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• View AccuWeather Forecasts in Google Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Being able to keep an eye on the weather while at work or browsing the Internet is definitely helpful. If you like detailed forecasts then join us as we take a look at the Forecastfox Weather extension for Google Chrome. Getting Started As soon as the Forecastfox Weather extension has finished installing you will automatically be presented with the “Customize Forecastfox Page”. The default setting is for New York with English measurement units. Enter your location into the blank and hit “Enter” to display the listing for your city/area. If you are presented multiple options to choose from simply click on the appropriate listing. Once you have your city/area displayed you will notice that it is possible to have access to weather forecasts for multiple locations. You can easily remove any unneeded listings with the “Remove Link”. For our example we removed the New York listing. Note: Click on desired locations and measurement units to automatically set them as defaults (no save button required). Forecastfox Weather in Action You can hover your mouse over the “Toolbar Button” to see the current weather conditions. Clicking on the “Toolbar Button” opens a popup window with the current conditions, 7 day forecast, and a static satellite image. If desired you can access additional details for the current weather conditions. Clicking on “details” opens a new tab with a nice bit of information such as UV Index, Moon Phases, Cloud Ceiling, etc. Note: AccuWeather.com webpages will have some ads displayed. Perhaps you need the Hourly Forecast… Once again a new tab will be opened with the predicted hourly weather conditions for the current day. Going back to the popup window you may also select a specific day from the 7 day forecast. You will be presented with a “Day & Night” forecast for the chosen day with links to view “Additional Details & Hourly” information. Interested in the satellite image instead? You can click on either of the available links for larger images. Once the new tab is open you can choose from a variety of different satellite images. Conclusion If you have been wanting a solid weather forecast extension for your Chrome browser then Forecastfox Weather is definitely a recommended install. Links Download the Forecastfox Weather extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Weather Forecasts to Google ChromeView Weather Underground Forecasts in Google ChromeView the Time & Date in Chrome When Hiding Your TaskbarView Maps and Get Directions in Google ChromeGoogle Image Search Quick Fix TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs Monitor Applications With Kiwi LocPDF is a Visual PDF Search Tool Download Free iPad Wallpapers at iPad Decor Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar

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• Exalytics and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) Partner Workshop

  - by mseika

  Workshop Description Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g is the #1 application infrastructure foundation. It enables enterprises to create and run agile and intelligent business applications and maximize IT efficiency by exploiting modern hardware and software architectures. Oracle Exalytics Business Intelligence Machine is the world’s first engineered system specifically designed to deliver high performance analysis, modeling and planning. Built using industry-standard hardware, market-leading business intelligence software and in-memory database technology, Oracle Exalytics is an optimized system that delivers unmatched speed, visualizations and scalability for Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management applications. This FREE hands-on, partner workshop highlights both the hardware and software components that are engineered to work together to deliver Oracle Exalytics - an optimized version of the industry-leading Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database with analytic extensions, a highly scalable Oracle server designed specifically for in-memory business intelligence, and Oracle’s proven Business Intelligence Foundation with enhanced visualization capabilities and performance optimizations. This workshop will provide hands-on experience with Oracle's latest engineered system. Topics covered will include TimesTen In-Memory Database and the new Summary Advisor for Exalytics, the technical details (including mobile features) of the latest release of visualization enhancements for OBI-EE, and technical updates on Essbase. After taking this course, you will be well prepared to architect, build, demo, and implement an end-to-end Exalytics solution. You will also be able to extend your current analytical and enterprise performance management application implementations with numerous Oracle technologies specifically enhanced to take advantage of the compute capacity and in-memory capabilities of Oracle Exalytics.If you are a BI or Data Warehouse Architect, developer or consultant, you don’t want to miss this 3-day workshop. Register Now! Presentations Exalytics Architectural Overview Upgrade and Lifecycle Management Times Ten for Exalytics Summary Advisor Utility Essbase and EPM System on Exalytics Dashboard and Analysis Interactions OBIEE 11.1.1.6 Features and Advanced Topics Lab OutlineThe labs showcase Oracle Exalytics core components and functionality and provide expertise of Oracle Business Intelligence 11.1.1.6 new features and updates from prior releases. The hands-on activities are based on an Oracle VirtualBox image with software and training samples pre-installed. Lab Environment Setup Creating and Working with Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database Running Summary Advisor Utility Working with Exalytics Visualization Features – Dashboard and Analysis Interactions Audience Oracle Partners BI and EPM Application Developers and Implementers System Integrators and Solution Consultants Data Warehouse Developers Enterprise Architects Prerequisites Experience and understanding of OBIEE 11g is required Previous attendance of Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation Suite Workshop or BIEE 11gIntroduction Workshop is highly recommended Good understanding of data warehousing and data modeling for reporting and analysis purpose Strong experience with database technologies preferred Equipment RequirementsThis workshop requires attendees to provide their own laptops for this class.Attendee laptops must meet the following minimum hardware/software requirements: Hardware Minimum 8GB RAM 60 GB free space (includes staging) USB 2.0 port (at least one available) It is strongly recommended that you bring a mouse. You will be working in a development environment and using the mouse heavily. Software One of the following operating systems: 64-bit Windows host/laptop OS 64-bit host/laptop OS with a Windows VM (XP, Server, or Win 7, BIC2g, etc.) Internet Explorer 7.x/8.x or Firefox 3.5.x WINRAR or 7ziputility to unzip workshop files: Download-able from http://www.win-rar.com/download.html Download-able from http://www.7zip.com/ Oracle VirtualBox 4.0.2 or higher Downloadable from http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads CPU virtualization mode needs to be enabled. We will provide guidance on the day of the workshop. Attendees will be given a VirtualBox image containing a pre-installed Oracle Exalytics environment. Schedule This workshop is 3 days. - Times vary by country!9:00am: Sign-in and technical setup 9:30am: Workshop starts 5:00pm: Workshop ends Oracle Exalytics and Business Intelligence (OBIEE) Workshop December 11-13, 2012: Oracle BVP, Birmingham, UK Register Here. Questions? Send email to: [email protected] Oracle Platform Technologies Enablement Services

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• Custom Templates: Using user exits

  - by Anthony Shorten

  One of the features of Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.1 is the ability to use templates and user exits to extend the base configuration files. The configuration files used by the product are based upon a set of templates shipped with the product. When the configureEnv utility asks for configuration settings they are stored in a configuration file ENVIRON.INI which outlines the environment settings. These settings are then used by the initialSetup utility to populate the various configuration files used by the product using templates located in the templates directory of the installation. Now, whilst the majority of the installations at any site are non-production and the templates provided are generally adequate for that need, there are circumstances where extension of templates are needed to take advantage of more advanced facilities (such as advanced security and environment settings). The issue then becomes that if you alter the configuration files manually (directly or indirectly) then you may lose all your custom settings the next time you run initialSetup. To counter this we allow customers to either override templates with their own template or we now provide user exits in the templates to add fragments of configuration unique to that part of the configuration file. The latter means that the base template is still used but additions are included to provide the extensions. The provision of custom templates is supported but as soon as you use a custom template you are then responsible for reflecting any changes we put in the base template over time. Not a big task but annoying if you have to do it for multiple copies of the product. I prefer to use user exits as they seem to represent the least effort solution. The way to find the user exits available is to either read the Server Administration Guide that comes with your product or look at individual templates and look for the lines: #ouaf_user_exit <user exit name> Where <user exit name> is the name of the user exit. User exits are not always present but are in places that we feel are the most likely to be changed. If a user exit does not exist the you can always use a custom template instead. Now lets show an example. By default, the product generates a config.xml file to be used with Oracle WebLogic. This configuration file has the basic setting contained in it to manage the product. If you want to take advantage of the Oracle WebLogic advanced settings, you can use the console to make those changes and it will be reflected in the config.xml automatically. To retain those changes across invocations of initialSetup, you need to alter the template that generates the config.xml or use user exits. The technique is this. Make the change in the console and when you save the change, WebLogic will reflect it in the config.xml for you. Compare the old version and new version of the config.xml and determine what to add and then find the user exit to put it in by examining the base template. For example, by default, the console is not automatically deployed (it is deployed on demand) in the base config.xml. To make the console deploy, you can add the following line to the templates/CM_config.xml.win.exit_3.include file (for windows) or templates/CM_config.xml.exit_3.include file (for linux/unix): <internal-apps-deploy-on-demand-enabled>false</internal-apps-deploy-on-demand-enabled> Now run initialSetup to reflect the change and if you check the splapp/config/config.xml file you will see the change applied for you. Now how did I know which include file? I check the template for config.xml and found there was an user exit at the right place. I prefixed my include filename with "CM_" to denote it as a custom user exit. This will tell the upgrade tools to leave that file alone whenever you decide to upgrade (or even apply fixes). User exits can be powerful and allow customizations to be added for advanced configuration. You will see products using Oracle Utilities Application Framework use this exits themselves (usually prefixed with the product code). You are also taking advantage of them.

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• October in Review

  - by Richard Bingham

  With OpenWorld over October was time to get back to serious work for everyone, including the Fusion Applications Developer Relations team. Don't forget the OpenWorld content is still available, including presentation downloads, for a limited period of time so be sure to grab anything you found useful or take another scan for anything you might have missed. Of all the announcements, the continued evolution of the Oracle Cloud services for extending and integrating with Fusion Applications is increasing in popularity, and certainly the Cloud Marketplace is something we're becoming involved in. More details to follow. Fusion Concepts Last week Vik from our team started the new "Fusion Concepts" series of articles, providing those new to Fusion Applications an explanation of the architectural basics, with the aim to reduce the learning curve and lay the platform for more efficient and effective development. The series begun with an insightful first post on the different schemas that exist in the Fusion Applications database. Look out for upcoming posts on multi-lingual entities, profile options, look-ups and more. New Learning Resources Our YouTube channel continued to expand with more 'how to' videos on using page composer, extending the Simplified UI (aka FUSE), and integrating BI reports and analytics. Also the Oracle Learning Library is now well established as a central resource for knowledge, now with thousands of tutorials, videos, and documents. Of particular note are the great new extensibility-related videos added by the CRM Product Management team, including more on the ever-expanding capabilities of Application Composer. To see some examples of these search using keyword 'customization' or the product 'Sales Cloud'. Finally on learning resources, as Oliver mentioned the Oracle Press book on Fusion Application Customization and Extensibility is now available for pre-order on Amazon (due out 1st Jan). Out And About October also saw us attend the annual Apps Conference held by the UK Oracle User Group in London. Interestingly there was an Applications Transformation stream of sessions and content that included Fusion Applications with all the latest in the Oracle Applications evolution, as always focused around the three tenets of social, mobile, and cloud. Read more in Richard's post-event write up. Other teams around Oracle have also been busy. Angelo from the Platform Technical Services group has done quite a bit of work using web services with Fusion SaaS and has published many interesting findings on his blog. It's definitely recommended reading if you are working on any related integration projects. The middleware-for-applications group has built a new tool called "AppAdvantage" offering an online assessment of your use of Fusion Middleware technologies with Oracle Applications. As the popularity of integrating cloud applications with on-premises systems continued to grow, leveraging existing middleware technologies (and licenses) to support the integration solution is likely to be of paramount importance. Similarly the "Build Enterprise Application Extensions with Ease" section of the related webpage has AppsUX director Killan Evers speaking about customization using the composer tools. Both are useful resources for those just getting started with a move to Fusion Applications. The Oracle A-Team, specialists in middleware technical architecture, always publish superb content via their 'chronicles' site, now with a substantial amount specifically related to Fusion Applications. Click on the Fusion Applications menu on the top right of their homepage to see more. Last month of particular note was an article on customizing the timeout pop-up message that shows to inactive users, providing design-time insight and easy-to-follow steps. Finally if you're looking at using Oracle Middleware and Cloud to tailor and extend your applications then you may also be interested in this new blog post on the roadmap for Oracle SOA and the latest on-demand Cloud Development webcast.

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• How to Create SharePoint List and Insert List Item programmatically from a Windows Forms Application.

  - by Michael M. Bangoy

  In this post I’m going to demonstrate how to create SharePoint List and also Insert Items on the List from a Windows Forms Application. 1. Open Visual Studio and create a new project. On the project template select Windows Form Application under C#. 2. In order to communicate with Sharepoint from a Windows Forms Application we need to add the 2 Sharepoint Client DLL located in c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI.  3. Select the Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.dll and Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.Runtime.dll. (Your solution should look like the one below) 4. Open the Form1 in design view and from the Toolbox menu add a button on the form surface. Your form should look like the one below. 5. Double click the button to open the code view. Add Using statement to reference the Sharepoint Client Library then create method for the Create List. Your code should like the codes below. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Data; using System.Drawing; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Security; using System.Windows.Forms; using SP = Microsoft.SharePoint.Client; namespace ClientObjectModel {     public partial class Form1 : Form     {         // url of the Sharepoint site         const string _context = "urlofthesharepointsite";         public Form1()         {             InitializeComponent();         }         private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)         {                    }         private void cmdcreate_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             try             {                 // declare the ClientContext Object                 SP.ClientContext _clientcontext = new SP.ClientContext(_context);                 SP.Web _site = _clientcontext.Web;                 // declare a ListCreationInfo                 SP.ListCreationInformation _listcreationinfo = new SP.ListCreationInformation();                 // set the Title and the Template of the List to be created                 _listcreationinfo.Title = "NewListFromCOM";                 _listcreationinfo.TemplateType = (int)SP.ListTemplateType.GenericList;                 // Call the add method to the ListCreatedInfo                 SP.List _list = _site.Lists.Add(_listcreationinfo);                 // Add Description field to the List                 SP.Field _Description = _list.Fields.AddFieldAsXml(@"                                     <Field Type='Text'                                         DisplayName='Description'>                                     </Field>", true, SP.AddFieldOptions.AddToDefaultContentType);                 // declare the List item Creation object for creating List Item                 SP.ListItemCreationInformation _itemcreationinfo = new SP.ListItemCreationInformation();                 // call the additem method of the list to insert a new List Item                 SP.ListItem _item = _list.AddItem(_itemcreationinfo);                 _item["Title"] = "New Item from Client Object Model";                 _item["Description"] = "This item was added by a Windows Forms Application";                 // call the update method                 _item.Update();                 // execute the query of the clientcontext                 _clientcontext.ExecuteQuery();                 // dispose the clientcontext                 _clientcontext.Dispose();                 MessageBox.Show("List Creation Successfull");             }             catch(Exception ex)             {                 MessageBox.Show("Error creating list" + ex.ToString());             }          }     } } 6. Hit F5 to run the application. A message will be displayed on the screen if the operation is successful and also if it fails. 7. To make that the operation of our Windows Form Application has really created the List and Inserted an item on it. Let’s open our SharePoint site. Once the SharePoint is open click on the Site Actions then View All Site Content. 7. Click the List to open it and check if an Item is inserted. That’s it. Hope this helps.

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• How to display Sharepoint Data in a Windows Forms Application

  - by Michael M. Bangoy

  In this post I'm going to demonstrate how to retrieve Sharepoint data and display it on a Windows Forms Application. 1. Open Visual Studio 2010 and create a new Project. 2. In the project template select Windows Forms Application. 3. In order to communicate with Sharepoint from a Windows Forms Application we need to add the 2 Sharepoint Client DLL located in c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI. 4. Select the Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.dll and Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.Runtime.dll. (Your solution should look like the one below) 5. Open the Form1 in design view and from the Toolbox menu Add a Button, TextBox, Label and DataGridView on the form. 6. Next double click on the Load Button, this will open the code view of the form. Add Using statement to reference the Sharepoint Client Library then create two method for the Load Site Title and LoadList. See below:   using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Data; using System.Drawing; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Security; using System.Windows.Forms; using SP = Microsoft.SharePoint.Client;   namespace ClientObjectModel {     public partial class Form1 : Form     {         // url of the Sharepoint site         const string _context = "theurlofthesharepointsite";         public Form1()         {             InitializeComponent();         }         private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)         {                    }         private void getsitetitle()         {             SP.ClientContext context = new SP.ClientContext(_context);             SP.Web _site = context.Web;             context.Load(_site);             context.ExecuteQuery();             txttitle.Text = _site.Title;             context.Dispose();         }                 private void loadlist()         {             using (SP.ClientContext _clientcontext = new SP.ClientContext(_context))             {                 SP.Web _web = _clientcontext.Web;                 SP.ListCollection _lists = _clientcontext.Web.Lists;                 _clientcontext.Load(_lists);                 _clientcontext.ExecuteQuery();                 DataTable dt = new DataTable();                 DataColumn column;                 DataRow row;                 column = new DataColumn();                 column.DataType = Type.GetType("System.String");                 column.ColumnName = "List Title";                 dt.Columns.Add(column);                 foreach (SP.List listitem in _lists)                 {                     row = dt.NewRow();                     row["List Title"] = listitem.Title;                     dt.Rows.Add(row);                 }                 dataGridView1.DataSource = dt;             }                   }       private void cmdload_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             getsitetitle();             loadlist();          }     } } 7. That’s it. Hit F5 to run the application then click the Load Button. Your screen should like the one below. Hope this helps.

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• Heterogeneous Datacenter Management with Enterprise Manager 12c

  - by Joe Diemer

  The following is a Guest Blog, contributed by Bryce Kaiser, Product Manager at Blue MedoraWhen I envision a perfect datacenter, it would consist of technologies acquired from a single vendor across the entire server, middleware, application, network, and storage stack - Apps to Disk - that meets your organization’s every IT requirement with absolute best-of-breed solutions in every category.   To quote a familiar motto, your datacenter would consist of "Hardware and Software, Engineered to Work Together".  In almost all cases, practical realities dictate something far less than the IT Utopia mentioned above.   You may wish to leverage multiple vendors to keep licensing costs down, a single vendor may not have an offering in the IT category you need, or your preferred vendor may quite simply not have the solution that meets your needs.    In other words, your IT needs dictate a heterogeneous IT environment.  Heterogeneity, however, comes with additional complexity. The following are two pretty typical challenges:1) No End-to-End Visibility into the Enterprise Wide Application Deployment. Each vendor solution which is added to an infrastructure may bring its own tooling creating different consoles for different vendor applications and platforms.2) No Visibility into Performance Bottlenecks. When multiple management tools operate independently, you lose diagnostic capabilities including identifying cross-tier issues with database, hung-requests, slowness, memory leaks and hardware errors/failures causing DB/MW issues. As adoption of Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) has increased, especially since the release of Enterprise Manager 12c, Oracle has seen an increase in the number of customers who want to leverage their investments in EM to manage non-Oracle workloads.  Enterprise Manager provides a single pane of glass view into their entire datacenter.  By creating a highly extensible framework via the Oracle EM Extensibility Development Kit (EDK), Oracle has provided the tooling for business partners such as my company Blue Medora as well as customers to easily fill gaps in the ecosystem and enhance existing solutions.  As mentioned in the previous post on the Enterprise Manager Extensibility Exchange, customers have access to an assortment of Oracle and Partner provided solutions through this Exchange, which is accessed at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emextensibility.  Currently, there are over 80 Oracle and partner provided plug-ins across the EM 11g and EM 12c versions.  Blue Medora is one of those contributing partners, for which you will find 3 of our solutions including our flagship plugin for VMware.  Let's look at Blue Medora’s VMware plug-in as an example to what I'm trying to convey.  Here is a common situation solved by true visibility into your entire stack:Symptoms•    My database is bogging down, however the database appears okay internally.  Maybe it’s starved for resources?•    My OS tooling is showing everything is “OK”.  Something doesn’t add up. Root cause•    Through the VMware plugin we can see the problem is actually on the virtualization layer Solution•    From within Enterprise Manager  -- the same tool you use for all of your database tuning -- we can overlay the data of the database target, host target, and virtual machine target for a true picture of the true root cause. Here is the console view: Perhaps your monitoring conditions are more specific to your environment.  No worries, Enterprise Manager still has you covered.  With Metric Extensions you have the “Next Generation” of User-Defined Metrics, which easily bring the power of your existing management scripts into a single console while leveraging the proven Enterprise Manager framework. Simply put, Oracle Enterprise manager boasts a growing ecosystem that provides the single pane of glass for your entire datacenter from the database and beyond.  Bryce can be contacted at [email protected]

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• How to retrieve Sharepoint data from a Windows Forms Application.

  - by Michael M. Bangoy

  In this demo I'm going to demonstrate how to retrieve Sharepoint data and display it on a Windows Forms Application. 1. Open Visual Studio 2010 and create a new Project. 2. In the project template select Windows Forms Application. 3. In order to communicate with Sharepoint from a Windows Forms Application we need to add the 2 Sharepoint Client DLL located in c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI. 4. Select the Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.dll and Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.Runtime.dll. That's it we're ready to write our codes. Note: In this example I've added to controls on the form, the controls are Button, TextBox, Label and DataGridView. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Data; using System.Data.Objects; using System.Drawing; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Security; using System.Windows.Forms; using SP = Microsoft.SharePoint.Client; namespace ClientObjectModel { public partial class Form1 : Form { // declare string url of the Sharepoint site string _context = "theurlofyoursharepointsite"; public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); } private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { } private void getsitetitle() {    SP.ClientContext context = new SP.ClientContext(_context);    SP.Web _site = context.Web;    context.Load(_site);    context.ExecuteQuery();    txttitle.Text = _site.Title;    context.Dispose(); } private void loadlist() { using (SP.ClientContext _clientcontext = new SP.ClientContext(_context)) {    SP.Web _web = _clientcontext.Web;    SP.ListCollection _lists = _clientcontext.Web.Lists;    _clientcontext.Load(_lists);    _clientcontext.ExecuteQuery();    DataTable dt = new DataTable();    DataColumn column;    DataRow row;    column = new DataColumn();    column.DataType = Type.GetType("System.String");    column.ColumnName = "List Title";    dt.Columns.Add(column);    foreach (SP.List listitem in _lists)    {       row = dt.NewRow();       row["List Title"] = listitem.Title;       dt.Rows.Add(row);    }       dataGridView1.DataSource = dt;    } private void cmdload_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { getsitetitle(); loadlist(); } } That's it. Running the application and clicking the Load Button will retrieve the Title of the Sharepoint site and display it on the TextBox and also it will retrieve ALL of the Sharepoint List on that site and populate the DataGridView with the List Title. Hope this helps. Thank you.

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• Getting the number of fragments which passed the depth test

  - by Etan

  In "modern" environments, the "NV Occlusion Query" extension provides a method to get the number of fragments which passed the depth test. However, on the iPad / iPhone using OpenGL ES, the extension is not available. What is the most performant approach to implement a similar behaviour in the fragment shader? Some of my ideas: Render the object completely in white, then count all the colors together using a two-pass shader where first a vertical line is rendered and for each fragment the shader computes the sum over the whole row. Then, a single vertex is rendered whose fragment sums all the partial sums of the first pass. Doesn't seem to be very efficient. Render the object completely in white over a black background. Downsample recursively, abusing the hardware linear interpolation between textures until being at a reasonably small resolution. This leads to fragments which have a greyscale level depending on the number of white pixels where in their corresponding region. Is this even accurate enough? Use mipmaps and simply read the pixel on the 1x1 level. Again the question of accuracy and if it is even possible using non-power-of-two textures. The problem wit these approaches is, that the pipeline gets stalled which results in major performance issues. Therefore, I'm looking for a more performant way to accomplish my goal. Using the EXT_OCCLUSION_QUERY_BOOLEAN extension Apple introduced EXT_OCCLUSION_QUERY_BOOLEAN in iOS 5.0 for iPad 2. "4.1.6 Occlusion Queries Occlusion queries use query objects to track the number of fragments or samples that pass the depth test. An occlusion query can be started and finished by calling BeginQueryEXT and EndQueryEXT, respectively, with a target of ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_EXT or ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_CONSERVATIVE_EXT. When an occlusion query is started with the target ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_EXT, the samples-boolean state maintained by the GL is set to FALSE. While that occlusion query is active, the samples-boolean state is set to TRUE if any fragment or sample passes the depth test. When the occlusion query finishes, the samples-boolean state of FALSE or TRUE is written to the corresponding query object as the query result value, and the query result for that object is marked as available. If the target of the query is ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_CONSERVATIVE_EXT, an implementation may choose to use a less precise version of the test which can additionally set the samples-boolean state to TRUE in some other implementation dependent cases." The first sentence hints on a behavior which is exactly what I'm looking for: getting the number of pixels which passed the depth test in an asynchronous manner without much performance loss. However, the rest of the document describes only how to get boolean results. Is it possible to exploit this extension to get the pixel count? Does the hardware support it so that there may be hidden API to get access to the pixel count? Other extensions which could be exploitable would be debugging features like the number of times the fragment shader was invoked (PSInvocations in DirectX - not sure if something simila is available in OpenGL ES). However, this would also result in a pipeline stall.

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• In hindsight, is basing XAML on XML a mistake or a good approach?

  - by romkyns

  XAML is essentially a subset of XML. One of the main benefits of basing XAML on XML is said to be that it can be parsed with existing tools. And it can, to a large degree, although the (syntactically non-trivial) attribute values will stay in text form and require further parsing. There are two major alternatives to describing a GUI in an XML-derived language. One is to do what WinForms did, and describe it in real code. There are numerous problems with this, though it’s not completely advantage-free (a question to compare XAML to this approach). The other major alternative is to design a completely new syntax specifically tailored for the task at hand. This is generally known as a domain-specific language. So, in hindsight, and as a lesson for the future generations, was it a good idea to base XAML on XML, or would it have been better as a custom-designed domain-specific language? If we were designing an even better UI framework, should we pick XML or a custom DSL? Since it’s much easier to think positively about the status quo, especially one that is quite liked by the community, I’ll give some example reasons for why building on top of XML might be considered a mistake. Basing a language off XML has one thing going for it: it’s much easier to parse (the core parser is already available), requires much, much less design work, and alternative parsers are also much easier to write for 3rd party developers. But the resulting language can be unsatisfying in various ways. It is rather verbose. If you change the type of something, you need to change it in the closing tag. It has very poor support for comments; it’s impossible to comment out an attribute. There are limitations placed on the content of attributes by XML. The markup extensions have to be built "on top" of the XML syntax, not integrated deeply and nicely into it. And, my personal favourite, if you set something via an attribute, you use completely different syntax than if you set the exact same thing as a content property. It’s also said that since everyone knows XML, XAML requires less learning. Strictly speaking this is true, but learning the syntax is a tiny fraction of the time spent learning a new UI framework; it’s the framework’s concepts that make the curve steep. Besides, the idiosyncracies of an XML-based language might actually add to the "needs learning" basket. Are these disadvantages outweighted by the ease of parsing? Should the next cool framework continue the tradition, or invest the time to design an awesome DSL that can’t be parsed by existing tools and whose syntax needs to be learned by everyone? P.S. Not everyone confuses XAML and WPF, but some do. XAML is the XML-like thing. WPF is the framework with support for bindings, theming, hardware acceleration and a whole lot of other cool stuff.

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• The long road to bug-free software

  - by Tony Davis

  The past decade has seen a burgeoning interest in functional programming languages such as Haskell or, in the Microsoft world, F#. Though still on the periphery of mainstream programming, functional programming concepts are gradually seeping into the imperative C# language (for example, Lambda expressions have their root in functional programming). One of the more interesting concepts from functional programming languages is the use of formal methods, the lofty ideal behind which is bug-free software. The idea is that we write a specification that describes exactly how our function (say) should behave. We then prove that our function conforms to it, and in doing so have proved beyond any doubt that it is free from bugs. All programmers already use one form of specification, specifically their programming language's type system. If a value has a specific type then, in a type-safe language, the compiler guarantees that value cannot be an instance of a different type. Many extensions to existing type systems, such as generics in Java and .NET, extend the range of programs that can be type-checked. Unfortunately, type systems can only prevent some bugs. To take a classic problem of retrieving an index value from an array, since the type system doesn't specify the length of the array, the compiler has no way of knowing that a request for the "value of index 4" from an array of only two elements is "unsafe". We restore safety via exception handling, but the ideal type system will prevent us from doing anything that is unsafe in the first place and this is where we start to borrow ideas from a language such as Haskell, with its concept of "dependent types". If the type of an array includes its length, we can ensure that any index accesses into the array are valid. The problem is that we now need to carry around the length of arrays and the values of indices throughout our code so that it can be type-checked. In general, writing the specification to prove a positive property, even for a problem very amenable to specification, such as a simple sorting algorithm, turns out to be very hard and the specification will be different for every program. Extend this to writing a specification for, say, Microsoft Word and we can see that the specification would end up being no simpler, and therefore no less buggy, than the implementation. Fortunately, it is easier to write a specification that proves that a program doesn't have certain, specific and undesirable properties, such as infinite loops or accesses to the wrong bit of memory. If we can write the specifications to prove that a program is immune to such problems, we could reuse them in many places. The problem is the lack of specification "provers" that can do this without a lot of manual intervention (i.e. hints from the programmer). All this might feel a very long way off, but computing power and our understanding of the theory of "provers" advances quickly, and Microsoft is doing some of it already. Via their Terminator research project they have started to prove that their device drivers will always terminate, and in so doing have suddenly eliminated a vast range of possible bugs. This is a huge step forward from saying, "we've tested it lots and it seems fine". What do you think? What might be good targets for specification and verification? SQL could be one: the cost of a bug in SQL Server is quite high given how many important systems rely on it, so there's a good incentive to eliminate bugs, even at high initial cost. [Many thanks to Mike Williamson for guidance and useful conversations during the writing of this piece] Cheers, Tony.

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• Video works with 'Try me' but not after install. What is the difference? U12.04LTS,

  - by HarveyP

  My hard drive got corrupted so I did a reinstall. Tested Youtube in FF during 'try me' and it worked - jerky, but it worked. Instal without all the updates (576 outstanding now) in order to get ff installed as per the demo - to no avail. In 'try me' mode ff NEVER crashed! After install ff crashed whilst I was typing in 'youtube' in the address field. When I finally got to youtube - no video. What is the difference between ff in try me and ff after install? Off to try some selected updates now to see if I can see it for myself. In previous installation I had several profiles and aliased ff with -safe-mode switch to simplify startup of most stable ff. Also found that ff startup in graphic mode worked better (but still without video) with all of the extensions disabled and all of the plugins set to "ask" and always denied ... I have SiS graphic card in SiS Motherboard for XP and ancient Hyundai ImageQuest QV770 monitor. I have Ubuntu 12.04.01 LTS 1 day after install with only the immediate upgrades requested to language pack (English UK). Using FR Alternative keyboard. Connected with domestic wifi network from Orange (FT) I really want to use Skype, but won't bother installing it (again) without video as I can do my sms on FB - whilst ff is not crashed ... Update ... Is something overflowing? I have just had to reboot in order to get ff to restart in any way shape or form - restart on crash form generates new crash form, etc. It was however a good half hour before it crashed so some improvement over conditions before disk corruption. I have now installed all of the critical updates (332 recommended updates still outstanding) which included some relating to ff. Still no video. Still crashing - especially when on Grepolis website. Since the re-install I have had a lovely 1024x768 screen, but after last ff crash and reboot I got a message about 'low graphics mode' and 'setting things myself'. I was not sufficiently tuned in at the time to take proper note - I have no doubt I shall see it again and shall report accordingly. I still have only laptop options for my screen and do not know how to rectify this. Spent a few days with ubuntu on a different, newer machine which has now suffered a graphics breakdown. Returned to this old one again, but with new flat screen Monitor. Found SIS drivers for my graphics BUT it is intended for Red Hat 7.2. I chose this over the version for 7.0 because I thought what the hell, I might not be able to do anything with either of them but this is the later one ... The file will not open with software manager - found a similar problem on Overclock but it has not helped me to install this driver. File name is sis_drv.o-410 and it is currently idling away in my Downloads folder ... I have tried the solution offered on another sis problem, but this shows that my xserver-xorg-video-sis driver is up to date. I am now at a loss as to how to proceed if I can't install the latest sis driver from sis ... Does nobody know how FF changes from "try-me" to "installed"? Any time I MUST have video I reboot from the disk again, but this is tedious! Also one of the things I mock most about MS is the constant rebooting ... UPDATE 10/6/2014 I have installed chromium-browser - worse, crashes even more often than ff.I have installed epiphany - better; Video works but not the associated soundtrack.FireFox is version 14.01 in 'try me' and version 29.0 from my install. Would it be useful to try to downgrade FireFox in order to get video?

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• edited and reversed changes on .htaccess - site starts redirecting to .comindex.php/

  - by Aurigae

  Site is a Joomla 2.5 site. I wanted to add a non www to www redirect to the htaccess file, did so, then the redirection went mad, reversed but still the site redirects. When i click view site in admin panel, i get linked to http://domain.comindex.php/ The website is http://www.domain.com Visiting the website URL works without www, but once you click on projects it acts mad too. Projects is managed with joomshopping extension. EDIT: the redirect also happens when rewrite is deactivated in admin panel. ## # @package Joomla # @copyright Copyright (C) 2005 - 2012 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved. # @license GNU General Public License version 2 or later; see LICENSE.txt ## ## # READ THIS COMPLETELY IF YOU CHOOSE TO USE THIS FILE! # # The line just below this section: 'Options +FollowSymLinks' may cause problems # with some server configurations. It is required for use of mod_rewrite, but may already # be set by your server administrator in a way that dissallows changing it in # your .htaccess file. If using it causes your server to error out, comment it out (add # to # beginning of line), reload your site in your browser and test your sef url's. If they work, # it has been set by your server administrator and you do not need it set here. ## ## Can be commented out if causes errors, see notes above. Options +FollowSymLinks ## Mod_rewrite in use. RewriteEngine On ## Begin - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits. # If you experience problems on your site block out the operations listed below # This attempts to block the most common type of exploit `attempts` to Joomla! # # Block out any script trying to base64_encode data within the URL. RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode[^(]*\([^)]*\) [OR] # Block out any script that includes a <script> tag in URL. RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (<|%3C)([^s]*s)+cript.*(>|%3E) [NC,OR] # Block out any script trying to set a PHP GLOBALS variable via URL. RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR] # Block out any script trying to modify a _REQUEST variable via URL. RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) # Return 403 Forbidden header and show the content of the root homepage RewriteRule .* index.php [F] # ## End - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits. ## Begin - Custom redirects # # If you need to redirect some pages, or set a canonical non-www to # www redirect (or vice versa), place that code here. Ensure those # redirects use the correct RewriteRule syntax and the [R=301,L] flags. # ## End - Custom redirects ## # Uncomment following line if your webserver's URL # is not directly related to physical file paths. # Update Your Joomla! Directory (just / for root). ## # RewriteBase / ## Begin - Joomla! core SEF Section. # RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}] # # If the requested path and file is not /index.php and the request # has not already been internally rewritten to the index.php script RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index\.php # and the request is for something within the component folder, # or for the site root, or for an extensionless URL, or the # requested URL ends with one of the listed extensions RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /component/|(/[^.]*|\.(php|html?|feed|pdf|vcf|raw))$ [NC] # and the requested path and file doesn't directly match a physical file RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f # and the requested path and file doesn't directly match a physical folder RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d # internally rewrite the request to the index.php script RewriteRule .* index.php [L] # ## End - Joomla! core SEF Section. Redirect 301 /index.html /index.php Redirect 301 /services /project Redirect 301 /projects/projects.html /project Redirect 301 /projects/project1.html /project Redirect 301 /projects/project2.html /project Redirect 301 /projects /project Redirect 301 /keypersonnel.html /about-agrin/keystaff Redirect 301 /cooperation.htm /about-agrin/intcoop Redirect 301 /member.html /about-agrin/memberships Redirect 301 /contact.html /contacts Redirect 301 /hr.htm /jobs Redirect 301 /index.php/404 /index.php

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• JEP 124: Enhance the Certificate Revocation-Checking API

  - by smullan

  Revocation checking is the mechanism to determine the revocation status of a certificate. If it is revoked, it is considered invalid and should not be used. Currently as of JDK 7, the PKIX implementation of java.security.cert.CertPathValidator  includes a revocation checking implementation that supports both OCSP and CRLs, the two main methods of checking revocation. However, there are very few options that allow you to configure the behavior. You can always implement your own revocation checker, but that's a lot of work. JEP 124 (Enhance the Certificate Revocation-Checking API) is one of the 11 new security features in JDK 8. This feature enhances the java.security.cert API to support various revocation settings such as best-effort checking, end-entity certificate checking, and mechanism-specific options and parameters. Let's describe each of these in more detail and show some examples. The features are provided through a new class named PKIXRevocationChecker. A PKIXRevocationChecker instance is returned by a PKIX CertPathValidator as follows: CertPathValidator cpv = CertPathValidator.getInstance("PKIX"); PKIXRevocationChecker prc = (PKIXRevocationChecker)cpv.getRevocationChecker(); You can now set various revocation options by calling different methods of the returned PKIXRevocationChecker object. For example, the best-effort option (called soft-fail) allows the revocation check to succeed if the status cannot be obtained due to a network connection failure or an overloaded server. It is enabled as follows: prc.setOptions(Enum.setOf(Option.SOFT_FAIL)); When the SOFT_FAIL option is specified, you can still obtain any exceptions that may have been thrown due to network issues. This can be useful if you want to log this information or treat it as a warning. You can obtain these exceptions by calling the getSoftFailExceptions method: List<CertPathValidatorException> exceptions = prc.getSoftFailExceptions(); Another new option called ONLY_END_ENTITY allows you to only check the revocation status of the end-entity certificate. This can improve performance, but you should be careful using this option, as the revocation status of CA certificates will not be checked. To set more than one option, simply specify them together, for example: prc.setOptions(Enum.setOf(Option.SOFT_FAIL, Option.ONLY_END_ENTITY)); By default, PKIXRevocationChecker will try to check the revocation status of a certificate using OCSP first, and then CRLs as a fallback. However, you can switch the order using the PREFER_CRLS option, or disable the fallback altogether using the NO_FALLBACK option. For example, here is how you would only use CRLs to check the revocation status: prc.setOptions(Enum.setOf(Option.PREFER_CRLS, Option.NO_FALLBACK)); There are also a number of other useful methods which allow you to specify various options such as the OCSP responder URI, the trusted OCSP responder certificate, and OCSP request extensions. However, one of the most useful features is the ability to specify a cached OCSP response with the setOCSPResponse method. This can be quite useful if the OCSPResponse has already been obtained, for example in a protocol that uses OCSP stapling. After you have set all of your preferred options, you must add the PKIXRevocationChecker to your PKIXParameters object as one of your custom CertPathCheckers before you validate the certificate chain, as follows: PKIXParameters params = new PKIXParameters(keystore); params.addCertPathChecker(prc); CertPathValidatorResult result = cpv.validate(path, params); Early access binaries of JDK 8 can be downloaded from http://jdk8.java.net/download.html

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• Custom Text and Binary Payloads using WebSocket (TOTD #186)

  - by arungupta

  TOTD #185 explained how to process text and binary payloads in a WebSocket endpoint. In summary, a text payload may be received as public void receiveTextMessage(String message) {    . . . } And binary payload may be received as: public void recieveBinaryMessage(ByteBuffer message) {    . . .} As you realize, both of these methods receive the text and binary data in raw format. However you may like to receive and send the data using a POJO. This marshaling and unmarshaling can be done in the method implementation but JSR 356 API provides a cleaner way. For encoding and decoding text payload into POJO, Decoder.Text (for inbound payload) and Encoder.Text (for outbound payload) interfaces need to be implemented. A sample implementation below shows how text payload consisting of JSON structures can be encoded and decoded. public class MyMessage implements Decoder.Text<MyMessage>, Encoder.Text<MyMessage> {     private JsonObject jsonObject;    @Override    public MyMessage decode(String string) throws DecodeException {        this.jsonObject = new JsonReader(new StringReader(string)).readObject();               return this;    }     @Override    public boolean willDecode(String string) {        return true;    }     @Override    public String encode(MyMessage myMessage) throws EncodeException {        return myMessage.jsonObject.toString();    } public JsonObject getObject() { return jsonObject; }} In this implementation, the decode method decodes incoming text payload to MyMessage, the encode method encodes MyMessage for the outgoing text payload, and the willDecode method returns true or false if the message can be decoded. The encoder and decoder implementation classes need to be specified in the WebSocket endpoint as: @WebSocketEndpoint(value="/endpoint", encoders={MyMessage.class}, decoders={MyMessage.class}) public class MyEndpoint { public MyMessage receiveMessage(MyMessage message) { . . . } } Notice the updated method signature where the application is working with MyMessage instead of the raw string. Note that the encoder and decoder implementations just illustrate the point and provide no validation or exception handling. Similarly Encooder.Binary and Decoder.Binary interfaces need to be implemented for encoding and decoding binary payload. Here are some references for you: JSR 356: Java API for WebSocket - Specification (Early Draft) and Implementation (already integrated in GlassFish 4 promoted builds) TOTD #183 - Getting Started with WebSocket in GlassFish TOTD #184 - Logging WebSocket Frames using Chrome Developer Tools, Net-internals and Wireshark TOTD #185: Processing Text and Binary (Blob, ArrayBuffer, ArrayBufferView) Payload in WebSocket Subsequent blogs will discuss the following topics (not necessary in that order) ... Error handling Interface-driven WebSocket endpoint Java client API Client and Server configuration Security Subprotocols Extensions Other topics from the API

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• Why is the framerate (fps) capped at 60?

  - by dennmat

  ISSUE I recently moved a project from my laptop to my desktop(machine info below). On my laptop the exact same code displays the fps(and ms/f) correctly. On my desktop it does not. What I mean by this is on the laptop it will display 300 fps(for example) where on my desktop it will show only up to 60. If I add 100 objects to the game on the laptop I'll see my frame rate drop accordingly; the same test on the desktop results in no change and the frames stay at 60. It takes a lot(~300) entities before I'll see a frame drop on the desktop, then it will descend. It seems as though its "theoretical" frames would be 400 or 500 but will never actually get to that and only do 60 until there's too much to handle at 60. This 60 frame cap is coming from no where. I'm not doing any frame limiting myself. It seems like something external is limiting my loop iterations on the desktop, but for the last couple days I've been scratching my head trying to figure out how to debug this. SETUPS Desktop: Visual Studio Express 2012 Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Laptop: Visual Studio Express 2010 Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit The libraries(allegro, box2d) are the same versions on both setups. CODE Main Loop: while(!abort) { frameTime = al_get_time(); if (frameTime - lastTime >= 1.0) { lastFps = fps/(frameTime - lastTime); lastTime = frameTime; avgMspf = cumMspf/fps; cumMspf = 0.0; fps = 0; } /** DRAWING/UPDATE CODE **/ fps++; cumMspf += al_get_time() - frameTime; } Note: There is no blocking code in the loop at any point. Where I'm at My understanding of al_get_time() is that it can return different resolutions depending on the system. However the resolution is never worse than seconds, and the double is represented as [seconds].[finer-resolution] and seeing as I'm only checking for a whole second al_get_time() shouldn't be responsible. My project settings and compiler options are the same. And I promise its the same code on both machines. My googling really didn't help me much, and although technically it's not that big of a deal. I'd really like to figure this out or perhaps have it explained, whichever comes first. Even just an idea of how to go about figuring out possible causes, because I'm out of ideas. Any help at all is greatly appreciated. EDIT: Thanks All. For any others that find this to disable vSync(windows only) in opengl: First get "wglext.h". It's all over the web. Then you can use a tool like GLee or just write your own quick extensions manager like: bool WGLExtensionSupported(const char *extension_name) { PFNWGLGETEXTENSIONSSTRINGEXTPROC _wglGetExtensionsStringEXT = NULL; _wglGetExtensionsStringEXT = (PFNWGLGETEXTENSIONSSTRINGEXTPROC) wglGetProcAddress("wglGetExtensionsStringEXT"); if (strstr(_wglGetExtensionsStringEXT(), extension_name) == NULL) { return false; } return true; } and then create and setup your function pointers: PFNWGLSWAPINTERVALEXTPROC wglSwapIntervalEXT = NULL; PFNWGLGETSWAPINTERVALEXTPROC wglGetSwapIntervalEXT = NULL; if (WGLExtensionSupported("WGL_EXT_swap_control")) { // Extension is supported, init pointers. wglSwapIntervalEXT = (PFNWGLSWAPINTERVALEXTPROC) wglGetProcAddress("wglSwapIntervalEXT"); // this is another function from WGL_EXT_swap_control extension wglGetSwapIntervalEXT = (PFNWGLGETSWAPINTERVALEXTPROC) wglGetProcAddress("wglGetSwapIntervalEXT"); } Then just call wglSwapIntervalEXT(0) to disable vSync and 1 to enable vSync. I found the reason this is windows only is that openGl actually doesn't deal with anything other than rendering it leaves the rest up to the OS and Hardware. Thanks everyone saved me a lot of time!

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• The long road to bug-free software

  - by Tony Davis

  The past decade has seen a burgeoning interest in functional programming languages such as Haskell or, in the Microsoft world, F#. Though still on the periphery of mainstream programming, functional programming concepts are gradually seeping into the imperative C# language (for example, Lambda expressions have their root in functional programming). One of the more interesting concepts from functional programming languages is the use of formal methods, the lofty ideal behind which is bug-free software. The idea is that we write a specification that describes exactly how our function (say) should behave. We then prove that our function conforms to it, and in doing so have proved beyond any doubt that it is free from bugs. All programmers already use one form of specification, specifically their programming language's type system. If a value has a specific type then, in a type-safe language, the compiler guarantees that value cannot be an instance of a different type. Many extensions to existing type systems, such as generics in Java and .NET, extend the range of programs that can be type-checked. Unfortunately, type systems can only prevent some bugs. To take a classic problem of retrieving an index value from an array, since the type system doesn't specify the length of the array, the compiler has no way of knowing that a request for the "value of index 4" from an array of only two elements is "unsafe". We restore safety via exception handling, but the ideal type system will prevent us from doing anything that is unsafe in the first place and this is where we start to borrow ideas from a language such as Haskell, with its concept of "dependent types". If the type of an array includes its length, we can ensure that any index accesses into the array are valid. The problem is that we now need to carry around the length of arrays and the values of indices throughout our code so that it can be type-checked. In general, writing the specification to prove a positive property, even for a problem very amenable to specification, such as a simple sorting algorithm, turns out to be very hard and the specification will be different for every program. Extend this to writing a specification for, say, Microsoft Word and we can see that the specification would end up being no simpler, and therefore no less buggy, than the implementation. Fortunately, it is easier to write a specification that proves that a program doesn't have certain, specific and undesirable properties, such as infinite loops or accesses to the wrong bit of memory. If we can write the specifications to prove that a program is immune to such problems, we could reuse them in many places. The problem is the lack of specification "provers" that can do this without a lot of manual intervention (i.e. hints from the programmer). All this might feel a very long way off, but computing power and our understanding of the theory of "provers" advances quickly, and Microsoft is doing some of it already. Via their Terminator research project they have started to prove that their device drivers will always terminate, and in so doing have suddenly eliminated a vast range of possible bugs. This is a huge step forward from saying, "we've tested it lots and it seems fine". What do you think? What might be good targets for specification and verification? SQL could be one: the cost of a bug in SQL Server is quite high given how many important systems rely on it, so there's a good incentive to eliminate bugs, even at high initial cost. [Many thanks to Mike Williamson for guidance and useful conversations during the writing of this piece] Cheers, Tony.

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• High Resolution Timeouts

  - by user12607257

  The default resolution of application timers and timeouts is now 1 msec in Solaris 11.1, down from 10 msec in previous releases. This improves out-of-the-box performance of polling and event based applications, such as ticker applications, and even the Oracle rdbms log writer. More on that in a moment. As a simple example, the poll() system call takes a timeout argument in units of msec: System Calls poll(2) NAME poll - input/output multiplexing SYNOPSIS int poll(struct pollfd fds[], nfds_t nfds, int timeout); In Solaris 11, a call to poll(NULL,0,1) returns in 10 msec, because even though a 1 msec interval is requested, the implementation rounds to the system clock resolution of 10 msec. In Solaris 11.1, this call returns in 1 msec. In specification lawyer terms, the resolution of CLOCK_REALTIME, introduced by POSIX.1b real time extensions, is now 1 msec. The function clock_getres(CLOCK_REALTIME,&res) returns 1 msec, and any library calls whose man page explicitly mention CLOCK_REALTIME, such as nanosleep(), are subject to the new resolution. Additionally, many legacy functions that pre-date POSIX.1b and do not explicitly mention a clock domain, such as poll(), are subject to the new resolution. Here is a fairly comprehensive list: nanosleep pthread_mutex_timedlock pthread_mutex_reltimedlock_np pthread_rwlock_timedrdlock pthread_rwlock_reltimedrdlock_np pthread_rwlock_timedwrlock pthread_rwlock_reltimedwrlock_np mq_timedreceive mq_reltimedreceive_np mq_timedsend mq_reltimedsend_np sem_timedwait sem_reltimedwait_np poll select pselect _lwp_cond_timedwait _lwp_cond_reltimedwait semtimedop sigtimedwait aiowait aio_waitn aio_suspend port_get port_getn cond_timedwait cond_reltimedwait setitimer (ITIMER_REAL) misc rpc calls, misc ldap calls This change in resolution was made feasible because we made the implementation of timeouts more efficient a few years back when we re-architected the callout subsystem of Solaris. Previously, timeouts were tested and expired by the kernel's clock thread which ran 100 times per second, yielding a resolution of 10 msec. This did not scale, as timeouts could be posted by every CPU, but were expired by only a single thread. The resolution could be changed by setting hires_tick=1 in /etc/system, but this caused the clock thread to run at 1000 Hz, which made the potential scalability problem worse. Given enough CPUs posting enough timeouts, the clock thread could be a performance bottleneck. We fixed that by re-implementing the timeout as a per-CPU timer interrupt (using the cyclic subsystem, for those familiar with Solaris internals). This decoupled the clock thread frequency from timeout resolution, and allowed us to improve default timeout resolution without adding CPU overhead in the clock thread. Here are some exceptions for which the default resolution is still 10 msec. The thread scheduler's time quantum is 10 msec by default, because preemption is driven by the clock thread (plus helper threads for scalability). See for example dispadmin, priocntl, fx_dptbl, rt_dptbl, and ts_dptbl. This may be changed using hires_tick. The resolution of the clock_t data type, primarily used in DDI functions, is 10 msec. It may be changed using hires_tick. These functions are only used by developers writing kernel modules. A few functions that pre-date POSIX CLOCK_REALTIME mention _SC_CLK_TCK, CLK_TCK, "system clock", or no clock domain. These functions are still driven by the clock thread, and their resolution is 10 msec. They include alarm, pcsample, times, clock, and setitimer for ITIMER_VIRTUAL and ITIMER_PROF. Their resolution may be changed using hires_tick. Now back to the database. How does this help the Oracle log writer? Foreground processes post a redo record to the log writer, which releases them after the redo has committed. When a large number of foregrounds are waiting, the release step can slow down the log writer, so under heavy load, the foregrounds switch to a mode where they poll for completion. This scales better because every foreground can poll independently, but at the cost of waiting the minimum polling interval. That was 10 msec, but is now 1 msec in Solaris 11.1, so the foregrounds process transactions faster under load. Pretty cool.

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• ????????????????? Oracle Solaris ??? - Solaris 11 ????

  - by kazun

  ???????????????? OS ????????????????????? 20 ??????????????????? Solaris?????????????????????? OS????????????????????????Solaris ???????????????????? ??????Solaris ?????????????? 4 ????????????????????? Oracle Solaris 11 ??????????????? [????????????]???? ?(????????????? ???)???? ?(??????????????)???? ?(????????)???? ?(?????????????????)(50??) Oracle Solaris 11 ??????? ???:Oracle Solaris 11??????? Solaris ??????????????????????????????????????????????Oracle Solaris 10 ?????????????????Oracle Solaris 11 ???Oracle Solaris ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Oracle Solaris ??????????????????????????Oracle Solaris ????????????????????????????????????????? ??:??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Oracle Solaris 11 ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Oracle Solaris 11 ????????????? ???:Oracle Solaris 11 ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Oracle Solaris ??????????????????????Solaris ????????????????????????Oracle Solaris 11 ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Oracle Solaris 11 ??????????????? ??:???????????????????ZFS?????????????Oracle Solaris ???????????????????????????????????????IPS???????????????????????? ??:?????????????????????? OS ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? OS ????? Oracle Solaris 11 ??? ??:????????????????????????????????????????????????? Oracle Solaris 11 ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??:????????????????????Solaris Trusted Extensions ? Solaris ????????????Privilege ????????????????????????????????Solaris 10 ???????????????????? ??:UNIX ?????????????????????????????????????Oracle Solaris 11 ??????????????????????????????????????????????????ZFS ??????????????????????????????????????????????????Oracle Solaris ?????????????????????????????????? ???:Oracle Solaris ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Oracle Solaris 11 ??????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????Oracle Solaris 11 ??:Oracle Solaris ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ZFS ?????????????????????????????????????????????? ??:?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Oracle Solaris ??????????????????????? ??:DTrace ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??:???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???:?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Solaris ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??:?????????????????? Solaris 10 ?????????????????????????????????????? ???:ISV ??????????????????????????????? ????????????????? T4 ??????????????? T ?????? 5 ???????????????????????????????????? CPU ?????????????????? OS ? Solaris ??????????????????????????????????????????????? ??:???????????????? OS ???? Solaris ???????????????????????????????????????????????????? Oracle Solaris ????????? ??:???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ZFS ?????????????????????????ZFS ??????????????????????????????????????? ???:Linux ??????????????????????????Solaris 11 ?????????????????????? GNU ????????????????????????????Solaris ?????????(Oracle Solaris Studio)????????????? Oracle Solaris Studio ?Linux??????????????Linux ??????????? Solaris ????????????????Linux ? Oracle Solaris Studio ?????????????????????????? Solaris ??????????????????? ??:??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????BCP(??????)??????????????????? ??:???????? Solaris 11 ?????? IA Server ?????????????????????????????????????????????…???????????Windows ????????????????????? Oracle Virtual Box ????????? Oracle Solaris 11 ??????????? ??:???Oracle Solaris ????????(?)??????????????ZFS???DTrace?????????????????????????????????????Solaris ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Solaris ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??:??? 3 ??????????????????????????????????????Oracle Solaris 11 ???????????? ??:???????????????????? OS ??????????????????????????Oracle Solaris 11 ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???:???????????? Solaris ???????????????Solaris 10 ???? 6 ??????????????????????????????????Oracle Solaris ?????????????????????????????? ?????? Oracle Solaris 10 Oracle Solaris 11

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• Windows Workflow Foundation 4 (WF4) Bookmark

  - by Russ Clark

  I'm working with Visual Studio 2010 and have a workflow where I'm trying to resume a bookmark. The bookmark appears to be getting set just fine, but when I try to run the code below to resume it, I get an entry in the InstancesTable in the persistence database with the SurrogateLockOwnerID field set to an integer, usually this field is null, and I can no longer do anything with the workflow. I think this is indicating that I have some kind of blocking lock going on, but I can't find any references anywhere to the SurrogateLockOwnerID. Does anyone know what is causing this, and how to fix it? WorkflowApplication workflowApp = new WorkflowApplication(new WebCARSWorkflow()); workflowApp.Extensions.Add(new SqlTrackingParticipant(ConnString)); InstanceStore instanceStore = new SqlWorkflowInstanceStore(ConnString); workflowApp.InstanceStore = instanceStore; workflowApp.Load(WorkflowInstanceId); workflowApp.PersistableIdle = (waie) => PersistableIdleAction.Unload; Approver actualApprover = new Approver(ProcessingStatus.Awaiting, my_RDA_Role, "RDAGetPlayersFromExternalRoleURI", 14); actualApprover.ActionDate = DateTime.Now; Player actualPlayer = (Player)GetPlayer(login); actualApprover.ActualPlayer = actualPlayer; actualApprover.ApproverAction = action; workflowApp.ResumeBookmark("ErrorOccurredBookmark", actualApprover);

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• Making TeamCity integrate the Subversion build number into the assembly version.

  - by Lasse V. Karlsen

  I want to adjust the output from my TeamCity build configuration of my class library so that the produced dll files have the following version number: 3.5.0.x, where x is the subversion revision number that TeamCity has picked up. I've found that I can use the BUILD_NUMBER environment variable to get x, but unfortunately I don't understand what else I need to do. The "tutorials" I find all say "You just add this to the script", but they don't say which script, and "this" is usually referring to the AssemblyInfo task from the MSBuild Community Extensions. Do I need to build a custom MSBuild script somehow to use this? Is the "script" the same as either the solution file or the C# project file? I don't know much about the MSBuild process at all, except that I can pass a solution file directly to MSBuild, but what I need to add to "the script" is XML, and the solution file decidedly does not look like XML. So, can anyone point me to a step-by-step guide on how to make this work? This is what I ended up with: Install the MSBuild Community Tasks Edit the .csproj file of my core class library, and change the bottom so that it reads: <Import Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" /> <Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\MSBuildCommunityTasks\MSBuild.Community.Tasks.Targets" /> <Target Name="BeforeBuild"> <AssemblyInfo Condition=" '$(BUILD_NUMBER)' != '' " CodeLanguage="CS" OutputFile="$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\..\GlobalInfo.cs" AssemblyVersion="3.5.0.0" AssemblyFileVersion="$(BUILD_NUMBER)" /> </Target> <Target Name="AfterBuild"> Change all my AssemblyInfo.cs files so that they don't specify either AssemblyVersion or AssemblyFileVersion (in retrospect, I'll look into putting AssemblyVersion back) Added a link to the now global GlobalInfo.cs that is located just outside all the project Make sure this file is built once, so that I have a default file in source control This will now update GlobalInfo.cs only if the environment variable BUILD_NUMBER is set, which it is when I build through TeamCity. I opted for keeping AssemblyVersion constant, so that references still work, and only update AssemblyFileVersion, so that I can see which build a dll is from.

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• Random DNS Client Issue with BIND9/Windows Server 2003 DNS

  - by upkels

  Within our office, we have a local server running DNS, for internal related "domains", (e.g. .internal, .office, .lan, .vpn, etc.). Randomly, only the hosts configured with those extensions will stop resolving on the Windows-based workstations. Sometimes it'll work for a couple weeks without issue on one machine, then suddenly stop working, or it'll happen on another 15 times per day. It's completely random for all workstations. When troubleshooting, I have opened up a command prompt, and issued various nslookup commands for some of these hosts, and they resolve, however I've been told that nslookup uses different "libraries" for name resolution than other applications such as web browsers, email clients, etc. The only solution thus far, is manually restarting the Windows DNS Client on each workstation when this happens. Issuing the ipconfig /flushdns command multiple times helps every now and then, but is not successful enough to even attempt before restarting the DNS Client. I have tried two different DNS servers; BIND9, and Windows Server 2003 R2 DNS, and the behavior is the same. We have a single Netgear JGS524 switch all workstations and servers are connected to within the office, and a Linksys SR224G switch in another department with workstations attached.

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• pylucene: install error

  - by Pradeep

  I am trying to install Pylucene (pylucene-3.3-3-src.tar.gz) on my ubuntu linux 11.10. I have python 2.7.2. I was able to compile JCC (I think) because I didnt see any error when I installed it. When I tried to install Pylucene I get the following error. Can someone help? Thanks. ICU not installed /usr/bin/python -m jcc --shared --jar lucene-java-3.3/lucene/build/lucene-core-3.3.jar --jar lucene-java-3.3/lucene/build/contrib/analyzers/common/lucene-analyzers-3.3.jar --jar lucene-java-3.3/lucene/build/contrib/memory/lucene-memory-3.3.jar --jar lucene-java-3.3/lucene/build/contrib/highlighter/lucene-highlighter-3.3.jar --jar build/jar/extensions.jar --jar lucene-java-3.3/lucene/build/contrib/queries/lucene-queries-3.3.jar --jar lucene-java-3.3/lucene/build/contrib/grouping/lucene-grouping-3.3.jar --package java.lang java.lang.System java.lang.Runtime --package java.util java.util.Arrays java.util.HashMap java.util.HashSet java.text.SimpleDateFormat java.text.DecimalFormat java.text.Collator --package java.util.regex --package java.io java.io.StringReader java.io.InputStreamReader java.io.FileInputStream --exclude org.apache.lucene.queryParser.Token --exclude org.apache.lucene.queryParser.TokenMgrError --exclude org.apache.lucene.queryParser.QueryParserTokenManager --exclude org.apache.lucene.queryParser.ParseException --exclude org.apache.lucene.search.regex.JakartaRegexpCapabilities --exclude org.apache.regexp.RegexpTunnel --exclude org.apache.lucene.analysis.cn.smart.AnalyzerProfile --python lucene --mapping org.apache.lucene.document.Document 'get:(Ljava/lang/String;)Ljava/lang/String;' --mapping java.util.Properties 'getProperty:(Ljava/lang/String;)Ljava/lang/String;' --sequence java.util.AbstractList 'size:()I' 'get:(I)Ljava/lang/Object;' --rename org.apache.lucene.search.highlight.SpanScorer=HighlighterSpanScorer --version 3.3 --module python/collections.py --module python/ICUNormalizer2Filter.py --module python/ICUFoldingFilter.py --module python/ICUTransformFilter.py --files 3 --build /usr/bin/python: No module named jcc make: *** [compile] Error 1 Here is my Makefile configuration which I uncommented PREFIX_PYTHON=/usr ANT=ant PYTHON=$(PREFIX_PYTHON)/bin/python JCC=$(PYTHON) -m jcc --shared NUM_FILES=3

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• Hidden Features of C#?

  - by Serhat Özgel

  This came to my mind after I learned the following from this question: where T : struct We, C# developers, all know the basics of C#. I mean declarations, conditionals, loops, operators, etc. Some of us even mastered the stuff like Generics, anonymous types, lambdas, linq, ... But what are the most hidden features or tricks of C# that even C# fans, addicts, experts barely know? Here are the revealed features so far: Keywords yield by Michael Stum var by Michael Stum using() statement by kokos readonly by kokos as by Mike Stone as / is by Ed Swangren as / is (improved) by Rocketpants default by deathofrats global:: by pzycoman using() blocks by AlexCuse volatile by Jakub Šturc extern alias by Jakub Šturc Attributes DefaultValueAttribute by Michael Stum ObsoleteAttribute by DannySmurf DebuggerDisplayAttribute by Stu DebuggerBrowsable and DebuggerStepThrough by bdukes ThreadStaticAttribute by marxidad FlagsAttribute by Martin Clarke ConditionalAttribute by AndrewBurns Syntax ?? operator by kokos number flaggings by Nick Berardi where T:new by Lars Mæhlum implicit generics by Keith one-parameter lambdas by Keith auto properties by Keith namespace aliases by Keith verbatim string literals with @ by Patrick enum values by lfoust @variablenames by marxidad event operators by marxidad format string brackets by Portman property accessor accessibility modifiers by xanadont ternary operator (?:) by JasonS checked and unchecked operators by Binoj Antony implicit and explicit operators by Flory Language Features Nullable types by Brad Barker Currying by Brian Leahy anonymous types by Keith __makeref __reftype __refvalue by Judah Himango object initializers by lomaxx format strings by David in Dakota Extension Methods by marxidad partial methods by Jon Erickson preprocessor directives by John Asbeck DEBUG pre-processor directive by Robert Durgin operator overloading by SefBkn type inferrence by chakrit boolean operators taken to next level by Rob Gough pass value-type variable as interface without boxing by Roman Boiko programmatically determine declared variable type by Roman Boiko Static Constructors by Chris Easier-on-the-eyes / condensed ORM-mapping using LINQ by roosteronacid Visual Studio Features select block of text in editor by Himadri snippets by DannySmurf Framework TransactionScope by KiwiBastard DependantTransaction by KiwiBastard Nullable<T> by IainMH Mutex by Diago System.IO.Path by ageektrapped WeakReference by Juan Manuel Methods and Properties String.IsNullOrEmpty() method by KiwiBastard List.ForEach() method by KiwiBastard BeginInvoke(), EndInvoke() methods by Will Dean Nullable<T>.HasValue and Nullable<T>.Value properties by Rismo GetValueOrDefault method by John Sheehan Tips & Tricks nice method for event handlers by Andreas H.R. Nilsson uppercase comparisons by John access anonymous types without reflection by dp a quick way to lazily instantiate collection properties by Will JavaScript-like anonymous inline-functions by roosteronacid Other netmodules by kokos LINQBridge by Duncan Smart Parallel Extensions by Joel Coehoorn

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• Can somebody explain the differences, status and future of the various ASP.NET AJAX libraries and to

  - by tjrobinson

  I'm confused about the differences and relationships between the various Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX components/libraries/toolkits and particularly the naming of them. It starts off relatively simple with ASP.NET AJAX itself: ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 (available for ASP.NET 2.0 in a separate package called ASP.NET 1.0 Extensions) ASP.NET AJAX 3.5 (included with ASP.NET 3.5) ASP.NET AJAX 4.0 (included with ASP.NET 4.0) Then come the various projects on CodePlex and elsewhere: ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit (aka Original Ajax Control Toolkit) Samples CodePlex It seems that the September 2009 Release is the final release of the Original Ajax Control Toolkit and that it's been superseded by... Ajax Control Toolkit in ASP.NET Ajax Library It looks like the old ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit has now become part of a larger ASP.NET Ajax Library but is still maintained seperately on CodePlex. This release is in beta at time of writing so presumably if I want to use the "Control Toolkit" I should stick with the September 2009 Release of the Original ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit CodePlex Microsoft Ajax Library Preview Is this the same as the ASP.NET Ajax Library mentioned above just with a confusing name variation? Is the "Control Toolkit" included in Preview 6 and is it older newer or older than the code in Ajax Control Toolkit in ASP.NET Ajax Library? CodePlex Microsoft ASP.NET Ajax Wiki - note the inconsistent insertion of ASP.NET into the name Links to useful articles, roadmaps would be useful.

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