated CV/cover letter sifting by some form of textual analysis to ideally eliminate the worst 50% or so of applications based on an analysis of the 20,000 or so historical applications we've received since 2007 - definitely not the basic keyword analysis beloved of recruitment agencies, since this would eliminate hardly anyone who was awful, but definitely would eliminate stellar Oxbridge candidates - #fail - or some nightmarishly complex Google-like system where we profile all our currently employees, only to realise that we're never going to get representative results because we don't have a statistically significant sample size in any given role - also #fail.) No, I think the new way is better. We let people self-select. We make them the masters (or mistresses) of their own destiny. We give applicants the power - we put their fate in their hands - by giving them the chance to demonstrate their skills, which is what they really want anyway, instead of requiring that they spend hours and hours creating a CV and cover letter that I'm going to evaluate for suitability, and make a value judgement about, in approximately 1 minute (give or take). It doesn't matter what university you attended, it doesn't matter if you had a bad year when you took your A-levels - here's your chance to shine, so take it and run with it. (As a side benefit, we cut the number of applications we have to sift by something like two thirds.) WIN! OK, yeah, sounds good, but will it actually work? That's an excellent question. My gut feeling is yes, and I'll justify why below (and hopefully have gone some way towards doing that above as well), but what I'm proposing here is really that we run an experiment for a period of time - probably a couple of months or so - and measure the outcomes we see: How many people apply? (Wouldn't be surprised or alarmed to see this cut by a factor of ten.) How many of them submit a good assessment? (More/less than at present?) How much overhead is there for us in dealing with these assessments compared to now? What are the success and failure rates at each interview stage compared to now? How many people are we hiring at the end of it compared to now? I think it'll work because I hypothesize that, amongst other things: It self-selects for people who really want to work at Red Gate which, at the moment, is something I have to try and assess based on their CV and cover letter - but if you're not that bothered about working here, why would you complete the assessment? Candidates who would submit a shoddy application probably won't feel motivated to do the assessment. Candidates who would demonstrate good attention to detail in their CV/cover letter will demonstrate good attention to detail in the assessment. In general, only the better candidates will complete and submit the assessment. Marking assessments is much less work so we'll be able to deal with any increase that we see (hopefully we will see). There are obviously other questions as well: Is plagiarism going to be a problem? Is there any way we can detect/discourage potential plagiarism? How do we assess candidates' education and experience? What about their ability to communicate in writing? Do we still want them to submit a CV afterwards if they pass assessment? Do we want to offer them the opportunity to tell us a bit about why they'd like the job when they submit their assessment? How does this affect our relationship with recruitment agencies we might use to hire for these roles? So, what's the objective for next week's Down Tools Week? Pretty simple really - we want to implement this process for the Graduate Software Engineer and Software Engineer positions that you can find on our website. I will be joined by a crack team of our best developers (Kevin Boyle, and new Red-Gater, Sam Blackburn), and recruiting hostess with the mostest Laura McQuillen, and hopefully a couple of others as well - if I can successfully twist more arms before Monday.* Hopefully by next Friday our experiment will be up and running, and we may have changed the way Red Gate recruits software engineers for good! Stay tuned and we'll let you know how it goes! *I'm going to play dirty by offering them beer and chocolate during meetings. Some background information: how agonising over the initial CV/cover letter sift helped lead us to bin it off entirely The other day I was agonising about the new university/good degree grade versus poor A-level results issue, and decided to canvas for other opinions to see if there was something I could do that was fairer than my current approach, which is almost always to reject. This generated quite an involved discussion on our Yammer site: I'm sure you can glean a pretty good impression of my own educational prejudices from that discussion as well, although I'm very open to changing my opinion - hopefully you've already figured that out from reading the rest of this post. Hopefully you can also trace a logical path from agonising about sifting to, "Uh, hang on, why on earth are we doing this anyway?!?" Technorati Tags: recruitment,hr,developers,testers,red gate,cv,resume,cover letter,assessment,sea change

Search Results

Search found 13004 results on 521 pages for 'pretty printing'.

Page 103/521 | < Previous Page | 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 | Next Page >

- by Dirty Bird Design

- by mystify

- by trix

- by Taylor Huston

- by theduke0

- by suicideducky

- by Ricket

- by John Calsbeek

- by Andrew Dunaway

- by Nick Lowman

- by John

- by Xeo

- by justin01

- by barak manos

- by Michael

- by user363243

- by Adrift

- by Rick Strahl

- by terje

- by SeanMcAlinden

- by Rick Strahl

- by scottdickson

- by DigiMortal

- by Laurent Bugnion

- by Bart Read

< Previous Page | 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 | Next Page >