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• Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 2: Platforms and Features

  - by Tim Murphy

  This is part 2 in a series of posts based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. In the previous post I discussed what reasons a company might have for creating a smartphone application.  In this installment I will cover some of history and state of the different platforms as well as features that can be leveraged for building enterprise smartphone applications. Platforms Before you start choosing a platform to develop your solutions on it is good to understand how we got here and what features you can leverage. History To my memory we owe all of this to a product called the Apple Newton that came out in 1987. It was the first PDA and back then I was much more of an Apple fan.  I was very impressed with this device even though it never really went anywhere.  The Palm Pilot by US Robotics was the next major advancement in PDA. It had a simple short hand window that allowed for quick stylus entry.. Later, Windows CE came out and started the broadening of the PDA market. After that it was the Palm and CE operating systems that started showing up on cell phones and for some time these were the two dominant operating systems that were distributed with devices from multiple hardware vendors. Current The iPhone was the first smartphone to take away the stylus and give us a multi-touch interface.  It was a revolution in usability and really changed the attractiveness of smartphones for the general public.  This brought us to the beginning of the current state of the market with the concept of an online store that makes it easy for customers to get new features and functionality on demand. With Android, Google made this more than a one horse race.  Not only did they come to compete, their low cost actually made them the leading OS.  Of course what made Android so attractive also is its major fault.  It is so open that it has been a target for malware which leaves consumers exposed.  Fortunately for Google though, most consumers aren’t aware of the threat that they are under. Although Microsoft had put out one of the first smart phone operating systems with CE it had to play catch up and finally came out with the Windows Phone.  They have gone for a market approach between those of iOS and Android.  They support multiple hardware vendors like Google, but they kept a certification process for applications that is similar to Apple.  They also created a user interface that was different enough to give it a clear separation from the other two platforms. The result of all this is hundreds of millions of smartphones being sold monthly across all three platforms giving us a wide range of choices and challenges when it comes to developing solutions. Features So what are the features that make these devices flexible enough be considered for use in the enterprise? The biggest advantage of today's devices is network connectivity.  The ability to access information from multiple sources at a moment’s notice is critical for businesses.  Add to that the ability to communicate over a variety of text, voice and video modes and we have a powerful starting point. Every smartphone has a cameras and they are not just useful for posting to Instagram. We are seeing more applications such as Bing vision that allow us to scan just about any printed code or text to find information.  These capabilities have been made available to developers in the form of standard libraries for reading barcodes of just about an flavor and optical character recognition (OCR) interpretation. Bluetooth give us the ability to communicate with multiple devices. Whether these are headsets, keyboard or printers the wireless communication capabilities are just starting to evolve.  The more these wireless communication protocols grow, the more opportunities we will see to transfer data between users and a variety of devices. Local storage of information that can be called up even when the device cannot reach the network is the other big capability.  This give users the ability to work offline as well and transmit information when connections are restored. These are the tools that we have to work with to build applications that can be leveraged to gain a competitive advantage for companies that implement them. Coming Up In the third installment I will cover key concerns that you face when building enterprise smartphone apps. del.icio.us Tags: smartphones,enterprise smartphone Apps,architecture,iOS,Android,Windows Phone

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• Delphi Prism and LINQ to SQL / Entity Framework

  - by Vegar

  I have found many posts and examples of using LINQ-syntax in Delphi Prism (Oxygene), but I have never found anything on LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework. Is it possible to use LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework together with Prism? Where can I found such an example? Update: Olaf is giving an answer through his blog The question is now if any visual tools and code generation is provided, or if everything must be done by hand... Second update: Olaf has answered the tool/code generation-question in a comment on his site: The class designer is there, but there is no Pascal code gen. According to marc hoffman that is currently not on their list. For now you have to live with manual mapping. I guess, if you had Visual Studio (not just the VS shell), that you could add a C# library project to your solution, reference that from your Prism project. Then create the Table-Class mapping in the C# project using the visual designer. Maybe somewhat ugly, but possibly the key to get the Designer + CodeGen integrated into Prism. Who cares what language is used for the mapping . I will say this is a 1 - 0 to c# vs prism. If I did not care which language is used for the mapping - why should I care about which language is used for the rest?

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• What off-the-shelf licensing system will meet my needs?

  - by Anders Pedersen

  I'm looking for an off-the-shelf license system for desktop software. After some research on the net -- and of course here on StackOverflow -- I haven't found one the suits our needs. I have a couple of must-have features and some would-be-nice features: Must have: Encrypted unlock key Possibility to automate the unlock key generation on my website User info in key so that I can show name and company in an about box and perhaps in reports Nice to have: License managing tools Online activation Nice upgrade possibilities to a version with concurrent license model and subscription model I have looked at Manco, but I find them difficult to work with and the documentation is minimal. Further, I couldn't get the name in the key. Also, the automatic generation of a key on my website has to be done with an application web service, but I would rather program against a DLL. Next I looked at xheo. It is easier to use and the documentation is better, but the price is substantially higher and here you can only get the user name in the license file that you then have to provide together with the unlock key. Could anyone share their experiences on what you are using and how it is working for you?

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• ASP.NET MVC static-asset aides/practices

  - by shannon

  I want to keep assets that are only used by one view in a view-specific folder, so my Search.aspx properly finds images/*.jpg, and helps me maintain my convention: ~/Areas/Candidate/Views/Job/Search.aspx -> ~/Assets/Candidate/Job/Search/images/*.jpg Perhaps with the ability to easily reference controller- or area-common assets manually or automatically: ~/Assets/Candidate/Job/images/*.jpg ~/Assets/Candidate/images/*.jpg If you wonder why I'm doing this, then speak up; I'm probably missing something. But here's why: I don't want stale static assets sitting in my ASP.NET MVC projects, which I expect to be an automatic outcome of the ~/Assets/Images folder: i.e. As a shared asset loses its last reference-count, who knows to delete it, especially with it being so difficult to trace content link validity in MVC projects? How do you, personally, do this? I can imagine, for example: Implement HtmlHelper extension methods for URL-generation. Extending ViewPage and ViewMasterPage with URL-generation methods. Implementing an inbound request filter to search related folders for static assets. and, are there good libraries out there for this? For example, something that also automatically appends timestamps for .JS and .CSS files, writes the / tags for me, and maybe even that allows me to inject includes in the head section from outside head code?

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• Advanced All In One .NET Framework

  - by alfredo dobrekk

  Hi, i m starting a new project that would basically take input from user and save them to database among about 30 screens, and i would like to find a framework that will allow the maximum number of these features out of the box : .net c#. windows form. unit testing continuous integration screens with lists, combo boxes, text boxes, add, delete, save, cancel that are easy to update when you add a property to your classes or a field to your database. auto completion on controls to help user find its way use of an orm like nhibernate easy multithreading and display of wait screens for user easy undo redo tabbed child windows search forms ability to grant access to some functionnalities according to user profiles mvp/mvvm or whatever design patterns either some code generation from database to c# classe or generation of database schema from c# classes some kind of database versioning / upgrade to easily update database when i release patches to application once in production automatic control resizing code metrics analysis some code generator i can use against my entities that would generate some rough form i can rearrange after code documentation generator ... Any ideas ? I know its lot but i really would like to use existing code to build upon so i can focus on business rules. Could splitting the requirements on 3 or 4 existing open source framework be possible ? Do u have any suggestion to add to the list before starting ? What open source tools would u use to achieve these ?

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• How to compare two variables from a java class in jess and execute a rule?

  - by user3417084

  I'm beginner in Jess. I'm trying to compare two variables from a Java class in Jess and trying to execute a rule. I have imported cTNumber and measuredCurrent (both are integer)form a java class called CurrentSignal. Similarly imported vTNumberand measuredVoltage form a java class DERSignal. Now I want to make a rule such that if cTNumber is equal to vTNumber then multiply measuredCurrent and measuredVoltage (Both are double) for calculating power. I'm trying in this way.... (import signals.*) (deftemplate CurrentSignal (declare (from-class CurrentSignal))) (deftemplate DERSignal (declare (from-class DERSignal))) (defglobal ?*CTnumber* = 0) (defglobal ?*VTnumber* = 0) (defglobal ?*VTnumberDER* = 0) (defglobal ?*measuredCurrent* = 0) (defglobal ?*measuredVoltage* = 0) (defglobal ?*measuredVoltageDER* = 0) (defrule Get-CT-Number (CurrentSignal (cTNumber ?m)) (CurrentSignal (measuredCurrent ?c)) => (bind ?*measuredCurrent* ?c) (printout t "Measured Current : " ?*measuredCurrent*" Amps"crlf) (bind ?*CTnumber* ?m) (printout t ?*CTnumber* crlf) ) (defrule Get-DER-Number (DERSignal (vTNumber ?o)) (DERSignal (measuredVoltage ?V)) => (bind ?*measuredVoltageDER* ?V) (printout t "Measured Voltage : " ?*measuredVoltageDER* " V" crlf) (bind ?*VTnumberDER* ?o) (printout t ?*VTnumberDER* crlf) ) (defrule Power-Calculation-DER-signal "Power calculation of DER Bay" (test (= ?*CTnumber* ?*VTnumberDER* )) => (printout t "Total Generation : " (* ?*measuredCurrent* ?*measuredVoltageDER*) crlf) ) But the Total Generation is showing 0. But I tried calculating in Java and it's showing a number. Can anyone please help me to solve this problem. Thank you.

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• C# DynamicMethod prelink

  - by soywiz

  I'm the author of a psp emulator made in C#. I'm generating lots of "DynamicMethod" using ILGenerator. I'm converting assembly code into an AST, and then generating IL code and building that DynamicMethod. I'm doing this in another thread, so I can generate new methods while the program is executing others so it can run smoothly. My problem is that the native code generation is lazy, so the machine code is generated when the function is called, not when the IL is generated. So it generates in the program executing thread, native code generation is prettly slow as it is the asm-ast-il step. I have tried the Marshal.Prelink method that it is suposed to generate the machine code before executing the function. It does work on Mono, but it doesn't work on MS .NET. Marshal.Prelink(MethodInfo); Is there a way of prelinking a DynamicMethod on MS .NET? I thought adding a boolean parameter to the function that if set, exits the function immediately so no code is actually executed. I could "prelink" that way, but I think that's a nasty solution I want to avoid. Any idea?

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• VS 2008 C++ build output?

  - by STingRaySC

  Why when I watch the build output from a VC++ project in VS do I see: 1Compiling... 1a.cpp 1b.cpp 1c.cpp 1d.cpp 1e.cpp [etc...] 1Generating code... 1x.cpp 1y.cpp [etc...] The output looks as though several compilation units are being handled before any code is generated. Is this really going on? I'm trying to improve build times, and by using pre-compiled headers, I've gotten great speedups for each ".cpp" file, but there is a relatively long pause during the "Generating Code..." message. I do not have "Whole Program Optimization" nor "Link Time Code Generation" turned on. If this is the case, then why? Why doesn't VC++ compile each ".cpp" individually (which would include the code generation phase)? If this isn't just an illusion of the output, is there cross-compilation-unit optimization potentially going on here? There don't appear to be any compiler options to control that behavior (I know about WPO and LTCG, as mentioned above). EDIT: The build log just shows the ".obj" files in the output directory, one per line. There is no indication of "Compiling..." vs. "Generating code..." steps. EDIT: I have confirmed that this behavior has nothing to do with the "maximum number of parallel project builds" setting in Tools - Options - Projects and Solutions - Build and Run. Nor is it related to the MSBuild project build output verbosity setting. Indeed if I cancel the build before the "Generating code..." step, the ".obj" files will not exist for the most recent set of "compiled" files. E.g., if I cancel the build during "c.cpp" above, I will see only "a.obj" and "b.obj".

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• advanced winform framework

  - by alfredo dobrekk

  Hi, i m starting a new project that would basically take input from user and save them to database among about 30 screens, and i would like to find a framework that will allow the maximum number of these features out of the box : .net c#. windows form. unit testing continuous integration screens with lists, combo boxes, text boxes, add, delete, save, cancel that are easy to update when you add a property to your classes or a field to your database. auto completion on controls to help user find its way use of an orm like nhibernate easy multithreading and display of wait screens for user easy undo redo tabbed child windows search forms ability to grant access to some functionnalities according to user profiles mvp/mvvm or whatever design patterns either some code generation from database to c# classe or generation of database schema from c# classes some kind of database versioning / upgrade to easily update database when i release patches to application once in production code metrics analysis some code generator i can use against my entities that would generate some rough form i can rearrange after code documentation generator ... Any ideas ? I know its lot but i really would like to use existing code to build upon so i can focus on business rules. Do u have any suggestion to add to the list before starting ? What open source tools would u use to achieve these ?

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• Entity Framework: Auto-updating foreign key when setting a new object reference

  - by Adrian Grigore

  Hi, I am porting an existing application from Linq to SQL to Entity Framework 4 (default code generation). One difference I noticed between the two is that a foreign key property are not updated when resetting the object reference. Now I need to decide how to deal with this. For example supposing you have two entity types, Company and Employee. One Company has many Employees. In Linq To SQL, setting the company also sets the company id: var company=new Company(ID=1); var employee=new Employee(); Debug.Assert(employee.CompanyID==0); employee.Company=company; Debug.Assert(employee.CompanyID==1); //Works fine! In Entity Framework (and without using any code template customization) this does not work: var company=new Company(ID=1); var employee=new Employee(); Debug.Assert(employee.CompanyID==0); employee.Company=company; Debug.Assert(employee.CompanyID==1); //Throws, since CompanyID was not updated! How can I make EF behave the same way as LinqToSQL? I had a look at the default code generation T4 template, but I could not figure out how to make the necessary changes.

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• How to encapsulate a third party complex object structure?

  - by tangens

  Motivation Currently I'm using the java parser japa to create an abstract syntax tree (AST) of a java file. With this AST I'm doing some code generation (e.g.: if there's an annotation on a method, create some other source files, ...) Problem When my code generation becomes more complex, I've to dive deeper into the structure of the AST (e.g. I have to use visitors to extract some type information of method parameters). But I'm not sure if I want to stay with japa or if I will change the parser library later. Because my code generator uses freemarker (which isn't good at automatic refactoring) I want the interface that it uses to access the AST information to be stable, even if I decide to change the java parser. Question What's the best way to encapsulate complex datastructures of third party libraries? I could create my own datatypes and copy the parts of the AST that I need into these. I could create lots of specialized access methods that work with the AST and create exactly the infos I need (e.g. the fully qualified return type of a method as one string, or the first template parameter of a class). I could create wrapper classes for the japa datastructures I currently need and embed the japa types inside, so that I can delegate requests to the japa types and transform the resulting japa types to my wrapper classes again. Which solution should I take? Are there other (better) solutions to this problem?

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• Silverlight Business Application template with WCF is throwing warning.

  - by Manoj

  Hi, I am using the Silvelight Business Application template. I wrote a function which uses Membership.getUserList function to return the user list. I tried exposing it as Service using WCF. But when I try to compile the client side code it throws a warning saying "Client Proxy Generation for user_authentication.Web.Service1 failed'. Why does it happen? The complete warning message is: Warning 4 Client proxy generation for service 'user_authentication.Web.Service1' failed: Generating metadata files... Warning: Unable to load a service with configName 'user_authentication.Web.Service1'. To export a service provide both the assembly containing the service type and an executable with configuration for this service. Details:Either none of the assemblies passed were executables with configuration files or none of the configuration files contained services with the config name 'user_authentication.Web.Service1'. Warning: No metadata files were generated. No service contracts were exported. To export a service, use the /serviceName option. To export data contracts, specify the /dataContractOnly option. This can sometimes occur in certain security contexts, such as when the assembly is loaded over a UNC network file share. If this is the case, try copying the assembly into a trusted environment and running it.

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• Advanced All In One .NET Framework (should i go for a software factory ?)

  - by alfredo dobrekk

  Hi, i m starting a new project that would basically take input from user and save them to database among about 30 screens, and i would like to find a framework that will allow the maximum number of these features out of the box : .net c#. windows form. unit testing continuous integration logging screens with lists, combo boxes, text boxes, add, delete, save, cancel that are easy to update when you add a property to your classes or a field to your database. auto completion on controls to help user find its way use of an orm like nhibernate easy multithreading and display of wait screens for user easy undo redo tabbed child windows search forms ability to grant access to some functionnalities according to user profiles mvp/mvvm or whatever design patterns either some code generation from database to c# classe or generation of database schema from c# classes some kind of database versioning / upgrade to easily update database when i release patches to application once in production automatic control resizing code metrics analysis some code generator i can use against my entities that would generate some rough form i can rearrange after code documentation generator ... At this point i have 3 options : Build from scratch on top of clr :( Find functionnalities among several open source framework and use them as a stack for infrastucture Find a "software factory" I know its lot but i really would like to use existing code to build upon so i can focus on business rules. What open source tools would u use to achieve these ?

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• Handle complex options with Boost's program_options

  - by R S

  I have a program that generates graphs using different multi-level models. Each multi-level model consists of a generation of a smaller seed graph (say, 50 nodes) which can be created from several models (for example - for each possible edge, choose to include it with probability p). After the seed graph generation, the graph is expanded into a larger one (say 1000 nodes), using one of another set of models. In each of the two stages, each model require a different number of parameters. I would like to be have program_options parse the different possible parameters, according to the names of the models. For example, say I have two seed graphs models: SA, which has 1 parameters, and SB, which has two. Also for the expansion part, I have two models: A and B, again with 1 and 2 parameters, respectively. I would like to be able do something like: ./graph_generator --seed=SA 0.1 --expansion=A 0.2 ./graph_generator --seed=SB 0.1 3 --expansion=A 0.2 ./graph_generator --seed=SA 0.1 --expansion=B 10 20 ./graph_generator --seed=SB 0.1 3 --expansion=B 10 20 and have the parameters parsed correctly. Is that even possible?

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• FreeBSD performance tuning. Sysctls, loader.conf, kernel

  - by SaveTheRbtz

  I wanted to share knowledge of tuning FreeBSD via sysctl.conf/loader.conf/KENCONF. It was initially based on Igor Sysoev's (author of nginx) presentation about FreeBSD tuning up to 100,000-200,000 active connections. Tunings are for FreeBSD-CURRENT. Since 7.2 amd64 some of them are tuned well by default. Prior 7.0 some of them are boot only (set via /boot/loader.conf) or does not exist at all. sysctl.conf: # No zero mapping feature # May break wine # (There are also reports about broken samba3) #security.bsd.map_at_zero=0 # If you have really busy webserver with apache13 you may run out of processes #kern.maxproc=10000 # Same for servers with apache2 / Pound #kern.threads.max_threads_per_proc=4096 # Max. backlog size kern.ipc.somaxconn=4096 # Shared memory // 7.2+ can use shared memory > 2Gb kern.ipc.shmmax=2147483648 # Sockets kern.ipc.maxsockets=204800 # Can cause this on older kernels: # http://old.nabble.com/Significant-performance-regression-for-increased-maxsockbuf-on-8.0-RELEASE-tt26745981.html#a26745981 ) kern.ipc.maxsockbuf=10485760 # Mbuf 2k clusters (on amd64 7.2+ 25600 is default) # For such high value vm.kmem_size must be increased to 3G kern.ipc.nmbclusters=262144 # Jumbo pagesize(_SC_PAGESIZE) clusters # Used as general packet storage for jumbo frames # can be monitored via `netstat -m` #kern.ipc.nmbjumbop=262144 # Jumbo 9k/16k clusters # If you are using them #kern.ipc.nmbjumbo9=65536 #kern.ipc.nmbjumbo16=32768 # For lower latency you can decrease scheduler's maximum time slice # default: stathz/10 (~ 13) #kern.sched.slice=1 # Increase max command-line length showed in `ps` (e.g for Tomcat/Java) # Default is PAGE_SIZE / 16 or 256 on x86 # This avoids commands to be presented as [executable] in `ps` # For more info see: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=120749 kern.ps_arg_cache_limit=4096 # Every socket is a file, so increase them kern.maxfiles=204800 kern.maxfilesperproc=200000 kern.maxvnodes=200000 # On some systems HPET is almost 2 times faster than default ACPI-fast # Useful on systems with lots of clock_gettime / gettimeofday calls # See http://old.nabble.com/ACPI-fast-default-timecounter,-but-HPET-83--faster-td23248172.html # After revision 222222 HPET became default: http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=222222 kern.timecounter.hardware=HPET # Small receive space, only usable on http-server, on file server this # should be increased to 65535 or even more #net.inet.tcp.recvspace=8192 # This is useful on Fat-Long-Pipes #net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_max=10485760 #net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_inc=65535 # Small send space is useful for http servers that serve small files # Autotuned since 7.x net.inet.tcp.sendspace=16384 # This is useful on Fat-Long-Pipes #net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_max=10485760 #net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_inc=65535 # Turn off receive autotuning # You can play with it. #net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_auto=0 #net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_auto=0 # This should be enabled if you going to use big spaces (>64k) # Also timestamp field is useful when using syncookies net.inet.tcp.rfc1323=1 # Turn this off on high-speed, lossless connections (LAN 1Gbit+) # If you set it there is no need in TCP_NODELAY sockopt (see man tcp) net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0 # This feature is useful if you are serving data over modems, Gigabit Ethernet, # or even high speed WAN links (or any other link with a high bandwidth delay product), # especially if you are also using window scaling or have configured a large send window. # Automatically disables on small RTT ( http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/netinet/tcp_subr.c?#rev1.237 ) # This sysctl was removed in 10-CURRENT: # See: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg06178.html #net.inet.tcp.inflight.enable=0 # TCP slowstart algorithm tunings # We assuming we have very fast clients #net.inet.tcp.slowstart_flightsize=100 #net.inet.tcp.local_slowstart_flightsize=100 # Disable randomizing of ports to avoid false RST # Before usage check SA here www.bsdcan.org/2006/papers/ImprovingTCPIP.pdf # (it's also says that port randomization auto-disables at some conn.rates, but I didn't checked it thou) #net.inet.ip.portrange.randomized=0 # Increase portrange # For outgoing connections only. Good for seed-boxes and ftp servers. net.inet.ip.portrange.first=1024 net.inet.ip.portrange.last=65535 # # stops route cache degregation during a high-bandwidth flood # http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/securing-freebsd.html #net.inet.ip.rtexpire=2 net.inet.ip.rtminexpire=2 net.inet.ip.rtmaxcache=1024 # Security net.inet.ip.redirect=0 net.inet.ip.sourceroute=0 net.inet.ip.accept_sourceroute=0 net.inet.icmp.maskrepl=0 net.inet.icmp.log_redirect=0 net.inet.icmp.drop_redirect=1 net.inet.tcp.drop_synfin=1 # # There is also good example of sysctl.conf with comments: # http://www.thern.org/projects/sysctl.conf # # icmp may NOT rst, helpful for those pesky spoofed # icmp/udp floods that end up taking up your outgoing # bandwidth/ifqueue due to all that outgoing RST traffic. # #net.inet.tcp.icmp_may_rst=0 # Security net.inet.udp.blackhole=1 net.inet.tcp.blackhole=2 # IPv6 Security # For more info see http://www.fosslc.org/drupal/content/security-implications-ipv6 # Disable Node info replies # To see this vulnerability in action run `ping6 -a sglAac ::1` or `ping6 -w ::1` on unprotected node net.inet6.icmp6.nodeinfo=0 # Turn on IPv6 privacy extensions # For more info see proposal http://unix.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/FreeBSD/net/2008-06/msg00103.html net.inet6.ip6.use_tempaddr=1 net.inet6.ip6.prefer_tempaddr=1 # Disable ICMP redirect net.inet6.icmp6.rediraccept=0 # Disable acceptation of RA and auto linklocal generation if you don't use them #net.inet6.ip6.accept_rtadv=0 #net.inet6.ip6.auto_linklocal=0 # Increases default TTL, sometimes useful # Default is 64 net.inet.ip.ttl=128 # Lessen max segment life to conserve resources # ACK waiting time in miliseconds # (default: 30000. RFC from 1979 recommends 120000) net.inet.tcp.msl=5000 # Max bumber of timewait sockets net.inet.tcp.maxtcptw=200000 # Don't use tw on local connections # As of 15 Apr 2009. Igor Sysoev says that nolocaltimewait has some buggy realization. # So disable it or now till get fixed #net.inet.tcp.nolocaltimewait=1 # FIN_WAIT_2 state fast recycle net.inet.tcp.fast_finwait2_recycle=1 # Time before tcp keepalive probe is sent # default is 2 hours (7200000) #net.inet.tcp.keepidle=60000 # Should be increased until net.inet.ip.intr_queue_drops is zero net.inet.ip.intr_queue_maxlen=4096 # Interrupt handling via multiple CPU, but with context switch. # You can play with it. Default is 1; #net.isr.direct=0 # This is for routers only #net.inet.ip.forwarding=1 #net.inet.ip.fastforwarding=1 # This speed ups dummynet when channel isn't saturated net.inet.ip.dummynet.io_fast=1 # Increase dummynet(4) hash #net.inet.ip.dummynet.hash_size=2048 #net.inet.ip.dummynet.max_chain_len # Should be increased when you have A LOT of files on server # (Increase until vfs.ufs.dirhash_mem becomes lower) vfs.ufs.dirhash_maxmem=67108864 # Note from commit http://svn.freebsd.org/base/head@211031 : # For systems with RAID volumes and/or virtualization envirnments, where # read performance is very important, increasing this sysctl tunable to 32 # or even more will demonstratively yield additional performance benefits. vfs.read_max=32 # Explicit Congestion Notification (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explicit_Congestion_Notification) net.inet.tcp.ecn.enable=1 # Flowtable - flow caching mechanism # Useful for routers #net.inet.flowtable.enable=1 #net.inet.flowtable.nmbflows=65535 # Extreme polling tuning #kern.polling.burst_max=1000 #kern.polling.each_burst=1000 #kern.polling.reg_frac=100 #kern.polling.user_frac=1 #kern.polling.idle_poll=0 # IPFW dynamic rules and timeouts tuning # Increase dyn_buckets till net.inet.ip.fw.curr_dyn_buckets is lower net.inet.ip.fw.dyn_buckets=65536 net.inet.ip.fw.dyn_max=65536 net.inet.ip.fw.dyn_ack_lifetime=120 net.inet.ip.fw.dyn_syn_lifetime=10 net.inet.ip.fw.dyn_fin_lifetime=2 net.inet.ip.fw.dyn_short_lifetime=10 # Make packets pass firewall only once when using dummynet # i.e. packets going thru pipe are passing out from firewall with accept #net.inet.ip.fw.one_pass=1 # shm_use_phys Wires all shared pages, making them unswappable # Use this to lessen Virtual Memory Manager's work when using Shared Mem. # Useful for databases #kern.ipc.shm_use_phys=1 # ZFS # Enable prefetch. Useful for sequential load type i.e fileserver. # FreeBSD sets vfs.zfs.prefetch_disable to 1 on any i386 systems and # on any amd64 systems with less than 4GB of avaiable memory # For additional info check this nabble thread http://old.nabble.com/Samba-read-speed-performance-tuning-td27964534.html #vfs.zfs.prefetch_disable=0 # On highload servers you may notice following message in dmesg: # "Approaching the limit on PV entries, consider increasing either the # vm.pmap.shpgperproc or the vm.pmap.pv_entry_max tunable" vm.pmap.shpgperproc=2048 loader.conf: # Accept filters for data, http and DNS requests # Useful when your software uses select() instead of kevent/kqueue or when you under DDoS # DNS accf available on 8.0+ accf_data_load="YES" accf_http_load="YES" accf_dns_load="YES" # Async IO system calls aio_load="YES" # Linux specific devices in /dev # As for 8.1 it only /dev/full #lindev_load="YES" # Adds NCQ support in FreeBSD # WARNING! all ad[0-9]+ devices will be renamed to ada[0-9]+ # 8.0+ only #ahci_load="YES" #siis_load="YES" # FreeBSD 8.2+ # New Congestion Control for FreeBSD # http://caia.swin.edu.au/urp/newtcp/tools/cc_chd-readme-0.1.txt # http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/78/slides/iccrg-5.pdf # Initial merge commit message http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg31410.html #cc_chd_load="YES" # Increase kernel memory size to 3G. # # Use ONLY if you have KVA_PAGES in kernel configuration, and you have more than 3G RAM # Otherwise panic will happen on next reboot! # # It's required for high buffer sizes: kern.ipc.nmbjumbop, kern.ipc.nmbclusters, etc # Useful on highload stateful firewalls, proxies or ZFS fileservers # (FreeBSD 7.2+ amd64 users: Check that current value is lower!) #vm.kmem_size="3G" # If your server has lots of swap (>4Gb) you should increase following value # according to http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2009-October/029616.html # Otherwise you'll be getting errors # "kernel: swap zone exhausted, increase kern.maxswzone" # kern.maxswzone="256M" # Older versions of FreeBSD can't tune maxfiles on the fly #kern.maxfiles="200000" # Useful for databases # Sets maximum data size to 1G # (FreeBSD 7.2+ amd64 users: Check that current value is lower!) #kern.maxdsiz="1G" # Maximum buffer size(vfs.maxbufspace) # You can check current one via vfs.bufspace # Should be lowered/upped depending on server's load-type # Usually decreased to preserve kmem # (default is 10% of mem) #kern.maxbcache="512M" # Sendfile buffers # For i386 only #kern.ipc.nsfbufs=10240 # FreeBSD 9+ # HPET "legacy route" support. It should allow HPET to work per-CPU # See http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg03603.html #hint.atrtc.0.clock=0 #hint.attimer.0.clock=0 #hint.hpet.0.legacy_route=1 # syncache Hash table tuning net.inet.tcp.syncache.hashsize=1024 net.inet.tcp.syncache.bucketlimit=512 net.inet.tcp.syncache.cachelimit=65536 # Increased hostcache # Later host cache can be viewed via net.inet.tcp.hostcache.list hidden sysctl # Very useful for it's RTT RTTVAR # Must be power of two net.inet.tcp.hostcache.hashsize=65536 # hashsize * bucketlimit (which is 30 by default) # It allocates 255Mb (1966080*136) of RAM net.inet.tcp.hostcache.cachelimit=1966080 # TCP control-block Hash table tuning net.inet.tcp.tcbhashsize=4096 # Disable ipfw deny all # Should be uncommented when there is a chance that # kernel and ipfw binary may be out-of sync on next reboot #net.inet.ip.fw.default_to_accept=1 # # SIFTR (Statistical Information For TCP Research) is a kernel module that # logs a range of statistics on active TCP connections to a log file. # See prerelease notes http://groups.google.com/group/mailing.freebsd.current/browse_thread/thread/b4c18be6cdce76e4 # and man 4 sitfr #siftr_load="YES" # Enable superpages, for 7.2+ only # Also read http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2009-November/030094.html vm.pmap.pg_ps_enabled=1 # Usefull if you are using Intel-Gigabit NIC #hw.em.rxd=4096 #hw.em.txd=4096 #hw.em.rx_process_limit="-1" # Also if you have ALOT interrupts on NIC - play with following parameters # NOTE: You should set them for every NIC #dev.em.0.rx_int_delay: 250 #dev.em.0.tx_int_delay: 250 #dev.em.0.rx_abs_int_delay: 250 #dev.em.0.tx_abs_int_delay: 250 # There is also multithreaded version of em/igb drivers can be found here: # http://people.yandex-team.ru/~wawa/ # # for additional em monitoring and statistics use # sysctl dev.em.0.stats=1 ; dmesg # sysctl dev.em.0.debug=1 ; dmesg # Also after r209242 (-CURRENT) there is a separate sysctl for each stat variable; # Same tunings for igb #hw.igb.rxd=4096 #hw.igb.txd=4096 #hw.igb.rx_process_limit=100 # Some useful netisr tunables. See sysctl net.isr #net.isr.maxthreads=4 #net.isr.defaultqlimit=4096 #net.isr.maxqlimit: 10240 # Bind netisr threads to CPUs #net.isr.bindthreads=1 # # FreeBSD 9.x+ # Increase interface send queue length # See commit message http://svn.freebsd.org/viewvc/base?view=revision&revision=207554 #net.link.ifqmaxlen=1024 # Nicer boot logo =) loader_logo="beastie" And finally here is KERNCONF: # Just some of them, see also # cat /sys/{i386,amd64,}/conf/NOTES # This one useful only on i386 #options KVA_PAGES=512 # You can play with HZ in environments with high interrupt rate (default is 1000) # 100 is for my notebook to prolong it's battery life #options HZ=100 # Polling is goot on network loads with high packet rates and low-end NICs # NB! Do not enable it if you want more than one netisr thread #options DEVICE_POLLING # Eliminate datacopy on socket read-write # To take advantage with zero copy sockets you should have an MTU >= 4k # This req. is only for receiving data. # Read more in man zero_copy_sockets # Also this epic thread on kernel trap: # http://kerneltrap.org/node/6506 # Here Linus says that "anybody that does it that way (FreeBSD) is totally incompetent" #options ZERO_COPY_SOCKETS # Support TCP sign. Used for IPSec options TCP_SIGNATURE # There was stackoverflow found in KAME IPSec stack: # See http://secunia.com/advisories/43995/ # For quick workaround you can use `ipfw add deny proto ipcomp` options IPSEC # This ones can be loaded as modules. They described in loader.conf section #options ACCEPT_FILTER_DATA #options ACCEPT_FILTER_HTTP # Adding ipfw, also can be loaded as modules options IPFIREWALL # On 8.1+ you can disable verbose to see blocked packets on ipfw0 interface. # Also there is no point in compiling verbose into the kernel, because # now there is net.inet.ip.fw.verbose tunable. #options IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE #options IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE_LIMIT=10 options IPFIREWALL_FORWARD # Adding kernel NAT options IPFIREWALL_NAT options LIBALIAS # Traffic shaping options DUMMYNET # Divert, i.e. for userspace NAT options IPDIVERT # This is for OpenBSD's pf firewall device pf device pflog # pf's QoS - ALTQ options ALTQ options ALTQ_CBQ # Class Bases Queuing (CBQ) options ALTQ_RED # Random Early Detection (RED) options ALTQ_RIO # RED In/Out options ALTQ_HFSC # Hierarchical Packet Scheduler (HFSC) options ALTQ_PRIQ # Priority Queuing (PRIQ) options ALTQ_NOPCC # Required for SMP build # Pretty console # Manual can be found here http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=6134 #options VESA #options SC_PIXEL_MODE # Disable reboot on Ctrl Alt Del #options SC_DISABLE_REBOOT # Change normal|kernel messages color options SC_NORM_ATTR=(FG_GREEN|BG_BLACK) options SC_KERNEL_CONS_ATTR=(FG_YELLOW|BG_BLACK) # More scroll space options SC_HISTORY_SIZE=8192 # Adding hardware crypto device device crypto device cryptodev # Useful network interfaces device vlan device tap #Virtual Ethernet driver device gre #IP over IP tunneling device if_bridge #Bridge interface device pfsync #synchronization interface for PF device carp #Common Address Redundancy Protocol device enc #IPsec interface device lagg #Link aggregation interface device stf #IPv4-IPv6 port # Also for my notebook, but may be used with Opteron device amdtemp # Same for Intel processors device coretemp # man 4 cpuctl device cpuctl # CPU control pseudo-device # Support for ECMP. More than one route for destination # Works even with default route so one can use it as LB for two ISP # For now code is unstable and panics (panic: rtfree 2) on route deletions. #options RADIX_MPATH # Multicast routing #options MROUTING #options PIM # Debug & DTrace options KDB # Kernel debugger related code options KDB_TRACE # Print a stack trace for a panic options KDTRACE_FRAME # amd64-only(?) options KDTRACE_HOOKS # all architectures - enable general DTrace hooks #options DDB #options DDB_CTF # all architectures - kernel ELF linker loads CTF data # Adaptive spining in lockmgr (8.x+) # See http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg10782.html options ADAPTIVE_LOCKMGRS # UTF-8 in console (8.x+) #options TEKEN_UTF8 # FreeBSD 8.1+ # Deadlock resolver thread # For additional information see http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg18124.html # (FYI: "resolution" is panic so use with caution) #options DEADLKRES # Increase maximum size of Raw I/O and sendfile(2) readahead #options MAXPHYS=(1024*1024) #options MAXBSIZE=(1024*1024) # For scheduler debug enable following option. # Debug will be available via `kern.sched.stats` sysctl # For more information see http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/sys/conf/NOTES?view=markup #options SCHED_STATS If you are tuning network for maximum performance you may wish to play with ifconfig options like: # You can list all capabilities via `ifconfig -m` ifconfig [-]rxcsum [-]txcsum [-]tso [-]lro mtu In case you've enabled DDB in kernel config, you should edit your /etc/ddb.conf and add something like this to enable automatic reboot (and textdump as bonus): script kdb.enter.panic=textdump set; capture on; show pcpu; bt; ps; alltrace; capture off; call doadump; reset script kdb.enter.default=textdump set; capture on; bt; ps; capture off; call doadump; reset And do not forget to add ddb_enable="YES" to /etc/rc.conf Since FreeBSD 9 you can select to enable/disable flowcontrol on your NIC: # See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_flow_control and # http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg07927.html for additional info ifconfig bge0 media auto mediaopt flowcontrol PS. Also most of FreeBSD's limits can be monitored by # vmstat -z and # limits PPS. variety of network counters can be monitored via # netstat -s In FreeBSD-9 netstat's -Q option appeared, try following command to display netisr stats # netstat -Q PPPS. also see # man 7 tuning PPPPS. I wanted to thank FreeBSD community, especially author of nginx - Igor Sysoev, nginx-ru@ and FreeBSD-performance@ mailing lists for providing useful information about FreeBSD tuning. FreeBSD WIP * Whats cooking for FreeBSD 7? * Whats cooking for FreeBSD 8? * Whats cooking for FreeBSD 9? So here is the question: What tunings are you using on yours FreeBSD servers? You can also post your /etc/sysctl.conf, /boot/loader.conf, kernel options, etc with description of its' meaning (do not copy-paste from sysctl -d). Don't forget to specify server type (web, smb, gateway, etc) Let's share experience!

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• Is it possible to run dhcpd3 as non-root user in a chroot jail?

  - by Lenain

  Hi everyone. I would like to run dhcpd3 from a chroot jail on Debian Lenny. At the moment, I can run it as root from my jail. Now I want to do this as non-root user (as "-u blah -t /path/to/jail" Bind option). If I start my process like this : start-stop-daemon --chroot /home/jails/dhcp --chuid dhcp \ --start --pidfile /home/jails/dhcp/var/run/dhcp.pid --exec /usr/sbin/dhcpd3 I get stuck with these errors : Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Server V3.1.1 Copyright 2004-2008 Internet Systems Consortium. All rights reserved. For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/ unable to create icmp socket: Operation not permitted Wrote 0 deleted host decls to leases file. Wrote 0 new dynamic host decls to leases file. Wrote 0 leases to leases file. Open a socket for LPF: Operation not permitted strace : brk(0) = 0x911b000 fcntl64(0, F_GETFD) = 0 fcntl64(1, F_GETFD) = 0 fcntl64(2, F_GETFD) = 0 access("/etc/suid-debug", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) access("/etc/ld.so.nohwcap", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb775d000 access("/etc/ld.so.preload", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/lib/tls/i686/cmov", 0xbfc2ac84) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/tls/i686/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/lib/tls/i686", 0xbfc2ac84) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/tls/cmov/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/lib/tls/cmov", 0xbfc2ac84) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/tls/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/lib/tls", 0xbfc2ac84) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/i686/cmov/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/lib/i686/cmov", 0xbfc2ac84) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/i686/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/lib/i686", 0xbfc2ac84) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/cmov/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/lib/cmov", 0xbfc2ac84) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = 3 read(3, "\177ELF\1\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0\3\0\1\0\0\0\260e\1\0004\0\0\0t"..., 512) = 512 fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=1294572, ...}) = 0 mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb775c000 mmap2(NULL, 1300080, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0) = 0xb761e000 mmap2(0xb7756000, 12288, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0x138) = 0xb7756000 mmap2(0xb7759000, 9840, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7759000 close(3) = 0 mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb761d000 set_thread_area({entry_number:-1 - 6, base_addr:0xb761d6b0, limit:1048575, seg_32bit:1, contents:0, read_exec_only:0, limit_in_pages:1, seg_not_present:0, useable:1}) = 0 mprotect(0xb7756000, 4096, PROT_READ) = 0 open("/dev/null", O_RDWR) = 3 close(3) = 0 brk(0) = 0x911b000 brk(0x913c000) = 0x913c000 socket(PF_FILE, SOCK_DGRAM, 0) = 3 fcntl64(3, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0 connect(3, {sa_family=AF_FILE, path="/dev/log"...}, 110) = 0 time(NULL) = 1284760816 open("/etc/localtime", O_RDONLY) = 4 fstat64(4, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2945, ...}) = 0 fstat64(4, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2945, ...}) = 0 mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb761c000 read(4, "TZif2\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\f\0\0\0\f\0\0\0\0\0"..., 4096) = 2945 _llseek(4, -28, [2917], SEEK_CUR) = 0 read(4, "\nCET-1CEST,M3.5.0,M10.5.0/3\n"..., 4096) = 28 close(4) = 0 munmap(0xb761c000, 4096) = 0 stat64("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2945, ...}) = 0 send(3, "Sep 18 00:00:16 dhcpd: Intern"..., 73, MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 73 write(2, "Internet Systems Consortium DHCP "..., 46Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Server V3.1.1) = 46 write(2, "\n"..., 1 ) = 1 time(NULL) = 1284760816 stat64("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2945, ...}) = 0 send(3, "Sep 18 00:00:16 dhcpd: Copyri"..., 75, MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 75 write(2, "Copyright 2004-2008 Internet Syst"..., 48Copyright 2004-2008 Internet Systems Consortium.) = 48 write(2, "\n"..., 1 ) = 1 time(NULL) = 1284760816 stat64("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2945, ...}) = 0 send(3, "Sep 18 00:00:16 dhcpd: All ri"..., 47, MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 47 write(2, "All rights reserved."..., 20All rights reserved.) = 20 write(2, "\n"..., 1 ) = 1 time(NULL) = 1284760816 stat64("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2945, ...}) = 0 send(3, "Sep 18 00:00:16 dhcpd: For in"..., 77, MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 77 write(2, "For info, please visit http://www"..., 50For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/) = 50 write(2, "\n"..., 1 ) = 1 socket(PF_FILE, SOCK_STREAM, 0) = 4 fcntl64(4, F_SETFL, O_RDWR|O_NONBLOCK) = 0 connect(4, {sa_family=AF_FILE, path="/var/run/nscd/socket"...}, 110) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) close(4) = 0 socket(PF_FILE, SOCK_STREAM, 0) = 4 fcntl64(4, F_SETFL, O_RDWR|O_NONBLOCK) = 0 connect(4, {sa_family=AF_FILE, path="/var/run/nscd/socket"...}, 110) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) close(4) = 0 open("/etc/nsswitch.conf", O_RDONLY) = 4 fstat64(4, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=475, ...}) = 0 mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb761c000 read(4, "# /etc/nsswitch.conf\n#\n# Example "..., 4096) = 475 read(4, ""..., 4096) = 0 close(4) = 0 munmap(0xb761c000, 4096) = 0 open("/lib/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/usr/lib/tls/i686/cmov", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/tls/i686/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/usr/lib/tls/i686", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/tls/cmov/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/usr/lib/tls/cmov", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/tls/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/usr/lib/tls", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/i686/cmov/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/usr/lib/i686/cmov", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/i686/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/usr/lib/i686", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/cmov/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/usr/lib/cmov", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/usr/lib", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/i486-linux-gnu/tls/i686/cmov/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/lib/i486-linux-gnu/tls/i686/cmov", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/i486-linux-gnu/tls/i686/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/lib/i486-linux-gnu/tls/i686", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/i486-linux-gnu/tls/cmov/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/lib/i486-linux-gnu/tls/cmov", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/i486-linux-gnu/tls/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/lib/i486-linux-gnu/tls", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/i486-linux-gnu/i686/cmov/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/lib/i486-linux-gnu/i686/cmov", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/i486-linux-gnu/i686/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/lib/i486-linux-gnu/i686", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/i486-linux-gnu/cmov/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/lib/i486-linux-gnu/cmov", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/i486-linux-gnu/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/lib/i486-linux-gnu", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu/tls/i686/cmov/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu/tls/i686/cmov", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu/tls/i686/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu/tls/i686", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu/tls/cmov/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu/tls/cmov", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu/tls/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu/tls", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu/i686/cmov/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu/i686/cmov", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu/i686/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu/i686", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu/cmov/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu/cmov", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu/libnss_db.so.2", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) stat64("/usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu", 0xbfc2ad5c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/libnss_files.so.2", O_RDONLY) = 4 read(4, "\177ELF\1\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0\3\0\1\0\0\0\320\30\0\0004\0\0\0\250"..., 512) = 512 fstat64(4, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=38408, ...}) = 0 mmap2(NULL, 41624, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_DENYWRITE, 4, 0) = 0xb7612000 mmap2(0xb761b000, 8192, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_DENYWRITE, 4, 0x8) = 0xb761b000 close(4) = 0 open("/etc/services", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 4 fcntl64(4, F_GETFD) = 0x1 (flags FD_CLOEXEC) fstat64(4, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=18480, ...}) = 0 mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7611000 read(4, "# Network services, Internet styl"..., 4096) = 4096 read(4, "9/tcp\t\t\t\t# Quick Mail Transfer Pr"..., 4096) = 4096 read(4, "note\t1352/tcp\tlotusnotes\t# Lotus "..., 4096) = 4096 read(4, "tion\nafs3-kaserver\t7004/udp\nafs3-"..., 4096) = 4096 read(4, "backup\t2989/tcp\t\t\t# Afmbackup sys"..., 4096) = 2096 read(4, ""..., 4096) = 0 close(4) = 0 munmap(0xb7611000, 4096) = 0 time(NULL) = 1284760816 open("/etc/protocols", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 4 fstat64(4, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2626, ...}) = 0 mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7611000 read(4, "# Internet (IP) protocols\n#\n# Upd"..., 4096) = 2626 close(4) = 0 munmap(0xb7611000, 4096) = 0 socket(PF_INET, SOCK_RAW, IPPROTO_ICMP) = -1 EPERM (Operation not permitted) time(NULL) = 1284760816 stat64("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2945, ...}) = 0 send(3, "Sep 18 00:00:16 dhcpd: unable"..., 80, MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 80 write(2, "unable to create icmp socket: Ope"..., 53unable to create icmp socket: Operation not permitted) = 53 write(2, "\n"..., 1 ) = 1 open("/etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf", O_RDONLY) = 4 lseek(4, 0, SEEK_END) = 1426 lseek(4, 0, SEEK_SET) = 0 read(4, "#----------------------------\n# G"..., 1426) = 1426 close(4) = 0 mmap2(NULL, 401408, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb75b0000 mmap2(NULL, 401408, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb754e000 mmap2(NULL, 401408, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb74ec000 brk(0x916f000) = 0x916f000 close(3) = 0 socket(PF_FILE, SOCK_DGRAM, 0) = 3 fcntl64(3, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0 connect(3, {sa_family=AF_FILE, path="/dev/log"...}, 110) = 0 time(NULL) = 1284760816 stat64("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2945, ...}) = 0 send(3, "Sep 18 00:00:16 dhcpd: Inter"..., 74, MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 74 time(NULL) = 1284760816 stat64("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2945, ...}) = 0 send(3, "Sep 18 00:00:16 dhcpd: Copyr"..., 76, MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 76 time(NULL) = 1284760816 stat64("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2945, ...}) = 0 send(3, "Sep 18 00:00:16 dhcpd: All r"..., 48, MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 48 time(NULL) = 1284760816 stat64("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2945, ...}) = 0 send(3, "Sep 18 00:00:16 dhcpd: For i"..., 78, MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 78 open("/var/lib/dhcp3/dhcpd.leases", O_RDONLY) = 4 lseek(4, 0, SEEK_END) = 126 lseek(4, 0, SEEK_SET) = 0 read(4, "# The format of this file is docu"..., 126) = 126 close(4) = 0 open("/var/lib/dhcp3/dhcpd.leases", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_APPEND, 0666) = 4 fstat64(4, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=126, ...}) = 0 mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb74eb000 fstat64(4, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=126, ...}) = 0 _llseek(4, 126, [126], SEEK_SET) = 0 time(NULL) = 1284760816 time(NULL) = 1284760816 open("/var/lib/dhcp3/dhcpd.leases.1284760816", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC, 0664) = 5 fcntl64(5, F_GETFL) = 0x1 (flags O_WRONLY) fstat64(5, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=0, ...}) = 0 mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb74ea000 _llseek(5, 0, [0], SEEK_CUR) = 0 close(4) = 0 munmap(0xb74eb000, 4096) = 0 time(NULL) = 1284760816 stat64("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2945, ...}) = 0 send(3, "Sep 18 00:00:16 dhcpd: Wrote"..., 70, MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 70 write(2, "Wrote 0 deleted host decls to lea"..., 42Wrote 0 deleted host decls to leases file.) = 42 write(2, "\n"..., 1 ) = 1 time(NULL) = 1284760816 stat64("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2945, ...}) = 0 send(3, "Sep 18 00:00:16 dhcpd: Wrote"..., 74, MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 74 write(2, "Wrote 0 new dynamic host decls to"..., 46Wrote 0 new dynamic host decls to leases file.) = 46 write(2, "\n"..., 1 ) = 1 time(NULL) = 1284760816 stat64("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2945, ...}) = 0 send(3, "Sep 18 00:00:16 dhcpd: Wrote"..., 58, MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 58 write(2, "Wrote 0 leases to leases file."..., 30Wrote 0 leases to leases file.) = 30 write(2, "\n"..., 1 ) = 1 write(5, "# The format of this file is docu"..., 126) = 126 fsync(5) = 0 unlink("/var/lib/dhcp3/dhcpd.leases~") = 0 link("/var/lib/dhcp3/dhcpd.leases", "/var/lib/dhcp3/dhcpd.leases~") = 0 rename("/var/lib/dhcp3/dhcpd.leases.1284760816", "/var/lib/dhcp3/dhcpd.leases") = 0 socket(PF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, IPPROTO_UDP) = 4 ioctl(4, SIOCGIFCONF, {0 - 64, NULL}) = 0 ioctl(4, SIOCGIFCONF, {64, {{"lo", {AF_INET, inet_addr("127.0.0.1")}}, {"eth0", {AF_INET, inet_addr("192.168.0.10")}}}}) = 0 ioctl(4, SIOCGIFFLAGS, {ifr_name="lo", ifr_flags=IFF_UP|IFF_LOOPBACK|IFF_RUNNING}) = 0 ioctl(4, SIOCGIFFLAGS, {ifr_name="eth0", ifr_flags=IFF_UP|IFF_BROADCAST|IFF_RUNNING|IFF_MULTICAST}) = 0 ioctl(4, SIOCGIFHWADDR, {ifr_name="eth0", ifr_hwaddr=00:c0:26:87:55:c0}) = 0 socket(PF_PACKET, SOCK_PACKET, 768) = -1 EPERM (Operation not permitted) time(NULL) = 1284760816 stat64("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2945, ...}) = 0 send(3, "Sep 18 00:00:16 dhcpd: Open "..., 74, MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 74 write(2, "Open a socket for LPF: Operation "..., 46Open a socket for LPF: Operation not permitted) = 46 write(2, "\n"..., 1 ) = 1 exit_group(1) = ? I understand that dhcpd wants to create sockets on port 67... but I don't know how to authorize that through the chroot. Any idea?

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• Where does ASP.NET Web API Fit?

  - by Rick Strahl

  With the pending release of ASP.NET MVC 4 and the new ASP.NET Web API, there has been a lot of discussion of where the new Web API technology fits in the ASP.NET Web stack. There are a lot of choices to build HTTP based applications available now on the stack - we've come a long way from when WebForms and Http Handlers/Modules where the only real options. Today we have WebForms, MVC, ASP.NET Web Pages, ASP.NET AJAX, WCF REST and now Web API as well as the core ASP.NET runtime to choose to build HTTP content with. Web API definitely squarely addresses the 'API' aspect - building consumable services - rather than HTML content, but even to that end there are a lot of choices you have today. So where does Web API fit, and when doesn't it? But before we get into that discussion, let's talk about what a Web API is and why we should care. What's a Web API? HTTP 'APIs' (Microsoft's new terminology for a service I guess)  are becoming increasingly more important with the rise of the many devices in use today. Most mobile devices like phones and tablets run Apps that are using data retrieved from the Web over HTTP. Desktop applications are also moving in this direction with more and more online content and synching moving into even traditional desktop applications. The pending Windows 8 release promises an app like platform for both the desktop and other devices, that also emphasizes consuming data from the Cloud. Likewise many Web browser hosted applications these days are relying on rich client functionality to create and manipulate the browser user interface, using AJAX rather than server generated HTML data to load up the user interface with data. These mobile or rich Web applications use their HTTP connection to return data rather than HTML markup in the form of JSON or XML typically. But an API can also serve other kinds of data, like images or other binary files, or even text data and HTML (although that's less common). A Web API is what feeds rich applications with data. ASP.NET Web API aims to service this particular segment of Web development by providing easy semantics to route and handle incoming requests and an easy to use platform to serve HTTP data in just about any content format you choose to create and serve from the server. But .NET already has various HTTP Platforms The .NET stack already includes a number of technologies that provide the ability to create HTTP service back ends, and it has done so since the very beginnings of the .NET platform. From raw HTTP Handlers and Modules in the core ASP.NET runtime, to high level platforms like ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, ASP.NET AJAX and the WCF REST engine (which technically is not ASP.NET, but can integrate with it), you've always been able to handle just about any kind of HTTP request and response with ASP.NET. The beauty of the raw ASP.NET platform is that it provides you everything you need to build just about any type of HTTP application you can dream up from low level APIs/custom engines to high level HTML generation engine. ASP.NET as a core platform clearly has stood the test of time 10+ years later and all other frameworks like Web API are built on top of this ASP.NET core. However, although it's possible to create Web APIs / Services using any of the existing out of box .NET technologies, none of them have been a really nice fit for building arbitrary HTTP based APIs. Sure, you can use an HttpHandler to create just about anything, but you have to build a lot of plumbing to build something more complex like a comprehensive API that serves a variety of requests, handles multiple output formats and can easily pass data up to the server in a variety of ways. Likewise you can use ASP.NET MVC to handle routing and creating content in various formats fairly easily, but it doesn't provide a great way to automatically negotiate content types and serve various content formats directly (it's possible to do with some plumbing code of your own but not built in). Prior to Web API, Microsoft's main push for HTTP services has been WCF REST, which was always an awkward technology that had a severe personality conflict, not being clear on whether it wanted to be part of WCF or purely a separate technology. In the end it didn't do either WCF compatibility or WCF agnostic pure HTTP operation very well, which made for a very developer-unfriendly environment. Personally I didn't like any of the implementations at the time, so much so that I ended up building my own HTTP service engine (as part of the West Wind Web Toolkit), as have a few other third party tools that provided much better integration and ease of use. With the release of Web API for the first time I feel that I can finally use the tools in the box and not have to worry about creating and maintaining my own toolkit as Web API addresses just about all the features I implemented on my own and much more. ASP.NET Web API provides a better HTTP Experience ASP.NET Web API differentiates itself from the previous Microsoft in-box HTTP service solutions in that it was built from the ground up around the HTTP protocol and its messaging semantics. Unlike WCF REST or ASP.NET AJAX with ASMX, it’s a brand new platform rather than bolted on technology that is supposed to work in the context of an existing framework. The strength of the new ASP.NET Web API is that it combines the best features of the platforms that came before it, to provide a comprehensive and very usable HTTP platform. Because it's based on ASP.NET and borrows a lot of concepts from ASP.NET MVC, Web API should be immediately familiar and comfortable to most ASP.NET developers. Here are some of the features that Web API provides that I like: Strong Support for URL Routing to produce clean URLs using familiar MVC style routing semantics Content Negotiation based on Accept headers for request and response serialization Support for a host of supported output formats including JSON, XML, ATOM Strong default support for REST semantics but they are optional Easily extensible Formatter support to add new input/output types Deep support for more advanced HTTP features via HttpResponseMessage and HttpRequestMessage classes and strongly typed Enums to describe many HTTP operations Convention based design that drives you into doing the right thing for HTTP Services Very extensible, based on MVC like extensibility model of Formatters and Filters Self-hostable in non-Web applications  Testable using testing concepts similar to MVC Web API is meant to handle any kind of HTTP input and produce output and status codes using the full spectrum of HTTP functionality available in a straight forward and flexible manner. Looking at the list above you can see that a lot of functionality is very similar to ASP.NET MVC, so many ASP.NET developers should feel quite comfortable with the concepts of Web API. The Routing and core infrastructure of Web API are very similar to how MVC works providing many of the benefits of MVC, but with focus on HTTP access and manipulation in Controller methods rather than HTML generation in MVC. There’s much improved support for content negotiation based on HTTP Accept headers with the framework capable of detecting automatically what content the client is sending and requesting and serving the appropriate data format in return. This seems like such a little and obvious thing, but it's really important. Today's service backends often are used by multiple clients/applications and being able to choose the right data format for what fits best for the client is very important. While previous solutions were able to accomplish this using a variety of mixed features of WCF and ASP.NET, Web API combines all this functionality into a single robust server side HTTP framework that intrinsically understands the HTTP semantics and subtly drives you in the right direction for most operations. And when you need to customize or do something that is not built in, there are lots of hooks and overrides for most behaviors, and even many low level hook points that allow you to plug in custom functionality with relatively little effort. No Brainers for Web API There are a few scenarios that are a slam dunk for Web API. If your primary focus of an application or even a part of an application is some sort of API then Web API makes great sense. HTTP ServicesIf you're building a comprehensive HTTP API that is to be consumed over the Web, Web API is a perfect fit. You can isolate the logic in Web API and build your application as a service breaking out the logic into controllers as needed. Because the primary interface is the service there's no confusion of what should go where (MVC or API). Perfect fit. Primary AJAX BackendsIf you're building rich client Web applications that are relying heavily on AJAX callbacks to serve its data, Web API is also a slam dunk. Again because much if not most of the business logic will probably end up in your Web API service logic, there's no confusion over where logic should go and there's no duplication. In Single Page Applications (SPA), typically there's very little HTML based logic served other than bringing up a shell UI and then filling the data from the server with AJAX which means the business logic required for data retrieval and data acceptance and validation too lives in the Web API. Perfect fit. Generic HTTP EndpointsAnother good fit are generic HTTP endpoints that to serve data or handle 'utility' type functionality in typical Web applications. If you need to implement an image server, or an upload handler in the past I'd implement that as an HTTP handler. With Web API you now have a well defined place where you can implement these types of generic 'services' in a location that can easily add endpoints (via Controller methods) or separated out as more full featured APIs. Granted this could be done with MVC as well, but Web API seems a clearer and more well defined place to store generic application services. This is one thing I used to do a lot of in my own libraries and Web API addresses this nicely. Great fit. Mixed HTML and AJAX Applications: Not a clear Choice  For all the commonality that Web API and MVC share they are fundamentally different platforms that are independent of each other. A lot of people have asked when does it make sense to use MVC vs. Web API when you're dealing with typical Web application that creates HTML and also uses AJAX functionality for rich functionality. While it's easy to say that all 'service'/AJAX logic should go into a Web API and all HTML related generation into MVC, that can often result in a lot of code duplication. Also MVC supports JSON and XML result data fairly easily as well so there's some confusion where that 'trigger point' is of when you should switch to Web API vs. just implementing functionality as part of MVC controllers. Ultimately there's a tradeoff between isolation of functionality and duplication. A good rule of thumb I think works is that if a large chunk of the application's functionality serves data Web API is a good choice, but if you have a couple of small AJAX requests to serve data to a grid or autocomplete box it'd be overkill to separate out that logic into a separate Web API controller. Web API does add overhead to your application (it's yet another framework that sits on top of core ASP.NET) so it should be worth it .Keep in mind that MVC can generate HTML and JSON/XML and just about any other content easily and that functionality is not going away, so just because you Web API is there it doesn't mean you have to use it. Web API is not a full replacement for MVC obviously either since there's not the same level of support to feed HTML from Web API controllers (although you can host a RazorEngine easily enough if you really want to go that route) so if you're HTML is part of your API or application in general MVC is still a better choice either alone or in combination with Web API. I suspect (and hope) that in the future Web API's functionality will merge even closer with MVC so that you might even be able to mix functionality of both into single Controllers so that you don't have to make any trade offs, but at the moment that's not the case. Some Issues To think about Web API is similar to MVC but not the Same Although Web API looks a lot like MVC it's not the same and some common functionality of MVC behaves differently in Web API. For example, the way single POST variables are handled is different than MVC and doesn't lend itself particularly well to some AJAX scenarios with POST data. Code Duplication I already touched on this in the Mixed HTML and Web API section, but if you build an MVC application that also exposes a Web API it's quite likely that you end up duplicating a bunch of code and - potentially - infrastructure. You may have to create authentication logic both for an HTML application and for the Web API which might need something different altogether. More often than not though the same logic is used, and there's no easy way to share. If you implement an MVC ActionFilter and you want that same functionality in your Web API you'll end up creating the filter twice. AJAX Data or AJAX HTML On a recent post's comments, David made some really good points regarding the commonality of MVC and Web API's and its place. One comment that caught my eye was a little more generic, regarding data services vs. HTML services. David says: I see a lot of merit in the combination of Knockout.js, client side templates and view models, calling Web API for a responsive UI, but sometimes late at night that still leaves me wondering why I would no longer be using some of the nice tooling and features that have evolved in MVC ;-) You know what - I can totally relate to that. On the last Web based mobile app I worked on, we decided to serve HTML partials to the client via AJAX for many (but not all!) things, rather than sending down raw data to inject into the DOM on the client via templating or direct manipulation. While there are definitely more bytes on the wire, with this, the overhead ended up being actually fairly small if you keep the 'data' requests small and atomic. Performance was often made up by the lack of client side rendering of HTML. Server rendered HTML for AJAX templating gives so much better infrastructure support without having to screw around with 20 mismatched client libraries. Especially with MVC and partials it's pretty easy to break out your HTML logic into very small, atomic chunks, so it's actually easy to create small rendering islands that can be used via composition on the server, or via AJAX calls to small, tight partials that return HTML to the client. Although this is often frowned upon as to 'heavy', it worked really well in terms of developer effort as well as providing surprisingly good performance on devices. There's still plenty of jQuery and AJAX logic happening on the client but it's more manageable in small doses rather than trying to do the entire UI composition with JavaScript and/or 'not-quite-there-yet' template engines that are very difficult to debug. This is not an issue directly related to Web API of course, but something to think about especially for AJAX or SPA style applications. Summary Web API is a great new addition to the ASP.NET platform and it addresses a serious need for consolidation of a lot of half-baked HTTP service API technologies that came before it. Web API feels 'right', and hits the right combination of usability and flexibility at least for me and it's a good fit for true API scenarios. However, just because a new platform is available it doesn't meant that other tools or tech that came before it should be discarded or even upgraded to the new platform. There's nothing wrong with continuing to use MVC controller methods to handle API tasks if that's what your app is running now - there's very little to be gained by upgrading to Web API just because. But going forward Web API clearly is the way to go, when building HTTP data interfaces and it's good to see that Microsoft got this one right - it was sorely needed! Resources ASP.NET Web API AspConf Ask the Experts Session (first 5 minutes) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Building The Right SharePoint Team For Your Organization

  - by Mark Rackley

  I see the question posted fairly often asking what kind SharePoint team an organization should have. How many people do I need? What roles do I need to fill? What is best for my organization? Well, just like every other answer in SharePoint, the correct answer is “it depends”. Do you ever get sick of hearing that??? I know I do… So, let me give you my thoughts and opinions based upon my experience and what I’ve seen and let you come to your own conclusions. What are the possible SharePoint roles? I guess the first thing you need to understand are the different roles that exist in SharePoint (and their are LOTS). Remember, SharePoint is a massive beast and you will NOT find one person who can do it all. If you are hoping to find that person you will be sorely disappointed. For the most part this is true in SharePoint 2007 and 2010. However, generally things are improved in 2010 and easier for junior individuals to grasp. SharePoint Administrator The absolutely positively only role that you should not be without no matter the size of your organization or SharePoint deployment is a SharePoint administrator. These guys are essential to keeping things running and figuring out what’s wrong when things aren’t running well. These unsung heroes do more before 10 am than I do all day. The bad thing is, when these guys are awesome, you don’t even know they exist because everything is running so smoothly. You should definitely invest some time and money here to make sure you have some competent if not rockstar help. You need an admin who truly loves SharePoint and will go that extra mile when necessary. Let me give you a real world example of what I’m talking about: We have a rockstar admin… and I’m sure she’s sick of my throwing her name around so she’ll just have to live with remaining anonymous in this post… sorry Lori… Anyway! A couple of weeks ago our Server teams came to us and said Hi Lori, I’m finalizing the MOSS servers and doing updates that require a restart; can I restart them? Seems like a harmless request from your server team does it not? Sure, go ahead and apply the patches and reboot during our scheduled maintenance window. No problem? right? Sounded fair to me… but no…. not to our fearless SharePoint admin… I need a complete list of patches that will be applied. There is an update that is out there that will break SharePoint… KB973917 is the patch that has been shown to cause issues. What? You mean Microsoft released a patch that would actually adversely affect SharePoint? If we did NOT have a rockstar admin, our server team would have applied these patches and then when some problem occurred in SharePoint we’d have to go through the fun task of tracking down exactly what caused the issue and resolve it. How much time would that have taken? If you have a junior SharePoint admin or an admin who’s not out there staying on top of what’s going on you could have spent days tracking down something so simple as applying a patch you should not have applied. I will even go as far to say the only SharePoint rockstar you NEED in your organization is a SharePoint admin. You can always outsource really complicated development projects or bring in a rockstar contractor every now and then to make sure you aren’t way off track in other areas. For your day-to-day sanity and to keep SharePoint running smoothly, you need an awesome Admin. Some rockstars in this category are: Ben Curry, Mike Watson, Joel Oleson, Todd Klindt, Shane Young, John Ferringer, Sean McDonough, and of course Lori Gowin. SharePoint Developer Another essential role for your SharePoint deployment is a SharePoint developer. Things do start to get a little hazy here and there are many flavors of “developers”. Are you writing custom code? using SharePoint Designer? What about SharePoint Branding?  Are all of these considered developers? I would say yes. Are they interchangeable? I’d say no. Development in SharePoint is such a large beast in itself. I would say that it’s not so large that you can’t know it all well, but it is so large that there are many people who specialize in one particular category. If you are lucky enough to have someone on staff who knows it all well, you better make sure they are well taken care of because those guys are ready-made to move over to a consulting role and charge you 3 times what you are probably paying them. :) Some of the all-around rockstars are Eric Shupps, Andrew Connell (go Razorbacks), Rob Foster, Paul Schaeflein, and Todd Bleeker SharePoint Power User/No-Code Solutions Developer These SharePoint Swiss Army Knives are essential for quick wins in your organization. These people can twist the out-of-the-box functionality to make it do things you would not even imagine. Give these guys SharePoint Designer, jQuery, InfoPath, and a little time and they will create views, dashboards, and KPI’s that will blow your mind away and give your execs the “wow” they are looking for. Not only can they deliver that wow factor, but they can mashup, merge, and really help make your SharePoint application usable and deliver an overall better user experience. Before you hand off a project to your SharePoint Custom Code developer, let one of these rockstars look at it and show you what they can do (in probably less time). I would say the second most important role you can fill in your organization is one of these guys. Rockstars in this category are Christina Wheeler, Laura Rogers, Jennifer Mason, and Mark Miller SharePoint Developer – Custom Code If you want to really integrate SharePoint into your legacy systems, or really twist it and make it bend to your will, you are going to have to open up Visual Studio and write some custom code.  Remember, SharePoint is essentially just a big, huge, ginormous .NET application, so you CAN write code to make it do ANYTHING, but do you really want to spend the time and effort to do so? At some point with every other form of SharePoint development you are going to run into SOME limitation (SPD Workflows is the big one that comes to mind). If you truly want to knock down all the walls then custom development is the way to go. PLEASE keep in mind when you are looking for a custom code developer that a .NET developer does NOT equal a SharePoint developer. Just SOME of the things these guys write are: Custom Workflows Custom Web Parts Web Service functionality Import data from legacy systems Export data to legacy systems Custom Actions Event Receivers Service Applications (2010) These guys are also the ones generally responsible for packaging everything up into solution packages (you are doing that, right?). Rockstars in this category are Phil Wicklund, Christina Wheeler, Geoff Varosky, and Brian Jackett. SharePoint Branding “But it LOOKS like SharePoint!” Somebody call the WAAAAAAAAAAAAHMbulance…   Themes, Master Pages, Page Layouts, Zones, and over 2000 styles in CSS.. these guys not only have to be comfortable with all of SharePoint’s quirks and pain points when branding, but they have to know it TWICE for publishing and non-publishing sites.  Not only that, but these guys really need to have an eye for graphic design and be able to translate the ramblings of business into something visually stunning. They also have to be comfortable with XSLT, XML, and be able to hand off what they do to your custom developers for them to package as solutions (which you are doing, right?). These rockstars include Heater Waterman, Cathy Dew, and Marcy Kellar SharePoint Architect SharePoint Architects are generally SharePoint Admins or Developers who have moved into more of a BA role? Is that fair to say? These guys really have a grasp and understanding for what SharePoint IS and what it can do. These guys help you structure your farms to meet your needs and help you design your applications the correct way. It’s always a good idea to bring in a rockstar SharePoint Architect to do a sanity check and make sure you aren’t doing anything stupid.  Most organizations probably do not have a rockstar architect on staff. These guys are generally brought in at the deployment of a farm, upgrade of a farm, or for large development projects. I personally also find architects very useful for sitting down with the business to translate their needs into what SharePoint can do. A good architect will be able to pick out what can be done out-of-the-box and what has to be custom built and hand those requirements to the development Staff. Architects can generally fill in as an admin or a developer when needed. Some rockstar architects are Rick Taylor, Dan Usher, Bill English, Spence Harbar, Neil Hodgkins, Eric Harlan, and Bjørn Furuknap. Other Roles / Specialties On top of all these other roles you also get these people who specialize in things like Reporting, BDC (BCS in 2010), Search, Performance, Security, Project Management, etc... etc... etc... Again, most organizations will not have one of these gurus on staff, they’ll just pay out the nose for them when they need them. :) SharePoint End User Everyone else in your organization that touches SharePoint falls into this category. What they actually DO in SharePoint is determined by your governance and what permissions you give these guys. Hopefully you have these guys on a fairly short leash and are NOT giving them access to tools like SharePoint Designer. Sadly end users are the ones who truly make your deployment a success by using it, but are also your biggest enemy in breaking it.  :)  We love you guys… really!!! Okay, all that’s fine and dandy, but what should MY SharePoint team look like? It depends! Okay… Are you just doing out of the box team sites with no custom development? Then you are probably fine with a great Admin team and a great No-Code Solution Development team. How many people do you need? Depends on how busy you can keep them. Sorry, can’t answer the question about numbers without knowing your specific needs. I can just tell you who you MIGHT need and what they will do for you. I’ll leave you with what my ideal SharePoint Team would look like for a particular scenario: Farm / Organization Structure Dev, QA, and 2 Production Farms. 5000 – 10000 Users Custom Development and Integration with legacy systems Team Sites, My Sites, Intranet, Document libraries and overall company collaboration Team Rockstar SharePoint Administrator 2-3 junior SharePoint Administrators SharePoint Architect / Lead Developer 2 Power User / No-Code Solution Developers 2-3 Custom Code developers Branding expert With a team of that size and skill set, they should be able to keep a substantial SharePoint deployment running smoothly and meet your business needs. This does NOT mean that you would not need to bring in contract help from time to time when you need an uber specialist in one area. Also, this team assumes there will be ongoing development for the life of your SharePoint farm. If you are just going to be doing sporadic custom development, it might make sense to partner with an awesome firm that specializes in that sort of work (I can give you the name of a couple if you are interested).  Again though, the size of your team depends on the number of requests you are receiving and how much active deployment you are doing. So, don’t bring in a team that looks like this and then yell at me because they are sitting around with nothing to do or are so overwhelmed that nothing is getting done. I do URGE you to take the proper time to asses your needs and determine what team is BEST for your organization. Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not skimp on the talent. When it comes to SharePoint you really do get what you pay for when it comes to employees, contractors, and software.  SharePoint can become absolutely critical to your business and because you skimped on hiring a developer he created a web part that brings down the farm because he doesn’t know what he’s doing, or you hire an admin who thinks it’s fine to stick everything in the same Content Database and then can’t figure out why people are complaining. SharePoint can be an enormous blessing to an organization or it’s biggest curse. Spend the time and money to do it right, or be prepared to spending even more time and money later to fix it.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, March 07, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, March 07, 2012Popular ReleasesStackBuilder: StackBuilder 1.0.5.0: + Added Collada/WebGL export to show 3D animation of pallet solutions...Delta Engine: Delta Engine Beta Preview v0.9.4: v0.9.4 is the release for February 2012, but it was delayed till 2012-03-07 until content generation worked much better for v0.9.4. The main improvements were done on the server side (content generation and improved build support for iOS and Android). v0.9.4 is also the first version everyone can use to deploy their application onto all supported platforms, see Marketplace Licensing for details: http://deltaengine.net/Marketplace Documentation for this version can be found at: http://help.de...PDFsharp - A .NET library for processing PDF: PDFsharp and MigraDoc Foundation 1.32: PDFsharp and MigraDoc Foundation 1.32 is a stable version that fixes a few bugs that were found with version 1.31. Version 1.32 includes solutions for Visual Studio 2010 only (but it should be possible to add the project files to existing solutions for VS 2005 or VS 2008). Users of VS 2005 or VS 2008 can still download version 1.31 with the solutions for those versions that allow them to easily try the samples that are included. While it may create smaller PDF files than version 1.30 because...Terminals: Version 2.0 - Release: Changes since version 1.9a:New art works New usability in Organize favorites window Improved usability of imports/exports and scans Large number of fixes Improvements in single instance mode Comparing November beta 4, this corrects: New application icons Doesn't show Logon error codes Fixed command line arguments exception for single instance mode Fixed detaching of tabs improved usability in detached window Fixed option settings for Capture manager Fixed system tray noti...MFCMAPI: March 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1032 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeSimple Injector: Simple Injector v1.4.1: This release adds two small improvements to the SimpleInjector.Extensions.dll. No changes have been made to the core library. New features and improvements in this release for the SimpleInjector.Extensions.dll The RegisterManyForOpenGeneric extension methods now accept non-generic decorator, as long as they implement the given open generic service type. GetTypesToRegister methods added to the OpenGenericBatchRegistrationExtensions class which allows to customize the behavior. Note that the...CommonLibrary: Code: CodePowerGUI Visual Studio Extension: PowerGUI VSX 1.5.2: Added support for PowerGUI 3.2.VidCoder: 1.3.1: Updated HandBrake core to 0.9.6 release (svn 4472). Removed erroneous "None" container choice. Change some logic and help text to stop assuming you have to pick the VIDEO_TS folder for a DVD scan. This should make previewing DVD titles on the Queue Multiple Titles window possible when you've picked the root DVD directory.ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.0: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-03-04 v3.1.0 -??Hidden???????（〓?〓）。 -?PageManager??...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.9.1: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????，????1M，????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDo...Windows Phone Commands for VS2010: Version 1.0: Initial Release Version 1.0 Connect from device or emulator (Monitors the connection) Show Device information (Plataform, build , version, avaliable memory, total memory, architeture Manager installed applications (Launch, uninstall and explorer isolate storage files) Manager core applications (Launch blocked applications from emulator (Office, Calculator, alarm, calendar , etc) Manager blocked settings from emulator (Airplane Mode, Celullar Network, Wifi, etc) Deploy and update ap...DNN Metro7 style Skin package: Metro7 style Skin for DotNetNuke 06.01.00: Changes on Version 06.01.00 Fixed issue on GraySmallTitle container, that breaks the layout Fixed issue on Blue Metro7 Skin where the Search, Login, Register, Date is missing Fixed issue with the Version numbers on the target file Fixed issue where the jQuery and jQuery-UI files not deleted on upgrade from Version 01.00.00 Added a internal page where the Image Slider would be replaces with a BannerPaneMedia Companion: MC 3.433b Release: General More GUI tweaks (mostly imperceptible!) Updates for mc_com.exe TV The 'Watched' button has been re-instigated Added TV Menu sub-option to search ALL for new Episodes (includes locked shows) Movies Added 'Source' field (eg DVD, Bluray, HDTV), customisable in Advanced Preferences (try it out, let us know how it works!) Added HTML <<format>> tag with optional parameters for video container, source, and resolution (updated HTML tags to be added to Documentation shortly) Known Issu...Picturethrill: Version 2.3.2.0: Release includes Self-Update feature for Picturethrill. What that means for users is that they are always guaranteed to have a fresh copy of Picturethrill on their computers with all latest fixes. When Picturethrill adds a new website to get pictures from, you will get it too!Simple MVVM Toolkit for Silverlight, WPF and Windows Phone: Simple MVVM Toolkit v3.0.0.0: Added support for Silverlight 5.0 and Windows Phone 7.1. Upgraded project templates and samples. Upgraded installer. There are some new prerequisites required for this version, namely Silverlight 5 Tools, Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5 (until the SDK is released), Windows Phone 7.1 SDK. Because it is in the experimental band, I have also removed the dependency on the Silverlight Testing Framework. You can use it if you wish, but the Ria Services project template no longer uses ...CODE Framework: 4.0.20301: The latest version adds a number of new features to the WPF system (such as stylable and testable messagebox support) as well as various new features throughout the system (especially in the Utilities namespace).MyRouter (Virtual WiFi Router): MyRouter 1.0.2 (Beta): A friendlier User Interface. A logger file to catch exceptions so you may send it to use to improve and fix any bugs that may occur. A feedback form because we always love hearing what you guy's think of MyRouter. Check for update menu item for you to stay up to date will the latest changes. Facebook fan page so you may spread the word and share MyRouter with friends and family And Many other exciting features were sure your going to love!WPF Sound Visualization Library: WPF SVL 0.3 (Source, Binaries, Examples, Help): Version 0.3 of WPFSVL. This includes three new controls: an equalizer, a digital clock, and a time editor.Orchard Project: Orchard 1.4: Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.4: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-4-Release-NotesNew Projects1-2-3 Music Store Downloads Server: The 1-2-3 Music Store Downloads server is a WCF-powered web service allowing owners of the now defunct Easybe 1-2-3 music store to access downloads for their installation of the 1-2-3 music store via a web service.Bootstrap for Orchard: Bootstrap Framework for Orchard. Provides a dynamic build of the Bootstrap CSS framework allowing developers of modules and themes to dynamically add css (in less of course), variables, mixins, and settings. (includes the Orchard dotless module)Calculating With Workflow: Basic example of using the Workflow Foundation 4.CRM JS Helper for REST Endpoint: CRM JS Helper for REST EndpointDev3Lib: Dev3Lib is an opensource library. It tries to ease your daily business coding. You can find quite a few handy functions, class to facilitate your coding experiences. Have a fun in this library.Emotiv Engine Client: Provides an event-driven .NET framework wrapper around the managed Emotiv EPOC neuroheadset API.Ewk: All kinds of things.GeoTransformer: GeoTransformer focuses on making it easier for geocachers to process GPX files and publish them on their GPS devices.Glioma Visualizer 2: This C#.NET application does space-time analytical simulations for glioma modeling.Government of Canada Usability Web Experience Toolkit: This toolkit addresses the Governement of Canada usability for CLF. It is based on SharePoint 2010 Server and provides templates for a publishing site with variations enabled. This toolkit includes: 1. Master Pages 2. Page Layouts 3. Custom User Controls 4. Source CodeHappy Frog @ WinPhone: It is just another Angry-Birds-like game using Farseer physics engine and XNA framework. This project has didn't finish yet, but it is already stopped. Our developers had moved to another project base on this one, whatever, we'd like to public the code, as what we thought at begin —— this project is open source, under LGPL license 2.1.HyperVBackup: HyperVBackup is an open source tool to backup Hyper-V virtual machines, including support for Cluster Shared Storage (CSV).iBIOFind 3: This is a console based C#.NET application for experimental research work in informational retrieval for medical research.JV.MVVM: Jv.mvvm intents to bring the mvvm pattern to winform projects. This project provide a windows form extender control that allows to provide more rich binding information per control. The control interpret the bindings and manages them properly. It is developed in C#, and uses other projects like TinyPG, and Emmiter.jWeaving: Javascript PackageMicro APIs: Small APIs for .NETModel Maker 3: A C#.NET application for time series analysis.Neural Scribe 2: This C#.NET application classification of EEG signals.Object To Html Mapping (OHM) jQuery Plugin: Object To HTML Mapping(OHM) Is a jQuery Plugin that enables the ability to quickly transfer javascript object (or JSON) into your HTML and from the HTML revert back to object after user changes, easy use with ASP.NET . see http://www.lotofcode.blogspot.comRandomSamples: All my random tests and samplesRelate2spot: A C# and WPF application that finds relationships between entities using Latent Semantic Analysis in a large collection of texts.school15py: A Website base on Flask.Secure SQL Server: TBDSharePoint 2010 - Add Documents and List Items to Quick Deploy from ECB Dropdown: Adds functionality to the SharePoint 2010 graphical interface to allow end-users to add document library and list items to a Quick Deploy content deployment job. I copied http://quickdeploydoc.codeplex.com/ and made it 2010 compatible and for any item or document.SharePoint 2010 HTML5 MasterPage Templates: This project is the modification of the SharePoint 2010 v4.master template to support the HTML5 features in advanced browsers. It will provide a WSP package of the solutions with source to allow modification and deployment of a customized masterpage supporting HTML5.Sharepoint 2010 Workflow History & Task Custom SPField Column: This project was inspired by Marc D Anderson while attending Office365 Saturday event in Redmond, WA on February 25, 2012. While giving his presentation he mentioned that he created a solution to show tasks for a workflow via a jQuery dialog. Although I liked his idea, I hated that his solution was tailored for one client only, and could not be easily applied to any out of the box SPList. This is how this project came to be and I hope you can find it useful.SharePoint Content Database Size Monitor: Monitor and track the size of your SharePoint content databases and log files directly from Central AdministrationSNSpirit: A sns clientSoGames : jeux multi-écrans: SoGames : codes source des jeux mutli-écrans présentés aux Techdays 2012 Avec la palette des technologies et outils proposée par Microsoft, il est assez simple de réaliser des applications originales et de bonne qualité. Pour autant, rien n'est magique et quelques concepts nécessitent de se retrousser un peu les manches. Pour mieux les saisir, vous trouverez ici les codes source de nos jeux collaboratifs : - SoSlam : Le premier joueur doit lancer un écureuil dans les airs à l'aide de s...SPAC (SharePoint Auto Coder): SPAC is a code generation tool which developers can easily generate custom code to be used in custom SharePoint development projects. SPAC can generate code for a given language of choice based on a predefined code template. Developers can choose to define the code template and then with few clicks SPAC will generate the code based on the defined template.Sushi Library: ASP.Net MVC Helpers Library using BootStrap from TwitterSystemOfVote: ?????39?????，????2?： 1.??????，?????????，???????????????????； 2.?????????????????。test140880: testingTheatre: ??????Time Maestro 2: This is a C#.NET application for times series modeling and forecasting in the cloud.USGS DEM File Reader: USGS DEM file readerVoluntariado mobile (windows phone): Se trata de desarrollar una aplicación nativa para windows phone que ofrezca al usuario una oferta de oportunidades de voluntariado geolocalizadas en las que poder participarWCF Format Extensions for CSV, TXT: This project add support for Legacy formats like CSV, TXT (CSV Export) to the data service output and allow $format=txt query. By default WCF Data Services support Atom and JSON responses however legacy systems do not understand ATOM or JSON but they understand CSV, TXT formats. This project is intended to develop and TXT (CSV) for WCF Data services so that it can be used with legacy application.

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• Oracle Solaris: Zones on Shared Storage

  - by Jeff Victor

  Oracle Solaris 11.1 has several new features. At oracle.com you can find a detailed list. One of the significant new features, and the most significant new feature releated to Oracle Solaris Zones, is casually called "Zones on Shared Storage" or simply ZOSS (rhymes with "moss"). ZOSS offers much more flexibility because you can store Solaris Zones on shared storage (surprise!) so that you can perform quick and easy migration of a zone from one system to another. This blog entry describes and demonstrates the use of ZOSS. ZOSS provides complete support for a Solaris Zone that is stored on "shared storage." In this case, "shared storage" refers to fiber channel (FC) or iSCSI devices, although there is one lone exception that I will demonstrate soon. The primary intent is to enable you to store a zone on FC or iSCSI storage so that it can be migrated from one host computer to another much more easily and safely than in the past. With this blog entry, I wanted to make it easy for you to try this yourself. I couldn't assume that you have a SAN available - which is a good thing, because neither do I! What could I use, instead? [There he goes, foreshadowing again... -Ed.] Developing this entry reinforced the lesson that the solution to every lab problem is VirtualBox. Oracle VM VirtualBox (its formal name) helps here in a couple of important ways. It offers the ability to easily install multiple copies of Solaris as guests on top of any popular system (Microsoft Windows, MacOS, Solaris, Oracle Linux (and other Linuxes) etc.). It also offers the ability to create a separate virtual disk drive (VDI) that appears as a local hard disk to a guest. This virtual disk can be moved very easily from one guest to another. In other words, you can follow the steps below on a laptop or larger x86 system. Please note that the ability to use ZOSS to store a zone on a local disk is very useful for a lab environment, but not so useful for production. I do not suggest regularly moving disk drives among computers. In the method I describe below, that virtual hard disk will contain the zone that will be migrated among the (virtual) hosts. In production, you would use FC or iSCSI LUNs instead. The zonecfg(1M) man page details the syntax for each of the three types of devices. Why Migrate? Why is the migration of virtual servers important? Some of the most common reasons are: Moving a workload to a different computer so that the original computer can be turned off for extensive maintenance. Moving a workload to a larger system because the workload has outgrown its original system. If the workload runs in an environment (such as a Solaris Zone) that is stored on shared storage, you can restore the service of the workload on an alternate computer if the original computer has failed and will not reboot. You can simplify lifecycle management of a workload by developing it on a laptop, migrating it to a test platform when it's ready, and finally moving it to a production system. Concepts For ZOSS, the important new concept is named "rootzpool". You can read about it in the zonecfg(1M) man page, but here's the short version: it's the backing store (hard disk(s), or LUN(s)) that will be used to make a ZFS zpool - the zpool that will hold the zone. This zpool: contains the zone's Solaris content, i.e. the root file system does not contain any content not related to the zone can only be mounted by one Solaris instance at a time Method Overview Here is a brief list of the steps to create a zone on shared storage and migrate it. The next section shows the commands and output. You will need a host system with an x86 CPU (hopefully at least a couple of CPU cores), at least 2GB of RAM, and at least 25GB of free disk space. (The steps below will not actually use 25GB of disk space, but I don't want to lead you down a path that ends in a big sign that says "Your HDD is full. Good luck!") Configure the zone on both systems, specifying the rootzpool that both will use. The best way is to configure it on one system and then copy the output of "zonecfg export" to the other system to be used as input to zonecfg. This method reduces the chances of pilot error. (It is not necessary to configure the zone on both systems before creating it. You can configure this zone in multiple places, whenever you want, and migrate it to one of those places at any time - as long as those systems all have access to the shared storage.) Install the zone on one system, onto shared storage. Boot the zone. Provide system configuration information to the zone. (In the Real World(tm) you will usually automate this step.) Shutdown the zone. Detach the zone from the original system. Attach the zone to its new "home" system. Boot the zone. The zone can be used normally, and even migrated back, or to a different system. Details The rest of this shows the commands and output. The two hostnames are "sysA" and "sysB". Note that each Solaris guest might use a different device name for the VDI that they share. I used the device names shown below, but you must discover the device name(s) after booting each guest. In a production environment you would also discover the device name first and then configure the zone with that name. Fortunately, you can use the command "zpool import" or "format" to discover the device on the "new" host for the zone. The first steps create the VirtualBox guests and the shared disk drive. I describe the steps here without demonstrating them. Download VirtualBox and install it using a method normal for your host OS. You can read the complete instructions. Create two VirtualBox guests, each to run Solaris 11.1. Each will use its own VDI as its root disk. Install Solaris 11.1 in each guest.Install Solaris 11.1 in each guest. To install a Solaris 11.1 guest, you can either download a pre-built VirtualBox guest, and import it, or install Solaris 11.1 from the "text install" media. If you use the latter method, after booting you will not see a windowing system. To install the GUI and other important things, login and run "pkg install solaris-desktop" and take a break while it installs those important things. Life is usually easier if you install the VirtualBox Guest Additions because then you can copy and paste between the host and guests, etc. You can find the guest additions in the folder matching the version of VirtualBox you are using. You can also read the instructions for installing the guest additions. To create the zone's shared VDI in VirtualBox, you can open the storage configuration for one of the two guests, select the SATA controller, and click on the "Add Hard Disk" icon nearby. Choose "Create New Disk" and specify an appropriate path name for the file that will contain the VDI. The shared VDI must be at least 1.5 GB. Note that the guest must be stopped to do this. Add that VDI to the other guest - using its Storage configuration - so that each can access it while running. The steps start out the same, except that you choose "Choose Existing Disk" instead of "Create New Disk." Because the disk is configured on both of them, VirtualBox prevents you from running both guests at the same time. Identify device names of that VDI, in each of the guests. Solaris chooses the name based on existing devices. The names may be the same, or may be different from each other. This step is shown below as "Step 1." Assumptions In the example shown below, I make these assumptions. The guest that will own the zone at the beginning is named sysA. The guest that will own the zone after the first migration is named sysB. On sysA, the shared disk is named /dev/dsk/c7t2d0 On sysB, the shared disk is named /dev/dsk/c7t3d0 (Finally!) The Steps Step 1) Determine the name of the disk that will move back and forth between the systems. root@sysA:~# format Searching for disks...done AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS: 0. c7t0d0 /pci@0,0/pci8086,2829@d/disk@0,0 1. c7t2d0 /pci@0,0/pci8086,2829@d/disk@2,0 Specify disk (enter its number): ^D Step 2) The first thing to do is partition and label the disk. The magic needed to write an EFI label is not overly complicated. root@sysA:~# format -e c7t2d0 selecting c7t2d0 [disk formatted] FORMAT MENU: ... format fdisk No fdisk table exists. The default partition for the disk is: a 100% "SOLARIS System" partition Type "y" to accept the default partition, otherwise type "n" to edit the partition table. n SELECT ONE OF THE FOLLOWING: ... Enter Selection: 1 ... G=EFI_SYS 0=Exit? f SELECT ONE... ... 6 format label ... Specify Label type[1]: 1 Ready to label disk, continue? y format quit root@sysA:~# ls /dev/dsk/c7t2d0 /dev/dsk/c7t2d0 Step 3) Configure zone1 on sysA. root@sysA:~# zonecfg -z zone1 Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone. zonecfg:zone1 create create: Using system default template 'SYSdefault' zonecfg:zone1 set zonename=zone1 zonecfg:zone1 set zonepath=/zones/zone1 zonecfg:zone1 add rootzpool zonecfg:zone1:rootzpool add storage dev:dsk/c7t2d0 zonecfg:zone1:rootzpool end zonecfg:zone1 exit root@sysA:~# oot@sysA:~# zonecfg -z zone1 info zonename: zone1 zonepath: /zones/zone1 brand: solaris autoboot: false bootargs: file-mac-profile: pool: limitpriv: scheduling-class: ip-type: exclusive hostid: fs-allowed: anet: ... rootzpool: storage: dev:dsk/c7t2d0 Step 4) Install the zone. This step takes the most time, but you can wander off for a snack or a few laps around the gym - or both! (Just not at the same time...) root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 install Created zone zpool: zone1_rpool Progress being logged to /var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T163634Z.zone1.install Image: Preparing at /zones/zone1/root. AI Manifest: /tmp/manifest.xml.RXaycg SC Profile: /usr/share/auto_install/sc_profiles/enable_sci.xml Zonename: zone1 Installation: Starting ... Creating IPS image Startup linked: 1/1 done Installing packages from: solaris origin: http://pkg.us.oracle.com/support/ DOWNLOAD PKGS FILES XFER (MB) SPEED Completed 183/183 33556/33556 222.2/222.2 2.8M/s PHASE ITEMS Installing new actions 46825/46825 Updating package state database Done Updating image state Done Creating fast lookup database Done Installation: Succeeded Note: Man pages can be obtained by installing pkg:/system/manual done. Done: Installation completed in 1696.847 seconds. Next Steps: Boot the zone, then log into the zone console (zlogin -C) to complete the configuration process. Log saved in non-global zone as /zones/zone1/root/var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T163634Z.zone1.install Step 5) Boot the Zone. root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 boot Step 6) Login to zone's console to complete the specification of system information. root@sysA:~# zlogin -C zone1 Answer the usual questions and wait for a login prompt. Then you can end the console session with the usual "~." incantation. Step 7) Shutdown the zone so it can be "moved." root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 shutdown Step 8) Detach the zone so that the original global zone can't use it. root@sysA:~# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - zone1 installed /zones/zone1 solaris excl root@sysA:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 17.6G 11.2G 6.47G 63% 1.00x ONLINE - zone1_rpool 1.98G 484M 1.51G 23% 1.00x ONLINE - root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 detach Exported zone zpool: zone1_rpool Step 9) Review the result and shutdown sysA so that sysB can use the shared disk. root@sysA:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 17.6G 11.2G 6.47G 63% 1.00x ONLINE - root@sysA:~# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - zone1 configured /zones/zone1 solaris excl root@sysA:~# init 0 Step 10) Now boot sysB and configure a zone with the parameters shown above in Step 1. (Again, the safest method is to use "zonecfg ... export" on sysA as described in section "Method Overview" above.) The one difference is the name of the rootzpool storage device, which was shown in the list of assumptions, and which you must determine by booting sysB and using the "format" or "zpool import" command. When that is done, you should see the output shown next. (I used the same zonename - "zone1" - in this example, but you can choose any valid zonename you want.) root@sysB:~# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - zone1 configured /zones/zone1 solaris excl root@sysB:~# zonecfg -z zone1 info zonename: zone1 zonepath: /zones/zone1 brand: solaris autoboot: false bootargs: file-mac-profile: pool: limitpriv: scheduling-class: ip-type: exclusive hostid: fs-allowed: anet: linkname: net0 ... rootzpool: storage: dev:dsk/c7t3d0 Step 11) Attaching the zone automatically imports the zpool. root@sysB:~# zoneadm -z zone1 attach Imported zone zpool: zone1_rpool Progress being logged to /var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T184034Z.zone1.attach Installing: Using existing zone boot environment Zone BE root dataset: zone1_rpool/rpool/ROOT/solaris Cache: Using /var/pkg/publisher. Updating non-global zone: Linking to image /. Processing linked: 1/1 done Updating non-global zone: Auditing packages. No updates necessary for this image. Updating non-global zone: Zone updated. Result: Attach Succeeded. Log saved in non-global zone as /zones/zone1/root/var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T184034Z.zone1.attach root@sysB:~# zoneadm -z zone1 boot root@sysB:~# zlogin zone1 [Connected to zone 'zone1' pts/2] Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.11 11.1 September 2012 Step 12) Now let's migrate the zone back to sysA. Create a file in zone1 so we can verify it exists after we migrate the zone back, then begin migrating it back. root@zone1:~# ls /opt root@zone1:~# touch /opt/fileA root@zone1:~# ls -l /opt/fileA -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 22 14:47 /opt/fileA root@zone1:~# exit logout [Connection to zone 'zone1' pts/2 closed] root@sysB:~# zoneadm -z zone1 shutdown root@sysB:~# zoneadm -z zone1 detach Exported zone zpool: zone1_rpool root@sysB:~# init 0 Step 13) Back on sysA, check the status. Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.11 11.1 September 2012 root@sysA:~# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - zone1 configured /zones/zone1 solaris excl root@sysA:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 17.6G 11.2G 6.47G 63% 1.00x ONLINE - Step 14) Re-attach the zone back to sysA. root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 attach Imported zone zpool: zone1_rpool Progress being logged to /var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T190441Z.zone1.attach Installing: Using existing zone boot environment Zone BE root dataset: zone1_rpool/rpool/ROOT/solaris Cache: Using /var/pkg/publisher. Updating non-global zone: Linking to image /. Processing linked: 1/1 done Updating non-global zone: Auditing packages. No updates necessary for this image. Updating non-global zone: Zone updated. Result: Attach Succeeded. Log saved in non-global zone as /zones/zone1/root/var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T190441Z.zone1.attach root@sysA:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 17.6G 11.2G 6.47G 63% 1.00x ONLINE - zone1_rpool 1.98G 491M 1.51G 24% 1.00x ONLINE - root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 boot root@sysA:~# zlogin zone1 [Connected to zone 'zone1' pts/2] Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.11 11.1 September 2012 root@zone1:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 1.98G 538M 1.46G 26% 1.00x ONLINE - Step 15) Check for the file created on sysB, earlier. root@zone1:~# ls -l /opt total 1 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 22 14:47 fileA Next Steps Here is a brief list of some of the fun things you can try next. Add space to the zone by adding a second storage device to the rootzpool. Make sure that you add it to the configurations of both zones! Create a new zone, specifying two disks in the rootzpool when you first configure the zone. When you install that zone, or clone it from another zone, zoneadm uses those two disks to create a mirrored pool. (Three disks will result in a three-way mirror, etc.) Conclusion Hopefully you have seen the ease with which you can now move Solaris Zones from one system to another.

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• Pain Comes Instantly

  - by user701213

  When I look back at recent blog entries – many of which are not all that current (more on where my available writing time is going later) – I am struck by how many of them focus on public policy or legislative issues instead of, say, the latest nefarious cyberattack or exploit (or everyone’s favorite new pastime: coining terms for the Coming Cyberpocalypse: “digital Pearl Harbor” is so 1941). Speaking of which, I personally hope evil hackers from Malefactoria will someday hack into my bathroom scale – which in a future time will be connected to the Internet because, gosh, wouldn’t it be great to have absolutely everything in your life Internet-enabled? – and recalibrate it so I’m 10 pounds thinner. The horror. In part, my focus on public policy is due to an admitted limitation of my skill set. I enjoy reading technical articles about exploits and cybersecurity trends, but writing a blog entry on those topics would take more research than I have time for and, quite honestly, doesn’t play to my strengths. The first rule of writing is “write what you know.” The bigger contributing factor to my recent paucity of blog entries is that more and more of my waking hours are spent engaging in “thrust and parry” activity involving emerging regulations of some sort or other. I’ve opined in earlier blogs about what constitutes good and reasonable public policy so nobody can accuse me of being reflexively anti-regulation. That said, you have so many cycles in the day, and most of us would rather spend it slaying actual dragons than participating in focus groups on whether dragons are really a problem, whether lassoing them (with organic, sustainable and recyclable lassos) is preferable to slaying them – after all, dragons are people, too - and whether we need lasso compliance auditors to make sure lassos are being used correctly and humanely. (A point that seems to evade many rule makers: slaying dragons actually accomplishes something, whereas talking about “approved dragon slaying procedures and requirements” wastes the time of those who are competent to dispatch actual dragons and who were doing so very well without the input of “dragon-slaying theorists.”) Unfortunately for so many of us who would just get on with doing our day jobs, cybersecurity is rapidly devolving into the “focus groups on dragon dispatching” realm, which actual dragons slayers have little choice but to participate in. The general trend in cybersecurity is that powers-that-be – which encompasses groups other than just legislators – are often increasingly concerned and therefore feel they need to Do Something About Cybersecurity. Many seem to believe that if only we had the right amount of regulation and oversight, there would be no data breaches: a breach simply must mean Someone Is At Fault and Needs Supervision. (Leaving aside the fact that we have lots of home invasions despite a) guard dogs b) liberal carry permits c) alarm systems d) etc.) Also note that many well-managed and security-aware organizations, like the US Department of Defense, still get hacked. More specifically, many powers-that-be feel they must direct industry in a multiplicity of ways, up to and including how we actually build and deploy information technology systems. The more prescriptive the requirement, the more regulators or overseers a) can be seen to be doing something b) feel as if they are doing something regardless of whether they are actually doing something useful or cost effective. Note: an unfortunate concomitant of Doing Something is that often the cure is worse than the ailment. That is, doing what overseers want creates unfortunate byproducts that they either didn’t foresee or worse, don’t care about. After all, the logic goes, we Did Something. Prescriptive practice in the IT industry is problematic for a number of reasons. For a start, prescriptive guidance is really only appropriate if: • It is cost effective• It is “current” (meaning, the guidance doesn’t require the use of the technical equivalent of buggy whips long after horse-drawn transportation has become passé)*• It is practical (that is, pragmatic, proven and effective in the real world, not theoretical and unproven)• It solves the right problem With the above in mind, heading up the list of “you must be joking” regulations are recent disturbing developments in the Payment Card Industry (PCI) world. I’d like to give PCI kahunas the benefit of the doubt about their intentions, except that efforts by Oracle among others to make them aware of “unfortunate side effects of your requirements” – which is as tactful I can be for reasons that I believe will become obvious below - have gone, to-date, unanswered and more importantly, unchanged. A little background on PCI before I get too wound up. In 2008, the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council (SSC) introduced the Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS). That standard requires vendors of payment applications to ensure that their products implement specific requirements and undergo security assessment procedures. In order to have an application listed as a Validated Payment Application (VPA) and available for use by merchants, software vendors are required to execute the PCI Payment Application Vendor Release Agreement (VRA). (Are you still with me through all the acronyms?) Beginning in August 2010, the VRA imposed new obligations on vendors that are extraordinary and extraordinarily bad, short-sighted and unworkable. Specifically, PCI requires vendors to disclose (dare we say “tell all?”) to PCI any known security vulnerabilities and associated security breaches involving VPAs. ASAP. Think about the impact of that. PCI is asking a vendor to disclose to them: • Specific details of security vulnerabilities • Including exploit information or technical details of the vulnerability • Whether or not there is any mitigation available (as in a patch) PCI, in turn, has the right to blab about any and all of the above – specifically, to distribute all the gory details of what is disclosed - to the PCI SSC, qualified security assessors (QSAs), and any affiliate or agent or adviser of those entities, who are in turn permitted to share it with their respective affiliates, agents, employees, contractors, merchants, processors, service providers and other business partners. This assorted crew can’t be more than, oh, hundreds of thousands of entities. Does anybody believe that several hundred thousand people can keep a secret? Or that several hundred thousand people are all equally trustworthy? Or that not one of the people getting all that information would blab vulnerability details to a bad guy, even by accident? Or be a bad guy who uses the information to break into systems? (Wait, was that the Easter Bunny that just hopped by? Bringing world peace, no doubt.) Sarcasm aside, common sense tells us that telling lots of people a secret is guaranteed to “unsecret” the secret. Notably, being provided details of a vulnerability (without a patch) is of little or no use to companies running the affected application. Few users have the technological sophistication to create a workaround, and even if they do, most workarounds break some other functionality in the application or surrounding environment. Also, given the differences among corporate implementations of any application, it is highly unlikely that a single workaround is going to work for all corporate users. So until a patch is developed by the vendor, users remain at risk of exploit: even more so if the details of vulnerability have been widely shared. Sharing that information widely before a patch is available therefore does not help users, and instead helps only those wanting to exploit known security bugs. There’s a shocker for you. Furthermore, we already know that insider information about security vulnerabilities inevitably leaks, which is why most vendors closely hold such information and limit dissemination until a patch is available (and frequently limit dissemination of technical details even with the release of a patch). That’s the industry norm, not that PCI seems to realize or acknowledge that. Why would anybody release a bunch of highly technical exploit information to a cast of thousands, whose only “vetting” is that they are members of a PCI consortium? Oracle has had personal experience with this problem, which is one reason why information on security vulnerabilities at Oracle is “need to know” (we use our own row level access control to limit access to security bugs in our bug database, and thus less than 1% of development has access to this information), and we don’t provide some customers with more information than others or with vulnerability information and/or patches earlier than others. Failure to remember “insider information always leaks” creates problems in the general case, and has created problems for us specifically. A number of years ago, one of the UK intelligence agencies had information about a non-public security vulnerability in an Oracle product that they circulated among other UK and Commonwealth defense and intelligence entities. Nobody, it should be pointed out, bothered to report the problem to Oracle, even though only Oracle could produce a patch. The vulnerability was finally reported to Oracle by (drum roll) a US-based commercial company, to whom the information had leaked. (Note: every time I tell this story, the MI-whatever agency that created the problem gets a bit shirty with us. I know they meant well and have improved their vulnerability handling/sharing processes but, dudes, next time you find an Oracle vulnerability, try reporting it to us first before blabbing to lots of people who can’t actually fix the problem. Thank you!) Getting back to PCI: clearly, these new disclosure obligations increase the risk of exploitation of a vulnerability in a VPA and thus, of misappropriation of payment card data and customer information that a VPA processes, stores or transmits. It stands to reason that VRA’s current requirement for the widespread distribution of security vulnerability exploit details -- at any time, but particularly before a vendor can issue a patch or a workaround -- is very poor public policy. It effectively publicizes information of great value to potential attackers while not providing compensating benefits - actually, any benefits - to payment card merchants or consumers. In fact, it magnifies the risk to payment card merchants and consumers. The risk is most prominent in the time before a patch has been released, since customers often have little option but to continue using an application or system despite the risks. However, the risk is not limited to the time before a patch is issued: customers often need days, or weeks, to apply patches to systems, based upon the complexity of the issue and dependence on surrounding programs. Rather than decreasing the available window of exploit, this requirement increases the available window of exploit, both as to time available to exploit a vulnerability and the ease with which it can be exploited. Also, why would hackers focus on finding new vulnerabilities to exploit if they can get “EZHack” handed to them in such a manner: a) a vulnerability b) in a payment application c) with exploit code: the “Hacking Trifecta!“ It’s fair to say that this is probably the exact opposite of what PCI – or any of us – would want. Established industry practice concerning vulnerability handling avoids the risks created by the VRA’s vulnerability disclosure requirements. Specifically, the norm is not to release information about a security bug until the associated patch (or a pretty darn good workaround) has been issued. Once a patch is available, the notice to the user community is a high-level communication discussing the product at issue, the level of risk associated with the vulnerability, and how to apply the patch. The notices do not include either the specific customers affected by the vulnerability or forensic reports with maps of the exploit (both of which are required by the current VRA). In this way, customers have the tools they need to prioritize patching and to help prevent an attack, and the information released does not increase the risk of exploit. Furthermore, many vendors already use industry standards for vulnerability description: Common Vulnerability Enumeration (CVE) and Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS). CVE helps ensure that customers know which particular issues a patch addresses and CVSS helps customers determine how severe a vulnerability is on a relative scale. Industry already provides the tools customers need to know what the patch contains and how bad the problem is that the patch remediates. So, what’s a poor vendor to do? Oracle is reaching out to other vendors subject to PCI and attempting to enlist then in a broad effort to engage PCI in rethinking (that is, eradicating) these requirements. I would therefore urge all who care about this issue, but especially those in the vendor community whose applications are subject to PCI and who may not have know they were being asked to tell-all to PCI and put their customers at risk, to do one of the following: • Contact PCI with your concerns• Contact Oracle (we are looking for vendors to sign our statement of concern)• And make sure you tell your customers that you have to rat them out to PCI if there is a breach involving the payment application I like to be charitable and say “PCI meant well” but in as important a public policy issue as what you disclose about vulnerabilities, to whom and when, meaning well isn’t enough. We need to do well. PCI, as regards this particular issue, has not done well, and has compounded the error by thus far being nonresponsive to those of us who have labored mightily to try to explain why they might want to rethink telling the entire planet about security problems with no solutions. By Way of Explanation… Non-related to PCI whatsoever, and the explanation for why I have not been blogging a lot recently, I have been working on Other Writing Venues with my sister Diane (who has also worked in the tech sector, inflicting upgrades on unsuspecting and largely ungrateful end users). I am pleased to note that we have recently (self-)published the first in the Miss Information Technology Murder Mystery series, Outsourcing Murder. The genre might best be described as “chick lit meets geek scene.” Our sisterly nom de plume is Maddi Davidson and (shameless plug follows): you can order the paper version of the book on Amazon, or the Kindle or Nook versions on www.amazon.com or www.bn.com, respectively. From our book jacket: Emma Jones, a 20-something IT consultant, is working on an outsourcing project at Tahiti Tacos, a restaurant chain offering Polynexican cuisine: refried poi, anyone? Emma despises her boss Padmanabh, a brilliant but arrogant partner in GD Consulting. When Emma discovers His-Royal-Padness’s body (verdict: death by cricket bat), she becomes a suspect.With her overprotective family and her best friend Stacey providing endless support and advice, Emma stumbles her way through an investigation of Padmanabh’s murder, bolstered by fusion food feeding frenzies, endless cups of frou-frou coffee and serious surfing sessions. While Stacey knows a PI who owes her a favor, landlady Magda urges Emma to tart up her underwear drawer before the next cute cop with a search warrant arrives. Emma’s mother offers to fix her up with a PhD student at Berkeley and showers her with self-defense gizmos while her old lover Keoni beckons from Hawai’i. And everyone, even Shaun the barista, knows a good lawyer. Book 2, Denial of Service, is coming out this summer. * Given the rate of change in technology, today’s “thou shalts” are easily next year’s “buggy whip guidance.”

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, January 28, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, January 28, 2011Popular ReleasesVFPX: VFP2C32 2.0.0.8 Release Candidate: This release includes several bugfixes, new functions and finally a CHM help file for the complete library.EnhSim: EnhSim 2.3.3 ALPHA: 2.3.3 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.06 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added back in a p...DB>doc for Microsoft SQL Server: 1.0.0.0: Initial release Supported output HTML WikiPlex markup Raw XML Supported objects Tables Primary Keys Foreign Keys ViewsmojoPortal: 2.3.6.1: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2361-released.aspx Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code. To download the source code see the Source Code Tab I recommend getting the latest source code using TortoiseHG, you can get the source code corresponding to this release here.Office Web.UI: Alpha preview: This is the first alpha release. Very exciting moment... This download is just the demo application : "Contoso backoffice Web App". No source included for the moment, just the app, for testing purposes and for feedbacks !! This package includes a set of official MS Office icons (143 png 16x16 and 132 png 32x32) to really make a great app ! Please rate and give feedback ThanksParallel Programming with Microsoft Visual C++: Drop 6 - Chapters 4 and 5: This is Drop 6. It includes: Drafts of the Preface, Introduction, Chapters 2-7, Appendix B & C and the glossary Sample code for chapters 2-7 and Appendix A & B. The new material we'd like feedback on is: Chapter 4 - Parallel Aggregation Chapter 5 - Futures The source code requires Visual Studio 2010 in order to run. There is a known bug in the A-Dash sample when the user attempts to cancel a parallel calculation. We are working to fix this.Catel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.1: (+) Styles can now be changed dynamically, see Examples application for a how-to (+) ViewModelBase class now have a constructor that allows services injection (+) ViewModelBase services can now be configured by IoC (via Microsoft.Unity) (+) All ViewModelBase services now have a unit test implementation (+) Added IProcessService to run processes from a viewmodel with directly using the process class (which makes it easier to unit test view models) (*) If the HasErrors property of DataObjec...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel Template, version 1.0.1.160: The NodeXL Excel template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 workbook. What's NewThis release improves NodeXL's Twitter and Pajek features. See the Complete NodeXL Release History for details. Installation StepsFollow these steps to install and use the template: Download the Zip file. Unzip it into any folder. Use WinZip or a similar program, or just right-click the Zip file in Windows Explorer and select "Extract All." Close Ex...Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.0 CTP: Files in this downloadkooboo_CMS.zip: The kooboo application files Content_DBProvider.zip: Additional content database implementation of MSSQL, RavenDB and SQLCE. Default is XML based database. To use them, copy the related dlls into web root bin folder and remove old content provider dlls. Content provider has the name like "Kooboo.CMS.Content.Persistence.SQLServer.dll" View_Engines.zip: Supports of Razor, webform and NVelocity view engine. Copy the dlls into web root bin folder to enable...UOB & ME: UOB ME 2.6: UOB ME 2.6????: ???? V1.0: ???? V1.0 ??Password Generator: 2.2: Parallel password generation Password strength calculation ( Same method used by Microsoft here : https://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/passwords/checker.aspx ) Minor code refactoringVisual Studio 2010 Architecture Tooling Guidance: Spanish - Architecture Guidance: Francisco Fagas http://geeks.ms/blogs/ffagas, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), localized the Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance for the Spanish communities, based on http://vsarchitectureguide.codeplex.com/releases/view/47828. Release Notes The guidance is available in a xps-only (default) or complete package. The complete package contains the files in xps, pdf and Office 2007 formats. 2011-01-24 Publish version 1.0 of the Spanish localized bits.ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.6.2: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager the html generation has been optimized, the html page size is much smaller nowFacebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 0.6: new Facebook Graph objects: Application, Page, Post, Comment Improved Intellisense documentation new Graph Api connections: albums, photos, posts, feed, home, friends JSON Toolkit upgraded to version 0.9 (beta release) with bug fixes and new features bug fixed: error when handling empty JSON arrays bug fixed: error when handling JSON array with square or large brackets in the message bug fixed: error when handling JSON obejcts with double quotation in the message bug fixed: erro...Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2008 Code Samples 2011-01-23: Code samples for Visual Studio 2008MVVM Light Toolkit: MVVM Light Toolkit V3 SP1 (3): Instructions for installation: http://www.galasoft.ch/mvvm/installing/manually/ Includes the hotfix templates for Windows Phone 7 development. This is only relevant if you didn't already install the hotfix described at http://blog.galasoft.ch/archive/2010/07/22/mvvm-light-hotfix-for-windows-phone-7-developer-tools-beta.aspx.Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V42: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has added some features / bugfixes: Bugfix: Decoding of Subject now also supports multi-line subjects (occurs only if you have very long subjects with non-ASCII characters)Minecraft Tools: Minecraft Topographical Survey 1.3: MTS requires version 4 of the .NET Framework - you must download it from Microsoft if you have not previously installed it. This version of MTS adds automatic block list updates, so MTS will recognize blocks added in game updates properly rather than drawing them in bright pink. New in this version of MTS: Support for all new blocks added since the Halloween update Auto-update of blockcolors.xml to support future game updates A splash screen that shows while the program searches for upd...StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.14996.000: New Features: ============= This release is just compiled against the latest release of JetBrains ReSharper 5.1.1766.4 Previous release: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes...New ProjectsAgilErp: AgilErp is a .NET OpenSource ERP - System developed in C# using WPF, WCF ,Entity Framework, MS-SQL-Server and MVVM. Angel Eye: 3d Game for the new generation AWWWE Browser: AWWWE Browser. (Pronounced "awe".) Aural World Wide Web Everywhere. 1) An aural browser. It talks and listens to you and you talk and listen to it. 2) A VUI for normal HTML web sites. It lets regular web sites talk and listen to you while you talk and listen to them.BitLocker Wrapper Library: The BDE Wrapper library allows .NET Developers to quickly use the WMI BitLocker provider without having to learn the complex methods and operation of the WMI classes.CRM8000: CRM8000????????????????DSM Hub for WP7: Implements a light version of the DSM tools for WP7. Currently, most of the effort is on the audio station.File Downloader: This application checks a Gmail account regularly for mail containing URLs. Once a URL is found, its content is downloaded and sent as a reply message with the file as an attachment. Intended usage: - Download IEEE articles as PDF when you're not in a authenticated network.Folder Space Quota: This component return Quotas Disk Space used for each folders and subfolders in a given directory. Results are returned with a graphic percent bar. Another Tab give access to this directory tree, indicating the size of each file and allows previewing them in a "LightBox" window. IDK: Every other month, IDK asks people to come up with awesome ideas for new programs and webpages. After the end of the month, IDKs developers have another month to create one of the top rated websites or applications. Got a great idea for a new app? Let IDK build it for you.Interop 2: Microformats for Azure Cloud with OData-InterfacejSPoint - JavaScript Library for SharePoint: JavaScript for SharePoint (jSPoint) is a library that help SharePoint developers to create rich,dynamic, & powerfull pages for SharePoint sites.MVVM T4: T4 Templates for generating view models, and views for WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone using T4 Toolbox and MVVM LightNumericUpDown Control for WPF: A basic NumericUpDown Control for WPF that mirrors all the most used functions of the WinForms NumericUpDown Control and looks similar to itOData for IQToolkit: OData for IQToolkit, converts OData expressions into a usable expressions for IQToolkit providers.PLATO: PALTO is micro plate processing pipeline and supports enzymes and metabolites. PLATO was developed at INRA-Bordeaux and is an evolution of the EnzymeLaborTool developed at the Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology.Purdue CS 490: Model-based testing of ADO.NET: Five students from Purdue University will develop model-based tests for an aspect of ADO.NET during the Spring 2011 semester. We'll be using C# and Spec Explorer, among other tools.Replace in multiple Office 2010 documents: This program replaces a text string in multiple office 2010 documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). It is developed in VB.NET and new code for additional products is welcome. SearchEngine: A Website Search Engine and Crawler.Set Custom Currency Symbol: This utility enables you to set/register custom currency symbols for the .NET FrameworkSimple C# Email Templates: A really simple, really easy to use class for sending email templates. Reads any file from disk (think ".txt" or ".html") and matches custom tokens with the values you supply, in both the message body and the subject line. Supports multiple CC and BCC addresses.SimpleBasicAuthentication: SimpleBasicAuthentication makes it easier for developers to build a website with basic authentication using the credentials from just a text file. You'll no longer have to create new users on the system just to let them log in to the website or service. It's developed in C# 4.0.SpecsFor - Yet Another BDD Framework For .NET: SpecsFor is another Behavior-Driven Development framework that focuses on ease of use for *developers* by minimizing testing friction. Square: Custom SharePoint MyProfile PageSynchrolist workflow: Sharepoint workflow whitch perform automatic synchronisation between two lists in the same collection. Usefull for automatic translation.TFS Aggregator: This server side plugin for TFS 2010 enables dynamic calculation of field values in TFS. (For example: Dev work + Test Work = Total Work) Supports same work item and parent-child links. Also has support for aggregating string values (ie Children are Done so the parent is Done)Tinchant: My nice projectZebra_Image, a lightweight image manipulation library written in PHP: This is a compact (one-file only), lightweight, object-oriented image manipulation library written in and for PHP, that provides methods for performing several types of image manipulation operations. It doesn’t require any external libraries other than the GD2 extension.Zebra_Pagination, a generic pagination class written in PHP: A generic pagination class that automatically generates navigation links given the total number of items and the number of items per page.Zebra_Session, a wrapper for PHP’s default session handler, using MySQL: Zebra_Session is a PHP class that acts as a wrapper for PHP’s default session handling functions but instead of storing session data in flat files it stores them in a MySQL database, thus providing both better security and better performance.

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• DevConnections Session Slides, Samples and Links

  - by Rick Strahl

  Finally coming up for air this week, after catching up with being on the road for the better part of three weeks. Here are my slides, samples and links for my four DevConnections Session two weeks ago in Vegas. I ended up doing one extra un-prepared for session on WebAPI and AJAX, as some of the speakers were either delayed or unable to make it at all to Vegas due to Sandy's mayhem. It was pretty hectic in the speaker room as Erik (our event coordinator extrodinaire) was scrambling to fill session slots with speakers :-). Surprisingly it didn't feel like the storm affected attendance drastically though, but I guess it's hard to tell without actual numbers. The conference was a lot of fun - it's been a while since I've been speaking at one of these larger conferences. I'd been taking a hiatus, and I forgot how much I enjoy actually giving talks. Preparing - well not  quite so much, especially since I ended up essentially preparing or completely rewriting for all three of these talks and I was stressing out a bit as I was sick the week before the conference and didn't get as much time to prepare as I wanted to. But - as always seems to be the case - it all worked out, but I guess those that attended have to be the judge of that… It was great to catch up with my speaker friends as well - man I feel out of touch. I got to spend a bunch of time with Dan Wahlin, Ward Bell, Julie Lerman and for about 10 minutes even got to catch up with the ever so busy Michele Bustamante. Lots of great technical discussions including a fun and heated REST controversy with Ward and Howard Dierking. There were also a number of great discussions with attendees, describing how they're using the technologies touched in my talks in live applications. I got some great ideas from some of these and I wish there would have been more opportunities for these kinds of discussions. One thing I miss at these Vegas events though is some sort of coherent event where attendees and speakers get to mingle. These Vegas conferences are just like "go to sessions, then go out and PARTY on the town" - it's Vegas after all! But I think that it's always nice to have at least one evening event where everybody gets to hang out together and trade stories and geek talk. Overall there didn't seem to be much opportunity for that beyond lunch or the small and short exhibit hall events which it seemed not many people actually went to. Anyways, a good time was had. I hope those of you that came to my sessions learned something useful. There were lots of great questions and discussions after the sessions - always appreciate hearing the real life scenarios that people deal with in relation to the abstracted scenarios in sessions. Here are the Session abstracts, a few comments and the links for downloading slides and  samples. It's not quite like being there, but I hope this stuff turns out to be useful to some of you. I'll be following up a couple of these sessions with white papers in the following weeks. Enjoy. ASP.NET Architecture: How ASP.NET Works at the Low Level Abstract:Interested in how ASP.NET works at a low level? ASP.NET is extremely powerful and flexible technology, but it's easy to forget about the core framework that underlies the higher level technologies like ASP.NET MVC, WebForms, WebPages, Web Services that we deal with on a day to day basis. The ASP.NET core drives all the higher level handlers and frameworks layered on top of it and with the core power comes some complexity in the form of a very rich object model that controls the flow of a request through the ASP.NET pipeline from Windows HTTP services down to the application level. To take full advantage of it, it helps to understand the underlying architecture and model. This session discusses the architecture of ASP.NET along with a number of useful tidbits that you can use for building and debugging your ASP.NET applications more efficiently. We look at overall architecture, how requests flow from the IIS (7 and later) Web Server to the ASP.NET runtime into HTTP handlers, modules and filters and finally into high-level handlers like MVC, Web Forms or Web API. Focus of this session is on the low-level aspects on the ASP.NET runtime, with examples that demonstrate the bootstrapping of ASP.NET, threading models, how Application Domains are used, startup bootstrapping, how configuration files are applied and how all of this relates to the applications you write either using low-level tools like HTTP handlers and modules or high-level pages or services sitting at the top of the ASP.NET runtime processing chain. Comments:I was surprised to see so many people show up for this session - especially since it was the last session on the last day and a short 1 hour session to boot. The room was packed and it was to see so many people interested the abstracts of architecture of ASP.NET beyond the immediate high level application needs. Lots of great questions in this talk as well - I only wish this session would have been the full hour 15 minutes as we just a little short of getting through the main material (didn't make it to Filters and Error handling). I haven't done this session in a long time and I had to pretty much re-figure all the system internals having to do with the ASP.NET bootstrapping in light for the changes that came with IIS 7 and later. The last time I did this talk was with IIS6, I guess it's been a while. I love doing this session, mainly because in my mind the core of ASP.NET overall is so cleanly designed to provide maximum flexibility without compromising performance that has clearly stood the test of time in the 10 years or so that .NET has been around. While there are a lot of moving parts, the technology is easy to manage once you understand the core components and the core model hasn't changed much even while the underlying architecture that drives has been almost completely revamped especially with the introduction of IIS 7 and later. Download Samples and Slides   Introduction to using jQuery with ASP.NET Abstract:In this session you'll learn how to take advantage of jQuery in your ASP.NET applications. Starting with an overview of jQuery client features via many short and fun examples, you'll find out about core features like the power of selectors for document element selection, manipulating these elements with jQuery's wrapped set methods in a browser independent way, how to hook up and handle events easily and generally apply concepts of unobtrusive JavaScript principles to client scripting. The second half of the session then delves into jQuery's AJAX features and several different ways how you can interact with ASP.NET on the server. You'll see examples of using ASP.NET MVC for serving HTML and JSON AJAX content, as well as using the new ASP.NET Web API to serve JSON and hypermedia content. You'll also see examples of client side templating/databinding with Handlebars and Knockout. Comments:This session was in a monster of a room and to my surprise it was nearly packed, given that this was a 100 level session. I can see that it's a good idea to continue to do intro sessions to jQuery as there appeared to be quite a number of folks who had not worked much with jQuery yet and who most likely could greatly benefit from using it. Seemed seemed to me the session got more than a few people excited to going if they hadn't yet :-).  Anyway I just love doing this session because it's mostly live coding and highly interactive - not many sessions that I can build things up from scratch and iterate on in an hour. jQuery makes that easy though. Resources: Slides and Code Samples Introduction to jQuery White Paper Introduction to ASP.NET Web API   Hosting the Razor Scripting Engine in Your Own Applications Abstract:The Razor Engine used in ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Pages is a free-standing scripting engine that can be disassociated from these Web-specific implementations and can be used in your own applications. Razor allows for a powerful mix of code and text rendering that makes it a wonderful tool for any sort of text generation, from creating HTML output in non-Web applications, to rendering mail merge-like functionality, to code generation for developer tools and even as a plug-in scripting engine. In this session, we'll look at the components that make up the Razor engine and how you can bootstrap it in your own applications to hook up templating. You'll find out how to create custom templates and manage Razor requests that can be pre-compiled, detecting page changes and act in ways similar to a full runtime. We look at ways that you can pass data into the engine and retrieve both the rendered output as well as result values in a package that makes it easy to plug Razor into your own applications. Comments:That this session was picked was a bit of a surprise to me, since it's a bit of a niche topic. Even more of a surprise was that during the session quite a few people who attended had actually used Razor externally and were there to find out more about how the process works and how to extend it. In the session I talk a bit about a custom Razor hosting implementation (Westwind.RazorHosting) and drilled into the various components required to build a custom Razor Hosting engine and a runtime around it. This sessions was a bit of a chore to prepare for as there are lots of technical implementation details that needed to be dealt with and squeezing that into an hour 15 is a bit tight (and that aren't addressed even by some of the wrapper libraries that exist). Found out though that there's quite a bit of interest in using a templating engine outside of web applications, or often side by side with the HTML output generated by frameworks like MVC or WebForms. An extra fun part of this session was that this was my first session and when I went to set up I realized I forgot my mini-DVI to VGA adapter cable to plug into the projector in my room - 6 minutes before the session was about to start. So I ended up sprinting the half a mile + back to my room - and back at a full sprint. I managed to be back only a couple of minutes late, but when I started I was out of breath for the first 10 minutes or so, while trying to talk. Musta sounded a bit funny as I was trying to not gasp too much :-) Resources: Slides and Code Samples Westwind.RazorHosting GitHub Project Original RazorHosting Blog Post   Introduction to ASP.NET Web API for AJAX Applications Abstract:WebAPI provides a new framework for creating REST based APIs, but it can also act as a backend to typical AJAX operations. This session covers the core features of Web API as it relates to typical AJAX application development. We’ll cover content-negotiation, routing and a variety of output generation options as well as managing data updates from the client in the context of a small Single Page Application style Web app. Finally we’ll look at some of the extensibility features in WebAPI to customize and extend Web API in a number and useful useful ways. Comments:This session was a fill in for session slots not filled due MIA speakers stranded by Sandy. I had samples from my previous Web API article so decided to go ahead and put together a session from it. Given that I spent only a couple of hours preparing and putting slides together I was glad it turned out as it did - kind of just ran itself by way of the examples I guess as well as nice audience interactions and questions. Lots of interest - and also some confusion about when Web API makes sense. Both this session and the jQuery session ended up getting a ton of questions about when to use Web API vs. MVC, whether it would make sense to switch to Web API for all AJAX backend work etc. In my opinion there's no need to jump to Web API for existing applications that already have a good AJAX foundation. Web API is awesome for real externally consumed APIs and clearly defined application AJAX APIs. For typical application level AJAX calls, it's still a good idea, but ASP.NET MVC can serve most if not all of that functionality just as well. There's no need to abandon MVC (or even ASP.NET AJAX or third party AJAX backends) just to move to Web API. For new projects Web API probably makes good sense for isolation of AJAX calls, but it really depends on how the application is set up. In some cases sharing business logic between the HTML and AJAX interfaces with a single MVC API can be cleaner than creating two completely separate code paths to serve essentially the same business logic. Resources: Slides and Code Samples Sample Code on GitHub Introduction to ASP.NET Web API White Paper© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Conferences  ASP.NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, January 24, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, January 24, 2011Popular ReleasesDeveloper Guidance - Onboarding Windows Phone 7: Fuel Tracker Source: Release NotesThis project is almost complete. We'll be making small updates to the code and documentation over the next week or so. We look forward to your feedback. This documentation and accompanying sample application will get you started creating a complete application for Windows Phone 7. You will learn about common developer issues in the context of a simple fuel-tracking application named Fuel Tracker. Some of the tasks that you will learn include the following: Creating a UI that...Password Generator: 2.2: Parallel password generation Password strength calculation ( Same method used by Microsoft here : https://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/passwords/checker.aspx ) Minor code refactoringProcess Enactment Tool Framework: PET 1.2.3: Bug fixing release. Introduced installer. General Upgraded to Visual Studio 2010 Created installer PET Wizard Fixed log bug if PET is placed in read-only folder SharePoint Tool Provider Fixed provider crash in case SharePoint.dll is not availableVisual Studio 2010 Architecture Tooling Guidance: Spanish - Architecture Guidance: Francisco Fagas http://geeks.ms/blogs/ffagas, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), localized the Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance for the Spanish communities, based on http://vsarchitectureguide.codeplex.com/releases/view/47828. Release Notes The guidance is available in a xps-only (default) or complete package. The complete package contains the files in xps, pdf and Office 2007 formats. 2011-01-24 Publish version 1.0 of the Spanish localized bits.ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.6.2: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager the html generation has been optimized, the html page size is much smaller nowSSH.NET Library: 2011.1.24: No new features in this release, only fixes to issues reported by users: Fixes Fix SFTP path resolution to allow for client to work with glibc and BSD based servers. Close handle when file download completes Fix reusing command object to execute different commands.Facebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 0.6: new Facebook Graph objects: Application, Page, Post, Comment Improved Intellisense documentation new Graph Api connections: albums, photos, posts, feed, home, friends JSON Toolkit upgraded to version 0.9 (beta release) with bug fixes and new features bug fixed: error when handling empty JSON arrays bug fixed: error when handling JSON array with square or large brackets in the message bug fixed: error when handling JSON obejcts with double quotation in the message bug fixed: erro...Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2008 Code Samples 2011-01-23: Code samples for Visual Studio 2008BloodSim: BloodSim - 1.4.0.0: This version requires an update for WControls.dll. - Removed option to use Old Rune Strike - Fixed an issue that was causing Ratings to not properly update when running Progressive simulations - Ability data is now loaded from an XML file in the BloodSim directory that is user editable. This data will be reloaded each time a fresh simulation is run. - Added toggle for showing Graph window. When unchecked, output data will instead be saved to a text file in the BloodSim directory based on the...MVVM Light Toolkit: MVVM Light Toolkit V3 SP1 (3): Instructions for installation: http://www.galasoft.ch/mvvm/installing/manually/ Includes the hotfix templates for Windows Phone 7 development. This is only relevant if you didn't already install the hotfix described at http://blog.galasoft.ch/archive/2010/07/22/mvvm-light-hotfix-for-windows-phone-7-developer-tools-beta.aspx.Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V42: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has added some features / bugfixes: Bugfix: Decoding of Subject now also supports multi-line subjects (occurs only if you have very long subjects with non-ASCII characters)Minecraft Tools: Minecraft Topographical Survey 1.3: MTS requires version 4 of the .NET Framework - you must download it from Microsoft if you have not previously installed it. This version of MTS adds automatic block list updates, so MTS will recognize blocks added in game updates properly rather than drawing them in bright pink. New in this version of MTS: Support for all new blocks added since the Halloween update Auto-update of blockcolors.xml to support future game updates A splash screen that shows while the program searches for upd...StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.14996.000: New Features: ============= This release is just compiled against the latest release of JetBrains ReSharper 5.1.1766.4 Previous release: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes...jqGrid ASP.Net MVC Control: Version 1.2.0.0: jqGrid 3.8 support jquery 1.4 support New and exciting features Many bugfixes Complete separation from the jquery, & jqgrid codeMediaScout: MediaScout 3.0 Preview 4: Update ReleaseCoding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1MFCMAPI: January 2011 Release: Build: 6.0.0.1024 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the tool, get the executable. If you want to debug it, get the symbol file and the source. The 64 bit build will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit build, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeAutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.4: Added champion: Renekton Removed automatic file association Fix: The recent files combobox didn't always open a file when an item was selected Fix: Removing a recently opened file caused an errorDotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.01: Major Highlights Fixed issue to remove preCondition checks when upgrading to .Net 4.0 Fixed issue where some valid domains were failing email validation checks. Fixed issue where editing Host menu page settings assigns the page to a Portal. Fixed issue which caused XHTML validation problems in 5.6.0 Fixed issue where an aspx page in any subfolder was inaccessible. Fixed issue where Config.Touch method signature had an unintentional breaking change in 5.6.0 Fixed issue which caused...iTracker Asp.Net Starter Kit: Version 3.0.0: This is the inital release of the version 3.0.0 Visual Studio 2010 (.Net 4.0) remake of the ITracker application. I connsider this a working, stable application but since there are still some features missing to make it "complete" I'm leaving it listed as a "beta" release. I am hoping to make it feature complete for v3.1.0 but anything is possible.New ProjectsAIMP2 .NET Interop Plugin: AIMP2 .NET Interop Plugin allows to write plugin for AIMP2 with managed code (C#, VB and so on).asp.net c# website: hot millions project is an asp.net c# sql express website where you can login and book and order your menu items. This project is built in Visual studio 2008 with asp.net c# sql express editionAutomatic Build Updater: A small tool with scripts to show the recent build of your program on your homepage or blog. It works fully automatically and is easy to use. Works with each IDE which supports Build-Events.BurakoNET: Burako OnLineDelNet: Tool created in C # to automate the development process. With this tool, you do not need to spend time with the creation of classes of connection, data access layer, view or update data with Windows Forms. Everything is here, ready.Droid Builder: Droid Builder is a WPF based application that can help Android ROM maker to create customized ROM. The basic functions of Droid Build are: 1. Deodex 2. Packaging 3. Signing In future, Droid Builder will provide more function on Android ROM customization.eatables: Eatables 2011Food information system: Food information system makes it easier for content providers to deliver information about food producers, contents and information about quality, recipes, allergy and other considerations to the consumers. ForceHttps: Very simple httpModule to ensure that all http requests are https. 1. Drop the dll into your website's bin directory 2. Update httpModules section of your web.config to reference the dll 3. Make sure your Web Server can handle SSL requests for the URL ALL http requests will be redirected as https.Frolic Game Engine for .NET: The Frolic game engine is an attempt at creating a retained style game engine that is agnostic to the rendering technology, allowing for easier inplementations of rendering engines for various graphics layers.Import VCF to MS Outlook: simple tools to import many *.vcf files to default contact in MS OutlookLe blog à TiK: Le blog à TiK is a blog engine written for the Windows Azure platformLearning CPP: Learning CPP.MinConsole: A minimilastic console application with configurable logging and debuggingMineSweeperChallenge: C# programming exercise. Simulates a given number of minesweeper games using a given ISweeper implementation (or use the step by step mode to study how the ISweeper implementations work). Create your own implementation and see how it compares to other implementations.MvcCss: MvcCss brings the convention-based simplicity of MVC to CSS.Natur Map Editor: Natur allows you to easily create and manage maps in 3D using the Xna framework. As you build your map, you can enter simulation mode at any time; this will activate bounds, physics, and any game logic such as animations and triggers.OneGames Open Framework: Projeto open-source da OneGames de desenvolvimento de jogos 2D com a engine SpriteCraft(tm).QQFindX: QQFindXsadd.practical.approach: SADD workshop is a project testorage to demonstrate practical approach of sadd while Lessons Learned site was developing. ?????? ???? ?????????? ??????????? ??? ?? ???????? ?????????? SADD ??? ???????? ????? "????????? ??????", ??????????? ????????? ??????????????? ?????? ?????.Seesmic Feed Reader: A simple plugin for Seesmic Desktop 2 that allows you to read syndication feeds (Rss 2.0 and Atom 1.0) inside Seesmic.Simple Farseer physics platform: Sample described on rabidlion.comSIN Generator: Social Insurance Number (SIN) Generator is a utility designed to generate SIN numbers to testing application software. It uses SIN generation algorithm provided on fakenamegenerator.com It is developed in C# and is meant for application testing ONLY!UsingLib: A library of automatically removed utilities: 1.Changing cursor to hourglass in Windows Forms 2.Logging It's developed in C#WP7Contrib: WP7 Contrib is a set of components to help build WP7 Apps. It can be plugged into MVVM Light or used as separate components in your App. Our goal is to provide a set of tools and patterns that help WP7 developers.

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• Categorized Document Management System

  - by cmptrgeekken

  At the company I work for, we have an intranet that provides employees with access to a wide variety of documents. These documents fall into several categories and subcategories, and each of these categories have their own web page. Below is one such page (each of the links shown will link to a similar view for that category): We currently store each document as a file on the web server and hand-code links to these documents whenever we need to add a new document. This is tedious and error-prone, and it also means we lack any sort of security for accessing these documents. I began looking into document management systems (like KnowledgeTree and OpenKM), however, none of these systems seem to provide a categorized view like in the preview above. My question is ... does anyone know of any Document Management System that allow for the type of flexibility we currently have with hand-coding links to our documents into various webpages (major and minor , while also providing security, ease of use, and (less important) version control? Or do you think I'd be better off developing such a system from scratch?

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