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• Oracle OpenWorld Preview: Real World Perspectives from Oracle WebCenter Customers

  - by Christie Flanagan

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} If you frequent the Oracle WebCenter blog you’ve probably read a lot about the customer experience revolution over the last few months.  An important aspect of the customer experience revolution is the increasing role that peers play in influencing how others perceive a product, brand or solution, simply by sharing their own, real-world experiences.  Think about it, who do you trust more -- marketers and sales people pitching polished messages or peers with similar roles and similar challenges to the ones you face in your business every day? With this spirit in mind, this polished marketer personally invites you to hear directly from Oracle WebCenter customers about their real-life experiences during our customer panel sessions at Oracle OpenWorld next week.  If you’re currently using WebCenter, thinking about it, or just want to find out more about best practices in social business, next-generation portals, enterprise content management or web experience management, be sure to attend these sessions: CON8899 - Becoming a Social Business: Stories from the Front Lines of Change Wednesday, Oct 3, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West - 3000Priscilla Hancock - Vice President/CIO, University of Louisville Kellie Christensen - Director of Information Technology, Banner EngineeringWhat does it really mean to be a social business? How can you change your organization to embrace social approaches? What pitfalls do you need to avoid? In this lively panel discussion, customer and industry thought leaders in social business explore these topics and more as they share their stories of the good, the bad, and the ugly that can happen when embracing social methods and technologies to improve business success. Using moderated questions and open Q&A from the audience, the panel discusses vital topics such as the critical factors for success, the major issues to avoid, how to gain senior executive support for social efforts, how to handle undesired behavior, and how to measure business impact. This session will take a thought-provoking look at becoming a social business from the inside. CON8900 - Building Next-Generation Portals: An Interactive Customer Panel DiscussionWednesday, Oct 3, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West - 3000Roberts Wayne - Director, IT, Canadian Partnership Against CancerMike Beattie - VP Application Development, Aramark Uniform ServicesJohn Chen - Utilities Services Manager 6, Los Angeles Department of Water & PowerJörg Modlmayr - Head of Product Managment, Siemens AGSocial and collaborative technologies have changed how people interact, learn, and collaborate, and providing a modern, social Web presence is imperative to remain competitive in today’s market. Can your business benefit from a more collaborative and interactive portal environment for employees, customers, and partners? Attend this session to hear from Oracle WebCenter Portal customers as they share their strategies and best practices for providing users with a modern experience that adapts to their needs and includes personalized access to content in context. The panel also addresses how customers have benefited from creating next-generation portals by migrating from older portal technologies to Oracle WebCenter Portal. CON8898 - Land Mines, Potholes, and Dirt Roads: Navigating the Way to ECM NirvanaThursday, Oct 4, 12:45 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West - 3001Stephen Madsen - Senior Management Consultant, Alberta Agriculture and Rural DevelopmentHimanshu Parikh - Sr. Director, Enterprise Architecture & Middleware, Ross Stores, Inc.Ten years ago, people were predicting that by this time in history, we’d be some kind of utopian paperless society. As we all know, we're not there yet, but are we getting closer? What is keeping companies from driving down the road to enterprise content management bliss? Most people understand that using ECM as a central platform enables organizations to expedite document-centric processes, but most business processes in organizations are still heavily paper-based. Many of these processes could be automated and improved with an ECM platform infrastructure. In this panel discussion, you’ll hear from Oracle WebCenter customers that have already solved some of these challenges as they share their strategies for success and roads to avoid along your journey. CON8897 - Using Web Experience Management to Drive Online Marketing SuccessThursday, Oct 4, 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West - 3001Blane Nelson - Chief Architect, Ancestry.comMike Remedios - CIO, ArbonneCaitlin Scanlon - Product Manager, Monster WorldwideEvery year, the online channel becomes more imperative for driving organizational top-line revenue, but for many companies, mastering how to best market their products and services in a fast-evolving online world with high customer expectations for personalized experiences can be a complex proposition. Come to this panel discussion, and hear directly from customers on how they are succeeding today by using Web experience management to drive marketing success, using capabilities such as targeting and optimization, user-generated content, mobile site publishing, and site visitor personalization to deliver engaging online experiences. Your Handy Guide to WebCenter at Oracle OpenWorld Want a quick and easy guide to all the keynotes, demos, hands-on labs and WebCenter sessions you definitely don't want to miss at Oracle OpenWorld? Download this handy guide, Focus on WebCenter. More helpful links: * Oracle OpenWorld* Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld* Oracle OpenWorld on Facebook * Oracle OpenWorld on Twitter* Oracle OpenWorld on LinkedIn* Oracle OpenWorld Blog

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• Are you cashing in on the MVP complimentary subscriptions ?

  - by Tarun Arora

  The two most asked questions in the Microsoft technology communities around the Microsoft MVP program are, 1. How do I become a Microsoft MVP? 2. What benefits do I get as an MVP? The answer to the first question has been well answered here. In this blog post, I’ll try and answer the second question.           Please find a comprehensive list of Not for Resale personal subscriptions of various products that Microsoft MVP’s are eligible for Product Description Details JetBrains Resharper, dotTrace, dotCover & WebStorm  https://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/buy/mvp.html RedGate Sql server development, database administration, .net development, azure development (merged with Cerebrata), mySQL development, Oracle development http://www.red-gate.com/community/mvp-program Pluralsight Pluralsight on demand training http://blog.pluralsight.com/2011/02/28/pluralsight-for-mvp/ Cerebrata Cloud storage studio and Azure Diagnostic Manager (part of redgate now) https://www.cerebrata.com/Offers/mvp.aspx Telerik Telerik Ultimate collection & Telerik TeamPulse http://blogs.telerik.com/blogs/posts/11-03-01/telerik-gift-for-microsoft-mvps.aspx Developer Express DevEx controls http://www.devexpress.com/Home/Community/mvp.xml InnerWorking 600 hours of .net training catalogue http://www.innerworkings.com/mvp Typemock Typemock Isolator, Typemock Isolator for Sharepoint developers, Typemock Isolator for web developers, TestDriven.NET http://www.typemock.com/mvp SpeakFlow A suite of tools for creating, managing, and delivering non-linear presentations http://www.speakflow.com/ TechSmith Camtasia Studio, SnagIt, screen cast http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html Altova Altova XML spy http://www.altova.com/xml-editor/ Visual SVN VisualSVN Subversion integration plug-in for Visual Studio http://www.visualsvn.com/visualsvn/purchase/mvp/ PreEmptive Solution Professional PreEmptive Analytics, Dotfuscator http://www.preemptive.com/landing/mvp Armadillo Armadillo Adaptive Bug Prevention http://www.armadilloverdrive.com/ IS Decisions NFR license to Userlock, RemoteExec, FileAudit & WinReporter http://www.isdecisions.com/download/mvp-mct-program.htm Idera SQL tools http://www.idera.com/Content/Home.aspx West Wind Help Builder Help builder solution http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/2005/Mar/09/Are-you-a-Microsoft-MVP-Get-a-FREE-copy-of-West-Wind-Html-Help-Builder Bamboo Sharepoint tools http://community.bamboosolutions.com/blogs/partner-advantage-program/archive/2008/08/01/partner-advantage-program-mvp.aspx Nitriq Nitriq code analysis http://blog.nitriq.com/FreeLicensesForMicrosoftMVPs.aspx ByteScout Components, Libraries and Developer Tools http://bytescout.com/buy/purchase_nfr_for_mvp.html YourKit Java and .net Profiler http://yourkit.com/.net/profiler/index.jsp Aspose .NET components http://www.aspose.com/corporate/community/2012_05_08_nfr-licenses-for-community-leaders.aspx Apart from google bing fu; stackoverflow and breathtech were a great help in compiling the above list. If you know of any other benefits, offers or complimentary subscriptions on offer for MVPs not cover in the list above, please add to the comment thread and I’ll have it updated in the list. Enjoy

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• What&rsquo;s New in ASP.NET 4.0 Part Two: WebForms and Visual Studio Enhancements

  - by Rick Strahl

  In the last installment I talked about the core changes in the ASP.NET runtime that I’ve been taking advantage of. In this column, I’ll cover the changes to the Web Forms engine and some of the cool improvements in Visual Studio that make Web and general development easier. WebForms The WebForms engine is the area that has received most significant changes in ASP.NET 4.0. Probably the most widely anticipated features are related to managing page client ids and of ViewState on WebForm pages. Take Control of Your ClientIDs Unique ClientID generation in ASP.NET has been one of the most complained about “features” in ASP.NET. Although there’s a very good technical reason for these unique generated ids - they guarantee unique ids for each and every server control on a page - these unique and generated ids often get in the way of client-side JavaScript development and CSS styling as it’s often inconvenient and fragile to work with the long, generated ClientIDs. In ASP.NET 4.0 you can now specify an explicit client id mode on each control or each naming container parent control to control how client ids are generated. By default, ASP.NET generates mangled client ids for any control contained in a naming container (like a Master Page, or a User Control for example). The key to ClientID management in ASP.NET 4.0 are the new ClientIDMode and ClientIDRowSuffix properties. ClientIDMode supports four different ClientID generation settings shown below. For the following examples, imagine that you have a Textbox control named txtName inside of a master page control container on a WebForms page. <%@Page Language="C#"      MasterPageFile="~/Site.Master"     CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="WebApplication1.WebForm2"  %> <asp:Content ID="content"  ContentPlaceHolderID="content"               runat="server"               ClientIDMode="Static" >       <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName" /> </asp:Content> The four available ClientIDMode values are: AutoID This is the existing behavior in ASP.NET 1.x-3.x where full naming container munging takes place. <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"        id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> This should be familiar to any ASP.NET developer and results in fairly unpredictable client ids that can easily change if the containership hierarchy changes. For example, removing the master page changes the name in this case, so if you were to move a block of script code that works against the control to a non-Master page, the script code immediately breaks. Static This option is the most deterministic setting that forces the control’s ClientID to use its ID value directly. No naming container naming at all is applied and you end up with clean client ids: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName"         type="text" id="txtName" /> Note that the name property which is used for postback variables to the server still is munged, but the ClientID property is displayed simply as the ID value that you have assigned to the control. This option is what most of us want to use, but you have to be clear on that because it can potentially cause conflicts with other controls on the page. If there are several instances of the same naming container (several instances of the same user control for example) there can easily be a client id naming conflict. Note that if you assign Static to a data-bound control, like a list child control in templates, you do not get unique ids either, so for list controls where you rely on unique id for child controls, you’ll probably want to use Predictable rather than Static. I’ll write more on this a little later when I discuss ClientIDRowSuffix. Predictable The previous two values are pretty self-explanatory. Predictable however, requires some explanation. To me at least it’s not in the least bit predictable. MSDN defines this value as follows: This algorithm is used for controls that are in data-bound controls. The ClientID value is generated by concatenating the ClientID value of the parent naming container with the ID value of the control. If the control is a data-bound control that generates multiple rows, the value of the data field specified in the ClientIDRowSuffix property is added at the end. For the GridView control, multiple data fields can be specified. If the ClientIDRowSuffix property is blank, a sequential number is added at the end instead of a data-field value. Each segment is separated by an underscore character (_). The key that makes this value a bit confusing is that it relies on the parent NamingContainer’s ClientID to build its own ClientID value. This effectively means that the value is not predictable at all but rather very tightly coupled to the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For my simple textbox example, if the ClientIDMode property of the parent naming container (Page in this case) is set to “Predictable” you’ll get this: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="content_txtName" /> which gives an id that based on walking up to the currently active naming container (the MasterPage content container) and starting the id formatting from there downward. Think of this as a semi unique name that’s guaranteed unique only for the naming container. If, on the other hand, the Page is set to “AutoID” you get the following with Predictable on txtName: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> The latter is effectively the same as if you specified AutoID because it inherits the AutoID naming from the Page and Content Master Page control of the page. But again - predictable behavior always depends on the parent naming container and how it generates its id, so the id may not always be exactly the same as the AutoID generated value because somewhere in the NamingContainer chain the ClientIDMode setting may be set to a different value. For example, if you had another naming container in the middle that was set to Static you’d end up effectively with an id that starts with the NamingContainers id rather than the whole ctl000_content munging. The most common use for Predictable is likely to be for data-bound controls, which results in each data bound item getting a unique ClientID. Unfortunately, even here the behavior can be very unpredictable depending on which data-bound control you use - I found significant differences in how template controls in a GridView behave from those that are used in a ListView control. For example, GridView creates clean child ClientIDs, while ListView still has a naming container in the ClientID, presumably because of the template container on which you can’t set ClientIDMode. Predictable is useful, but only if all naming containers down the chain use this setting. Otherwise you’re right back to the munged ids that are pretty unpredictable. Another property, ClientIDRowSuffix, can be used in combination with ClientIDMode of Predictable to force a suffix onto list client controls. For example: <asp:GridView runat="server" ID="gvItems"              AutoGenerateColumns="false"             ClientIDMode="Static"              ClientIDRowSuffix="Id">     <Columns>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>             <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtName"                        Text='<%# Eval("Name") %>'                   ClientIDMode="Predictable"/>         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>         <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtId"                     Text='<%# Eval("Id") %>'                     ClientIDMode="Predictable" />         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     </Columns>  </asp:GridView> generates client Ids inside of a column in the master page described earlier: <td>     <span id="txtName_0">Rick</span> </td> where the value after the underscore is the ClientIDRowSuffix field - in this case “Id” of the item data bound to the control. Note that all of the child controls require ClientIDMode=”Predictable” in order for the ClientIDRowSuffix to be applied, and the parent GridView controls need to be set to Static either explicitly or via Naming Container inheritance to give these simple names. It’s a bummer that ClientIDRowSuffix doesn’t work with Static to produce this automatically. Another real problem is that other controls process the ClientIDMode differently. For example, a ListView control processes the Predictable ClientIDMode differently and produces the following with the Static ListView and Predictable child controls: <span id="ctrl0_txtName_0">Rick</span> I couldn’t even figure out a way using ClientIDMode to get a simple ID that also uses a suffix short of falling back to manually generated ids using <%= %> expressions instead. Given the inconsistencies inside of list controls using <%= %>, ids for the ListView might not be a bad idea anyway. Inherit The final setting is Inherit, which is the default for all controls except Page. This means that controls by default inherit the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For more detailed information on ClientID behavior and different scenarios you can check out a blog post of mine on this subject: http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/54760.aspx. ClientID Enhancements Summary The ClientIDMode property is a welcome addition to ASP.NET 4.0. To me this is probably the most useful WebForms feature as it allows me to generate clean IDs simply by setting ClientIDMode="Static" on either the page or inside of Web.config (in the Pages section) which applies the setting down to the entire page which is my 95% scenario. For the few cases when it matters - for list controls and inside of multi-use user controls or custom server controls) - I can use Predictable or even AutoID to force controls to unique names. For application-level page development, this is easy to accomplish and provides maximum usability for working with client script code against page controls. ViewStateMode Another area of large criticism for WebForms is ViewState. ViewState is used internally by ASP.NET to persist page-level changes to non-postback properties on controls as pages post back to the server. It’s a useful mechanism that works great for the overall mechanics of WebForms, but it can also cause all sorts of overhead for page operation as ViewState can very quickly get out of control and consume huge amounts of bandwidth in your page content. ViewState can also wreak havoc with client-side scripting applications that modify control properties that are tracked by ViewState, which can produce very unpredictable results on a Postback after client-side updates. Over the years in my own development, I’ve often turned off ViewState on pages to reduce overhead. Yes, you lose some functionality, but you can easily implement most of the common functionality in non-ViewState workarounds. Relying less on heavy ViewState controls and sticking with simpler controls or raw HTML constructs avoids getting around ViewState problems. In ASP.NET 3.x and prior, it wasn’t easy to control ViewState - you could turn it on or off and if you turned it off at the page or web.config level, you couldn’t turn it back on for specific controls. In short, it was an all or nothing approach. With ASP.NET 4.0, the new ViewStateMode property gives you more control. It allows you to disable ViewState globally either on the page or web.config level and then turn it back on for specific controls that might need it. ViewStateMode only works when EnableViewState="true" on the page or web.config level (which is the default). You can then use ViewStateMode of Disabled, Enabled or Inherit to control the ViewState settings on the page. If you’re shooting for minimal ViewState usage, the ideal situation is to set ViewStateMode to disabled on the Page or web.config level and only turn it back on particular controls: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"        ClientIDMode="Static"                ViewStateMode="Disabled"     EnableViewState="true"  %> <!-- this control has viewstate  --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName"  ViewStateMode="Enabled" />       <!-- this control has no viewstate - it inherits  from parent container --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtAddress" /> Note that the EnableViewState="true" at the Page level isn’t required since it’s the default, but it’s important that the value is true. ViewStateMode has no effect if EnableViewState="false" at the page level. The main benefit of ViewStateMode is that it allows you to more easily turn off ViewState for most of the page and enable only a few key controls that might need it. For me personally, this is a perfect combination as most of my WebForm apps can get away without any ViewState at all. But some controls - especially third party controls - often don’t work well without ViewState enabled, and now it’s much easier to selectively enable controls rather than the old way, which required you to pretty much turn off ViewState for all controls that you didn’t want ViewState on. Inline HTML Encoding HTML encoding is an important feature to prevent cross-site scripting attacks in data entered by users on your site. In order to make it easier to create HTML encoded content, ASP.NET 4.0 introduces a new Expression syntax using <%: %> to encode string values. The encoding expression syntax looks like this: <%: "<script type='text/javascript'>" +     "alert('Really?');</script>" %> which produces properly encoded HTML: &lt;script type=&#39;text/javascript&#39; &gt;alert(&#39;Really?&#39;);&lt;/script&gt; Effectively this is a shortcut to: <%= HttpUtility.HtmlEncode( "<script type='text/javascript'>" + "alert('Really?');</script>") %> Of course the <%: %> syntax can also evaluate expressions just like <%= %> so the more common scenario applies this expression syntax against data your application is displaying. Here’s an example displaying some data model values: <%: Model.Address.Street %> This snippet shows displaying data from your application’s data store or more importantly, from data entered by users. Anything that makes it easier and less verbose to HtmlEncode text is a welcome addition to avoid potential cross-site scripting attacks. Although I listed Inline HTML Encoding here under WebForms, anything that uses the WebForms rendering engine including ASP.NET MVC, benefits from this feature. ScriptManager Enhancements The ASP.NET ScriptManager control in the past has introduced some nice ways to take programmatic and markup control over script loading, but there were a number of shortcomings in this control. The ASP.NET 4.0 ScriptManager has a number of improvements that make it easier to control script loading and addresses a few of the shortcomings that have often kept me from using the control in favor of manual script loading. The first is the AjaxFrameworkMode property which finally lets you suppress loading the ASP.NET AJAX runtime. Disabled doesn’t load any ASP.NET AJAX libraries, but there’s also an Explicit mode that lets you pick and choose the library pieces individually and reduce the footprint of ASP.NET AJAX script included if you are using the library. There’s also a new EnableCdn property that forces any script that has a new WebResource attribute CdnPath property set to a CDN supplied URL. If the script has this Attribute property set to a non-null/empty value and EnableCdn is enabled on the ScriptManager, that script will be served from the specified CdnPath. [assembly: WebResource(    "Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js",    "application/x-javascript",    CdnPath =  "http://mysite.com/scripts/ww.jquery.min.js")] Cool, but a little too static for my taste since this value can’t be changed at runtime to point at a debug script as needed, for example. Assembly names for loading scripts from resources can now be simple names rather than fully qualified assembly names, which make it less verbose to reference scripts from assemblies loaded from your bin folder or the assembly reference area in web.config: <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <Scripts>         <asp:ScriptReference          Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js"         Assembly="Westwind.Web" />     </Scripts>        </asp:ScriptManager> The ScriptManager in 4.0 also supports script combining via the CompositeScript tag, which allows you to very easily combine scripts into a single script resource served via ASP.NET. Even nicer: You can specify the URL that the combined script is served with. Check out the following script manager markup that combines several static file scripts and a script resource into a single ASP.NET served resource from a static URL (allscripts.js): <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <CompositeScript          Path="~/scripts/allscripts.js">         <Scripts>             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/ww.jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference            Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.editors.js"                 Assembly="Westwind.Web" />         </Scripts>     </CompositeScript> </asp:ScriptManager> When you render this into HTML, you’ll see a single script reference in the page: <script src="scripts/allscripts.debug.js"          type="text/javascript"></script> All you need to do to make this work is ensure that allscripts.js and allscripts.debug.js exist in the scripts folder of your application - they can be empty but the file has to be there. This is pretty cool, but you want to be real careful that you use unique URLs for each combination of scripts you combine or else browser and server caching will easily screw you up royally. The script manager also allows you to override native ASP.NET AJAX scripts now as any script references defined in the Scripts section of the ScriptManager trump internal references. So if you want custom behavior or you want to fix a possible bug in the core libraries that normally are loaded from resources, you can now do this simply by referencing the script resource name in the Name property and pointing at System.Web for the assembly. Not a common scenario, but when you need it, it can come in real handy. Still, there are a number of shortcomings in this control. For one, the ScriptManager and ClientScript APIs still have no common entry point so control developers are still faced with having to check and support both APIs to load scripts so that controls can work on pages that do or don’t have a ScriptManager on the page. The CdnUrl is static and compiled in, which is very restrictive. And finally, there’s still no control over where scripts get loaded on the page - ScriptManager still injects scripts into the middle of the HTML markup rather than in the header or optionally the footer. This, in turn, means there is little control over script loading order, which can be problematic for control developers. MetaDescription, MetaKeywords Page Properties There are also a number of additional Page properties that correspond to some of the other features discussed in this column: ClientIDMode, ClientTarget and ViewStateMode. Another minor but useful feature is that you can now directly access the MetaDescription and MetaKeywords properties on the Page object to set the corresponding meta tags programmatically. Updating these values programmatically previously required either <%= %> expressions in the page markup or dynamic insertion of literal controls into the page. You can now just set these properties programmatically on the Page object in any Control derived class on the page or the Page itself: Page.MetaKeywords = "ASP.NET,4.0,New Features"; Page.MetaDescription = "This article discusses the new features in ASP.NET 4.0"; Note, that there’s no corresponding ASP.NET tag for the HTML Meta element, so the only way to specify these values in markup and access them is via the @Page tag: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"      ClientIDMode="Static"                MetaDescription="Article that discusses what's                      new in ASP.NET 4.0"     MetaKeywords="ASP.NET,4.0,New Features" %> Nothing earth shattering but quite convenient. Visual Studio 2010 Enhancements for Web Development For Web development there are also a host of editor enhancements in Visual Studio 2010. Some of these are not Web specific but they are useful for Web developers in general. Text Editors Throughout Visual Studio 2010, the text editors have all been updated to a new core engine based on WPF which provides some interesting new features for various code editors including the nice ability to zoom in and out with Ctrl-MouseWheel to quickly change the size of text. There are many more API options to control the editor and although Visual Studio 2010 doesn’t yet use many of these features, we can look forward to enhancements in add-ins and future editor updates from the various language teams that take advantage of the visual richness that WPF provides to editing. On the negative side, I’ve noticed that occasionally the code editor and especially the HTML and JavaScript editors will lose the ability to use various navigation keys like arrows, back and delete keys, which requires closing and reopening the documents at times. This issue seems to be well documented so I suspect this will be addressed soon with a hotfix or within the first service pack. Overall though, the code editors work very well, especially given that they were re-written completely using WPF, which was one of my big worries when I first heard about the complete redesign of the editors. Multi-Targeting Visual Studio now targets all versions of the .NET framework from 2.0 forward. You can use Visual Studio 2010 to work on your ASP.NET 2, 3.0 and 3.5 applications which is a nice way to get your feet wet with the new development environment without having to make changes to existing applications. It’s nice to have one tool to work in for all the different versions. Multi-Monitor Support One cool feature of Visual Studio 2010 is the ability to drag windows out of the Visual Studio environment and out onto the desktop including onto another monitor easily. Since Web development often involves working with a host of designers at the same time - visual designer, HTML markup window, code behind and JavaScript editor - it’s really nice to be able to have a little more screen real estate to work on each of these editors. Microsoft made a welcome change in the environment. IntelliSense Snippets for HTML and JavaScript Editors The HTML and JavaScript editors now finally support IntelliSense scripts to create macro-based template expansions that have been in the core C# and Visual Basic code editors since Visual Studio 2005. Snippets allow you to create short XML-based template definitions that can act as static macros or real templates that can have replaceable values that can be embedded into the expanded text. The XML syntax for these snippets is straight forward and it’s pretty easy to create custom snippets manually. You can easily create snippets using XML and store them in your custom snippets folder (C:\Users\rstrahl\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Code Snippets\Visual Web Developer\My HTML Snippets and My JScript Snippets), but it helps to use one of the third-party tools that exist to simplify the process for you. I use SnippetEditor, by Bill McCarthy, which makes short work of creating snippets interactively (http://snippeteditor.codeplex.com/). Note: You may have to manually add the Visual Studio 2010 User specific Snippet folders to this tool to see existing ones you’ve created. Code snippets are some of the biggest time savers and HTML editing more than anything deals with lots of repetitive tasks that lend themselves to text expansion. Visual Studio 2010 includes a slew of built-in snippets (that you can also customize!) and you can create your own very easily. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to spend a little time examining your coding patterns and find the repetitive code that you write and convert it into snippets. I’ve been using CodeRush for this for years, but now you can do much of the basic expansion natively for HTML and JavaScript snippets. jQuery Integration Is Now Native jQuery is a popular JavaScript library and recently Microsoft has recently stated that it will become the primary client-side scripting technology to drive higher level script functionality in various ASP.NET Web projects that Microsoft provides. In Visual Studio 2010, the default full project template includes jQuery as part of a new project including the support files that provide IntelliSense (-vsdoc files). IntelliSense support for jQuery is now also baked into Visual Studio 2010, so unlike Visual Studio 2008 which required a separate download, no further installs are required for a rich IntelliSense experience with jQuery. Summary ASP.NET 4.0 brings many useful improvements to the platform, but thankfully most of the changes are incremental changes that don’t compromise backwards compatibility and they allow developers to ease into the new features one feature at a time. None of the changes in ASP.NET 4.0 or Visual Studio 2010 are monumental or game changers. The bigger features are language and .NET Framework changes that are also optional. This ASP.NET and tools release feels more like fine tuning and getting some long-standing kinks worked out of the platform. It shows that the ASP.NET team is dedicated to paying attention to community feedback and responding with changes to the platform and development environment based on this feedback. If you haven’t gotten your feet wet with ASP.NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010, there’s no reason not to give it a shot now - the ASP.NET 4.0 platform is solid and Visual Studio 2010 works very well for a brand new release. Check it out. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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• An Xml Serializable PropertyBag Dictionary Class for .NET

  - by Rick Strahl

  I don't know about you but I frequently need property bags in my applications to store and possibly cache arbitrary data. Dictionary<T,V> works well for this although I always seem to be hunting for a more specific generic type that provides a string key based dictionary. There's string dictionary, but it only works with strings. There's Hashset<T> but it uses the actual values as keys. In most key value pair situations for me string is key value to work off. Dictionary<T,V> works well enough, but there are some issues with serialization of dictionaries in .NET. The .NET framework doesn't do well serializing IDictionary objects out of the box. The XmlSerializer doesn't support serialization of IDictionary via it's default serialization, and while the DataContractSerializer does support IDictionary serialization it produces some pretty atrocious XML. What doesn't work? First off Dictionary serialization with the Xml Serializer doesn't work so the following fails: [TestMethod] public void DictionaryXmlSerializerTest() { var bag = new Dictionary<string, object>(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42, 45, 66 }); TestContext.WriteLine(this.ToXml(bag)); } public string ToXml(object obj) { if (obj == null) return null; StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(); XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(obj.GetType()); ser.Serialize(sw, obj); return sw.ToString(); } The error you get with this is: System.NotSupportedException: The type System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2[[System.String, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089],[System.Object, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089]] is not supported because it implements IDictionary. Got it! BTW, the same is true with binary serialization. Running the same code above against the DataContractSerializer does work: [TestMethod] public void DictionaryDataContextSerializerTest() { var bag = new Dictionary<string, object>(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42, 45, 66 }); TestContext.WriteLine(this.ToXmlDcs(bag)); } public string ToXmlDcs(object value, bool throwExceptions = false) { var ser = new DataContractSerializer(value.GetType(), null, int.MaxValue, true, false, null); MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(); ser.WriteObject(ms, value); return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(ms.ToArray(), 0, (int)ms.Length); } This DOES work but produces some pretty heinous XML (formatted with line breaks and indentation here): <ArrayOfKeyValueOfstringanyType xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>key</Key> <Value i:type="a:string" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">Value</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key2</Key> <Value i:type="a:decimal" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">100.10</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key3</Key> <Value i:type="a:guid" xmlns:a="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/">2cd46d2a-a636-4af4-979b-e834d39b6d37</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key4</Key> <Value i:type="a:dateTime" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">2011-09-19T17:17:05.4406999-07:00</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key5</Key> <Value i:type="a:boolean" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">true</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key7</Key> <Value i:type="a:base64Binary" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">Ki1C</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> </ArrayOfKeyValueOfstringanyType> Ouch! That seriously hurts the eye! :-) Worse though it's extremely verbose with all those repetitive namespace declarations. It's good to know that it works in a pinch, but for a human readable/editable solution or something lightweight to store in a database it's not quite ideal. Why should I care? As a little background, in one of my applications I have a need for a flexible property bag that is used on a free form database field on an otherwise static entity. Basically what I have is a standard database record to which arbitrary properties can be added in an XML based string field. I intend to expose those arbitrary properties as a collection from field data stored in XML. The concept is pretty simple: When loading write the data to the collection, when the data is saved serialize the data into an XML string and store it into the database. When reading the data pick up the XML and if the collection on the entity is accessed automatically deserialize the XML into the Dictionary. (I'll talk more about this in another post). While the DataContext Serializer would work, it's verbosity is problematic both for size of the generated XML strings and the fact that users can manually edit this XML based property data in an advanced mode. A clean(er) layout certainly would be preferable and more user friendly. Custom XMLSerialization with a PropertyBag Class So… after a bunch of experimentation with different serialization formats I decided to create a custom PropertyBag class that provides for a serializable Dictionary. It's basically a custom Dictionary<TType,TValue> implementation with the keys always set as string keys. The result are PropertyBag<TValue> and PropertyBag (which defaults to the object type for values). The PropertyBag<TType> and PropertyBag classes provide these features: Subclassed from Dictionary<T,V> Implements IXmlSerializable with a cleanish XML format ToXml() and FromXml() methods to export and import to and from XML strings Static CreateFromXml() method to create an instance It's simple enough as it's merely a Dictionary<string,object> subclass but that supports serialization to a - what I think at least - cleaner XML format. The class is super simple to use: [TestMethod] public void PropertyBagTwoWayObjectSerializationTest() { var bag = new PropertyBag(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42,45,66 } ); bag.Add("Key8", null); bag.Add("Key9", new ComplexObject() { Name = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now, Count = 10 }); string xml = bag.ToXml(); TestContext.WriteLine(bag.ToXml()); bag.Clear(); bag.FromXml(xml); Assert.IsTrue(bag["key"] as string == "Value"); Assert.IsInstanceOfType( bag["Key3"], typeof(Guid)); Assert.IsNull(bag["Key8"]); //Assert.IsNull(bag["Key10"]); Assert.IsInstanceOfType(bag["Key9"], typeof(ComplexObject)); } This uses the PropertyBag class which uses a PropertyBag<string,object> - which means it returns untyped values of type object. I suspect for me this will be the most common scenario as I'd want to store arbitrary values in the PropertyBag rather than one specific type. The same code with a strongly typed PropertyBag<decimal> looks like this: [TestMethod] public void PropertyBagTwoWayValueTypeSerializationTest() { var bag = new PropertyBag<decimal>(); bag.Add("key", 10M); bag.Add("Key1", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key2", 200.10M); bag.Add("Key3", 300.10M); string xml = bag.ToXml(); TestContext.WriteLine(bag.ToXml()); bag.Clear(); bag.FromXml(xml); Assert.IsTrue(bag.Get("Key1") == 100.10M); Assert.IsTrue(bag.Get("Key3") == 300.10M); } and produces typed results of type decimal. The types can be either value or reference types the combination of which actually proved to be a little more tricky than anticipated due to null and specific string value checks required - getting the generic typing right required use of default(T) and Convert.ChangeType() to trick the compiler into playing nice. Of course the whole raison d'etre for this class is the XML serialization. You can see in the code above that we're doing a .ToXml() and .FromXml() to serialize to and from string. The XML produced for the first example looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <properties> <item> <key>key</key> <value>Value</value> </item> <item> <key>Key2</key> <value type="decimal">100.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key3</key> <value type="___System.Guid"> <guid>f7a92032-0c6d-4e9d-9950-b15ff7cd207d</guid> </value> </item> <item> <key>Key4</key> <value type="datetime">2011-09-26T17:45:58.5789578-10:00</value> </item> <item> <key>Key5</key> <value type="boolean">true</value> </item> <item> <key>Key7</key> <value type="base64Binary">Ki1C</value> </item> <item> <key>Key8</key> <value type="nil" /> </item> <item> <key>Key9</key> <value type="___Westwind.Tools.Tests.PropertyBagTest+ComplexObject"> <ComplexObject> <Name>Rick</Name> <Entered>2011-09-26T17:45:58.5789578-10:00</Entered> <Count>10</Count> </ComplexObject> </value> </item> </properties>   The format is a bit cleaner than the DataContractSerializer. Each item is serialized into <key> <value> pairs. If the value is a string no type information is written. Since string tends to be the most common type this saves space and serialization processing. All other types are attributed. Simple types are mapped to XML types so things like decimal, datetime, boolean and base64Binary are encoded using their Xml type values. All other types are embedded with a hokey format that describes the .NET type preceded by a three underscores and then are encoded using the XmlSerializer. You can see this best above in the ComplexObject encoding. For custom types this isn't pretty either, but it's more concise than the DCS and it works as long as you're serializing back and forth between .NET clients at least. The XML generated from the second example that uses PropertyBag<decimal> looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <properties> <item> <key>key</key> <value type="decimal">10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key1</key> <value type="decimal">100.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key2</key> <value type="decimal">200.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key3</key> <value type="decimal">300.10</value> </item> </properties>   How does it work As I mentioned there's nothing fancy about this solution - it's little more than a subclass of Dictionary<T,V> that implements custom Xml Serialization and a couple of helper methods that facilitate getting the XML in and out of the class more easily. But it's proven very handy for a number of projects for me where dynamic data storage is required. Here's the code: /// <summary> /// Creates a serializable string/object dictionary that is XML serializable /// Encodes keys as element names and values as simple values with a type /// attribute that contains an XML type name. Complex names encode the type /// name with type='___namespace.classname' format followed by a standard xml /// serialized format. The latter serialization can be slow so it's not recommended /// to pass complex types if performance is critical. /// </summary> [XmlRoot("properties")] public class PropertyBag : PropertyBag<object> { /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a propertybag from an Xml string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml">Serialize</param> /// <returns></returns> public static PropertyBag CreateFromXml(string xml) { var bag = new PropertyBag(); bag.FromXml(xml); return bag; } } /// <summary> /// Creates a serializable string for generic types that is XML serializable. /// /// Encodes keys as element names and values as simple values with a type /// attribute that contains an XML type name. Complex names encode the type /// name with type='___namespace.classname' format followed by a standard xml /// serialized format. The latter serialization can be slow so it's not recommended /// to pass complex types if performance is critical. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TValue">Must be a reference type. For value types use type object</typeparam> [XmlRoot("properties")] public class PropertyBag<TValue> : Dictionary<string, TValue>, IXmlSerializable { /// <summary> /// Not implemented - this means no schema information is passed /// so this won't work with ASMX/WCF services. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema GetSchema() { return null; } /// <summary> /// Serializes the dictionary to XML. Keys are /// serialized to element names and values as /// element values. An xml type attribute is embedded /// for each serialized element - a .NET type /// element is embedded for each complex type and /// prefixed with three underscores. /// </summary> /// <param name="writer"></param> public void WriteXml(System.Xml.XmlWriter writer) { foreach (string key in this.Keys) { TValue value = this[key]; Type type = null; if (value != null) type = value.GetType(); writer.WriteStartElement("item"); writer.WriteStartElement("key"); writer.WriteString(key as string); writer.WriteEndElement(); writer.WriteStartElement("value"); string xmlType = XmlUtils.MapTypeToXmlType(type); bool isCustom = false; // Type information attribute if not string if (value == null) { writer.WriteAttributeString("type", "nil"); } else if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(xmlType)) { if (xmlType != "string") { writer.WriteStartAttribute("type"); writer.WriteString(xmlType); writer.WriteEndAttribute(); } } else { isCustom = true; xmlType = "___" + value.GetType().FullName; writer.WriteStartAttribute("type"); writer.WriteString(xmlType); writer.WriteEndAttribute(); } // Actual deserialization if (!isCustom) { if (value != null) writer.WriteValue(value); } else { XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(value.GetType()); ser.Serialize(writer, value); } writer.WriteEndElement(); // value writer.WriteEndElement(); // item } } /// <summary> /// Reads the custom serialized format /// </summary> /// <param name="reader"></param> public void ReadXml(System.Xml.XmlReader reader) { this.Clear(); while (reader.Read()) { if (reader.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element && reader.Name == "key") { string xmlType = null; string name = reader.ReadElementContentAsString(); // item element reader.ReadToNextSibling("value"); if (reader.MoveToNextAttribute()) xmlType = reader.Value; reader.MoveToContent(); TValue value; if (xmlType == "nil") value = default(TValue); // null else if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(xmlType)) { // value is a string or object and we can assign TValue to value string strval = reader.ReadElementContentAsString(); value = (TValue) Convert.ChangeType(strval, typeof(TValue)); } else if (xmlType.StartsWith("___")) { while (reader.Read() && reader.NodeType != XmlNodeType.Element) { } Type type = ReflectionUtils.GetTypeFromName(xmlType.Substring(3)); //value = reader.ReadElementContentAs(type,null); XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(type); value = (TValue)ser.Deserialize(reader); } else value = (TValue)reader.ReadElementContentAs(XmlUtils.MapXmlTypeToType(xmlType), null); this.Add(name, value); } } } /// <summary> /// Serializes this dictionary to an XML string /// </summary> /// <returns>XML String or Null if it fails</returns> public string ToXml() { string xml = null; SerializationUtils.SerializeObject(this, out xml); return xml; } /// <summary> /// Deserializes from an XML string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml"></param> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public bool FromXml(string xml) { this.Clear(); // if xml string is empty we return an empty dictionary if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(xml)) return true; var result = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject(xml, this.GetType()) as PropertyBag<TValue>; if (result != null) { foreach (var item in result) { this.Add(item.Key, item.Value); } } else // null is a failure return false; return true; } /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a propertybag from an Xml string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static PropertyBag<TValue> CreateFromXml(string xml) { var bag = new PropertyBag<TValue>(); bag.FromXml(xml); return bag; } } } The code uses a couple of small helper classes SerializationUtils and XmlUtils for mapping Xml types to and from .NET, both of which are from the WestWind,Utilities project (which is the same project where PropertyBag lives) from the West Wind Web Toolkit. The code implements ReadXml and WriteXml for the IXmlSerializable implementation using old school XmlReaders and XmlWriters (because it's pretty simple stuff - no need for XLinq here). Then there are two helper methods .ToXml() and .FromXml() that basically allow your code to easily convert between XML and a PropertyBag object. In my code that's what I use to actually to persist to and from the entity XML property during .Load() and .Save() operations. It's sweet to be able to have a string key dictionary and then be able to turn around with 1 line of code to persist the whole thing to XML and back. Hopefully some of you will find this class as useful as I've found it. It's a simple solution to a common requirement in my applications and I've used the hell out of it in the  short time since I created it. Resources You can find the complete code for the two classes plus the helpers in the Subversion repository for Westwind.Utilities. You can grab the source files from there or download the whole project. You can also grab the full Westwind.Utilities assembly from NuGet and add it to your project if that's easier for you. PropertyBag Source Code SerializationUtils and XmlUtils Westwind.Utilities Assembly on NuGet (add from Visual Studio) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in .NET  CSharp   Tweet (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); })();

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• Oracle OpenWorld Preview: Oracle WebCenter Sessions You Won’t Want to Miss

  - by Christie Flanagan

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The beginning of Oracle OpenWorld is only a few short days away. This week on the WebCenter blog, we’ll focus in on the sessions you definitely don’t want to miss while you’re in San Francisco next week.  Monday, October 1 will be a day focused on strategy.  Here are the sessions you want to add to your calendar: CON8268 - Oracle WebCenter Strategy: Engaging Your Customers. Empowering Your Business Monday, Oct 1, 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM - Moscone West – 3001 Start things off with Oracle WebCenter’s Christian Finn, Senior Director of Evangelism and Roel Stalman, VP of Product Management to learn more about the Oracle WebCenter strategy, and to understand where Oracle is taking the platform to help companies engage, customers, empower employees, and enable partners. This session will also feature Richard Backx, Business IT Architect/Consultant, for the Dutch telecom, KPN. Richard has played a key role in the roll-out of WebCenter products for KPN’s multibrand portals with a specific focus on creating the best customer journey platform for all the company’s digital channels. Business success starts with ensuring that everyone is engaged with the right people and the right information and can access what they need through the channel of their choice—web, mobile, or social. Are you giving customers, employees, and partners the best-possible experience? Come learn how you can! Dig deeper into WebCenter’s strategy for its ECM, portal, web experience management and social collaboration in the following sessions: CON8270 - Oracle WebCenter Content Strategy and Vision Monday, Oct 1, 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM - Moscone West – 3001 Oracle WebCenter Content provides a strategic content infrastructure for managing documents, images, e-mails, and rich media files. With a single repository, organizations can address any content use case, such as accounts payable, HR onboarding, document management, compliance, records management, digital asset management, or Website management. In this session, learn about future plans for how Oracle WebCenter will address new use cases as well as new integrations with Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications, leveraging your investments by making your users more productive and error-free. CON8269 - Oracle WebCenter Sites Strategy and Vision Monday, Oct 1, 1:45 PM - 2:45 PM - Moscone West - 3009 Oracle’s Web experience management solution, Oracle WebCenter Sites, enables organizations to use the online channel to drive customer acquisition and brand loyalty. It helps marketers and business users easily create and manage contextually relevant, social, interactive online experiences across multiple channels on a global scale. In this session, learn about future plans for how Oracle WebCenter Sites will provide you with the tools, capabilities, and integrations you need in order to continue to address your customers’ evolving requirements for engaging online experiences and keep moving your business forward. CON8271 - Oracle WebCenter Portal Strategy and Vision Monday, Oct 1, 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM - Moscone West - 3001 To innovate and keep a competitive edge, organizations need to leverage the power of agile and responsive Web applications. Oracle WebCenter Portal enables you to do just that, by delivering intuitive user experiences for enterprise applications to drive innovation with composite applications and mashups. Attend this session to learn firsthand from Oracle WebCenter Portal customers like the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, extend the value of existing enterprise applications, business processes, and content; delivers a superior business user experience; and maximizes limited IT resources. CON8272 - Oracle Social Network Strategy and Vision Monday, Oct 1, 4:45 PM - 5:45 PM - Moscone West - 3001 One key way of increasing employee productivity is by bringing people, processes, and information together—providing new social capabilities to enable business users to quickly correspond and collaborate on business activities. Oracle WebCenter provides a user engagement platform with social and collaborative technologies to empower business users to focus on their key business processes, applications, and content in the context of their role and process. Attend this session to hear how the latest social capabilities in Oracle Social Network are enabling organizations to transform themselves into social businesses.Attention WebCenter Customers: Last Day to RSVP for WebCenter Customer Appreciation Reception Oracle WebCenter partners Fishbowl Solutions, Fujitsu, Keste, Mythics, Redstone Content Solutions, TEAM Informatics, and TekStream invite Oracle WebCenter customers to a private cocktail reception at one of San Francisco's finest hotels. Please join us and fellow Oracle WebCenter customers for hors d'oeuvres and cocktails at this exclusive reception. Don't miss this opportunity to meet and talk with executives from Oracle WebCenter product management and product marketing, and premier Oracle WebCenter partners. We look forward to seeing you! RSVP today.

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• Back from Russia

  - by Stephen Walther

  Thanks everyone who came to my talks on ASP.NET Web Forms and MVC in Moscow last week!  Here are the slide decks and demo code for the two talks (You need Visual Studio 2010):   What’s New in ASP.NET MVC 2?   What’s New in ASP.NET 4 Web Forms?   I had a great time in Russia. On the second day, I had an opportunity to walk around Moscow. Here’s a picture of me standing in Red Square:   Here’s a picture of me eating Chicken Kiev with Microsoft evangelist James Senior. James has just started his worldwide Web Camp tour to promote ASP.NET 4. He is traveling non-stop country to country. After Russia, he is off to China and Australia. You can find out more about the Web Camps here: http://www.webcamps.ms/

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• Learn About Oracle’s Strategy for a Simple, Modern User Experience at OpenWorld 2012

  - by Applications User Experience

  By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience If you’re interested in what the best possible user experience looks like, you’ll want to hear what Oracle’s Applications User Experience team is planning for OpenWorld 2012, Sept. 30-Oct. 4 in San Francisco. This year, we will talk Fusion, Fusion, Fusion. We were among the first to show Oracle Fusion Applications in the last couple of years, and we’ll be showing it again this year so you can see what Oracle is planning for the next generation of enterprise applications. Attend our sessions to learn more about the user experience strategy in which Oracle is investing. Simplicity is the driving force behind the demos that we are unveiling now, which you can see at OpenWorld. We want to create opportunities for productivity and efficiency, and deliver enterprise data across devices to help you do your work in the way best suited to your job and needs, said Jeremy Ashley, Vice President, Oracle Applications User Experience. You can see the new look for Fusion Applications at a general session led by Ashley at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 3. You’ll also have the chance to learn more about tailoring in Oracle Fusion Applications, and gain a new understanding of the investment in the user experience behind Fusion Applications at our sessions (see session information below). Inside the Oracle Applications User Experience team’s on-site lab at Oracle OpenWorld 2011. Head to the demogrounds to see new demos from the Applications User Experience team, including the new look for Fusion Applications and what we’re building for mobile platforms. Take a spin on our eye tracker, a very cool tool that we use to research the usability of a particular design. Visit the Usable Apps OpenWorld page to find out where our demopods will be located. We are also recruiting participants for our on-site lab, in which we gather feedback on new user experience designs, and taking reservations for a charter bus that will bring you to Oracle headquarters for a lab tour Thursday, Oct. 4, or Friday, Oct. 5. Tours leave at 10 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. from the Moscone Center in San Francisco. You’ll see more of our newest designs at the lab tour, and some of our research tools in action. Can’t participate in a customer feedback session or take a lab tour this time around? Visit Usable Apps to participate or book a tour another time. For more information on any OpenWorld sessions, check the content catalog – also available at www.oracle.com/openworld. For information on Applications User Experience (Apps UX) sessions and activities, go to the Usable Apps OpenWorld page. APPS UX OPENWORLD SESSIONS Oracle’s Roadmap to a Simple, Modern User Experience Presenter: Jeremy Ashley, Vice President Applications User Experience, Oracle; with Debra Lilley, Fujitsu Consulting; Basheer Khan, Innowave; and Edward Roske, InterRelSession ID: CON9467Date: Wednesday, Oct. 3 Time: 3:30 - 4:30 p.m.Location: Moscone West - 3002/3004 Jeremy Ashley Oracle Fusion Applications: Transforming Insight into Action Presenters: Killian Evers and Kristin Desmond, OracleSession ID: CON8718Date: Thursday, Oct. 4Time: 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.Location: Moscone West - 2008 “FRIENDS OF UX” OPENWORLD SESSIONS Sessions by the Oracle Usability Advisory Board (OUAB) members: Advances in Oracle Enterprise Governance, Risk, and Compliance Manager  Presenters: Koen Delaure, KPMG Advisory NV, and Oracle Usability Advisory Board member; Russell Stohr, Oracle Session ID: CON9389Date: Tuesday, Oct. 2Time: 1:15 - 2:15 p.m.Location: Palace Hotel - Concert Optimize Oracle E-Busines Suite Procure-to-Pay: Cut Inefficiences/Fraud with Oracle GRC Apps Presenters: Koen Delaure, KPMG Advisory NV, and Solveig Wagner, Seadrill Management AS, both Oracle Usability Advisory Board members; and Swarnali Bag, OracleSession ID: CON9401Date: Monday, Oct. 1Time: 12:15 - 1:15 p.m.Location: Intercontinental - Sutter Showcase of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Mobility Presenters: Jon Wells, Westmoreland Coal Co., Oracle Usability Advisory Board member; Rob Mills and Liz Davson, Town of Oakville; Keith Sholes and Louise Farner, Oracle Session ID: CON9123Date: Tuesday, Oct. 2Time: 1:15 - 2:15 p.m.Location: InterContinental - Grand Ballroom B Sessions by the Fusion User Experience Adovcates (FXA) Usability and Features of Oracle Fusion Applications, Built upon Oracle Fusion Middleware Presenters: Debra Lilley, Fujitsu Consulting and Oracle Usability Advisory Board member; John King, King Training ResourcesSession ID: UGF10371Date: Sunday, Sept. 30Time: 11 a.m. - 11:45 a.m. Location: Moscone West – 2010 Ten Things to Love About Oracle Fusion Project Portfolio Management  Presenter: Floyd Teter, EiS TechnologiesSession ID: CON6021Date: Tuesday, Oct. 2Time: 10:15 - 11:15 a.m.Location: Moscone West – 2003

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• Your Day-by-Day Guide to Agile PLM at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

  - by Kerrie Foy

  This year’s Oracle OpenWorld conference is nearly here, and we’re all excited about what we have planned! With five days of activities and customer presenters from market leaders and top innovators like The Coca-Cola Company, Starbucks, JDSU, Facebook, GlobalFoundries, and more, this is an event you don't want to miss. I've compiled this day-by-day guide to help anyone keep track of all the “Product Lifecycle Management and Product Value Chain” sessions and activities at OpenWorld 2012, September 30 – October 4 in San Francisco, California.  Monday, October 1 There are great networking activities on Sunday September 30, but PLM specific sessions start after general conference keynotes on Monday, October 1 at 10:45 a.m. at the InterContinental Hotel in room Telegraph Hill. In fact, most of our sessions this year will be held in this room, which is still close to the conference keynotes in Moscone, but just far enough away to allow some focused networking and discussions.   This first session, 10:45 – 11:45 a.m. is a joint session with the Agile and AutoVue teams, entitled “Streamline PLM Design-to-Manufacturing Processes with AutoVue Visualization Soltuions” featuring presenters from Oracle as well as joint AutoVue and Agile PLM customer GlobalFoundries. In the following 12:15 – 1:15 p.m. slot, there are two sessions to choose from, so if you have a team of representatives attending OpenWorld, you may consider splitting up to catch both of these: a) Our General Session will be held in the InterContinental Hotel Ballroom C, which will cover our complete enterprise PLM strategy, product updates, and roadmaps. It’s our pleasure to feature a customer keynote presentation from Chris Bedi, CIO, and Rajeev Sethi, Director IT Business Engagement, of JDSU. b) A focused session on integrating PLM with Engineering and Supply Chain Systems will be held on the second floor of Moscone West (next to the InterContinental) in room 2022. Join to discover how these types of integrations help companies manage common and integrated design information across all MCAD, ECAD, and software components. After a lunch break and perhaps a visit to the Demogrounds in Moscone West, select from two product roadmap sessions in the next time slot (3:15 – 4:15 p.m.): an Agile 9.3.x session located in the InterContinental’s Ballroom C, and an Agile PLM for Process session located back in the InterContinental’s Telegraph Room. Both sessions will have strong content around each product line’s latest releases, vision, and customer examples. We are very pleased to feature Daniel Soosai of Facebook in the A9 session and Vinnie D’Agostino of The Coca-Cola Company in the PLM for Process session. Afterwards, hang in there for one last session of the day from 4:45 – 5:45 p.m.; it’s an insightful discussion on leveraging Agile PLM as the Foundation for Enterprise Quality Management, and it’s sure to be one of the best. In the Telegraph Room, this session will feature Oracle experts, partner co-presenter David Bartlett from CPG Solutions, and customer co-presenter Thomas Crowe, CIO of PL Developments. Hear their experience around implementing collaborative, integrated solutions to ensure effective knowledge transfer throughout an organization, and how to perform analysis in real time to resolve product quality issues swiftly and efficiently. On Monday evening there will be plenty of industry, product, and partner dinners, so take advantage of all the networking opportunities and catch some great tunes at the 5 day Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival! Tuesday, October 2 Tuesday starts early with a special PLM Networking Brunch, sponsored by several partners, from 8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. at the B Restaurant that sits atop Yerba Buena Gardens. You’ll have the unique opportunity to meet with like-minded industry peers and a PLM partner to discuss a topic of your choosing while enjoying a delicious meal. Registration is required, so to inquire about attending this brunch, please email Terri.Hiskey-AT-oracle.com. After wrapping up your conversations over brunch, head over to the Marriott Marquis in the Nob Hill CD room for a chance to experience the Oracle Product Lifecycle Analytics solution in a Hands-On Lab, open from 10:15 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. Experts will be there to answer your questions. Back in the InterContinental Hotel’s Telegraph room, the session on “Ideation and Requirements Management: Capturing the Voice of the Customer” begins at 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. This may be the session for you if you’re struggling with challenges like too many repositories of customer needs, requests, and ideas; limited visibility into which ideas are being advanced by customers and field resources; or if you’re unable to leverage internal expertise to expose effort and potential risks. This session will discuss how Agile PLM can help you overcome ideation challenges to deliver the right products to their targeted markets and fulfill customer desires. Next, from 1:15 – 2:15 p.m. join us for a session on Managing Profitable Innovation with Oracle Product Lifecycle Analytics. If you missed the Hands-on Lab, have more questions, or simply want to be inspired by the product’s forward-thinking vision and capabilities, this is a great opportunity to meet the progressive-minded executives behind the application. After this session, it may be a good opportunity to swing by the Demogrounds in Moscone West and visit the Agile PLM demos at exhibit booths #81 for Agile PLM for Discrete Manufacturing, #70 for Agile PLM for Process, and #82 for AutoVue and Agile PLM Enterprise Visualization. Check out the related Supply Chain Management booths close by if you’re interested - here's the map. There’s always lots to see and do around the exhibit area. But don’t forget the last session of the day from 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. in Telegraph Hill on Managing Product Innovation and Compliance in Life Science Companies, a “must-see” if you’re in this industry. Launching innovative products quickly is already a high-stakes challenge, but companies in the life sciences industry face uniquely severe consequences when new products don’t perform or comply as required. In recent years, more and more regulations have become mandatory, and new ones, such as REACH, are currently going into effect for several companies. Customer presenters from pharmaceutical leader Eli Lilly will share how they’ve leveraged Agile PLM to deliver high-quality, innovative products in a fast-paced, heavily regulated market environment. Tuesday evening unwind at the Supply Chain Management Reception from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. at the premier boutique Roe Nightclub and Lounge, which is located about three blocks down on Howard Street (on the other side of Moscone from the InterContinental Hotel). Registration is required. Click here for the details.   Wednesday, October 3 We have another full line-up on Wednesday, so be ready for an action-packed day. We start with a session at 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. in the Telegraph Room where we have a session on “PLM for Consumer Products: Building an Engine for Quality and Innovation” with featured presenters from Starbucks and partner Kalypso. This is a rare opportunity to learn directly from Starbucks how they instill quality and innovation throughout their organization, products, and processes, leveraging PLM disciplines with strong support from their partner.  If you’re not in the consumer products industry, we recommend attending another session at 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. in Moscone West room 3005: “Eco-Enterprise Innovation Awards and the Business Case for Sustainability” featuring Jeff Henley, Oracle’s Chairman of the Board and Jon Chorley, Chief Sustainability Officer. Oracle will honor select customers with Oracle’s Eco-Enterprise Innovation award, which recognizes customers and their respective partners who rely on Oracle products to support their green business practices to reduce their environmental impact while improving business efficiencies and reducing costs. The awards presentation is followed by a panel discussion with customers and Oracle executives, who describe how these award-winning organizations are embracing environmental initiatives as a central part of their business strategy and how information technology plays a pivotal role. Next at 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. in Telegraph Hill attend our session devoted to exploring Product Lifecycle Management’s role in Software Lifecycle Management. This is a thought leadership session with Oracle experts in the field on the importance of change management, and we’ll discuss how Oracle has for years leveraged Agile PLM to develop Agile PLM. If software lifecycle management doesn’t apply to your business or you’d rather engage in some lively one-on-one discussions, we also have a “Supply Chain Meet the Experts” session in Moscone West Room 2001A. Product experts, thought leaders and executives will be on hand to discuss your questions/topics, so come prepared. This session tends to fill up fast so try to get in early. At 1:15 – 2:15 p.m. join us back in Telegraph Hill for a session focused on leveraging the Agile Product Portfolio Management application as the Product Development Master Schedule to improve efficiencies, optimize resources, and gain visibility across projects enterprise-wide to improve portfolio profitability. Customer presenters from Broadcom will explain how they’ve leveraged the product to enable a master schedule with enterprise-level, phase-gate program and project collaboration and resource optimization. Again in Telegraph Hill from 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. we have an interesting session with leading semiconductor customer LSI and partner Kalypso on how LSI leveraged Agile PLM to advance from homegrown applications to complete Product Value Chain Management. That type of transition can be challenging, and LSI details how they were able to achieve their goals and the value they gained along the journey – a fascinating account for any company interested in leveraging best practices to innovate their business processes and even end products. Lastly, we’ll wrap up in Telegraph Hill from 5:00 – 6:00 p.m. with a session on “Ensuring New Product Success by Achieving Excellence in New Product Introduction.” This is a cross-industry session, guaranteed to deliver insight in the often elusive practice of creating winning products, and we’re very excited about. According to IDC Manufacturing Insights analyst Joe Barkai, “Product Failures are not necessarily a result of bad ideas…they are a result of suboptimal decisions.” We’ll show you how to wire your business processes to enhance decision-making and maximize product potential. Now, quickly hit your hotel room to freshen up and then catch one of the many complimentary shuttles to the much-anticipated Oracle Customer Appreciation Event on Treasure Island. We have a very exciting show planned – check out what’s in store here. Thursday, October 4 PLM has a light schedule on Thursday this year with just one session, but this again is one of our best sessions on managing the Product Value Chain: at 11:15 a.m – 12:15 p.m.in Telegraph Hill, it’s a customer and partner driven session with Sonoco Products and Deloitte telling their story about how to achieve integrated change control by interfacing Agile PLM with Oracle E-Business Suite. Sonoco Products, a global manufacturer of consumer and industrial packaging materials, with its systems integrator, Deloitte, is doing this by implementing prebuilt integration (Oracle Design-to-Release Integration Pack for Agile Product Lifecycle Management for Process and Oracle Process) to integrate Agile with Oracle Product Hub/Oracle Product Information Management and Oracle E-Business Suite. This session presents a case study of how Sonoco is leveraging this solution to improve data quality and build a framework for stronger master data governance. Even though that ends our PLM line-up at OpenWorld, there will still be many sessions and activities at the conference, so visit the Oracle OpenWorld website to review agendas and build your schedule. And of course, download and bring this guide and the latest version of the Agile PLM Focus-On Document (available soon!). San Francisco is a wonderful city to explore, and we’re glad you’re considering joining the Agile PLM team at Oracle OpenWorld!  I hope to see you there! Follow me before the conference and on site for real-time updates about #OOW12 on Twitter @Kerrie_Foy or @AgilePLM.

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• Making Sense of ASP.NET Paths

  - by Renso

  Making Sense of ASP.NET Paths ASP.Net includes quite a plethora of properties to retrieve path information about the current request, control and application. There's a ton of information available about paths on the Request object, some of it appearing to overlap and some of it buried several levels down, and it can be confusing to find just the right path that you are looking for. To keep things straight I thought it a good idea to summarize the path options along with descriptions and example paths. I wrote a post about this a long time ago in 2004 and I find myself frequently going back to that page to quickly figure out which path I’m looking for in processing the current URL. Apparently a lot of people must be doing the same, because the original post is the second most visited even to this date on this blog to the tune of nearly 500 hits per day. So, I decided to update and expand a bit on the original post with a little more information and clarification based on the original comments. Request Object Paths Available Here's a list of the Path related properties on the Request object (and the Page object). Assume a path like http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/admin/paths.aspx for the paths below where webstore is the name of the virtual. Request Property Description and Value ApplicationPath Returns the web root-relative logical path to the virtual root of this app. /webstore/ PhysicalApplicationPath Returns local file system path of the virtual root for this app. c:\inetpub\wwwroot\webstore PhysicalPath Returns the local file system path to the current script or path. c:\inetpub\wwwroot\webstore\admin\paths.aspx Path FilePath CurrentExecutionFilePath All of these return the full root relative logical path to the script page including path and scriptname. CurrentExcecutionFilePath will return the ‘current’ request path after a Transfer/Execute call while FilePath will always return the original request’s path. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath Returns an ASP.NET root relative virtual path to the script or path for the current request. If in  a Transfer/Execute call the transferred Path is returned. ~/admin/paths.aspx PathInfo Returns any extra path following the script name. If no extra path is provided returns the root-relative path (returns text in red below). string.Empty if no PathInfo is available. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx/ExtraPathInfo RawUrl Returns the full root relative URL including querystring and extra path as a string. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx?sku=wwhelp40 Url Returns a fully qualified URL including querystring and extra path. Note this is a Uri instance rather than string. http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/admin/paths.aspx?sku=wwhelp40 UrlReferrer The fully qualified URL of the page that sent the request. This is also a Uri instance and this value is null if the page was directly accessed by typing into the address bar or using an HttpClient based Referrer client Http header. http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/default.aspx?Info Control.TemplateSourceDirectory Returns the logical path to the folder of the page, master or user control on which it is called. This is useful if you need to know the path only to a Page or control from within the control. For non-file controls this returns the Page path. /webstore/admin/ As you can see there’s a ton of information available there for each of the three common path formats: Physical Path is an OS type path that points to a path or file on disk. Logical Path is a Web path that is relative to the Web server’s root. It includes the virtual plus the application relative path. ~/ (Root-relative) Path is an ASP.NET specific path that includes ~/ to indicate the virtual root Web path. ASP.NET can convert virtual paths into either logical paths using Control.ResolveUrl(), or physical paths using Server.MapPath(). Root relative paths are useful for specifying portable URLs that don’t rely on relative directory structures and very useful from within control or component code. You should be able to get any necessary format from ASP.NET from just about any path or script using these mechanisms. ~/ Root Relative Paths and ResolveUrl() and ResolveClientUrl() ASP.NET supports root-relative virtual path syntax in most of its URL properties in Web Forms. So you can easily specify a root relative path in a control rather than a location relative path: <asp:Image runat="server" ID="imgHelp" ImageUrl="~/images/help.gif" /> ASP.NET internally resolves this URL by using ResolveUrl("~/images/help.gif") to arrive at the root-relative URL of /webstore/images/help.gif which uses the Request.ApplicationPath as the basepath to replace the ~. By convention any custom Web controls also should use ResolveUrl() on URL properties to provide the same functionality. In your own code you can use Page.ResolveUrl() or Control.ResolveUrl() to accomplish the same thing: string imgPath = this.ResolveUrl("~/images/help.gif"); imgHelp.ImageUrl = imgPath; Unfortunately ResolveUrl() is limited to WebForm pages, so if you’re in an HttpHandler or Module it’s not available. ASP.NET Mvc also has it’s own more generic version of ResolveUrl in Url.Decode: <script src="<%= Url.Content("~/scripts/new.js") %>" type="text/javascript"></script> which is part of the UrlHelper class. In ASP.NET MVC the above sort of syntax is actually even more crucial than in WebForms due to the fact that views are not referencing specific pages but rather are often path based which can lead to various variations on how a particular view is referenced. In a Module or Handler code Control.ResolveUrl() unfortunately is not available which in retrospect seems like an odd design choice – URL resolution really should happen on a Request basis not as part of the Page framework. Luckily you can also rely on the static VirtualPathUtility class: string path = VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute("~/admin/paths.aspx"); VirtualPathUtility also many other quite useful methods for dealing with paths and converting between the various kinds of paths supported. One thing to watch out for is that ToAbsolute() will throw an exception if a query string is provided and doesn’t work on fully qualified URLs. I wrote about this topic with a custom solution that works fully qualified URLs and query strings here (check comments for some interesting discussions too). Similar to ResolveUrl() is ResolveClientUrl() which creates a fully qualified HTTP path that includes the protocol and domain name. It’s rare that this full resolution is needed but can be useful in some scenarios. Mapping Virtual Paths to Physical Paths with Server.MapPath() If you need to map root relative or current folder relative URLs to physical URLs or you can use HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(). Inside of a Page you can do the following: string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("~/scripts/ww.jquery.js")); MapPath is pretty flexible and it understands both ASP.NET style virtual paths as well as plain relative paths, so the following also works. string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("scripts/silverlight.js"); as well as dot relative syntax: string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("../scripts/jquery.js"); Once you have the physical path you can perform standard System.IO Path and File operations on the file. Remember with physical paths and IO or copy operations you need to make sure you have permissions to access files and folders based on the Web server user account that is active (NETWORK SERVICE, ASPNET typically). Note the Server.MapPath will not map up beyond the virtual root of the application for security reasons. Server and Host Information Between these settings you can get all the information you may need to figure out where you are at and to build new Url if necessary. If you need to build a URL completely from scratch you can get access to information about the server you are accessing: Server Variable Function and Example SERVER_NAME The of the domain or IP Address wwww.west-wind.com or 127.0.0.1 SERVER_PORT The port that the request runs under. 80 SERVER_PORT_SECURE Determines whether https: was used. 0 or 1 APPL_MD_PATH ADSI DirectoryServices path to the virtual root directory. Note that LM typically doesn’t work for ADSI access so you should replace that with LOCALHOST or the machine’s NetBios name. /LM/W3SVC/1/ROOT/webstore Request.Url and Uri Parsing If you still need more control over the current request URL or  you need to create new URLs from an existing one, the current Request.Url Uri property offers a lot of control. Using the Uri class and UriBuilder makes it easy to retrieve parts of a URL and create new URLs based on existing URL. The UriBuilder class is the preferred way to create URLs – much preferable over creating URIs via string concatenation. Uri Property Function Scheme The URL scheme or protocol prefix. http or https Port The port if specifically specified. DnsSafeHost The domain name or local host NetBios machine name www.west-wind.com or rasnote LocalPath The full path of the URL including script name and extra PathInfo. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx Query The query string if any ?id=1 The Uri class itself is great for retrieving Uri parts, but most of the properties are read only if you need to modify a URL in order to change it you can use the UriBuilder class to load up an existing URL and modify it to create a new one. Here are a few common operations I’ve needed to do to get specific URLs: Convert the Request URL to an SSL/HTTPS link For example to take the current request URL and converted  it to a secure URL can be done like this: UriBuilder build = new UriBuilder(Request.Url); build.Scheme = "https"; build.Port = -1; // don't inject portUri newUri = build.Uri; string newUrl = build.ToString(); Retrieve the fully qualified URL without a QueryString AFAIK, there’s no native routine to retrieve the current request URL without the query string. It’s easy to do with UriBuilder however: UriBuilder builder = newUriBuilder(Request.Url); builder.Query = ""; stringlogicalPathWithoutQuery = builder.ToString();

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• 2D Barcode Addendum

  - by Tim Dexter

  Having finally got my external drive back(long story) today from Oklahoma (thank you so much Sammy) Im back with a full compliment of Oracle and blogging tools at my disposal. I have missed JDeveloper this past week, which I have found, I immensely prefer over Eclipse (let the flaming commence :0) I use Zoundry Raven for writing articles and its not installed locally but on my external drove, so I have been soldiering on with the blog server's pain in the backside UI for writing. Now I have my favority editor back and things are calming down workwise, I will start to get the Excel template posts out. Today thou, a note about 2D barcode support or more specifically any barcode that needs some data manipulation before the barcode font is applied. I wrote about these fonts a long time back and laid out the java class you would need to write if you had an algorithm from the font manufacturer to use. I missed out a valuable point and James at Luminex fell into the trap. He was wanting to use the datamatrix font from IDAutomation but and had built the java class to be called from the RTF template but it was not encoding or at least did not appear to be. New debugging feature to the rescue. Kan over at the bipconsultng blog documented the feature a while back. Just adding <?xdo-debug-level:'STATEMENT'?> to my test template generated all the debug files in my c:\temp directory. No messing with files, just a simple command ... at last! Kan has documented the feature here. With the log in hand I spotted a java error stack referencing a missing code128a method, huh? Looking at James' class he had the following snippet: ENCODERS.put("code128a",mUtility.getClass().getMethod("code128a",clazz)); ENCODERS.put("code128b",mUtility.getClass().getMethod("code128b", clazz)); ENCODERS.put("code128c",mUtility.getClass().getMethod("code128c", clazz)); ENCODERS.put("pdf417",mUtility.getClass().getMethod("pdf417", clazz)); ENCODERS.put("datamatrix",mUtility.getClass().getMethod("datamatrix", clazz)); His class did not include the other code128 and pdf147 methods and BIP was expecting them. An easy fix, just comment them out, rebuild and deploy and the encoding started working. If you are hitting similar problems, check that class and ensure all of the referenced methods are available, if not, delete or get commenting. James now has purdy labels popping out that his hard ware can read, sweet!

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• Sun2Oracle: Hub City Media Webcast Reminder - Thursday, September 13, 2012

  - by Darin Pendergraft

  Our Sun2Oracle webcast featuring Steve Giovanetti from Hub City Media is this Thursday, September 13th at 10:00 am PST.  If you haven't registered yet, there is still time: Register Here. Scott Bonell, Sr. Director of Product Management will be talking to Steve about their recent project to upgrade a large University from Sun DSEE Directory to Oracle Unified Directory.  Scott and Steve will talk through details of the project, from planning through implementation. In addition to this webcast, Steve Giovanetti will also be participating in two sessions at Oracle OpenWorld 2012: CON9465 - Next-Generation Directory: Oracle Unified Directory  Etienne Remillon, Principal Product Manager, Oracle  Steve Giovanetti, CTO Hub City Media  Warren Leung, Sr. Architect, UCLA  Tuesday, Oct 2, 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM  Moscone West – 3008 CON5749 - Solutions for Migration of Oracle Waveset to Oracle Identity Manager Steve Giovanetti, CTO Hub City Media Kevin Moulton, Senior Sales Consulting  Manager, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM Moscone West - 3008

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• links for 2010-04-07

  - by Bob Rhubart

  James McGovern: Enterprise Architecture and Social CRM "With a few exceptions, the vast majority of enterprise architects I know spend an awful lot of time focused on internal issues whether it is rationalization, the cloud, storage governance, data center consolidation, creation of reference architectures, portfolio management and other considerations that aren’t even visible to customers. One should ask whether IT can be truly successful if we are busy listening to the business but otherwise are blissfully ignorant towards the customers they serve." -- James McGovern (tags: enterprisearchitecture crm socialcomputing) WRF Benchmark: X6275 Beats Power6 - BestPerf "Oracle's Sun Blade X6275 cluster is 28% faster than the IBM POWER6 cluster on Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) continental United Status (CONUS) benchmark datasets. The Sun Blade X6275 cluster used a Quad Data Rate (QDR) InfiniBand connection along with Intel compilers and MPI." (tags: oracle sun x6275 benchmarks)

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• How to detect two moving shapes overlapped?

  - by user1389813

  Given a list of circles with its coordinates (x and y) that are moving every second in different direction (South-East, South-West, North-East and North-West), and the circle will change direction if it hits the wall sort of like bouncing, so how do we detect if any of them collide or overlap with each other ? I am not sure if we can use some data structures like a Binary Search Tree because since all the coordinates vary every seconds, so the tree will have to re-build accordingly. Or can we use Vertical Sweep Line Algorithm each time ? Any ideas on how to do this in a efficient way ?

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• Even EA's Have Bad Days - it's Time to Reset

  - by Pat Shepherd

  I saw this article and thought I'd share it because, even we EA's have bad days and the 7 points listed are a great way for you to hit the "reset" button. From Geoffrey James on INC.COM, here are 7 ways to change your view of things when, say, you are hitting a frustration point coordinating stakeholders to agree on an approach (never happens, right?) Positive Thinking: 7 Easy Ways to Improve a Bad Day http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/positive-thinking-7-easy-ways-to-improve-a-bad-day.html To paraphrase:          You can decide (in an instant) to change patterns of the past          Believe in (or even visualize) good things happening, and they will          Keep a healthy perspective on the work-life / life-life continuum (what things REALLY matter in the big scheme of things)                  Focus on the good (the laws of positive-attraction apply)

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• Multiple Key Presses in XNA?

  - by Bryan Harrington

  I'm actually trying to do something fairly simple. I cannot get multiple key presses to work in XNA. I've tried the following pieces of code. else if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Down) && (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left))) { //Move Character South-West } and I tried. else if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Down)) { if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) { //Move Character South-West } } Neither worked for me. Single presses work just fine. Any thoughts?

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• OpenJDK DIO Project Now Live! Java SE Embedded API Accessing Peripherals

  - by hinkmond

  The DIO project on OpenJDK is now live! For those who grew up in the 1970's and 1980's, you might remember Ronnie James Dio, lead singer of Black Sabbath after Ozzy was fired, and lead singer of his own band, Dio. Well, this DIO is not that Dio. This DIO is the OpenJDK Device I/O project which provides a Java-level API for accessing generic device peripherals on embedded devices, like your Raspberry Pi running Java SE Embedded software. See: OpenJDK DIO Project Here's a quote: + General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) + Inter-Integrated Circuit Bus (I2C) + Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UART) + Serial Peripheral Interface If you're familiar with Pi4J, then you're going to like DIO. And, if you liked Ozzy, you probably liked Ronnie James Dio. This will probably make Robert Savage happy too. The part about DIO being live now, not the part about Dio replacing Ozzy, because everyone likes Ozzy. Hinkmond

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• Where'd My Data Go? (and/or...How Do I Get Rid of It?)

  - by David Paquette

  Want to get a better idea of how cascade deletes work in Entity Framework Code First scenarios? Want to see it in action? Stick with us as we quickly demystify what happens when you tell your data context to nuke a parent entity. This post is authored by Calgary .NET User Group Leader David Paquette with help from Microsoft MVP in Asp.Net James Chambers. We got to spend a great week back in March at Prairie Dev Con West, chalk full of sessions, presentations, workshops, conversations and, of course, questions.  One of the questions that came up during my session: "How does Entity Framework Code First deal with cascading deletes?". James and I had different thoughts on what the default was, if it was different from SQL server, if it was the same as EF proper and if there was a way to override whatever the default was.  So we built a set of examples and figured out that the answer is simple: it depends.  (Download Samples) Consider the example of a hockey league. You have several different entities in the league including games, teams that play the games and players that make up the teams. Each team also has a mascot.  If you delete a team, we need a couple of things to happen: The team, games and mascot will be deleted, and The players for that team will remain in the league (and therefore the database) but they should no longer be assigned to a team. So, let's make this start to come together with a look at the default behaviour in SQL when using an EDMX-driven project. The Reference – Understanding EF's Behaviour with an EDMX/DB First Approach First up let’s take a look at the DB first approach.  In the database, we defined 4 tables: Teams, Players, Mascots, and Games.  We also defined 4 foreign keys as follows: Players.Team_Id (NULL) –> Teams.Id Mascots.Id (NOT NULL) –> Teams.Id (ON DELETE CASCADE) Games.HomeTeam_Id (NOT NULL) –> Teams.Id Games.AwayTeam_Id (NOT NULL) –> Teams.Id Note that by specifying ON DELETE CASCADE for the Mascots –> Teams foreign key, the database will automatically delete the team’s mascot when the team is deleted.  While we want the same behaviour for the Games –> Teams foreign keys, it is not possible to accomplish this using ON DELETE CASCADE in SQL Server.  Specifying a ON DELETE CASCADE on these foreign keys would cause a circular reference error: The series of cascading referential actions triggered by a single DELETE or UPDATE must form a tree that contains no circular references. No table can appear more than one time in the list of all cascading referential actions that result from the DELETE or UPDATE – MSDN When we create an entity data model from the above database, we get the following:   In order to get the Games to be deleted when the Team is deleted, we need to specify End1 OnDelete action of Cascade for the HomeGames and AwayGames associations.   Now, we have an Entity Data Model that accomplishes what we set out to do.  One caveat here is that Entity Framework will only properly handle the cascading delete when the the players and games for the team have been loaded into memory.  For a more detailed look at Cascade Delete in EF Database First, take a look at this blog post by Alex James.   Building The Same Sample with EF Code First Next, we're going to build up the model with the code first approach.  EF Code First is defined on the Ado.Net team blog as such: Code First allows you to define your model using C# or VB.Net classes, optionally additional configuration can be performed using attributes on your classes and properties or by using a Fluent API. Your model can be used to generate a database schema or to map to an existing database. Entity Framework Code First follows some conventions to determine when to cascade delete on a relationship.  More details can be found on MSDN: If a foreign key on the dependent entity is not nullable, then Code First sets cascade delete on the relationship. If a foreign key on the dependent entity is nullable, Code First does not set cascade delete on the relationship, and when the principal is deleted the foreign key will be set to null. The multiplicity and cascade delete behavior detected by convention can be overridden by using the fluent API. For more information, see Configuring Relationships with Fluent API (Code First). Our DbContext consists of 4 DbSets: public DbSet<Team> Teams { get; set; } public DbSet<Player> Players { get; set; } public DbSet<Mascot> Mascots { get; set; } public DbSet<Game> Games { get; set; } When we set the Mascot –> Team relationship to required, Entity Framework will automatically delete the Mascot when the Team is deleted.  This can be done either using the [Required] data annotation attribute, or by overriding the OnModelCreating method of your DbContext and using the fluent API. Data Annotations: public class Mascot { public int Id { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } [Required] public virtual Team Team { get; set; } } Fluent API: protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder) { modelBuilder.Entity<Mascot>().HasRequired(m => m.Team); } The Player –> Team relationship is automatically handled by the Code First conventions. When a Team is deleted, the Team property for all the players on that team will be set to null.  No additional configuration is required, however all the Player entities must be loaded into memory for the cascading to work properly. The Game –> Team relationship causes some grief in our Code First example.  If we try setting the HomeTeam and AwayTeam relationships to required, Entity Framework will attempt to set On Cascade Delete for the HomeTeam and AwayTeam foreign keys when creating the database tables.  As we saw in the database first example, this causes a circular reference error and throws the following SqlException: Introducing FOREIGN KEY constraint 'FK_Games_Teams_AwayTeam_Id' on table 'Games' may cause cycles or multiple cascade paths. Specify ON DELETE NO ACTION or ON UPDATE NO ACTION, or modify other FOREIGN KEY constraints. Could not create constraint. To solve this problem, we need to disable the default cascade delete behaviour using the fluent API: protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder) { modelBuilder.Entity<Mascot>().HasRequired(m => m.Team); modelBuilder.Entity<Team>() .HasMany(t => t.HomeGames) .WithRequired(g => g.HomeTeam) .WillCascadeOnDelete(false); modelBuilder.Entity<Team>() .HasMany(t => t.AwayGames) .WithRequired(g => g.AwayTeam) .WillCascadeOnDelete(false); base.OnModelCreating(modelBuilder); } Unfortunately, this means we need to manually manage the cascade delete behaviour.  When a Team is deleted, we need to manually delete all the home and away Games for that Team. foreach (Game awayGame in jets.AwayGames.ToArray()) { entities.Games.Remove(awayGame); } foreach (Game homeGame in homeGames) { entities.Games.Remove(homeGame); } entities.Teams.Remove(jets); entities.SaveChanges();   Overriding the Defaults – When and How To As you have seen, the default behaviour of Entity Framework Code First can be overridden using the fluent API.  This can be done by overriding the OnModelCreating method of your DbContext, or by creating separate model override files for each entity.  More information is available on MSDN.   Going Further These were simple examples but they helped us illustrate a couple of points. First of all, we were able to demonstrate the default behaviour of Entity Framework when dealing with cascading deletes, specifically how entity relationships affect the outcome. Secondly, we showed you how to modify the code and control the behaviour to get the outcome you're looking for. Finally, we showed you how easy it is to explore this kind of thing, and we're hoping that you get a chance to experiment even further. For example, did you know that: Entity Framework Code First also works seamlessly with SQL Azure (MSDN) Database creation defaults can be overridden using a variety of IDatabaseInitializers  (Understanding Database Initializers) You can use Code Based migrations to manage database upgrades as your model continues to evolve (MSDN) Next Steps There's no time like the present to start the learning, so here's what you need to do: Get up-to-date in Visual Studio 2010 (VS2010 | SP1) or Visual Studio 2012 (VS2012) Build yourself a project to try these concepts out (or download the sample project) Get into the community and ask questions! There are a ton of great resources out there and community members willing to help you out (like these two guys!). Good luck! About the Authors David Paquette works as a lead developer at P2 Energy Solutions in Calgary, Alberta where he builds commercial software products for the energy industry.  Outside of work, David enjoys outdoor camping, fishing, and skiing. David is also active in the software community giving presentations both locally and at conferences. David also serves as the President of Calgary .Net User Group. James Chambers crafts software awesomeness with an incredible team at LogiSense Corp, based in Cambridge, Ontario. A husband, father and humanitarian, he is currently residing in the province of Manitoba where he resists the urge to cheer for the Jets and maintains he allegiance to the Calgary Flames. When he's not active with the family, outdoors or volunteering, you can find James speaking at conferences and user groups across the country about web development and related technologies.

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• Podcast Show Notes: The Role of the Cloud Architect

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Ron Batra James Baty If you want to understand what a cloud architect does, what better way than to talk to people in that role? In this program that’s exactly what we’ll do. Joining me for this conversation are cloud architects Ron Batra and Dr. James Baty. Ron is an Oracle ACE Director and product director for cloud computing at AT&T , and Jim is Vice President of Oracle’s Global Enterprise Architecture Program . This interview was recorded on June 12, 2012. The Conversation Listen to Part 1: How cloud computing is driving the supply-chaining of IT and the democratization of the activity of architecture. Listen to Part 2 (July 12): A discussion of DevOps, cloud computing, and the increasing velocity of IT. Listen to Part 3 (July 19): Why architects need to up their game to thrive and succeed in a cloud-driven world. Coming Soon A conversation about the International SOA, Cloud & Service Technology Symposium with a panel that features Thomas Erl and several Oracle community members who will be presenting at that event.

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• Juju bootstrap fails with "Temporary failure in name resolution" using Amazon AWS

  - by Will

  I have followed the instructions over at https://juju.ubuntu.com/docs/config-aws.html to try and setup myself with a juju environment. It all seemed to setup alright. SSH keys, Gererate config, repository, adding access id and secret keys to environments.yaml file. Although my key file from aws IAM management console was called credentials.csv rather than rootkey, I couldn't find that link described in the documentation. When I give the command juju bootstrap in the testing page. It fails giving me the error: juju bootstrap ERROR Get https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/juju-gobblygookmynukmbersinhere/provider-state: lookup s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com: Temporary failure in name resolution (note I just replaced my numbers for this posting my actual terminal has my numbers in. This is my first attempt at any ec2 work so I have gone in and created new IAM profiles. What have I done wrong? Any help would be great. I think I'm in over my head!

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• Is software innovation still primarily North American and European? Why, and for how much longer?

  - by limist

  Since this site is read by a global audience of programmers, I want to know if people generally agree that the vast majority of software innovation - languages, OS, tools, methodologies, books, etc. - still originates from the USA, Canada, and the EU. I can think of a few exceptions, e.g. Nginx webserver from Russia and the Ruby language from Japan, but overwhelmingly, the software I use and encounter daily is from North America and the EU. Why? Is history and historical momentum (computing having started in USA and Europe) still driving the industry? And/or, is some nebulous (or real) cultural difference discouraging software innovation abroad? Or are those of us in the West simply ignorant of real software innovation going on in Asia, South America, Eastern Europe, etc.? When, if ever, might the centers of innovation move out of the West? Your experiences and opinions welcome, thanks!

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• "Yes, but that's niche."

  - by Geertjan

  JavaOne 2012 has come to an end though it feels like it hasn't even started yet! What happened, time is a weird thing. Too many things to report on. James Gosling's appearance at the JavaOne community keynote was seen, by everyone (which is quite a lot) of people I talked to, as the highlight of the conference. It was interesting that the software for the Duke's Choice Award winning Liquid Robotics that James Gosling is now part of and came to talk about is a Swing application that uses the WorldWind libraries. It was also interesting that James Gosling pointed out to the conference: "There are things you can't do using HTML." That brings me to the wonderful counter argument to the above, which I spend my time running into a lot: "Yes, but that's niche." It's a killer argument, i.e., it kills all discussions completely in one fell swoop. Kind of when you're talking about someone and then this sentence drops into the conversation: "Yes, but she's got cancer now." Here's one implementation of "Yes, but that's niche": Person A: All applications are moving to the web, tablet, and mobile phone. That's especially true now with HTML5, which is going to wipe away everything everywhere and all applications are going to be browser based. Person B: What about air traffic control applications? Will they run on mobile phones too? And do you see defence applications running in a browser? Don't you agree that there are multiple scenarios imaginable where the Java desktop is the optimal platform for running applications? Person A: Yes, but that's niche. Here's another implementation, though it contradicts the above [despite often being used by the same people], since JavaFX is a Java desktop technology: Person A: Swing is dead. Everyone is going to be using purely JavaFX and nothing else. Person B: Does JavaFX have a docking framework and a module system? Does it have a plugin system?  These are some of the absolutely basic requirements of Java desktop software once you get to high end systems, e.g., banks, defence force, oil/gas services. Those kinds of applications need a web browser and so they love the JavaFX WebView component and they also love the animated JavaFX charting components. But they need so much more than that, i.e., an application framework. Aren't there requirements that JavaFX isn't meeting since it is a UI toolkit, just like Swing is a UI toolkit, and what they have in common is their lack, i.e., natively, of any kind of application framework? Don't people need more than a single window and a monolithic application structure? Person A: Yes, but that's niche. In other words, anything that doesn't fit within the currently dominant philosophy is "niche", for no other reason than that it doesn't fit within the currently dominant philosophy... regardless of the actual needs of real developers. Saying "Yes, but that's niche", kills the discussion completely, because it relegates one side of the conversation to the arcane and irrelevant corners of the universe. You're kind of like Cobol now, as soon as "Yes, but that's niche" is said. What's worst about "Yes, but that's niche" is that it doesn't enter into any discussion about user requirements, i.e., there's so few that need this particular solution that we don't even need to talk about them anymore. Note, of course, that I'm not referring specifically or generically to anyone or anything in particular. Just picking up from conversations I've picked up on as I was scurrying around the Hilton's corridors while looking for the location of my next presentation over the past few days. It does, however, mean that there were people thinking "Yes, but that's niche" while listening to James Gosling pointing out that HTML is not the be-all and end-all of absolutely everything. And so this all leaves me wondering: How many applications must be part of a niche for the niche to no longer be a niche? And what if there are multiple small niches that have the same requirements? Don't all those small niches together form a larger whole, one that should be taken seriously, i.e., a whole that is not a niche?

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• Is It October Already? A Preview of Monday, October 1 at Oracle OpenWorld

  - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team

   By Karen Shamban  Here are just some of the things happening at Oracle OpenWorld on Monday, October 1. Registration Moscone West, Moscone South, Hilton San Francisco, Westin St. Francis, 7:00 a.m. - 6:30 p.m. Oracle OpenWorld Keynote featuring Oracle President Mark Hurd Moscone North Hall D, 8:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. Exhibition Halls Open Moscone South and Moscone West, 9:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. General Sessions Various times and locations Sessions, Demos, Labs, BOFs Various times and locations Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival Various times and locations Enjoy your first full day at the conference - be sure to conserve your energy for everything else that's happening this week.

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• Updates about Multidimensional vs Tabular #ssas #msbi

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  I recently read the blog post from James Serra Tabular model: Not ready for prime time? (read also the comments because there are discussions about a few points raised by James) and the following post from Christian Wade Multidimensional or Tabular. In the last 2 years I worked with many companies adopting Tabular in different scenarios and I agree with some of the points expressed by James in his post (especially about missing features in Tabular if compared to Multidimensional), but I strongly disagree in others. In general, Tabular is a good choice for a new project when: the development team does not have a good knowledge of Multidimensional and MDX (DAX is faster to learn, not so easy as it is sold by MS, but definitely easier than MDX) you don’t need calculations based on hierarchies (common in certain financial applications, but not so common as it could seem) there are important calculations based on distinct count measures there are complex calculations based on many-to-many relationships Until now, I never suggested to migrate an existing Multidimensional model to a Tabular one. There should be very important reasons for that, such as performance issues in distinct count and many-to-many relationships that cannot be easily solved by optimizing the Multidimensional model, but I still never encountered this scenario. I would say that in 80% of the new projects, you might use either Multidimensional or Tabular and the real difference is the time-to-market depending on the skills of the development team. So it’s not strange that who is used to Multidimensional is not moving to Tabular, not getting a particular benefit from the new model unless specific requirements exist. The recent DAXMD feature that allows using SharePoint Power View on Multidimensional is a really important one, even if I’d like having also Excel Power View enabled for this scenario (this should be just a question of time). Another scenario in which I’m seeing a growing adoption of Tabular is in companies that creates models for their product/service and do that by using XMLA or Tabular AMO 2012. I am used to call them ISVs, even if those providing services cannot be really defined in this way. These companies are facing the multitenancy challenge with Tabular and even if this is a niche market, I see some potential here, because adopting Tabular seems a much more natural choice than Multidimensional in those scenario where an analytical engine has to be embedded to deliver one of the features of a larger product/service delivered to customers. I’d like to see other feedbacks in the comments: tell your story of choosing between Tabular and Multidimensional in a BI project you started with SQL Server 2012, thanks!

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• New DataCenter Options for Windows Azure

  - by ScottKlein

  Effective immediately, new compute and storage resource options are now available when selecting data center options in the Windows Azure Portal. "West US" and "East US" options are now available, for Compute and Storage. SQL Azure options for these two data centers will be available in the next few months. The official announcement can be found here.In terms of geo-replication:US East and West are paired together for Windows Azure Storage geo-replicationUS North and South are paired together for Windows Azure Storage geo-replicationThese two new data centers are now visible in the Windows Azure Management Portal effective immediately. Compute and Storage pricing remains the same across all data centers. Get started with Windows Azure through the free 90 day trial.

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• Implementing Unit Testing with the iPhone SDK

  - by ing0

  Hi, So I've followed this tutorial to setup unit testing on my app when I got a little stuck. At bullet point 8 in that tutorial it shows this image, which is what I should be expecting when I build: However this isn't what I get when I build. I get this error message: Command /bin/sh failed with exit code 1 as well as the error message the unit test has created. Then, when I expand on the first error I get this: PhaseScriptExecution "Run Script" "build/3D Pool.build/Debug-iphonesimulator/LogicTests.build/Script-1A6BA6AE10F28F40008AC2A8.sh" cd "/Users/james/Desktop/FYP/3D Pool" setenv ACTION build setenv ALTERNATE_GROUP staff ... setenv XCODE_VERSION_MAJOR 0300 setenv XCODE_VERSION_MINOR 0320 setenv YACC /Developer/usr/bin/yacc /bin/sh -c "\"/Users/james/Desktop/FYP/3D Pool/build/3D Pool.build/Debug-iphonesimulator/LogicTests.build/Script-1A6BA6AE10F28F40008AC2A8.sh\"" /Developer/Tools/RunPlatformUnitTests.include:412: note: Started tests for architectures 'i386' /Developer/Tools/RunPlatformUnitTests.include:419: note: Running tests for architecture 'i386' (GC OFF) objc[12589]: GC: forcing GC OFF because OBJC_DISABLE_GC is set Test Suite '/Users/james/Desktop/FYP/3D Pool/build/Debug-iphonesimulator/LogicTests.octest(Tests)' started at 2010-01-04 21:05:06 +0000 Test Suite 'LogicTests' started at 2010-01-04 21:05:06 +0000 Test Case '-[LogicTests testFail]' started. /Users/james/Desktop/FYP/3D Pool/LogicTests.m:17: error: -[LogicTests testFail] : Must fail to succeed. Test Case '-[LogicTests testFail]' failed (0.000 seconds). Test Suite 'LogicTests' finished at 2010-01-04 21:05:06 +0000. Executed 1 test, with 1 failure (0 unexpected) in 0.000 (0.000) seconds Test Suite '/Users/james/Desktop/FYP/3D Pool/build/Debug-iphonesimulator/LogicTests.octest(Tests)' finished at 2010-01-04 21:05:06 +0000. Executed 1 test, with 1 failure (0 unexpected) in 0.000 (0.002) seconds /Developer/Tools/RunPlatformUnitTests.include:448: error: Failed tests for architecture 'i386' (GC OFF) /Developer/Tools/RunPlatformUnitTests.include:462: note: Completed tests for architectures 'i386' Command /bin/sh failed with exit code 1 Now this is very odd as it is running the tests (and succeeding as you can see my STFail firing) because if I add a different test which passes I get no errors, so the tests are working fine. But why am I getting this extra build fail? It may also be of note that when downloading solutions/templates which should work out the box, I get the same error. I'm guessing I've set something up wrong here but I've just followed a tutorial 100% correctly!! If anyone could help I'd be very grateful! Thanks EDIT: According to this blog, this post and a few other websites, I'm not the only one getting this problem. It has been like this since the release of xCode 3.2, assuming the apple dev center documents and tutorials etc are pre-3.2 as well. However some say its a known issue whereas others seem to think this was intentional. I for one would like both the extended console and in code messages, and I certainly do not like the "Command /bin/sh..." error and really think they would have documented such an update. Hopefully it will be fixed soon anyway. UPDATE: Here's confirmation it's something changed since the release of xCode 3.2.1. This image: is from my test build using 3.2.1. This one is from an older version (3.1.4): . (The project for both was unchanged). Edit: Image URLS updated.

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