prototype chain - Page 117

Can't seem to get C TCP Server-Client Communications Right

- by Zeesponge

Ok i need some serious help here. I have to make a TCP Server Client. When the Client connects to server using a three stage handshake. AFterwards... while the Client is running in the terminal, the user enters linux shell commands like xinput list, ls -1, ect... something that uses standard output. The server accepts the commands and uses system() (in a fork() in an infinite loop) to run the commands and the standard output is redirected to the client, where the client prints out each line. Afterward the server sends a completion signal of "\377\n". In which the client goes back to the command prompt asking for a new command and closes its connection and exit()'s when inputting "quit". I know that you have to dup2() both the STDOUT_FILENO and STDERR_FILENO to the clients file descriptor {dup2(client_FD, STDOUT_FILENO). Everything works accept when it comes for the client to retrieve system()'s stdout and printing it out... all i get is a blank line with a blinking cursor (client waiting on stdin). I tried all kinds of different routes with no avail... If anyone can help out i would greatly appreciate it TCP SERVER CODE include #include <sys/socket.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> #include <netinet/in.h> #include <signal.h> #include <unistd.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <errno.h> //Prototype void handle_client(int connect_fd); int main() { int server_sockfd, client_sockfd; socklen_t server_len, client_len; struct sockaddr_in server_address; struct sockaddr_in client_address; server_sockfd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0); server_address.sin_family = AF_INET; server_address.sin_addr.s_addr = htonl(INADDR_ANY); server_address.sin_port = htons(9734); server_len = sizeof(server_address); bind(server_sockfd, (struct sockaddr *)&server_address, server_len); /* Create a connection queue, ignore child exit details and wait for clients. */ listen(server_sockfd, 10); signal(SIGCHLD, SIG_IGN); while(1) { printf("server waiting\n"); client_len = sizeof(client_address); client_sockfd = accept(server_sockfd, (struct sockaddr *)&client_address, &client_len); if(fork() == 0) handle_client(client_sockfd); else close(client_sockfd); } } void handle_client(int connect_fd) { const char* remsh = "<remsh>\n"; const char* ready = "<ready>\n"; const char* ok = "<ok>\n"; const char* command = "<command>\n"; const char* complete = "<\377\n"; const char* shared_secret = "<shapoopi>\n"; static char server_msg[201]; static char client_msg[201]; static char commands[201]; int sys_return; //memset client_msg, server_msg, commands memset(&client_msg, 0, sizeof(client_msg)); memset(&server_msg, 0, sizeof(client_msg)); memset(&commands, 0, sizeof(commands)); //read remsh from client read(connect_fd, &client_msg, 200); //check remsh validity from client if(strcmp(client_msg, remsh) != 0) { errno++; perror("Error Establishing Handshake"); close(connect_fd); exit(1); } //memset client_msg memset(&client_msg, 0, sizeof(client_msg)); //write remsh to client write(connect_fd, remsh, strlen(remsh)); //read shared_secret from client read(connect_fd, &client_msg, 200); //check shared_secret validity from client if(strcmp(client_msg, shared_secret) != 0) { errno++; perror("Invalid Security Passphrase"); write(connect_fd, "no", 2); close(connect_fd); exit(1); } //memset client_msg memset(&client_msg, 0, sizeof(client_msg)); //write ok to client write(connect_fd, ok, strlen(ok)); // dup2 STDOUT_FILENO <= client fd, STDERR_FILENO <= client fd dup2(connect_fd, STDOUT_FILENO); dup2(connect_fd, STDERR_FILENO); //begin while... while read (client_msg) from server and >0 while(read(connect_fd, &client_msg, 200) > 0) { //check command validity from client if(strcmp(client_msg, command) != 0) { errno++; perror("Error, unable to retrieve data"); close(connect_fd); exit(1); } //memset client_msg memset(&client_msg, 0, sizeof(client_msg)); //write ready to client write(connect_fd, ready, strlen(ready)); //read commands from client read(connect_fd, &commands, 200); //run commands using system( ) sys_return = system(commands); //check success of system( ) if(sys_return < 0) { perror("Invalid Commands"); errno++; } //memset commands memset(commands, 0, sizeof(commands)); //write complete to client write(connect_fd, complete, sizeof(complete)); } } TCP CLIENT CODE #include <sys/types.h> #include <sys/socket.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> #include <netinet/in.h> #include <arpa/inet.h> #include <unistd.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <errno.h> #include "readline.c" int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { int sockfd; int len; struct sockaddr_in address; int result; const char* remsh = "<remsh>\n"; const char* ready = "<ready>\n"; const char* ok = "<ok>\n"; const char* command = "<command>\n"; const char* complete = "<\377\n"; const char* shared_secret = "<shapoopi>\n"; static char server_msg[201]; static char client_msg[201]; memset(&client_msg, 0, sizeof(client_msg)); memset(&server_msg, 0, sizeof(server_msg)); /* Create a socket for the client. */ sockfd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0); /* Name the socket, as agreed with the server. */ memset(&address, 0, sizeof(address)); address.sin_family = AF_INET; address.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr(argv[1]); address.sin_port = htons(9734); len = sizeof(address); /* Now connect our socket to the server's socket. */ result = connect(sockfd, (struct sockaddr *)&address, len); if(result == -1) { perror("ACCESS DENIED"); exit(1); } //write remsh to server write(sockfd, remsh, strlen(remsh)); //read remsh from server read(sockfd, &server_msg, 200); //check remsh validity from server if(strcmp(server_msg, remsh) != 0) { errno++; perror("Error Establishing Initial Handshake"); close(sockfd); exit(1); } //memset server_msg memset(&server_msg, 0, sizeof(server_msg)); //write shared secret text to server write(sockfd, shared_secret, strlen(shared_secret)); //read ok from server read(sockfd, &server_msg, 200); //check ok velidity from server if(strcmp(server_msg, ok) != 0 ) { errno++; perror("Incorrect security phrase"); close(sockfd); exit(1); } //? dup2 STDIN_FILENO = server socket fd? //dup2(sockfd, STDIN_FILENO); //begin while(1)/////////////////////////////////////// while(1){ //memset both msg arrays memset(&client_msg, 0, sizeof(client_msg)); memset(&server_msg, 0, sizeof(server_msg)); //print Enter Command, scan input, fflush to stdout printf("<<Enter Command>> "); scanf("%s", client_msg); fflush(stdout); //check quit input, if true close and exit successfully if(strcmp(client_msg, "quit") == 0) { printf("Exiting\n"); close(sockfd); exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); } //write command to server write(sockfd, command, strlen(command)); //read ready from server read(sockfd, &server_msg, 200); //check ready validity from server if(strcmp(server_msg, ready) != 0) { errno++; perror("Failed Server Communications"); close(sockfd); exit(1); } //memset server_msg memset(&server_msg, 0, sizeof(server_msg)); //begin looping and retrieving from stdin, //break loop at EOF or complete while((read(sockfd, server_msg, 200) != 0) && (strcmp(server_msg, complete) != 0)) { //while((fgets(server_msg, 4096, stdin) != EOF) || (strcmp(server_msg, complete) == 0)) { printf("%s", server_msg); memset(&server_msg, 0, sizeof(server_msg)); } } }

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Stretch UL to fill the entire DIV

- by Interfaith

There is a similar post: Stretch horizontal ul to fit width of div But mine is a little bit tricky, as I have tried the above example but failed. My code: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-… <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <title></title> <script type='text/javascript' src='https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/li… <script> function mainmenu(){ $(" #nav ul ").css({display: "none"}); // Opera Fix $(" #nav li").hover(function(){ $(this).find('ul:first').css({visibi… "visible",display: "none"}).show(400); },function(){ $(this).find('ul:first').css({visibi… "hidden"}); }); } $(document).ready(function(){ mainmenu(); }); </script> <style> body{ font-size:0.85em; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; } #nav, #nav ul{ margin:0; padding:0; list-style-type:none; list-style-position:outside; position:relative; line-height:1.5em; display: table; width: 100%; } #nav a{ display:block; padding:10px 15px 10px 15px; border:1px solid #fff; color:#fff; text-align: center; margin:0; text-decoration:none; background: #C34328; border-top:1px solid #EF593B; -moz-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset; -webkit-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset; -box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset; } #nav a:hover{ background-color:#fff; color:#333; } #nav li{ float:left; position:relative; } #nav ul { position:absolute; display:none; width:12em; top:3.2em; } #nav li ul a{ width:12em; height:auto; float:left; } #nav ul ul{ top:auto; } #nav li ul ul { left:12em; margin:0px 0 0 10px; } </style> </head> <body> <div style="width: 980px; border: 1px black solid;"> <ul id="nav"> <li><a href="#">Find a Doctor</a></li> <li><a href="#">Why Interfaith</a></li> <li><a href="#">For Patients & Visitors</a> <ul> <li><a href="#">3.1 jQuery</a></li> <li><a href="#">3.2 Mootools</a></li> <li><a href="#">3.3 Prototype</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#">Medical Services</a> <ul> <li><a href="#">Behavioral Health</a></li> <li><a href="#">Clinical Laboratory</a></li> <li><a href="#">Dentistry</a></li> <li><a href="#">Emergency</a></li> <li><a href="#">Gynecology</a></li> <li><a href="#">Medicine</a></li> <li><a href="#">Pastoral</a></li> <li><a href="#">Pediatrics</a></li> <li><a href="#">Physical Medicine & Rehab</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#">Medical Trainings</a> <ul> <li><a href="#">Medical Training</a></li> <li><a href="#">Behavioral Health</a></li> <li><a href="#">Predoctoral Externship</a></li> <li><a href="#">Podiatric Residency</a></li> <li><a href="#">Dental Residency</a></li> <li><a href="#">Pulmonary Medicine</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#">Contact</a></li> </ul> </div> </body> </html> Can someone tell me where I have to edit to complete the code? Thanks

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Logic error for Gauss elimination

- by iwanttoprogram

Logic error problem with the Gaussian Elimination code...This code was from my Numerical Methods text in 1990's. The code is typed in from the book- not producing correct output... Sample Run: SOLUTION OF SIMULTANEOUS LINEAR EQUATIONS USING GAUSSIAN ELIMINATION This program uses Gaussian Elimination to solve the system Ax = B, where A is the matrix of known coefficients, B is the vector of known constants and x is the column matrix of the unknowns. Number of equations: 3 Enter elements of matrix [A] A(1,1) = 0 A(1,2) = -6 A(1,3) = 9 A(2,1) = 7 A(2,2) = 0 A(2,3) = -5 A(3,1) = 5 A(3,2) = -8 A(3,3) = 6 Enter elements of [b] vector B(1) = -3 B(2) = 3 B(3) = -4 SOLUTION OF SIMULTANEOUS LINEAR EQUATIONS The solution is x(1) = 0.000000 x(2) = -1.#IND00 x(3) = -1.#IND00 Determinant = -1.#IND00 Press any key to continue . . . The code as copied from the text... //Modified Code from C Numerical Methods Text- June 2009 #include <stdio.h> #include <math.h> #define MAXSIZE 20 //function prototype int gauss (double a[][MAXSIZE], double b[], int n, double *det); int main(void) { double a[MAXSIZE][MAXSIZE], b[MAXSIZE], det; int i, j, n, retval; printf("\n \t SOLUTION OF SIMULTANEOUS LINEAR EQUATIONS"); printf("\n \t USING GAUSSIAN ELIMINATION \n"); printf("\n This program uses Gaussian Elimination to solve the"); printf("\n system Ax = B, where A is the matrix of known"); printf("\n coefficients, B is the vector of known constants"); printf("\n and x is the column matrix of the unknowns."); //get number of equations n = 0; while(n <= 0 || n > MAXSIZE) { printf("\n Number of equations: "); scanf ("%d", &n); } //read matrix A printf("\n Enter elements of matrix [A]\n"); for (i = 0; i < n; i++) for (j = 0; j < n; j++) { printf(" A(%d,%d) = ", i + 1, j + 1); scanf("%lf", &a[i][j]); } //read {B} vector printf("\n Enter elements of [b] vector\n"); for (i = 0; i < n; i++) { printf(" B(%d) = ", i + 1); scanf("%lf", &b[i]); } //call Gauss elimination function retval = gauss(a, b, n, &det); //print results if (retval == 0) { printf("\n\t SOLUTION OF SIMULTANEOUS LINEAR EQUATIONS\n"); printf("\n\t The solution is"); for (i = 0; i < n; i++) printf("\n \t x(%d) = %lf", i + 1, b[i]); printf("\n \t Determinant = %lf \n", det); } else printf("\n \t SINGULAR MATRIX \n"); return 0; } /* Solves the system of equations [A]{x} = {B} using */ /* the Gaussian elimination method with partial pivoting. */ /* Parameters: */ /* n - number of equations */ /* a[n][n] - coefficient matrix */ /* b[n] - right-hand side vector */ /* *det - determinant of [A] */ int gauss (double a[][MAXSIZE], double b[], int n, double *det) { double tol, temp, mult; int npivot, i, j, l, k, flag; //initialization *det = 1.0; tol = 1e-30; //initial tolerance value npivot = 0; //mult = 0; //forward elimination for (k = 0; k < n; k++) { //search for max coefficient in pivot row- a[k][k] pivot element for (i = k + 1; i < n; i++) { if (fabs(a[i][k]) > fabs(a[k][k])) { //interchange row with maxium element with pivot row npivot++; for (l = 0; l < n; l++) { temp = a[i][l]; a[i][l] = a[k][l]; a[k][l] = temp; } temp = b[i]; b[i] = b[k]; b[k] = temp; } } //test for singularity if (fabs(a[k][k]) < tol) { //matrix is singular- terminate flag = 1; return flag; } //compute determinant- the product of the pivot elements *det = *det * a[k][k]; //eliminate the coefficients of X(I) for (i = k; i < n; i++) { mult = a[i][k] / a[k][k]; b[i] = b[i] - b[k] * mult; //compute constants for (j = k; j < n; j++) //compute coefficients a[i][j] = a[i][j] - a[k][j] * mult; } } //adjust the sign of the determinant if(npivot % 2 == 1) *det = *det * (-1.0); //backsubstitution b[n] = b[n] / a[n][n]; for(i = n - 1; i > 1; i--) { for(j = n; j > i + 1; j--) b[i] = b[i] - a[i][j] * b[j]; b[i] = b[i] / a[i - 1][i]; } flag = 0; return flag; } The solution should be: 1.058824, 1.823529, 0.882353 with det as -102.000000 Any insight is appreciated...

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Linked List manipulation, issues retrieving data c++

- by floatfil

I'm trying to implement some functions to manipulate a linked list. The implementation is a template typename T and the class is 'List' which includes a 'head' pointer and also a struct: struct Node { // the node in a linked list T* data; // pointer to actual data, operations in T Node* next; // pointer to a Node }; Since it is a template, and 'T' can be any data, how do I go about checking the data of a list to see if it matches the data input into the function? The function is called 'retrieve' and takes two parameters, the data and a pointer: bool retrieve(T target, T*& ptr); // This is the prototype we need to use for the project "bool retrieve : similar to remove, but not removed from list. If there are duplicates in the list, the first one encountered is retrieved. Second parameter is unreliable if return value is false. E.g., " Employee target("duck", "donald"); success = company1.retrieve(target, oneEmployee); if (success) { cout << "Found in list: " << *oneEmployee << endl; } And the function is called like this: company4.retrieve(emp3, oneEmployee) So that when you cout *oneEmployee, you'll get the data of that pointer (in this case the data is of type Employee). (Also, this is assuming all data types have the apropriate overloaded operators) I hope this makes sense so far, but my issue is in comparing the data in the parameter and the data while going through the list. (The data types that we use all include overloads for equality operators, so oneData == twoData is valid) This is what I have so far: template <typename T> bool List<T>::retrieve(T target , T*& ptr) { List<T>::Node* dummyPtr = head; // point dummy pointer to what the list's head points to for(;;) { if (*dummyPtr->data == target) { // EDIT: it now compiles, but it breaks here and I get an Access Violation error. ptr = dummyPtr->data; // set the parameter pointer to the dummy pointer return true; // return true } else { dummyPtr = dummyPtr->next; // else, move to the next data node } } return false; } Here is the implementation for the Employee class: //-------------------------- constructor ----------------------------------- Employee::Employee(string last, string first, int id, int sal) { idNumber = (id >= 0 && id <= MAXID? id : -1); salary = (sal >= 0 ? sal : -1); lastName = last; firstName = first; } //-------------------------- destructor ------------------------------------ // Needed so that memory for strings is properly deallocated Employee::~Employee() { } //---------------------- copy constructor ----------------------------------- Employee::Employee(const Employee& E) { lastName = E.lastName; firstName = E.firstName; idNumber = E.idNumber; salary = E.salary; } //-------------------------- operator= --------------------------------------- Employee& Employee::operator=(const Employee& E) { if (&E != this) { idNumber = E.idNumber; salary = E.salary; lastName = E.lastName; firstName = E.firstName; } return *this; } //----------------------------- setData ------------------------------------ // set data from file bool Employee::setData(ifstream& inFile) { inFile >> lastName >> firstName >> idNumber >> salary; return idNumber >= 0 && idNumber <= MAXID && salary >= 0; } //------------------------------- < ---------------------------------------- // < defined by value of name bool Employee::operator<(const Employee& E) const { return lastName < E.lastName || (lastName == E.lastName && firstName < E.firstName); } //------------------------------- <= ---------------------------------------- // < defined by value of inamedNumber bool Employee::operator<=(const Employee& E) const { return *this < E || *this == E; } //------------------------------- > ---------------------------------------- // > defined by value of name bool Employee::operator>(const Employee& E) const { return lastName > E.lastName || (lastName == E.lastName && firstName > E.firstName); } //------------------------------- >= ---------------------------------------- // < defined by value of name bool Employee::operator>=(const Employee& E) const { return *this > E || *this == E; } //----------------- operator == (equality) ---------------- // if name of calling and passed object are equal, // return true, otherwise false // bool Employee::operator==(const Employee& E) const { return lastName == E.lastName && firstName == E.firstName; } //----------------- operator != (inequality) ---------------- // return opposite value of operator== bool Employee::operator!=(const Employee& E) const { return !(*this == E); } //------------------------------- << --------------------------------------- // display Employee object ostream& operator<<(ostream& output, const Employee& E) { output << setw(4) << E.idNumber << setw(7) << E.salary << " " << E.lastName << " " << E.firstName << endl; return output; } I will include a check for NULL pointer but I just want to get this working and will test it on a list that includes the data I am checking. Thanks to whoever can help and as usual, this is for a course so I don't expect or want the answer, but any tips as to what might be going wrong will help immensely!

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Custom ASP.NET Routing to an HttpHandler

- by Rick Strahl

As of version 4.0 ASP.NET natively supports routing via the now built-in System.Web.Routing namespace. Routing features are automatically integrated into the HtttpRuntime via a few custom interfaces. New Web Forms Routing Support In ASP.NET 4.0 there are a host of improvements including routing support baked into Web Forms via a RouteData property available on the Page class and RouteCollection.MapPageRoute() route handler that makes it easy to route to Web forms. To map ASP.NET Page routes is as simple as setting up the routes with MapPageRoute:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); } void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.MapPageRoute("StockQuote", "StockQuote/{symbol}", "StockQuote.aspx"); routes.MapPageRoute("StockQuotes", "StockQuotes/{symbolList}", "StockQuotes.aspx"); } and then accessing the route data in the page you can then use the new Page class RouteData property to retrieve the dynamic route data information:public partial class StockQuote1 : System.Web.UI.Page { protected StockQuote Quote = null; protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { string symbol = RouteData.Values["symbol"] as string; StockServer server = new StockServer(); Quote = server.GetStockQuote(symbol); // display stock data in Page View } } Simple, quick and doesn’t require much explanation. If you’re using WebForms most of your routing needs should be served just fine by this simple mechanism. Kudos to the ASP.NET team for putting this in the box and making it easy! How Routing Works To handle Routing in ASP.NET involves these steps: Registering Routes Creating a custom RouteHandler to retrieve an HttpHandler Attaching RouteData to your HttpHandler Picking up Route Information in your Request code Registering routes makes ASP.NET aware of the Routes you want to handle via the static RouteTable.Routes collection. You basically add routes to this collection to let ASP.NET know which URL patterns it should watch for. You typically hook up routes off a RegisterRoutes method that fires in Application_Start as I did in the example above to ensure routes are added only once when the application first starts up. When you create a route, you pass in a RouteHandler instance which ASP.NET caches and reuses as routes are matched. Once registered ASP.NET monitors the routes and if a match is found just prior to the HttpHandler instantiation, ASP.NET uses the RouteHandler registered for the route and calls GetHandler() on it to retrieve an HttpHandler instance. The RouteHandler.GetHandler() method is responsible for creating an instance of an HttpHandler that is to handle the request and – if necessary – to assign any additional custom data to the handler. At minimum you probably want to pass the RouteData to the handler so the handler can identify the request based on the route data available. To do this you typically add a RouteData property to your handler and then assign the property from the RouteHandlers request context. This is essentially how Page.RouteData comes into being and this approach should work well for any custom handler implementation that requires RouteData. It’s a shame that ASP.NET doesn’t have a top level intrinsic object that’s accessible off the HttpContext object to provide route data more generically, but since RouteData is directly tied to HttpHandlers and not all handlers support it it might cause some confusion of when it’s actually available. Bottom line is that if you want to hold on to RouteData you have to assign it to a custom property of the handler or else pass it to the handler via Context.Items[] object that can be retrieved on an as needed basis. It’s important to understand that routing is hooked up via RouteHandlers that are responsible for loading HttpHandler instances. RouteHandlers are invoked for every request that matches a route and through this RouteHandler instance the Handler gains access to the current RouteData. Because of this logic it’s important to understand that Routing is really tied to HttpHandlers and not available prior to handler instantiation, which is pretty late in the HttpRuntime’s request pipeline. IOW, Routing works with Handlers but not with earlier in the pipeline within Modules. Specifically ASP.NET calls RouteHandler.GetHandler() from the PostResolveRequestCache HttpRuntime pipeline event. Here’s the call stack at the beginning of the GetHandler() call: which fires just before handler resolution. Non-Page Routing – You need to build custom RouteHandlers If you need to route to a custom Http Handler or other non-Page (and non-MVC) endpoint in the HttpRuntime, there is no generic mapping support available. You need to create a custom RouteHandler that can manage creating an instance of an HttpHandler that is fired in response to a routed request. Depending on what you are doing this process can be simple or fairly involved as your code is responsible based on the route data provided which handler to instantiate, and more importantly how to pass the route data on to the Handler. Luckily creating a RouteHandler is easy by implementing the IRouteHandler interface which has only a single GetHttpHandler(RequestContext context) method. In this method you can pick up the requestContext.RouteData, instantiate the HttpHandler of choice, and assign the RouteData to it. Then pass back the handler and you’re done.Here’s a simple example of GetHttpHandler() method that dynamically creates a handler based on a passed in Handler type./// <summary> /// Retrieves an Http Handler based on the type specified in the constructor /// </summary> /// <param name="requestContext"></param> /// <returns></returns> IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; // If we're dealing with a Callback Handler // pass the RouteData for this route to the Handler if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } Note that this code checks for a specific type of handler and if it matches assigns the RouteData to this handler. This is optional but quite a common scenario if you want to work with RouteData. If the handler you need to instantiate isn’t under your control but you still need to pass RouteData to Handler code, an alternative is to pass the RouteData via the HttpContext.Items collection:IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; requestContext.HttpContext.Items["RouteData"] = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } The code in the handler implementation can then pick up the RouteData from the context collection as needed:RouteData routeData = HttpContext.Current.Items["RouteData"] as RouteData This isn’t as clean as having an explicit RouteData property, but it does have the advantage that the route data is visible anywhere in the Handler’s code chain. It’s definitely preferable to create a custom property on your handler, but the Context work-around works in a pinch when you don’t’ own the handler code and have dynamic code executing as part of the handler execution. An Example of a Custom RouteHandler: Attribute Based Route Implementation In this post I’m going to discuss a custom routine implementation I built for my CallbackHandler class in the West Wind Web & Ajax Toolkit. CallbackHandler can be very easily used for creating AJAX, REST and POX requests following RPC style method mapping. You can pass parameters via URL query string, POST data or raw data structures, and you can retrieve results as JSON, XML or raw string/binary data. It’s a quick and easy way to build service interfaces with no fuss. As a quick review here’s how CallbackHandler works: You create an Http Handler that derives from CallbackHandler You implement methods that have a [CallbackMethod] Attribute and that’s it. Here’s an example of an CallbackHandler implementation in an ashx.cs based handler:// RestService.ashx.cs public class RestService : CallbackHandler { [CallbackMethod] public StockQuote GetStockQuote(string symbol) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); return server.GetStockQuote(symbol); } [CallbackMethod] public StockQuote[] GetStockQuotes(string symbolList) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); string[] symbols = symbolList.Split(new char[2] { ',',';' },StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); return server.GetStockQuotes(symbols); } } CallbackHandler makes it super easy to create a method on the server, pass data to it via POST, QueryString or raw JSON/XML data, and then retrieve the results easily back in various formats. This works wonderful and I’ve used these tools in many projects for myself and with clients. But one thing missing has been the ability to create clean URLs. Typical URLs looked like this: http://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebToolkit/samples/Rest/StockService.ashx?Method=GetStockQuote&symbol=msfthttp://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebToolkit/samples/Rest/StockService.ashx?Method=GetStockQuotes&symbolList=msft,intc,gld,slw,mwe&format=xml which works and is clear enough, but also clearly very ugly. It would be much nicer if URLs could look like this: http://www.west-wind.com//WestwindWebtoolkit/Samples/StockQuote/msfthttp://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebtoolkit/Samples/StockQuotes/msft,intc,gld,slw?format=xml (the Virtual Root in this sample is WestWindWebToolkit/Samples and StockQuote/{symbol} is the route)(If you use FireFox try using the JSONView plug-in make it easier to view JSON content) So, taking a clue from the WCF REST tools that use RouteUrls I set out to create a way to specify RouteUrls for each of the endpoints. The change made basically allows changing the above to: [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="RestService/StockQuote/{symbol}")] public StockQuote GetStockQuote(string symbol) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); return server.GetStockQuote(symbol); } [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl = "RestService/StockQuotes/{symbolList}")] public StockQuote[] GetStockQuotes(string symbolList) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); string[] symbols = symbolList.Split(new char[2] { ',',';' },StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); return server.GetStockQuotes(symbols); } where a RouteUrl is specified as part of the Callback attribute. And with the changes made with RouteUrls I can now get URLs like the second set shown earlier. So how does that work? Let’s find out… How to Create Custom Routes As mentioned earlier Routing is made up of several steps: Creating a custom RouteHandler to create HttpHandler instances Mapping the actual Routes to the RouteHandler Retrieving the RouteData and actually doing something useful with it in the HttpHandler In the CallbackHandler routing example above this works out to something like this: Create a custom RouteHandler that includes a property to track the method to call Set up the routes using Reflection against the class Looking for any RouteUrls in the CallbackMethod attribute Add a RouteData property to the CallbackHandler so we can access the RouteData in the code of the handler Creating a Custom Route Handler To make the above work I created a custom RouteHandler class that includes the actual IRouteHandler implementation as well as a generic and static method to automatically register all routes marked with the [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="…")] attribute. Here’s the code:/// <summary> /// Route handler that can create instances of CallbackHandler derived /// callback classes. The route handler tracks the method name and /// creates an instance of the service in a predictable manner /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TCallbackHandler">CallbackHandler type</typeparam> public class CallbackHandlerRouteHandler : IRouteHandler { /// <summary> /// Method name that is to be called on this route. /// Set by the automatically generated RegisterRoutes /// invokation. /// </summary> public string MethodName { get; set; } /// <summary> /// The type of the handler we're going to instantiate. /// Needed so we can semi-generically instantiate the /// handler and call the method on it. /// </summary> public Type CallbackHandlerType { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Constructor to pass in the two required components we /// need to create an instance of our handler. /// </summary> /// <param name="methodName"></param> /// <param name="callbackHandlerType"></param> public CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(string methodName, Type callbackHandlerType) { MethodName = methodName; CallbackHandlerType = callbackHandlerType; } /// <summary> /// Retrieves an Http Handler based on the type specified in the constructor /// </summary> /// <param name="requestContext"></param> /// <returns></returns> IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; // If we're dealing with a Callback Handler // pass the RouteData for this route to the Handler if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } /// <summary> /// Generic method to register all routes from a CallbackHandler /// that have RouteUrls defined on the [CallbackMethod] attribute /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TCallbackHandler">CallbackHandler Type</typeparam> /// <param name="routes"></param> public static void RegisterRoutes<TCallbackHandler>(RouteCollection routes) { // find all methods var methods = typeof(TCallbackHandler).GetMethods(BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public); foreach (var method in methods) { var attrs = method.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(CallbackMethodAttribute), false); if (attrs.Length < 1) continue; CallbackMethodAttribute attr = attrs[0] as CallbackMethodAttribute; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(attr.RouteUrl)) continue; // Add the route routes.Add(method.Name, new Route(attr.RouteUrl, new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(method.Name, typeof(TCallbackHandler)))); } } } The RouteHandler implements IRouteHandler, and its responsibility via the GetHandler method is to create an HttpHandler based on the route data. When ASP.NET calls GetHandler it passes a requestContext parameter which includes a requestContext.RouteData property. This parameter holds the current request’s route data as well as an instance of the current RouteHandler. If you look at GetHttpHandler() you can see that the code creates an instance of the handler we are interested in and then sets the RouteData property on the handler. This is how you can pass the current request’s RouteData to the handler. The RouteData object also has a RouteData.RouteHandler property that is also available to the Handler later, which is useful in order to get additional information about the current route. In our case here the RouteHandler includes a MethodName property that identifies the method to execute in the handler since that value no longer comes from the URL so we need to figure out the method name some other way. The method name is mapped explicitly when the RouteHandler is created and here the static method that auto-registers all CallbackMethods with RouteUrls sets the method name when it creates the routes while reflecting over the methods (more on this in a minute). The important point here is that you can attach additional properties to the RouteHandler and you can then later access the RouteHandler and its properties later in the Handler to pick up these custom values. This is a crucial feature in that the RouteHandler serves in passing additional context to the handler so it knows what actions to perform. The automatic route registration is handled by the static RegisterRoutes<TCallbackHandler> method. This method is generic and totally reusable for any CallbackHandler type handler. To register a CallbackHandler and any RouteUrls it has defined you simple use code like this in Application_Start (or other application startup code):protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Register Routes for RestService CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes<RestService>(RouteTable.Routes); } If you have multiple CallbackHandler style services you can make multiple calls to RegisterRoutes for each of the service types. RegisterRoutes internally uses reflection to run through all the methods of the Handler, looking for CallbackMethod attributes and whether a RouteUrl is specified. If it is a new instance of a CallbackHandlerRouteHandler is created and the name of the method and the type are set. routes.Add(method.Name, new Route(attr.RouteUrl, new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(method.Name, typeof(TCallbackHandler) )) ); While the routing with CallbackHandlerRouteHandler is set up automatically for all methods that use the RouteUrl attribute, you can also use code to hook up those routes manually and skip using the attribute. The code for this is straightforward and just requires that you manually map each individual route to each method you want a routed: protected void Application_Start(objectsender, EventArgs e){ RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);}void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.Add("StockQuote Route",new Route("StockQuote/{symbol}", new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler("GetStockQuote",typeof(RestService) ) ) ); routes.Add("StockQuotes Route",new Route("StockQuotes/{symbolList}", new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler("GetStockQuotes",typeof(RestService) ) ) );}I think it’s clearly easier to have CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes() do this automatically for you based on RouteUrl attributes, but some people have a real aversion to attaching logic via attributes. Just realize that the option to manually create your routes is available as well. Using the RouteData in the Handler A RouteHandler’s responsibility is to create an HttpHandler and as mentioned earlier, natively IHttpHandler doesn’t have any support for RouteData. In order to utilize RouteData in your handler code you have to pass the RouteData to the handler. In my CallbackHandlerRouteHandler when it creates the HttpHandler instance it creates the instance and then assigns the custom RouteData property on the handler:IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; Again this only works if you actually add a RouteData property to your handler explicitly as I did in my CallbackHandler implementation:/// <summary> /// Optionally store RouteData on this handler /// so we can access it internally /// </summary> public RouteData RouteData {get; set; } and the RouteHandler needs to set it when it creates the handler instance. Once you have the route data in your handler you can access Route Keys and Values and also the RouteHandler. Since my RouteHandler has a custom property for the MethodName to retrieve it from within the handler I can do something like this now to retrieve the MethodName (this example is actually not in the handler but target is an instance pass to the processor): // check for Route Data method name if (target is CallbackHandler) { var routeData = ((CallbackHandler)target).RouteData; if (routeData != null) methodToCall = ((CallbackHandlerRouteHandler)routeData.RouteHandler).MethodName; } When I need to access the dynamic values in the route ( symbol in StockQuote/{symbol}) I can retrieve it easily with the Values collection (RouteData.Values["symbol"]). In my CallbackHandler processing logic I’m basically looking for matching parameter names to Route parameters: // look for parameters in the routeif(routeData != null){ string parmString = routeData.Values[parameter.Name] as string; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType);} And with that we’ve come full circle. We’ve created a custom RouteHandler() that passes the RouteData to the handler it creates. We’ve registered our routes to use the RouteHandler, and we’ve utilized the route data in our handler. For completeness sake here’s the routine that executes a method call based on the parameters passed in and one of the options is to retrieve the inbound parameters off RouteData (as well as from POST data or QueryString parameters):internal object ExecuteMethod(string method, object target, string[] parameters, CallbackMethodParameterType paramType, ref CallbackMethodAttribute callbackMethodAttribute) { HttpRequest Request = HttpContext.Current.Request; object Result = null; // Stores parsed parameters (from string JSON or QUeryString Values) object[] adjustedParms = null; Type PageType = target.GetType(); MethodInfo MI = PageType.GetMethod(method, BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic); if (MI == null) throw new InvalidOperationException("Invalid Server Method."); object[] methods = MI.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(CallbackMethodAttribute), false); if (methods.Length < 1) throw new InvalidOperationException("Server method is not accessible due to missing CallbackMethod attribute"); if (callbackMethodAttribute != null) callbackMethodAttribute = methods[0] as CallbackMethodAttribute; ParameterInfo[] parms = MI.GetParameters(); JSONSerializer serializer = new JSONSerializer(); RouteData routeData = null; if (target is CallbackHandler) routeData = ((CallbackHandler)target).RouteData; int parmCounter = 0; adjustedParms = new object[parms.Length]; foreach (ParameterInfo parameter in parms) { // Retrieve parameters out of QueryString or POST buffer if (parameters == null) { // look for parameters in the route if (routeData != null) { string parmString = routeData.Values[parameter.Name] as string; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType); } // GET parameter are parsed as plain string values - no JSON encoding else if (HttpContext.Current.Request.HttpMethod == "GET") { // Look up the parameter by name string parmString = Request.QueryString[parameter.Name]; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType); } // POST parameters are treated as methodParameters that are JSON encoded else if (paramType == CallbackMethodParameterType.Json) //string newVariable = methodParameters.GetValue(parmCounter) as string; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = serializer.Deserialize(Request.Params["parm" + (parmCounter + 1).ToString()], parameter.ParameterType); else adjustedParms[parmCounter] = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject( Request.Params["parm" + (parmCounter + 1).ToString()], parameter.ParameterType); } else if (paramType == CallbackMethodParameterType.Json) adjustedParms[parmCounter] = serializer.Deserialize(parameters[parmCounter], parameter.ParameterType); else adjustedParms[parmCounter] = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject(parameters[parmCounter], parameter.ParameterType); parmCounter++; } Result = MI.Invoke(target, adjustedParms); return Result; } The code basically uses Reflection to loop through all the parameters available on the method and tries to assign the parameters from RouteData, QueryString or POST variables. The parameters are converted into their appropriate types and then used to eventually make a Reflection based method call. What’s sweet is that the RouteData retrieval is just another option for dealing with the inbound data in this scenario and it adds exactly two lines of code plus the code to retrieve the MethodName I showed previously – a seriously low impact addition that adds a lot of extra value to this endpoint callback processing implementation. Debugging your Routes If you create a lot of routes it’s easy to run into Route conflicts where multiple routes have the same path and overlap with each other. This can be difficult to debug especially if you are using automatically generated routes like the routes created by CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes. Luckily there’s a tool that can help you out with this nicely. Phill Haack created a RouteDebugging tool you can download and add to your project. The easiest way to do this is to grab and add this to your project is to use NuGet (Add Library Package from your Project’s Reference Nodes): which adds a RouteDebug assembly to your project. Once installed you can easily debug your routes with this simple line of code which needs to be installed at application startup:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes<StockService>(RouteTable.Routes); // Debug your routes RouteDebug.RouteDebugger.RewriteRoutesForTesting(RouteTable.Routes); } Any routed URL then displays something like this: The screen shows you your current route data and all the routes that are mapped along with a flag that displays which route was actually matched. This is useful – if you have any overlap of routes you will be able to see which routes are triggered – the first one in the sequence wins. This tool has saved my ass on a few occasions – and with NuGet now it’s easy to add it to your project in a few seconds and then remove it when you’re done. Routing Around Custom routing seems slightly complicated on first blush due to its disconnected components of RouteHandler, route registration and mapping of custom handlers. But once you understand the relationship between a RouteHandler, the RouteData and how to pass it to a handler, utilizing of Routing becomes a lot easier as you can easily pass context from the registration to the RouteHandler and through to the HttpHandler. The most important thing to understand when building custom routing solutions is to figure out how to map URLs in such a way that the handler can figure out all the pieces it needs to process the request. This can be via URL routing parameters and as I did in my example by passing additional context information as part of the RouteHandler instance that provides the proper execution context. In my case this ‘context’ was the method name, but it could be an actual static value like an enum identifying an operation or category in an application. Basically user supplied data comes in through the url and static application internal data can be passed via RouteHandler property values. Routing can make your application URLs easier to read by non-techie types regardless of whether you’re building Service type or REST applications, or full on Web interfaces. Routing in ASP.NET 4.0 makes it possible to create just about any extensionless URLs you can dream up and custom RouteHanmdler References Sample ProjectIncludes the sample CallbackHandler service discussed here along with compiled versionsof the Westwind.Web and Westwind.Utilities assemblies. (requires .NET 4.0/VS 2010) West Wind Web Toolkit includes full implementation of CallbackHandler and the Routing Handler West Wind Web Toolkit Source CodeContains the full source code to the Westwind.Web and Westwind.Utilities assemblies usedin these samples. Includes the source described in the post.(Latest build in the Subversion Repository) CallbackHandler Source(Relevant code to this article tree in Westwind.Web assembly) JSONView FireFoxPluginA simple FireFox Plugin to easily view JSON data natively in FireFox.For IE you can use a registry hack to display JSON as raw text.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET AJAX HTTP

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Windows Azure: Import/Export Hard Drives, VM ACLs, Web Sockets, Remote Debugging, Continuous Delivery, New Relic, Billing Alerts and More

- by ScottGu

Two weeks ago we released a giant set of improvements to Windows Azure, as well as a significant update of the Windows Azure SDK. This morning we released another massive set of enhancements to Windows Azure. Today’s new capabilities include: Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to your Storage Accounts HDInsight: General Availability of our Hadoop Service in the cloud Virtual Machines: New VM Gallery, ACL support for VIPs Web Sites: WebSocket and Remote Debugging Support Notification Hubs: Segmented customer push notification support with tag expressions TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics Billing: New Billing Alert Service that sends emails notifications when your bill hits a threshold you define All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note that some features are still in preview). Below are more details about them. Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to Windows Azure I am excited to announce the preview of our new Windows Azure Import/Export Service! The Windows Azure Import/Export Service enables you to move large amounts of on-premises data into and out of your Windows Azure Storage accounts. It does this by enabling you to securely ship hard disk drives directly to our Windows Azure data centers. Once we receive the drives we’ll automatically transfer the data to or from your Windows Azure Storage account. This enables you to import or export massive amounts of data more quickly and cost effectively (and not be constrained by available network bandwidth). Encrypted Transport Our Import/Export service provides built-in support for BitLocker disk encryption – which enables you to securely encrypt data on the hard drives before you send it, and not have to worry about it being compromised even if the disk is lost/stolen in transit (since the content on the transported hard drives is completely encrypted and you are the only one who has the key to it). The drive preparation tool we are shipping today makes setting up bitlocker encryption on these hard drives easy. How to Import/Export your first Hard Drive of Data You can read our Getting Started Guide to learn more about how to begin using the import/export service. You can create import and export jobs via the Windows Azure Management Portal as well as programmatically using our Server Management APIs. It is really easy to create a new import or export job using the Windows Azure Management Portal. Simply navigate to a Windows Azure storage account, and then click the new Import/Export tab now available within it (note: if you don’t have this tab make sure to sign-up for the Import/Export preview): Then click the “Create Import Job” or “Create Export Job” commands at the bottom of it. This will launch a wizard that easily walks you through the steps required: For more comprehensive information about Import/Export, refer to Windows Azure Storage team blog. You can also send questions and comments to the [email protected] email address. We think you’ll find this new service makes it much easier to move data into and out of Windows Azure, and it will dramatically cut down the network bandwidth required when working on large data migration projects. We hope you like it. HDInsight: 100% Compatible Hadoop Service in the Cloud Last week we announced the general availability release of Windows Azure HDInsight. HDInsight is a 100% compatible Hadoop service that allows you to easily provision and manage Hadoop clusters for big data processing in Windows Azure. This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported 24x7 by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. HDInsight allows you to use Apache Hadoop tools, such as Pig and Hive, to process large amounts of data in Windows Azure Blob Storage. Because data is stored in Windows Azure Blob Storage, you can choose to dynamically create Hadoop clusters only when you need them, and then shut them down when they are no longer required (since you pay only for the time the Hadoop cluster instances are running this provides a super cost effective way to use them). You can create Hadoop clusters using either the Windows Azure Management Portal (see below) or using our PowerShell and Cross Platform Command line tools: The import/export hard drive support that came out today is a perfect companion service to use with HDInsight – the combination allows you to easily ingest, process and optionally export a limitless amount of data. We’ve also integrated HDInsight with our Business Intelligence tools, so users can leverage familiar tools like Excel in order to analyze the output of jobs. You can find out more about how to get started with HDInsight here. Virtual Machines: VM Gallery Enhancements Today’s update of Windows Azure brings with it a new Virtual Machine gallery that you can use to create new VMs in the cloud. You can launch the gallery by doing New->Compute->Virtual Machine->From Gallery within the Windows Azure Management Portal: The new Virtual Machine Gallery includes some nice enhancements that make it even easier to use: Search: You can now easily search and filter images using the search box in the top-right of the dialog. For example, simply type “SQL” and we’ll filter to show those images in the gallery that contain that substring. Category Tree-view: Each month we add more built-in VM images to the gallery. You can continue to browse these using the “All” view within the VM Gallery – or now quickly filter them using the category tree-view on the left-hand side of the dialog. For example, by selecting “Oracle” in the tree-view you can now quickly filter to see the official Oracle supplied images. MSDN and Supported checkboxes: With today’s update we are also introducing filters that makes it easy to filter out types of images that you may not be interested in. The first checkbox is MSDN: using this filter you can exclude any image that is not part of the Windows Azure benefits for MSDN subscribers (which have highly discounted pricing - you can learn more about the MSDN pricing here). The second checkbox is Supported: this filter will exclude any image that contains prerelease software, so you can feel confident that the software you choose to deploy is fully supported by Windows Azure and our partners. Sort options: We sort gallery images by what we think customers are most interested in, but sometimes you might want to sort using different views. So we’re providing some additional sort options, like “Newest,” to customize the image list for what suits you best. Pricing information: We now provide additional pricing information about images and options on how to cost effectively run them directly within the VM Gallery. The above improvements make it even easier to use the VM Gallery and quickly create launch and run Virtual Machines in the cloud. Virtual Machines: ACL Support for VIPs A few months ago we exposed the ability to configure Access Control Lists (ACLs) for Virtual Machines using Windows PowerShell cmdlets and our Service Management API. With today’s release, you can now configure VM ACLs using the Windows Azure Management Portal as well. You can now do this by clicking the new Manage ACL command in the Endpoints tab of a virtual machine instance: This will enable you to configure an ordered list of permit and deny rules to scope the traffic that can access your VM’s network endpoints. For example, if you were on a virtual network, you could limit RDP access to a Windows Azure virtual machine to only a few computers attached to your enterprise. Or if you weren’t on a virtual network you could alternatively limit traffic from public IPs that can access your workloads: Here is the default behaviors for ACLs in Windows Azure: By default (i.e. no rules specified), all traffic is permitted. When using only Permit rules, all other traffic is denied. When using only Deny rules, all other traffic is permitted. When there is a combination of Permit and Deny rules, all other traffic is denied. Lastly, remember that configuring endpoints does not automatically configure them within the VM if it also has firewall rules enabled at the OS level. So if you create an endpoint using the Windows Azure Management Portal, Windows PowerShell, or REST API, be sure to also configure your guest VM firewall appropriately as well. Web Sites: Web Sockets Support With today’s release you can now use Web Sockets with Windows Azure Web Sites. This feature enables you to easily integrate real-time communication scenarios within your web based applications, and is available at no extra charge (it even works with the free tier). Higher level programming libraries like SignalR and socket.io are also now supported with it. You can enable Web Sockets support on a web site by navigating to the Configure tab of a Web Site, and by toggling Web Sockets support to “on”: Once Web Sockets is enabled you can start to integrate some really cool scenarios into your web applications. Check out the new SignalR documentation hub on www.asp.net to learn more about some of the awesome scenarios you can do with it. Web Sites: Remote Debugging Support The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 we released two weeks ago introduced remote debugging support for Windows Azure Cloud Services. With today’s Windows Azure release we are extending this remote debugging support to also work with Windows Azure Web Sites. With live, remote debugging support inside of Visual Studio, you are able to have more visibility than ever before into how your code is operating live in Windows Azure. It is now super easy to attach the debugger and quickly see what is going on with your application in the cloud. Remote Debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 Enabling the remote debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 is really easy. Start by opening up your web application’s project within Visual Studio. Then navigate to the “Server Explorer” tab within Visual Studio, and click on the deployed web-site you want to debug that is running within Windows Azure using the Windows Azure->Web Sites node in the Server Explorer. Then right-click and choose the “Attach Debugger” option on it: When you do this Visual Studio will remotely attach the debugger to the Web Site running within Windows Azure. The debugger will then stop the web site’s execution when it hits any break points that you have set within your web application’s project inside Visual Studio. For example, below I set a breakpoint on the “ViewBag.Message” assignment statement within the HomeController of the standard ASP.NET MVC project template. When I hit refresh on the “About” page of the web site within the browser, the breakpoint was triggered and I am now able to debug the app remotely using Visual Studio: Note above how we can debug variables (including autos/watchlist/etc), as well as use the Immediate and Command Windows. In the debug session above I used the Immediate Window to explore some of the request object state, as well as to dynamically change the ViewBag.Message property. When we click the the “Continue” button (or press F5) the app will continue execution and the Web Site will render the content back to the browser. This makes it super easy to debug web apps remotely. Tips for Better Debugging To get the best experience while debugging, we recommend publishing your site using the Debug configuration within Visual Studio’s Web Publish dialog. This will ensure that debug symbol information is uploaded to the Web Site which will enable a richer debug experience within Visual Studio. You can find this option on the Web Publish dialog on the Settings tab: When you ultimately deploy/run the application in production we recommend using the “Release” configuration setting – the release configuration is memory optimized and will provide the best production performance. To learn more about diagnosing and debugging Windows Azure Web Sites read our new Troubleshooting Windows Azure Web Sites in Visual Studio guide. Notification Hubs: Segmented Push Notification support with tag expressions In August we announced the General Availability of Windows Azure Notification Hubs - a powerful Mobile Push Notifications service that makes it easy to send high volume push notifications with low latency from any mobile app back-end. Notification hubs can be used with any mobile app back-end (including ones built using our Mobile Services capability) and can also be used with back-ends that run in the cloud as well as on-premises. Beginning with the initial release, Notification Hubs allowed developers to send personalized push notifications to both individual users as well as groups of users by interest, by associating their devices with tags representing the logical target of the notification. For example, by registering all devices of customers interested in a favorite MLB team with a corresponding tag, it is possible to broadcast one message to millions of Boston Red Sox fans and another message to millions of St. Louis Cardinals fans with a single API call respectively. New support for using tag expressions to enable advanced customer segmentation With today’s release we are adding support for even more advanced customer targeting. You can now identify customers that you want to send push notifications to by defining rich tag expressions. With tag expressions, you can now not only broadcast notifications to Boston Red Sox fans, but take that segmenting a step farther and reach more granular segments. This opens up a variety of scenarios, for example: Offers based on multiple preferences—e.g. send a game day vegetarian special to users tagged as both a Boston Red Sox fan AND a vegetarian Push content to multiple segments in a single message—e.g. rain delay information only to users who are tagged as either a Boston Red Sox fan OR a St. Louis Cardinal fan Avoid presenting subsets of a segment with irrelevant content—e.g. season ticket availability reminder to users who are tagged as a Boston Red Sox fan but NOT also a season ticket holder To illustrate with code, consider a restaurant chain app that sends an offer related to a Red Sox vs Cardinals game for users in Boston. Devices can be tagged by your app with location tags (e.g. “Loc:Boston”) and interest tags (e.g. “Follows:RedSox”, “Follows:Cardinals”), and then a notification can be sent by your back-end to “(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston” in order to deliver an offer to all devices in Boston that follow either the RedSox or the Cardinals. This can be done directly in your server backend send logic using the code below: var notification = new WindowsNotification(messagePayload); hub.SendNotificationAsync(notification, "(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston"); In your expressions you can use all Boolean operators: AND (&&), OR (||), and NOT (!). Some other cool use cases for tag expressions that are now supported include: Social: To “all my group except me” - group:id && !user:id Events: Touchdown event is sent to everybody following either team or any of the players involved in the action: Followteam:A || Followteam:B || followplayer:1 || followplayer:2 … Hours: Send notifications at specific times. E.g. Tag devices with time zone and when it is 12pm in Seattle send to: GMT8 && follows:thaifood Versions and platforms: Send a reminder to people still using your first version for Android - version:1.0 && platform:Android For help on getting started with Notification Hubs, visit the Notification Hub documentation center. Then download the latest NuGet package (or use the Notification Hubs REST APIs directly) to start sending push notifications using tag expressions. They are really powerful and enable a bunch of great new scenarios. TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable continuous delivery support with Windows Azure and Team Foundation Services. Team Foundation Services is a cloud based offering from Microsoft that provides integrated source control (with both TFS and Git support), build server, test execution, collaboration tools, and agile planning support. It makes it really easy to setup a team project (complete with automated builds and test runners) in the cloud, and it has really rich integration with Visual Studio. With today’s Windows Azure release it is now really easy to enable continuous delivery support with both TFS and Git based repositories hosted using Team Foundation Services. This enables a workflow where when code is checked in, built successfully on an automated build server, and all tests pass on it – I can automatically have the app deployed on Windows Azure with zero manual intervention or work required. The below screen-shots demonstrate how to quickly setup a continuous delivery workflow to Windows Azure with a Git-based ASP.NET MVC project hosted using Team Foundation Services. Enabling Continuous Delivery to Windows Azure with Team Foundation Services The project I’m going to enable continuous delivery with is a simple ASP.NET MVC project whose source code I’m hosting using Team Foundation Services. I did this by creating a “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” repository there using Git – and then used the new built-in Git tooling support within Visual Studio 2013 to push the source code to it. Below is a screen-shot of the Git repository hosted within Team Foundation Services: I can access the repository within Visual Studio 2013 and easily make commits with it (as well as branch, merge and do other tasks). Using VS 2013 I can also setup automated builds to take place in the cloud using Team Foundation Services every time someone checks in code to the repository: The cool thing about this is that I don’t have to buy or rent my own build server – Team Foundation Services automatically maintains its own build server farm and can automatically queue up a build for me (for free) every time someone checks in code using the above settings. This build server (and automated testing) support now works with both TFS and Git based source control repositories. Connecting a Team Foundation Services project to Windows Azure Once I have a source repository hosted in Team Foundation Services with Automated Builds and Testing set up, I can then go even further and set it up so that it will be automatically deployed to Windows Azure when a source code commit is made to the repository (assuming the Build + Tests pass). Enabling this is now really easy. To set this up with a Windows Azure Web Site simply use the New->Compute->Web Site->Custom Create command inside the Windows Azure Management Portal. This will create a dialog like below. I gave the web site a name and then made sure the “Publish from source control” checkbox was selected: When we click next we’ll be prompted for the location of the source repository. We’ll select “Team Foundation Services”: Once we do this we’ll be prompted for our Team Foundation Services account that our source repository is hosted under (in this case my TFS account is “scottguthrie”): When we click the “Authorize Now” button we’ll be prompted to give Windows Azure permissions to connect to the Team Foundation Services account. Once we do this we’ll be prompted to pick the source repository we want to connect to. Starting with today’s Windows Azure release you can now connect to both TFS and Git based source repositories. This new support allows me to connect to the “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” respository we created earlier: Clicking the finish button will then create the Web Site with the continuous delivery hooks setup with Team Foundation Services. Now every time someone pushes source control to the repository in Team Foundation Services, it will kick off an automated build, run all of the unit tests in the solution , and if they pass the app will be automatically deployed to our Web Site in Windows Azure. You can monitor the history and status of these automated deployments using the Deployments tab within the Web Site: This enables a really slick continuous delivery workflow, and enables you to build and deploy apps in a really nice way. Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable Developer Analytics and Monitoring support with both Windows Azure Web Site and Windows Azure Mobile Services. We are partnering with New Relic, who provide a great dev analytics and app performance monitoring offering, to enable this - and we have updated the Windows Azure Management Portal to make it really easy to configure. Enabling New Relic with a Windows Azure Web Site Enabling New Relic support with a Windows Azure Web Site is now really easy. Simply navigate to the Configure tab of a Web Site and scroll down to the “developer analytics” section that is now within it: Clicking the “add-on” button will display some additional UI. If you don’t already have a New Relic subscription, you can click the “view windows azure store” button to obtain a subscription (note: New Relic has a perpetually free tier so you can enable it even without paying anything): Clicking the “view windows azure store” button will launch the integrated Windows Azure Store experience we have within the Windows Azure Management Portal. You can use this to browse from a variety of great add-on services – including New Relic: Select “New Relic” within the dialog above, then click the next button, and you’ll be able to choose which type of New Relic subscription you wish to purchase. For this demo we’ll simply select the “Free Standard Version” – which does not cost anything and can be used forever: Once we’ve signed-up for our New Relic subscription and added it to our Windows Azure account, we can go back to the Web Site’s configuration tab and choose to use the New Relic add-on with our Windows Azure Web Site. We can do this by simply selecting it from the “add-on” dropdown (it is automatically populated within it once we have a New Relic subscription in our account): Clicking the “Save” button will then cause the Windows Azure Management Portal to automatically populate all of the needed New Relic configuration settings to our Web Site: Deploying the New Relic Agent as part of a Web Site The final step to enable developer analytics using New Relic is to add the New Relic runtime agent to our web app. We can do this within Visual Studio by right-clicking on our web project and selecting the “Manage NuGet Packages” context menu: This will bring up the NuGet package manager. You can search for “New Relic” within it to find the New Relic agent. Note that there is both a 32-bit and 64-bit edition of it – make sure to install the version that matches how your Web Site is running within Windows Azure (note: you can configure your Web Site to run in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode using the Web Site’s “Configuration” tab within the Windows Azure Management Portal): Once we install the NuGet package we are all set to go. We’ll simply re-publish the web site again to Windows Azure and New Relic will now automatically start monitoring the application Monitoring a Web Site using New Relic Now that the application has developer analytics support with New Relic enabled, we can launch the New Relic monitoring portal to start monitoring the health of it. We can do this by clicking on the “Add Ons” tab in the left-hand side of the Windows Azure Management Portal. Then select the New Relic add-on we signed-up for within it. The Windows Azure Management Portal will provide some default information about the add-on when we do this. Clicking the “Manage” button in the tray at the bottom will launch a new browser tab and single-sign us into the New Relic monitoring portal associated with our account: When we do this a new browser tab will launch with the New Relic admin tool loaded within it: We can now see insights into how our app is performing – without having to have written a single line of monitoring code. The New Relic service provides a ton of great built-in monitoring features allowing us to quickly see: Performance times (including browser rendering speed) for the overall site and individual pages. You can optionally set alert thresholds to trigger if the speed does not meet a threshold you specify. Information about where in the world your customers are hitting the site from (and how performance varies by region) Details on the latency performance of external services your web apps are using (for example: SQL, Storage, Twitter, etc) Error information including call stack details for exceptions that have occurred at runtime SQL Server profiling information – including which queries executed against your database and what their performance was And a whole bunch more… The cool thing about New Relic is that you don’t need to write monitoring code within your application to get all of the above reports (plus a lot more). The New Relic agent automatically enables the CLR profiler within applications and automatically captures the information necessary to identify these. This makes it super easy to get started and immediately have a rich developer analytics view for your solutions with very little effort. If you haven’t tried New Relic out yet with Windows Azure I recommend you do so – I think you’ll find it helps you build even better cloud applications. Following the above steps will help you get started and deliver you a really good application monitoring solution in only minutes. Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics With today’s release, we are enabling support within Service Bus for partitioned queues and topics. Enabling partitioning enables you to achieve a higher message throughput and better availability from your queues and topics. Higher message throughput is achieved by implementing multiple message brokers for each partitioned queue and topic. The multiple messaging stores will also provide higher availability. You can create a partitioned queue or topic by simply checking the Enable Partitioning option in the custom create wizard for a Queue or Topic: Read this article to learn more about partitioned queues and topics and how to take advantage of them today. Billing: New Billing Alert Service Today’s Windows Azure update enables a new Billing Alert Service Preview that enables you to get proactive email notifications when your Windows Azure bill goes above a certain monetary threshold that you configure. This makes it easier to manage your bill and avoid potential surprises at the end of the month. With the Billing Alert Service Preview, you can now create email alerts to monitor and manage your monetary credits or your current bill total. To set up an alert first sign-up for the free Billing Alert Service Preview. Then visit the account management page, click on a subscription you have setup, and then navigate to the new Alerts tab that is available: The alerts tab allows you to setup email alerts that will be sent automatically once a certain threshold is hit. For example, by clicking the “add alert” button above I can setup a rule to send myself email anytime my Windows Azure bill goes above $100 for the month: The Billing Alert Service will evolve to support additional aspects of your bill as well as support multiple forms of alerts such as SMS. Try out the new Billing Alert Service Preview today and give us feedback. Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a ton of great new scenarios, and makes building applications hosted in the cloud even easier. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today. Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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Diving into OpenStack Network Architecture - Part 2 - Basic Use Cases

- by Ronen Kofman

rkofman Normal rkofman 4 138 2014-06-05T03:38:00Z 2014-06-05T05:04:00Z 3 2735 15596 Oracle Corporation 129 36 18295 12.00 Clean Clean false false false false EN-US X-NONE HE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-bidi-language:AR-SA;} In the previous post we reviewed several network components including Open vSwitch, Network Namespaces, Linux Bridges and veth pairs. In this post we will take three simple use cases and see how those basic components come together to create a complete SDN solution in OpenStack. With those three use cases we will review almost the entire network setup and see how all the pieces work together. The use cases we will use are: 1. Create network – what happens when we create network and how can we create multiple isolated networks 2. Launch a VM – once we have networks we can launch VMs and connect them to networks. 3. DHCP request from a VM – OpenStack can automatically assign IP addresses to VMs. This is done through local DHCP service controlled by OpenStack Neutron. We will see how this service runs and how does a DHCP request and response look like. In this post we will show connectivity, we will see how packets get from point A to point B. We first focus on how a configured deployment looks like and only later we will discuss how and when the configuration is created. Personally I found it very valuable to see the actual interfaces and how they connect to each other through examples and hands on experiments. After the end game is clear and we know how the connectivity works, in a later post, we will take a step back and explain how Neutron configures the components to be able to provide such connectivity. We are going to get pretty technical shortly and I recommend trying these examples on your own deployment or using the Oracle OpenStack Tech Preview. Understanding these three use cases thoroughly and how to look at them will be very helpful when trying to debug a deployment in case something does not work. Use case #1: Create Network Create network is a simple operation it can be performed from the GUI or command line. When we create a network in OpenStack the network is only available to the tenant who created it or it could be defined as “shared” and then it can be used by all tenants. A network can have multiple subnets but for this demonstration purpose and for simplicity we will assume that each network has exactly one subnet. Creating a network from the command line will look like this: # neutron net-create net1 Created a new network: +---------------------------+--------------------------------------+ | Field | Value | +---------------------------+--------------------------------------+ | admin_state_up | True | | id | 5f833617-6179-4797-b7c0-7d420d84040c | | name | net1 | | provider:network_type | vlan | | provider:physical_network | default | | provider:segmentation_id | 1000 | | shared | False | | status | ACTIVE | | subnets | | | tenant_id | 9796e5145ee546508939cd49ad59d51f | +---------------------------+--------------------------------------+ Creating a subnet for this network will look like this: # neutron subnet-create net1 10.10.10.0/24 Created a new subnet: +------------------+------------------------------------------------+ | Field | Value | +------------------+------------------------------------------------+ | allocation_pools | {"start": "10.10.10.2", "end": "10.10.10.254"} | | cidr | 10.10.10.0/24 | | dns_nameservers | | | enable_dhcp | True | | gateway_ip | 10.10.10.1 | | host_routes | | | id | 2d7a0a58-0674-439a-ad23-d6471aaae9bc | | ip_version | 4 | | name | | | network_id | 5f833617-6179-4797-b7c0-7d420d84040c | | tenant_id | 9796e5145ee546508939cd49ad59d51f | +------------------+------------------------------------------------+ We now have a network and a subnet, on the network topology view this looks like this: Now let’s dive in and see what happened under the hood. Looking at the control node we will discover that a new namespace was created: # ip netns list qdhcp-5f833617-6179-4797-b7c0-7d420d84040c The name of the namespace is qdhcp-<network id> (see above), let’s look into the namespace and see what’s in it: # ip netns exec qdhcp-5f833617-6179-4797-b7c0-7d420d84040c ip addr 1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00 inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo inet6 ::1/128 scope host valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 12: tap26c9b807-7c: <BROADCAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN link/ether fa:16:3e:1d:5c:81 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet 10.10.10.3/24 brd 10.10.10.255 scope global tap26c9b807-7c inet6 fe80::f816:3eff:fe1d:5c81/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever We see two interfaces in the namespace, one is the loopback and the other one is an interface called “tap26c9b807-7c”. This interface has the IP address of 10.10.10.3 and it will also serve dhcp requests in a way we will see later. Let’s trace the connectivity of the “tap26c9b807-7c” interface from the namespace. First stop is OVS, we see that the interface connects to bridge “br-int” on OVS: # ovs-vsctl show 8a069c7c-ea05-4375-93e2-b9fc9e4b3ca1 Bridge "br-eth2" Port "br-eth2" Interface "br-eth2" type: internal Port "eth2" Interface "eth2" Port "phy-br-eth2" Interface "phy-br-eth2" Bridge br-ex Port br-ex Interface br-ex type: internal Bridge br-int Port "int-br-eth2" Interface "int-br-eth2" Port "tap26c9b807-7c" tag: 1 Interface "tap26c9b807-7c" type: internal Port br-int Interface br-int type: internal ovs_version: "1.11.0" In the picture above we have a veth pair which has two ends called “int-br-eth2” and "phy-br-eth2", this veth pair is used to connect two bridge in OVS "br-eth2" and "br-int". In the previous post we explained how to check the veth connectivity using the ethtool command. It shows that the two are indeed a pair: # ethtool -S int-br-eth2 NIC statistics: peer_ifindex: 10 . . #ip link . . 10: phy-br-eth2: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP qlen 1000 . . Note that “phy-br-eth2” is connected to a bridge called "br-eth2" and one of this bridge's interfaces is the physical link eth2. This means that the network which we have just created has created a namespace which is connected to the physical interface eth2. eth2 is the “VM network” the physical interface where all the virtual machines connect to where all the VMs are connected. About network isolation: OpenStack supports creation of multiple isolated networks and can use several mechanisms to isolate the networks from one another. The isolation mechanism can be VLANs, VxLANs or GRE tunnels, this is configured as part of the initial setup in our deployment we use VLANs. When using VLAN tagging as an isolation mechanism a VLAN tag is allocated by Neutron from a pre-defined VLAN tags pool and assigned to the newly created network. By provisioning VLAN tags to the networks Neutron allows creation of multiple isolated networks on the same physical link. The big difference between this and other platforms is that the user does not have to deal with allocating and managing VLANs to networks. The VLAN allocation and provisioning is handled by Neutron which keeps track of the VLAN tags, and responsible for allocating and reclaiming VLAN tags. In the example above net1 has the VLAN tag 1000, this means that whenever a VM is created and connected to this network the packets from that VM will have to be tagged with VLAN tag 1000 to go on this particular network. This is true for namespace as well, if we would like to connect a namespace to a particular network we have to make sure that the packets to and from the namespace are correctly tagged when they reach the VM network. In the example above we see that the namespace interface “tap26c9b807-7c” has vlan tag 1 assigned to it, if we examine OVS we see that it has flows which modify VLAN tag 1 to VLAN tag 1000 when a packet goes to the VM network on eth2 and vice versa. We can see this using the dump-flows command on OVS for packets going to the VM network we see the modification done on br-eth2: # ovs-ofctl dump-flows br-eth2 NXST_FLOW reply (xid=0x4): cookie=0x0, duration=18669.401s, table=0, n_packets=857, n_bytes=163350, idle_age=25, priority=4,in_port=2,dl_vlan=1 actions=mod_vlan_vid:1000,NORMAL cookie=0x0, duration=165108.226s, table=0, n_packets=14, n_bytes=1000, idle_age=5343, hard_age=65534, priority=2,in_port=2 actions=drop cookie=0x0, duration=165109.813s, table=0, n_packets=1671, n_bytes=213304, idle_age=25, hard_age=65534, priority=1 actions=NORMAL For packets coming from the interface to the namespace we see the following modification: # ovs-ofctl dump-flows br-int NXST_FLOW reply (xid=0x4): cookie=0x0, duration=18690.876s, table=0, n_packets=1610, n_bytes=210752, idle_age=1, priority=3,in_port=1,dl_vlan=1000 actions=mod_vlan_vid:1,NORMAL cookie=0x0, duration=165130.01s, table=0, n_packets=75, n_bytes=3686, idle_age=4212, hard_age=65534, priority=2,in_port=1 actions=drop cookie=0x0, duration=165131.96s, table=0, n_packets=863, n_bytes=160727, idle_age=1, hard_age=65534, priority=1 actions=NORMAL To summarize we can see that when a user creates a network Neutron creates a namespace and this namespace is connected through OVS to the “VM network”. OVS also takes care of tagging the packets from the namespace to the VM network with the correct VLAN tag and knows to modify the VLAN for packets coming from VM network to the namespace. Now let’s see what happens when a VM is launched and how it is connected to the “VM network”. Use case #2: Launch a VM Launching a VM can be done from Horizon or from the command line this is how we do it from Horizon: Attach the network: And Launch Once the virtual machine is up and running we can see the associated IP using the nova list command : # nova list +--------------------------------------+--------------+--------+------------+-------------+-----------------+ | ID | Name | Status | Task State | Power State | Networks | +--------------------------------------+--------------+--------+------------+-------------+-----------------+ | 3707ac87-4f5d-4349-b7ed-3a673f55e5e1 | Oracle Linux | ACTIVE | None | Running | net1=10.10.10.2 | +--------------------------------------+--------------+--------+------------+-------------+-----------------+ The nova list command shows us that the VM is running and that the IP 10.10.10.2 is assigned to this VM. Let’s trace the connectivity from the VM to VM network on eth2 starting with the VM definition file. The configuration files of the VM including the virtual disk(s), in case of ephemeral storage, are stored on the compute node at/var/lib/nova/instances/<instance-id>/. Looking into the VM definition file ,libvirt.xml, we see that the VM is connected to an interface called “tap53903a95-82” which is connected to a Linux bridge called “qbr53903a95-82”: <interface type="bridge"> <mac address="fa:16:3e:fe:c7:87"/> <source bridge="qbr53903a95-82"/> <target dev="tap53903a95-82"/> </interface> Looking at the bridge using the brctl show command we see this: # brctl show bridge name bridge id STP enabled interfaces qbr53903a95-82 8000.7e7f3282b836 no qvb53903a95-82 tap53903a95-82 The bridge has two interfaces, one connected to the VM (“tap53903a95-82 “) and another one ( “qvb53903a95-82”) connected to “br-int” bridge on OVS: # ovs-vsctl show 83c42f80-77e9-46c8-8560-7697d76de51c Bridge "br-eth2" Port "br-eth2" Interface "br-eth2" type: internal Port "eth2" Interface "eth2" Port "phy-br-eth2" Interface "phy-br-eth2" Bridge br-int Port br-int Interface br-int type: internal Port "int-br-eth2" Interface "int-br-eth2" Port "qvo53903a95-82" tag: 3 Interface "qvo53903a95-82" ovs_version: "1.11.0" As we showed earlier “br-int” is connected to “br-eth2” on OVS using the veth pair int-br-eth2,phy-br-eth2 and br-eth2 is connected to the physical interface eth2. The whole flow end to end looks like this: VM è tap53903a95-82 (virtual interface)è qbr53903a95-82 (Linux bridge) è qvb53903a95-82 (interface connected from Linux bridge to OVS bridge br-int) è int-br-eth2 (veth one end) è phy-br-eth2 (veth the other end) è eth2 physical interface. The purpose of the Linux Bridge connecting to the VM is to allow security group enforcement with iptables. Security groups are enforced at the edge point which are the interface of the VM, since iptables nnot be applied to OVS bridges we use Linux bridge to apply them. In the future we hope to see this Linux Bridge going away rules. VLAN tags: As we discussed in the first use case net1 is using VLAN tag 1000, looking at OVS above we see that qvo41f1ebcf-7c is tagged with VLAN tag 3. The modification from VLAN tag 3 to 1000 as we go to the physical network is done by OVS as part of the packet flow of br-eth2 in the same way we showed before. To summarize, when a VM is launched it is connected to the VM network through a chain of elements as described here. During the packet from VM to the network and back the VLAN tag is modified. Use case #3: Serving a DHCP request coming from the virtual machine In the previous use cases we have shown that both the namespace called dhcp-<some id> and the VM end up connecting to the physical interface eth2 on their respective nodes, both will tag their packets with VLAN tag 1000.We saw that the namespace has an interface with IP of 10.10.10.3. Since the VM and the namespace are connected to each other and have interfaces on the same subnet they can ping each other, in this picture we see a ping from the VM which was assigned 10.10.10.2 to the namespace: The fact that they are connected and can ping each other can become very handy when something doesn’t work right and we need to isolate the problem. In such case knowing that we should be able to ping from the VM to the namespace and back can be used to trace the disconnect using tcpdump or other monitoring tools. To serve DHCP requests coming from VMs on the network Neutron uses a Linux tool called “dnsmasq”,this is a lightweight DNS and DHCP service you can read more about it here. If we look at the dnsmasq on the control node with the ps command we see this: dnsmasq --no-hosts --no-resolv --strict-order --bind-interfaces --interface=tap26c9b807-7c --except-interface=lo --pid-file=/var/lib/neutron/dhcp/5f833617-6179-4797-b7c0-7d420d84040c/pid --dhcp-hostsfile=/var/lib/neutron/dhcp/5f833617-6179-4797-b7c0-7d420d84040c/host --dhcp-optsfile=/var/lib/neutron/dhcp/5f833617-6179-4797-b7c0-7d420d84040c/opts --leasefile-ro --dhcp-range=tag0,10.10.10.0,static,120s --dhcp-lease-max=256 --conf-file= --domain=openstacklocal The service connects to the tap interface in the namespace (“--interface=tap26c9b807-7c”), If we look at the hosts file we see this: # cat /var/lib/neutron/dhcp/5f833617-6179-4797-b7c0-7d420d84040c/host fa:16:3e:fe:c7:87,host-10-10-10-2.openstacklocal,10.10.10.2 If you look at the console output above you can see the MAC address fa:16:3e:fe:c7:87 which is the VM MAC. This MAC address is mapped to IP 10.10.10.2 and so when a DHCP request comes with this MAC dnsmasq will return the 10.10.10.2.If we look into the namespace at the time we initiate a DHCP request from the VM (this can be done by simply restarting the network service in the VM) we see the following: # ip netns exec qdhcp-5f833617-6179-4797-b7c0-7d420d84040c tcpdump -n 19:27:12.191280 IP 0.0.0.0.bootpc > 255.255.255.255.bootps: BOOTP/DHCP, Request from fa:16:3e:fe:c7:87, length 310 19:27:12.191666 IP 10.10.10.3.bootps > 10.10.10.2.bootpc: BOOTP/DHCP, Reply, length 325 To summarize, the DHCP service is handled by dnsmasq which is configured by Neutron to listen to the interface in the DHCP namespace. Neutron also configures dnsmasq with the combination of MAC and IP so when a DHCP request comes along it will receive the assigned IP. Summary In this post we relied on the components described in the previous post and saw how network connectivity is achieved using three simple use cases. These use cases gave a good view of the entire network stack and helped understand how an end to end connection is being made between a VM on a compute node and the DHCP namespace on the control node. One conclusion we can draw from what we saw here is that if we launch a VM and it is able to perform a DHCP request and receive a correct IP then there is reason to believe that the network is working as expected. We saw that a packet has to travel through a long list of components before reaching its destination and if it has done so successfully this means that many components are functioning properly. In the next post we will look at some more sophisticated services Neutron supports and see how they work. We will see that while there are some more components involved for the most part the concepts are the same. @RonenKofman

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Why do I get a connection error / timeout when using python suds to connect to Microsoft CRM?

- by Chris R

When I try to connect to an MS CRM web service using suds/python-ntlm, I am getting a timeout on requests. However, the code that I'm trying to replace -- which calls out to the cURL command line app to do the same call -- succeeds. Clearly something is different in the way that cURL is sending the command data, but I'll be damned if I know what the difference is. Below are the full details of the various calls. Anyone got any tips? Here's the code that is making the request, followed by the output. The cURL command code is below that, and its response follows. Hosts, users, and passwords have been changed to protect the innocent, of course. wsdl_url = 'https://client.service.host/MSCrmServices/2007/MetadataService.asmx?WSDL' username = r'domain\user.name' password = 'userpass' from suds.transport.https import WindowsHttpAuthenticated from suds.client import Client import logging logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO) logging.getLogger('suds.client').setLevel(logging.DEBUG) logging.getLogger('suds.transport').setLevel(logging.DEBUG) ntlmTransport = WindowsHttpAuthenticated(username=username, password=password) metadata_client = Client(wsdl_url, transport=ntlmTransport) request = metadata_client.factory.create('RetrieveAttributeRequest') request.MetadataId = '00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000' request.EntityLogicalName = 'opportunity' request.LogicalName = 'new_typeofcontact' request.RetrieveAsIfPublished = 'false' attr = metadata_client.service.Execute(request) print attr Here's the output: DEBUG:suds.client:sending to (http://client.service.host/MSCrmServices/2007/MetadataService.asmx) message: <SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:ns0="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:ns1="http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"> <SOAP-ENV:Header/> <ns0:Body> <ns1:Execute> <ns1:Request xsi:type="ns1:RetrieveAttributeRequest"> <ns1:MetadataId>00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</ns1:MetadataId> <ns1:EntityLogicalName>opportunity</ns1:EntityLogicalName> <ns1:LogicalName>new_typeofcontact</ns1:LogicalName> <ns1:RetrieveAsIfPublished>false</ns1:RetrieveAsIfPublished> </ns1:Request> </ns1:Execute> </ns0:Body> </SOAP-ENV:Envelope> DEBUG:suds.client:headers = {'SOAPAction': u'"http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices/Execute"', 'Content-Type': 'text/xml'} DEBUG:suds.transport.http:sending: URL:http://client.service.host/MSCrmServices/2007/MetadataService.asmx HEADERS: {'SOAPAction': u'"http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices/Execute"', 'Content-Type': 'text/xml', 'Content-type': 'text/xml', 'Soapaction': u'"http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices/Execute"'} MESSAGE: <SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:ns0="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:ns1="http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"> <SOAP-ENV:Header/> <ns0:Body> <ns1:Execute> <ns1:Request xsi:type="ns1:RetrieveAttributeRequest"> <ns1:MetadataId>00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</ns1:MetadataId> <ns1:EntityLogicalName>opportunity</ns1:EntityLogicalName> <ns1:LogicalName>new_typeofcontact</ns1:LogicalName> <ns1:RetrieveAsIfPublished>false</ns1:RetrieveAsIfPublished> </ns1:Request> </ns1:Execute> </ns0:Body> </SOAP-ENV:Envelope> ERROR: An unexpected error occurred while tokenizing input The following traceback may be corrupted or invalid The error message is: ('EOF in multi-line statement', (16, 0)) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- URLError Traceback (most recent call last) /Users/crose/projects/2366/crm/<ipython console> in <module>() /var/folders/nb/nbJAzxR1HbOppPcs6xO+dE+++TY/-Tmp-/python-67186icm.py in <module>() 19 request.LogicalName = 'new_typeofcontact' 20 request.RetrieveAsIfPublished = 'false' 21 ---> 22 attr = metadata_client.service.Execute(request) 23 print attr /Users/crose/virtualenv/advanis/lib/python2.6/site-packages/suds/client.pyc in __call__(self, *args, **kwargs) 537 return (500, e) 538 else: --> 539 return client.invoke(args, kwargs) 540 541 def faults(self): /Users/crose/virtualenv/advanis/lib/python2.6/site-packages/suds/client.pyc in invoke(self, args, kwargs) 596 self.method.name, timer) 597 timer.start() --> 598 result = self.send(msg) 599 timer.stop() 600 metrics.log.debug( /Users/crose/virtualenv/advanis/lib/python2.6/site-packages/suds/client.pyc in send(self, msg) 621 request = Request(location, str(msg)) 622 request.headers = self.headers() --> 623 reply = transport.send(request) 624 if retxml: 625 result = reply.message /Users/crose/virtualenv/advanis/lib/python2.6/site-packages/suds/transport/https.pyc in send(self, request) 62 def send(self, request): 63 self.addcredentials(request) ---> 64 return HttpTransport.send(self, request) 65 66 def addcredentials(self, request): /Users/crose/virtualenv/advanis/lib/python2.6/site-packages/suds/transport/http.pyc in send(self, request) 75 request.headers.update(u2request.headers) 76 log.debug('sending:\n%s', request) ---> 77 fp = self.u2open(u2request) 78 self.getcookies(fp, u2request) 79 result = Reply(200, fp.headers.dict, fp.read()) /Users/crose/virtualenv/advanis/lib/python2.6/site-packages/suds/transport/http.pyc in u2open(self, u2request) 116 return url.open(u2request) 117 else: --> 118 return url.open(u2request, timeout=tm) 119 120 def u2opener(self): /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/urllib2.pyc in open(self, fullurl, data, timeout) 381 req = meth(req) 382 --> 383 response = self._open(req, data) 384 385 # post-process response /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/urllib2.pyc in _open(self, req, data) 399 protocol = req.get_type() 400 result = self._call_chain(self.handle_open, protocol, protocol + --> 401 '_open', req) 402 if result: 403 return result /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/urllib2.pyc in _call_chain(self, chain, kind, meth_name, *args) 359 func = getattr(handler, meth_name) 360 --> 361 result = func(*args) 362 if result is not None: 363 return result /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/urllib2.pyc in http_open(self, req) 1128 1129 def http_open(self, req): -> 1130 return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPConnection, req) 1131 1132 http_request = AbstractHTTPHandler.do_request_ /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/urllib2.pyc in do_open(self, http_class, req) 1103 r = h.getresponse() 1104 except socket.error, err: # XXX what error? -> 1105 raise URLError(err) 1106 1107 # Pick apart the HTTPResponse object to get the addinfourl URLError: <urlopen error [Errno 60] Operation timed out> The cURL command is: /opt/local/bin/curl --ntlm -u "domain\user.name:userpass" -k -d @- -A "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.2; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR 3.5.21022; InfoPath.1)" -H "Connection: Keep-Alive" -H "Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8" -H "SOAPAction: http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices/Execute" https://client.service.host/MSCrmServices/2007/MetadataService.asmx The data that is piped to that cURL command: <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <soap:Header> <CrmAuthenticationToken xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices"> <AuthenticationType xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/CoreTypes">0</AuthenticationType> <CrmTicket xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/CoreTypes"></CrmTicket> <OrganizationName xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/CoreTypes">CMIFS</OrganizationName> <CallerId xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/CoreTypes">00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</CallerId> </CrmAuthenticationToken> </soap:Header> <soap:Body> <Execute xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices"> <Request xsi:type="RetrieveAttributeRequest"> <MetadataId>00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</MetadataId> <EntityLogicalName>opportunity</EntityLogicalName> <LogicalName>new_typeofcontact</LogicalName> <RetrieveAsIfPublished>false</RetrieveAsIfPublished> </Request> </Execute> </soap:Body> </soap:Envelope> Here's the response: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <soap:Body> <ExecuteResponse xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices"> <Response xsi:type="RetrieveAttributeResponse"> <AttributeMetadata xsi:type="PicklistAttributeMetadata"> <MetadataId>101346cf-a6af-4eb4-a4bf-9c3c6bbd6582</MetadataId> <SchemaName>New_TypeofContact</SchemaName> <LogicalName>new_typeofcontact</LogicalName> <EntityLogicalName>opportunity</EntityLogicalName> <AttributeType> <Value>Picklist</Value> </AttributeType>  </AttributeMetadata> </Response> </ExecuteResponse> </soap:Body> </soap:Envelope>

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How to get skin tone color pixel in iPhone?

- by aman-gupta

Hi In my application I m using following way to get red pixel in a image // // PixelsAccessAppDelegate.h // PixelsAccess // // Created by Fortune1 on 14/04/10. // Copyright MyCompanyName 2010. All rights reserved. // import @class clsPixelAccess; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels1; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels2; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels3; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels4; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels5; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels6; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels7; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels8; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels9; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels10; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels11; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels12; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels13; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels14; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels15; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels16; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels17; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels18; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels19; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels20; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels21; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels22; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels23; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels24; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels25; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels26; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels27; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels28; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels29; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels30; NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels31; @interface PixelsAccessAppDelegate : NSObject { UIWindow *window; clsPixelAccess *obj; } @property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIWindow *window; -(IBAction)processImage:(id)sender; @end //////////////////// // // PixelsAccessAppDelegate.m // PixelsAccess // // Created by Fortune1 on 14/04/10. // Copyright MyCompanyName 2010. All rights reserved. // import "PixelsAccessAppDelegate.h" import "clsPixelAccess.h" @implementation PixelsAccessAppDelegate @synthesize window; (IBAction)processImage:(id)sender { NSUInteger retVal; obj = [[clsPixelAccess alloc] init]; NSInteger imageSend =[obj processImage1:[UIImage imageNamed:@"s.jpg"]]; NSInteger iamgeCall =[obj getPixelData:retVal]; NSUInteger *numberOfRedPixels = retVal; //lblPixelCount.text = [NSString stringWithFormat: @"There are %d red pixels in the image", numberOfRedPixels]; } (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application { // Override point for customization after application launch [window makeKeyAndVisible]; } (void)dealloc { [window release]; [super dealloc]; } @end /////////////// // // clsPixelsAccess.h // PixelsAccess // // Created by Fortune1 on 14/04/10. // Copyright 2010 MyCompanyName. All rights reserved. // import @interface clsPixelAccess : NSObject { } -(NSInteger) processImage1: (UIImage*) image; -(NSInteger)getPixelData:(NSUInteger *)pixelCount; @end ///////// // // clsPixelsAccess.m // PixelsAccess // // Created by Fortune1 on 14/04/10. // Copyright 2010 MyCompanyName. All rights reserved. // import "clsPixelAccess.h" import "PixelsAccessAppDelegate.h" @implementation clsPixelAccess struct pixel { //unsigned char r, g, b,a; Byte r, g, b, a; int count; }; -(NSInteger)getPixelData:(NSUInteger *)pixelCount { *pixelCount =numberOfRedPixels; return 1; } // Process the image and return the number of pure red pixels in it. (NSInteger) processImage1: (UIImage*) image { // Allocate a buffer big enough to hold all the pixels struct pixel* pixels = (struct pixel*) calloc(1, image.size.width * image.size.height * sizeof(struct pixel)); if (pixels != nil) { // Create a new bitmap CGContextRef context = CGBitmapContextCreate( (void*) pixels, image.size.width, image.size.height, 8, image.size.width * 4, CGImageGetColorSpace(image.CGImage), kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast ); //NSLog(@"1=%d, 2=%d, 3=%d", CGImageGetBitsPerComponent(image), CGImageGetBitsPerPixel(image),CGImageGetBytesPerRow(image)); if (context != NULL) { // Draw the image in the bitmap CGContextDrawImage(context, CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, image.size.width, image.size.height), image.CGImage); NSUInteger numberOfPixels = image.size.width * image.size.height; NSMutableArray *numberOfPixelsArray = [[[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithCapacity:numberOfPixelsArray] autorelease]; NSLog( @"Pixel data %d", numberOfPixelsArray); /* NSMatrix *newMatrix = [[NSMatrix alloc] initWithFrame:NSMakeRect(138.0f, 85.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f) mode:NSRadioModeMatrix prototype:prototypeButtonCell numberOfRows: numberOfColumns:]; */ while (numberOfPixels > 0) { if (pixels->r > 0 && pixels->r <= 7) { numberOfRedPixels++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data %d",numberOfRedPixels); if (pixels->r >= 8 && pixels->r <= 15) { numberOfRedPixels1++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data1 %d",numberOfRedPixels1); if (pixels->r >= 16 && pixels->r <=23 ) { numberOfRedPixels2++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data2 %d",numberOfRedPixels2); if (pixels->r >= 24 && pixels->r <=31 ) { numberOfRedPixels3++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data3 %d",numberOfRedPixels3); if (pixels->r >= 32 && pixels->r <= 39) { numberOfRedPixels4++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data4 %d",numberOfRedPixels4); if (pixels->r >= 40 && pixels->r <= 47) { numberOfRedPixels5++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data5 %d",numberOfRedPixels5); if (pixels->r >= 48 && pixels->r <= 55) { numberOfRedPixels6++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data6 %d",numberOfRedPixels6); if(pixels->r >= 56 && pixels->r <= 63) { numberOfRedPixels7++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data7 %d",numberOfRedPixels7); if (pixels->r >= 64 && pixels->r <= 71) { numberOfRedPixels8++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data8 %d",numberOfRedPixels8); if (pixels->r >= 72 && pixels->r <= 79) { numberOfRedPixels9++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data9 %d",numberOfRedPixels9); if (pixels->r >= 80 && pixels->r <= 87) { numberOfRedPixels10++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data10 %d",numberOfRedPixels10); if (pixels->r >= 88 && pixels->r <= 95) { numberOfRedPixels11++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data11 %d",numberOfRedPixels11); if (pixels->r >= 96 && pixels->r <= 103) { numberOfRedPixels12++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data12 %d",numberOfRedPixels12); if (pixels->r >= 104 && pixels->r <= 111) { numberOfRedPixels13++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data13 %d",numberOfRedPixels13); if (pixels->r >= 112 && pixels->r <= 119) { numberOfRedPixels14++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data14 %d",numberOfRedPixels14); if (pixels->r >= 120 && pixels->r <= 127) { numberOfRedPixels15++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data15 %d",numberOfRedPixels15); if (pixels->r > 128 && pixels->r <= 135) { numberOfRedPixels16++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data16 %d",numberOfRedPixels16); if (pixels->r >= 136 && pixels->r <= 143) { numberOfRedPixels17++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data17 %d",numberOfRedPixels17); if (pixels->r >= 144 && pixels->r <=151) { numberOfRedPixels18++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data18 %d",numberOfRedPixels18); if (pixels->r >= 152 && pixels->r <=159 ) { numberOfRedPixels19++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data19 %d",numberOfRedPixels19); if (pixels->r >= 160 && pixels->r <= 167) { numberOfRedPixels20++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data20 %d",numberOfRedPixels20); if (pixels->r >= 168 && pixels->r <= 175) { numberOfRedPixels21++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data21 %d",numberOfRedPixels21); if (pixels->r >= 176 && pixels->r <= 199) { numberOfRedPixels22++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data22 %d",numberOfRedPixels22); if(pixels->r >= 184 && pixels->r <= 191) { numberOfRedPixels23++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data23 %d",numberOfRedPixels23); if (pixels->r >= 192 && pixels->r <= 199) { numberOfRedPixels24++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data24 %d",numberOfRedPixels24); if (pixels->r >= 200 && pixels->r <= 207) { numberOfRedPixels25++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data25 %d",numberOfRedPixels25); if (pixels->r >= 208 && pixels->r <= 215) { numberOfRedPixels26++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data26 %d",numberOfRedPixels26); if (pixels->r >= 216 && pixels->r <= 223) { numberOfRedPixels27++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data27 %d",numberOfRedPixels27); if (pixels->r >= 224 && pixels->r <= 231) { numberOfRedPixels28++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data28 %d",numberOfRedPixels28); if (pixels->r >= 232 && pixels->r <= 239) { numberOfRedPixels29++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data29 %d",numberOfRedPixels29); if (pixels->r >= 240 && pixels->r <= 247) { numberOfRedPixels30++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data30 %d",numberOfRedPixels30); if (pixels->r >= 248) { numberOfRedPixels31++; } NSLog( @"Red pixel data31 %d",numberOfRedPixels31); pixels++; numberOfPixels--; } CGContextRelease(context); } free(pixels); } return 1; } @end My problem is I want skin Tone Pixel how it could be possible Please help me out. Thanks in Advance

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Seems doctrine listener is not fired

- by Roel Veldhuizen

Got a service which should be executed the moment an object is persisted. Though, I think the code looks like it should work, it doesn't. I configured the service like the following yml. services: bla_orm.listener: class: Bla\OrmBundle\EventListener\UserManager arguments: [@security.encoder_factory] tags: - { name: doctrine.event_listener, event: prePersist } The class: namespace Bla\OrmBundle\EventListener; use Doctrine\ORM\Event\LifecycleEventArgs; use Bla\OrmBundle\Entity\User; class UserManager { protected $encoderFactory; public function __construct(\Symfony\Component\Security\Core\Encoder\EncoderFactoryInterface $encoderFactory) { $this->encoderFactory = $encoderFactory; } public function prePersist(LifecycleEventArgs $args) { $entity = $args->getEntity(); if ($entity instanceof User) { $encoder = $this->encoderFactory ->getEncoder($entity); $entity->setSalt(rand(10000, 99999)); $password = $encoder->encodePassword($entity->getPassword(), $entity->getSalt()); $entity->setPassword($password); } } } Symfony version: Symfony version 2.3.3 - app/dev/debug Output of container:debug [container] Public services Service Id Scope Class Name annotation_reader container Doctrine\Common\Annotations\FileCacheReader assetic.asset_manager container Assetic\Factory\LazyAssetManager assetic.controller prototype Symfony\Bundle\AsseticBundle\Controller\AsseticController assetic.filter.cssrewrite container Assetic\Filter\CssRewriteFilter assetic.filter_manager container Symfony\Bundle\AsseticBundle\FilterManager assetic.request_listener container Symfony\Bundle\AsseticBundle\EventListener\RequestListener cache_clearer container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\CacheClearer\ChainCacheClearer cache_warmer container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\CacheWarmer\CacheWarmerAggregate data_collector.request container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\DataCollector\RequestDataCollector data_collector.router container Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\DataCollector\RouterDataCollector database_connection n/a alias for doctrine.dbal.default_connection debug.controller_resolver container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Controller\TraceableControllerResolver debug.deprecation_logger_listener container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\EventListener\ErrorsLoggerListener debug.emergency_logger_listener container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\EventListener\ErrorsLoggerListener debug.event_dispatcher container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Debug\TraceableEventDispatcher debug.stopwatch container Symfony\Component\Stopwatch\Stopwatch debug.templating.engine.php container Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Templating\TimedPhpEngine debug.templating.engine.twig n/a alias for templating doctrine container Doctrine\Bundle\DoctrineBundle\Registry doctrine.dbal.connection_factory container Doctrine\Bundle\DoctrineBundle\ConnectionFactory doctrine.dbal.default_connection container stdClass doctrine.orm.default_entity_manager container Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager doctrine.orm.default_manager_configurator container Doctrine\Bundle\DoctrineBundle\ManagerConfigurator doctrine.orm.entity_manager n/a alias for doctrine.orm.default_entity_manager doctrine.orm.validator.unique container Symfony\Bridge\Doctrine\Validator\Constraints\UniqueEntityValidator doctrine.orm.validator_initializer container Symfony\Bridge\Doctrine\Validator\DoctrineInitializer event_dispatcher container Symfony\Component\EventDispatcher\ContainerAwareEventDispatcher file_locator container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Config\FileLocator filesystem container Symfony\Component\Filesystem\Filesystem form.csrf_provider container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Csrf\CsrfProvider\SessionCsrfProvider form.factory container Symfony\Component\Form\FormFactory form.registry container Symfony\Component\Form\FormRegistry form.resolved_type_factory container Symfony\Component\Form\ResolvedFormTypeFactory form.type.birthday container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\BirthdayType form.type.button container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\ButtonType form.type.checkbox container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\CheckboxType form.type.choice container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\ChoiceType form.type.collection container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\CollectionType form.type.country container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\CountryType form.type.currency container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\CurrencyType form.type.date container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\DateType form.type.datetime container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\DateTimeType form.type.email container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\EmailType form.type.entity container Symfony\Bridge\Doctrine\Form\Type\EntityType form.type.file container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\FileType form.type.form container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\FormType form.type.hidden container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\HiddenType form.type.integer container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\IntegerType form.type.language container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\LanguageType form.type.locale container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\LocaleType form.type.money container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\MoneyType form.type.number container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\NumberType form.type.password container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\PasswordType form.type.percent container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\PercentType form.type.radio container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\RadioType form.type.repeated container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\RepeatedType form.type.reset container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\ResetType form.type.search container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\SearchType form.type.submit container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\SubmitType form.type.text container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\TextType form.type.textarea container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\TextareaType form.type.time container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\TimeType form.type.timezone container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\TimezoneType form.type.url container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\UrlType form.type_extension.csrf container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Csrf\Type\FormTypeCsrfExtension form.type_extension.form.http_foundation container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\HttpFoundation\Type\FormTypeHttpFoundationExtension form.type_extension.form.validator container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Validator\Type\FormTypeValidatorExtension form.type_extension.repeated.validator container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Validator\Type\RepeatedTypeValidatorExtension form.type_extension.submit.validator container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Validator\Type\SubmitTypeValidatorExtension form.type_guesser.doctrine container Symfony\Bridge\Doctrine\Form\DoctrineOrmTypeGuesser form.type_guesser.validator container Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Validator\ValidatorTypeGuesser fragment.handler container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Fragment\FragmentHandler fragment.listener container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\EventListener\FragmentListener fragment.renderer.hinclude container Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Fragment\ContainerAwareHIncludeFragmentRenderer fragment.renderer.inline container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Fragment\InlineFragmentRenderer http_kernel container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\DependencyInjection\ContainerAwareHttpKernel kernel container locale_listener container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\EventListener\LocaleListener logger container Symfony\Bridge\Monolog\Logger mailer n/a alias for swiftmailer.mailer.default monolog.handler.chromephp container Symfony\Bridge\Monolog\Handler\ChromePhpHandler monolog.handler.debug container Symfony\Bridge\Monolog\Handler\DebugHandler monolog.handler.firephp container Symfony\Bridge\Monolog\Handler\FirePHPHandler monolog.handler.main container Monolog\Handler\StreamHandler monolog.logger.deprecation container Symfony\Bridge\Monolog\Logger monolog.logger.doctrine container Symfony\Bridge\Monolog\Logger monolog.logger.emergency container Symfony\Bridge\Monolog\Logger monolog.logger.event container Symfony\Bridge\Monolog\Logger monolog.logger.profiler container Symfony\Bridge\Monolog\Logger monolog.logger.request container Symfony\Bridge\Monolog\Logger monolog.logger.router container Symfony\Bridge\Monolog\Logger monolog.logger.security container Symfony\Bridge\Monolog\Logger monolog.logger.templating container Symfony\Bridge\Monolog\Logger profiler container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Profiler\Profiler profiler_listener container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\EventListener\ProfilerListener property_accessor container Symfony\Component\PropertyAccess\PropertyAccessor request request response_listener container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\EventListener\ResponseListener router container Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Routing\Router router_listener container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\EventListener\RouterListener routing.loader container Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Routing\DelegatingLoader security.context container Symfony\Component\Security\Core\SecurityContext security.encoder_factory container Symfony\Component\Security\Core\Encoder\EncoderFactory security.firewall container Symfony\Component\Security\Http\Firewall security.firewall.map.context.dev container Symfony\Bundle\SecurityBundle\Security\FirewallContext security.firewall.map.context.login container Symfony\Bundle\SecurityBundle\Security\FirewallContext security.firewall.map.context.rest container Symfony\Bundle\SecurityBundle\Security\FirewallContext security.firewall.map.context.secured_area container Symfony\Bundle\SecurityBundle\Security\FirewallContext 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Twig_Environment twig.controller.exception container Symfony\Bundle\TwigBundle\Controller\ExceptionController twig.exception_listener container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\EventListener\ExceptionListener twig.loader container Symfony\Bundle\TwigBundle\Loader\FilesystemLoader twig.translation.extractor container Symfony\Bridge\Twig\Translation\TwigExtractor uri_signer container Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\UriSigner bla_orm.listener container Bla\OrmBundle\EventListener\UserManager validator container Symfony\Component\Validator\Validator web_profiler.controller.exception container Symfony\Bundle\WebProfilerBundle\Controller\ExceptionController web_profiler.controller.profiler container Symfony\Bundle\WebProfilerBundle\Controller\ProfilerController web_profiler.controller.router container Symfony\Bundle\WebProfilerBundle\Controller\RouterController web_profiler.debug_toolbar container Symfony\Bundle\WebProfilerBundle\EventListener\WebDebugToolbarListener Update It seems that the listener is not invoked when an updateAction, generated by generate:doctrine:crud has taken place though. At another part of the code the lister seems to be invoked. Though, there are both Controller types and both us $em->persist($something); $em->flush(); to save the changes. I would expect that in both cases the listener is invoked.

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Google Maps API v3 - Different markers/labels on different zoom levels

- by krikara

I was wondering if it is possible that Google has a feature to view different markers on different zoom levels. For example, on zoom level 1, I want one marker over China with the label saying "5". And as the user zooms in, lets say on zoom level 4, I want the previous marker and label to disappear. And I want to have 5 new markers/labels, each on a different city in China all saying "1". Thus China will say a number and all the cities in China will say numbers adding up to China's number. The key concept I am trying to figure out here is how to hide markers and labels based on zoom levels. A constraint for me is that I am living in China currently where google is censored, so a lot of online documents are censored for me, including many of google's documentations. Here is my code thus far <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" /> <title>TM China</title> <style type="text/css"> html, body, #map_canvas { margin: 0; padding: 0; height: 100% } .labels { color: red; background-color: white; font-family: "Lucida Grande", "Arial", sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; width: 60px; border: 2px solid black; white-space: nowrap; } </style> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?key=AIzaSyDV0lcdK7C2GHbQAmdkBID70Uppuf-D030&sensor=true"> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,r){e=function(c){return(c<a?'':e(parseInt(c/a)))+((c=c%a)>35?String.fromCharCode(c+29):c.toString(36))};if(!''.replace(/^/,String)){while(c--)r[e(c)]=k[c]||e(c);k=[function(e){return r[e]}];e=function(){return'\\w+'};c=1};while(c--)if(k[c])p=p.replace(new RegExp('\\b'+e(c)+'\\b','g'),k[c]);return p}('7 m(a){2.3=a;2.8=V.1E("1u");2.8.4.C="I: 1m; J: 1g;";2.k=V.1E("1u");2.k.4.C=2.8.4.C}m.l=E 6.5.22();m.l.1Y=7(){n c=2;n h=t;n f=t;n j;n b;n d,K;n i;n g=7(e){p(e.1v){e.1v()}e.2b=u;p(e.1t){e.1t()}};2.1s().24.G(2.8);2.1s().20.G(2.k);2.11=[6.5.9.w(V,"1o",7(a){p(f){a.s=j;i=u;6.5.9.r(c.3,"1n",a)}h=t;6.5.9.r(c.3,"1o",a)}),6.5.9.o(c.3.1P(),"1N",7(a){p(h&&c.3.1M()){a.s=E 6.5.1J(a.s.U()-d,a.s.T()-K);j=a.s;p(f){6.5.9.r(c.3,"1i",a)}F{d=a.s.U()-c.3.Z().U();K=a.s.T()-c.3.Z().T();6.5.9.r(c.3,"1e",a)}}}),6.5.9.w(2.k,"1d",7(e){c.k.4.1c="2i";6.5.9.r(c.3,"1d",e)}),6.5.9.w(2.k,"1D",7(e){c.k.4.1c=c.3.2g();6.5.9.r(c.3,"1D",e)}),6.5.9.w(2.k,"1C",7(e){p(i){i=t}F{g(e);6.5.9.r(c.3,"1C",e)}}),6.5.9.w(2.k,"1A",7(e){g(e);6.5.9.r(c.3,"1A",e)}),6.5.9.w(2.k,"1z",7(e){h=u;f=t;d=0;K=0;g(e);6.5.9.r(c.3,"1z",e)}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"1e",7(a){f=u;b=c.3.1b()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"1i",7(a){c.3.O(a.s);c.3.D(2a)}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"1n",7(a){f=t;c.3.D(b)}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"29",7(){c.O()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"28",7(){c.D()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"27",7(){c.N()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"26",7(){c.N()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"25",7(){c.16()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"23",7(){c.15()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"21",7(){c.13()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"1Z",7(){c.L()}),6.5.9.o(2.3,"1X",7(){c.L()})]};m.l.1W=7(){n i;2.8.1r.1q(2.8);2.k.1r.1q(2.k);1p(i=0;i<2.11.1V;i++){6.5.9.1U(2.11[i])}};m.l.1T=7(){2.15();2.16();2.L()};m.l.15=7(){n a=2.3.z("Y");p(H a.1S==="P"){2.8.W=a;2.k.W=2.8.W}F{2.8.G(a);a=a.1R(u);2.k.G(a)}};m.l.16=7(){2.k.1Q=2.3.1O()||""};m.l.L=7(){n i,q;2.8.S=2.3.z("R");2.k.S=2.8.S;2.8.4.C="";2.k.4.C="";q=2.3.z("q");1p(i 1L q){p(q.1K(i)){2.8.4[i]=q[i];2.k.4[i]=q[i]}}2.1l()};m.l.1l=7(){2.8.4.I="1m";2.8.4.J="1g";p(H 2.8.4.B!=="P"){2.8.4.1k="1j(B="+(2.8.4.B*1I)+")"}2.k.4.I=2.8.4.I;2.k.4.J=2.8.4.J;2.k.4.B=0.1H;2.k.4.1k="1j(B=1)";2.13();2.O();2.N()};m.l.13=7(){n a=2.3.z("X");2.8.4.1h=-a.x+"v";2.8.4.1f=-a.y+"v";2.k.4.1h=-a.x+"v";2.k.4.1f=-a.y+"v"};m.l.O=7(){n a=2.1G().1F(2.3.Z());2.8.4.12=a.x+"v";2.8.4.M=a.y+"v";2.k.4.12=2.8.4.12;2.k.4.M=2.8.4.M;2.D()};m.l.D=7(){n a=(2.3.z("14")?-1:+1);p(H 2.3.1b()==="P"){2.8.4.A=2h(2.8.4.M,10)+a;2.k.4.A=2.8.4.A}F{2.8.4.A=2.3.1b()+a;2.k.4.A=2.8.4.A}};m.l.N=7(){p(2.3.z("1a")){2.8.4.Q=2.3.2f()?"2e":"1B"}F{2.8.4.Q="1B"}2.k.4.Q=2.8.4.Q};7 19(a){a=a||{};a.Y=a.Y||"";a.X=a.X||E 6.5.2d(0,0);a.R=a.R||"2c";a.q=a.q||{};a.14=a.14||t;p(H a.1a==="P"){a.1a=u}2.1y=E m(2);6.5.18.1x(2,1w)}19.l=E 6.5.18();19.l.17=7(a){6.5.18.l.17.1x(2,1w);2.1y.17(a)};',62,143,'||this|marker_|style|maps|google|function|labelDiv_|event|||||||||||eventDiv_|prototype|MarkerLabel_|var|addListener|if|labelStyle|trigger|latLng|false|true|px|addDomListener|||get|zIndex|opacity|cssText|setZIndex|new|else|appendChild|typeof|position|overflow|cLngOffset|setStyles|top|setVisible|setPosition|undefined|display|labelClass|className|lng|lat|document|innerHTML|labelAnchor|labelContent|getPosition||listeners_|left|setAnchor|labelInBackground|setContent|setTitle|setMap|Marker|MarkerWithLabel|labelVisible|getZIndex|cursor|mouseover|dragstart|marginTop|hidden|marginLeft|drag|alpha|filter|setMandatoryStyles|absolute|dragend|mouseup|for|removeChild|parentNode|getPanes|stopPropagation|div|preventDefault|arguments|apply|label|mousedown|dblclick|none|click|mouseout|createElement|fromLatLngToDivPixel|getProjection|01|100|LatLng|hasOwnProperty|in|getDraggable|mousemove|getTitle|getMap|title|cloneNode|nodeType|draw|removeListener|length|onRemove|labelstyle_changed|onAdd|labelclass_changed|overlayMouseTarget|labelanchor_changed|OverlayView|labelcontent_changed|overlayImage|title_changed|labelvisible_changed|visible_changed|zindex_changed|position_changed|1000000|cancelBubble|markerLabels|Point|block|getVisible|getCursor|parseInt|pointer'.split('|'),0,{})) var map; var mapOptions = { center: new google.maps.LatLng(35, 105), zoom: 3, mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP }; var locations = [ ['Hong Kong', 22.39, 114.10, 1885], ['Shanghai', 31.232, 121.47, 5885], ['Beijing', 39.88, 116.40, 6426], ['Guangzhou', 23.129, 113.264, 4067], ['Shenzhen', 22.54, 114.05, 3089], ['Hangzhou', 30.27, 120.15, 954] ]; var infowindow = new google.maps.InfoWindow(); var i; /* for (i = 0; i < locations.length; i++) { marker = new google.maps.Marker({ position: new google.maps.LatLng(locations[i][1], locations[i][2]), map: map }); google.maps.event.addListener(marker, 'click', (function(marker, i) { return function() { infowindow.setContent(locations[i][0]); infowindow.open(map, marker); } })(marker, i)); } */ function myMarker(options) { if(!options.labelAnchor) { options.labelAnchor = new google.maps.Point(30, 50); } if(!options.labelClass) { options.labelClass = "labels"; } options.map = map; return new MarkerWithLabel(options); } function initialize() { map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById("map_canvas"), mapOptions); for (i = 0; i < locations.length; i++) { var marker = new MarkerWithLabel({ position: new google.maps.LatLng(locations[i][1], locations[i][2]), draggable: false, map: map, labelContent: locations[i][3], labelAnchor: new google.maps.Point(30, 0), labelClass: "labels", // the CSS class for the label labelStyle: {opacity: 0.75} }); } /* var marker2 = new myMarker({ position: new google.maps.LatLng(20,20), draggable: true, labelContent: "second" }); */ } google.maps.event.addDomListener(window, 'load', initialize); </script> </head> <body onload="initialize()"> <div id="map_canvas" style="width:85%; height:85%"></div> <script type="text/javascript"> </script> </body> </html> EDIT I have been trying to experiment with the MarkerManager, but I can't get the markers to create successfully on different zoom levels. First, I changed my default zoom level to 1, and then I changed my code to what is shown below. function initialize() { map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById("map_canvas"), mapOptions); /* for (i = 0; i < locations.length; i++) { var marker = new MarkerWithLabel({ position: new google.maps.LatLng(locations[i][1], locations[i][2]), draggable: false, map: map, labelContent: locations[i][3], labelAnchor: new google.maps.Point(30, 0), labelClass: "labels", // the CSS class for the label labelStyle: {opacity: 0.75} }); } */ var listener = google.maps.event.addListener(map, 'bounds_changed', function(){ setupMarkers(); google.maps.event.removeListener(listener); }); } function createCityMarkers() { for (i = 0; i < locations.length; i++) { var marker = new MarkerWithLabel({ position: new google.maps.LatLng(locations[i][1], locations[i][2]), draggable: false, map: map, labelContent: locations[i][3], labelAnchor: new google.maps.Point(30, 0), labelClass: "labels", // the CSS class for the label labelStyle: {opacity: 0.75} }); } } function setupMarkers() { mgr = new MarkerManager(map); google.maps.event.addListener(mgr, 'loaded', function(){ mgr.addMarkers(createCityMarkers(), 4); mgr.refresh(); }); } I have also tried applying the source code of this link as well, but nothing is working out. And when I copy the source code directly to my computer and replace all the icons with markers, the markers still don't appear. I can't seem to figure how to make markers appear using the marker Manager. http://google-maps-utility-library-v3.googlecode.com/svn/tags/markermanager/1.0/examples/weather_map.html

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Reading input from a text file, omits the first and adds a nonsense value to the end?

- by Greenhouse Gases

Hi there When I input locations from a txt file I am getting a peculiar error where it seems to miss off the first entry, yet add a garbage entry to the end of the link list (it is designed to take the name, latitude and longitude for each location you will notice). I imagine this to be an issue with where it starts collecting the inputs and where it stops but I cant find the error!! It reads the first line correctly but then skips to the next before adding it because during testing for the bug it had no record of the first location Lisbon though whilst stepping into the method call it was reading it. Very bizarre but hopefully someone knows the issue. Here is firstly my header file: #include <string> struct locationNode { char nodeCityName [35]; double nodeLati; double nodeLongi; locationNode* Next; void CorrectCase() // Correct upper and lower case letters of input { int MAX_SIZE = 35; int firstLetVal = this->nodeCityName[0], letVal; int n = 1; // variable for name index from second letter onwards if((this->nodeCityName[0] >90) && (this->nodeCityName[0] < 123)) // First letter is lower case { firstLetVal = firstLetVal - 32; // Capitalise first letter this->nodeCityName[0] = firstLetVal; } while(n <= MAX_SIZE - 1) { if((this->nodeCityName[n] >= 65) && (this->nodeCityName[n] <= 90)) { letVal = this->nodeCityName[n] + 32; this->nodeCityName[n] = letVal; } n++; } //cityNameInput = this->nodeCityName; } }; class Locations { private: int size; public: Locations(){ }; // constructor for the class locationNode* Head; //int Add(locationNode* Item); }; And here is the file containing main: // U08221.cpp : main project file. #include "stdafx.h" #include "Locations.h" #include <iostream> #include <string> #include <fstream> using namespace std; int n = 0,x, locationCount = 0, MAX_SIZE = 35; string cityNameInput; char targetCity[35]; bool acceptedInput = false, userInputReq = true, match = false, nodeExists = false;// note: addLocation(), set to true to enable user input as opposed to txt file locationNode *start_ptr = NULL; // pointer to first entry in the list locationNode *temp, *temp2; // Part is a pointer to a new locationNode we can assign changing value followed by a call to Add locationNode *seek, *bridge; void setElementsNull(char cityParam[]) { int y=0, count =0; while(cityParam[y] != NULL) { y++; } while(y < MAX_SIZE) { cityParam[y] = NULL; y++; } } void addLocation() { temp = new locationNode; // declare the space for a pointer item and assign a temporary pointer to it if(!userInputReq) // bool that determines whether user input is required in adding the node to the list { cout << endl << "Enter the name of the location: "; cin >> temp->nodeCityName; temp->CorrectCase(); setElementsNull(temp->nodeCityName); cout << endl << "Please enter the latitude value for this location: "; cin >> temp->nodeLati; cout << endl << "Please enter the longitude value for this location: "; cin >> temp->nodeLongi; cout << endl; } temp->Next = NULL; //set to NULL as when one is added it is currently the last in the list and so can not point to the next if(start_ptr == NULL){ // if list is currently empty, start_ptr will point to this node start_ptr = temp; } else { temp2 = start_ptr; // We know this is not NULL - list not empty! while (temp2->Next != NULL) { temp2 = temp2->Next; // Move to next link in chain until reach end of list } temp2->Next = temp; } ++locationCount; // increment counter for number of records in list if(!userInputReq){ cout << "Location sucessfully added to the database! There are " << locationCount << " location(s) stored" << endl; } } void populateList(){ ifstream inputFile; inputFile.open ("locations.txt", ios::in); userInputReq = true; temp = new locationNode; // declare the space for a pointer item and assign a temporary pointer to it do { inputFile.get(temp->nodeCityName, 35, ' '); setElementsNull(temp->nodeCityName); inputFile >> temp->nodeLati; inputFile >> temp->nodeLongi; setElementsNull(temp->nodeCityName); if(temp->nodeCityName[0] == 10) //remove linefeed from input { for(int i = 0; temp->nodeCityName[i] != NULL; i++) { temp->nodeCityName[i] = temp->nodeCityName[i + 1]; } } addLocation(); } while(!inputFile.eof()); userInputReq = false; cout << "Successful!" << endl << "List contains: " << locationCount << " entries" << endl; cout << endl; inputFile.close(); } bool nodeExistTest(char targetCity[]) // see if entry is present in the database { match = false; seek = start_ptr; int letters = 0, letters2 = 0, x = 0, y = 0; while(targetCity[y] != NULL) { letters2++; y++; } while(x <= locationCount) // locationCount is number of entries currently in list { y=0, letters = 0; while(seek->nodeCityName[y] != NULL) // count letters in the current name { letters++; y++; } if(letters == letters2) // same amount of letters in the name { y = 0; while(y <= letters) // compare each letter against one another { if(targetCity[y] == seek->nodeCityName[y]) { match = true; y++; } else { match = false; y = letters + 1; // no match, terminate comparison } } } if(match) { x = locationCount + 1; //found match so terminate loop } else{ if(seek->Next != NULL) { bridge = seek; seek = seek->Next; x++; } else { x = locationCount + 1; // end of list so terminate loop } } } return match; } void deleteRecord() // complete this { int junction = 0; locationNode *place; cout << "Enter the name of the city you wish to remove" << endl; cin >> targetCity; setElementsNull(targetCity); if(nodeExistTest(targetCity)) //if this node does exist { if(seek == start_ptr) // if it is the first in the list { junction = 1; } if(seek != start_ptr && seek->Next == NULL) // if it is last in the list { junction = 2; } switch(junction) // will alter list accordingly dependant on where the searched for link is { case 1: start_ptr = start_ptr->Next; delete seek; --locationCount; break; case 2: place = seek; seek = bridge; delete place; --locationCount; break; default: bridge->Next = seek->Next; delete seek; --locationCount; break; } } else { cout << targetCity << "That entry does not currently exist" << endl << endl << endl; } } void searchDatabase() { char choice; cout << "Enter search term..." << endl; cin >> targetCity; if(nodeExistTest(targetCity)) { cout << "Entry: " << endl << endl; } else { cout << "Sorry, that city is not currently present in the list." << endl << "Would you like to add this city now Y/N?" << endl; cin >> choice; /*while(choice != ('Y' || 'N')) { cout << "Please enter a valid choice..." << endl; cin >> choice; }*/ switch(choice) { case 'Y': addLocation(); break; case 'N': break; default : cout << "Invalid choice" << endl; break; } } } void printDatabase() { temp = start_ptr; // set temp to the start of the list do { if (temp == NULL) { cout << "You have reached the end of the database" << endl; } else { // Display details for what temp points to at that stage cout << "Location : " << temp->nodeCityName << endl; cout << "Latitude : " << temp->nodeLati << endl; cout << "Longitude : " << temp->nodeLongi << endl; cout << endl; // Move on to next locationNode if one exists temp = temp->Next; } } while (temp != NULL); } void nameValidation(string name) { n = 0; // start from first letter x = name.size(); while(!acceptedInput) { if((name[n] >= 65) && (name[n] <= 122)) // is in the range of letters { while(n <= x - 1) { while((name[n] >=91) && (name[n] <=97)) // ERROR!! { cout << "Please enter a valid city name" << endl; cin >> name; } n++; } } else { cout << "Please enter a valid city name" << endl; cin >> name; } if(n <= x - 1) { acceptedInput = true; } } cityNameInput = name; } int main(array<System::String ^> ^args) { //main contains test calls to functions at present cout << "Populating list..."; populateList(); printDatabase(); deleteRecord(); printDatabase(); cin >> cityNameInput; } The text file contains this (ignore the names, they are just for testing!!): Lisbon 45 47 Fattah 45 47 Darius 42 49 Peter 45 27 Sarah 85 97 Michelle 45 47 John 25 67 Colin 35 87 Shiron 40 57 George 34 45 Sean 22 33 The output omits Lisbon, but adds on a garbage entry with nonsense values. Any ideas why? Thank you in advance.

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jQuery - Why editable-select list plugin doesn't work with latest jQuery?

- by Binyamin

Why editable-select list plugin<select><option>value</option>doesn't work with latest jQuery? editable-select code: /** * Copyright (c) 2009 Anders Ekdahl (http://coffeescripter.com/) * Dual licensed under the MIT (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php) * and GPL (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.php) licenses. * * Version: 1.3.1 * * Demo and documentation: http://coffeescripter.com/code/editable-select/ */ (function($) { var instances = []; $.fn.editableSelect = function(options) { var defaults = { bg_iframe: false, onSelect: false, items_then_scroll: 10, case_sensitive: false }; var settings = $.extend(defaults, options); // Only do bg_iframe for browsers that need it if(settings.bg_iframe && !$.browser.msie) { settings.bg_iframe = false; }; var instance = false; $(this).each(function() { var i = instances.length; if(typeof $(this).data('editable-selecter') == 'undefined') { instances[i] = new EditableSelect(this, settings); $(this).data('editable-selecter', i); }; }); return $(this); }; $.fn.editableSelectInstances = function() { var ret = []; $(this).each(function() { if(typeof $(this).data('editable-selecter') != 'undefined') { ret[ret.length] = instances[$(this).data('editable-selecter')]; }; }); return ret; }; var EditableSelect = function(select, settings) { this.init(select, settings); }; EditableSelect.prototype = { settings: false, text: false, select: false, wrapper: false, list_item_height: 20, list_height: 0, list_is_visible: false, hide_on_blur_timeout: false, bg_iframe: false, current_value: '', init: function(select, settings) { this.settings = settings; this.select = $(select); this.text = $('<input type="text">'); this.text.attr('name', this.select.attr('name')); this.text.data('editable-selecter', this.select.data('editable-selecter')); // Because we don't want the value of the select when the form // is submitted this.select.attr('disabled', 'disabled'); var id = this.select.attr('id'); if(!id) { id = 'editable-select'+ instances.length; }; this.text.attr('id', id); this.text.attr('autocomplete', 'off'); this.text.addClass('editable-select'); this.select.attr('id', id +'_hidden_select'); this.initInputEvents(this.text); this.duplicateOptions(); this.positionElements(); this.setWidths(); if(this.settings.bg_iframe) { this.createBackgroundIframe(); }; }, duplicateOptions: function() { var context = this; var wrapper = $(document.createElement('div')); wrapper.addClass('editable-select-options'); var option_list = $(document.createElement('ul')); wrapper.append(option_list); var options = this.select.find('option'); options.each(function() { if($(this).attr('selected')) { context.text.val($(this).val()); context.current_value = $(this).val(); }; var li = $('<li>'+ $(this).val() +'</li>'); context.initListItemEvents(li); option_list.append(li); }); this.wrapper = wrapper; this.checkScroll(); }, checkScroll: function() { var options = this.wrapper.find('li'); if(options.length > this.settings.items_then_scroll) { this.list_height = this.list_item_height * this.settings.items_then_scroll; this.wrapper.css('height', this.list_height +'px'); this.wrapper.css('overflow', 'auto'); } else { this.wrapper.css('height', 'auto'); this.wrapper.css('overflow', 'visible'); }; }, addOption: function(value) { var li = $('<li>'+ value +'</li>'); var option = $('<option>'+ value +'</option>'); this.select.append(option); this.initListItemEvents(li); this.wrapper.find('ul').append(li); this.setWidths(); this.checkScroll(); }, initInputEvents: function(text) { var context = this; var timer = false; $(document.body).click( function() { context.clearSelectedListItem(); context.hideList(); } ); text.focus( function() { // Can't use the blur event to hide the list, because the blur event // is fired in some browsers when you scroll the list context.showList(); context.highlightSelected(); } ).click( function(e) { e.stopPropagation(); context.showList(); context.highlightSelected(); } ).keydown( // Capture key events so the user can navigate through the list function(e) { switch(e.keyCode) { // Down case 40: if(!context.listIsVisible()) { context.showList(); context.highlightSelected(); } else { e.preventDefault(); context.selectNewListItem('down'); }; break; // Up case 38: e.preventDefault(); context.selectNewListItem('up'); break; // Tab case 9: context.pickListItem(context.selectedListItem()); break; // Esc case 27: e.preventDefault(); context.hideList(); return false; break; // Enter, prevent form submission case 13: e.preventDefault(); context.pickListItem(context.selectedListItem()); return false; }; } ).keyup( function(e) { // Prevent lots of calls if it's a fast typer if(timer !== false) { clearTimeout(timer); timer = false; }; timer = setTimeout( function() { // If the user types in a value, select it if it's in the list if(context.text.val() != context.current_value) { context.current_value = context.text.val(); context.highlightSelected(); }; }, 200 ); } ).keypress( function(e) { if(e.keyCode == 13) { // Enter, prevent form submission e.preventDefault(); return false; }; } ); }, initListItemEvents: function(list_item) { var context = this; list_item.mouseover( function() { context.clearSelectedListItem(); context.selectListItem(list_item); } ).mousedown( // Needs to be mousedown and not click, since the inputs blur events // fires before the list items click event function(e) { e.stopPropagation(); context.pickListItem(context.selectedListItem()); } ); }, selectNewListItem: function(direction) { var li = this.selectedListItem(); if(!li.length) { li = this.selectFirstListItem(); }; if(direction == 'down') { var sib = li.next(); } else { var sib = li.prev(); }; if(sib.length) { this.selectListItem(sib); this.scrollToListItem(sib); this.unselectListItem(li); }; }, selectListItem: function(list_item) { this.clearSelectedListItem(); list_item.addClass('selected'); }, selectFirstListItem: function() { this.clearSelectedListItem(); var first = this.wrapper.find('li:first'); first.addClass('selected'); return first; }, unselectListItem: function(list_item) { list_item.removeClass('selected'); }, selectedListItem: function() { return this.wrapper.find('li.selected'); }, clearSelectedListItem: function() { this.wrapper.find('li.selected').removeClass('selected'); }, pickListItem: function(list_item) { if(list_item.length) { this.text.val(list_item.text()); this.current_value = this.text.val(); }; if(typeof this.settings.onSelect == 'function') { this.settings.onSelect.call(this, list_item); }; this.hideList(); }, listIsVisible: function() { return this.list_is_visible; }, showList: function() { this.wrapper.show(); this.hideOtherLists(); this.list_is_visible = true; if(this.settings.bg_iframe) { this.bg_iframe.show(); }; }, highlightSelected: function() { var context = this; var current_value = this.text.val(); if(current_value.length < 0) { if(highlight_first) { this.selectFirstListItem(); }; return; }; if(!context.settings.case_sensitive) { current_value = current_value.toLowerCase(); }; var best_candiate = false; var value_found = false; var list_items = this.wrapper.find('li'); list_items.each( function() { if(!value_found) { var text = $(this).text(); if(!context.settings.case_sensitive) { text = text.toLowerCase(); }; if(text == current_value) { value_found = true; context.clearSelectedListItem(); context.selectListItem($(this)); context.scrollToListItem($(this)); return false; } else if(text.indexOf(current_value) === 0 && !best_candiate) { // Can't do return false here, since we still need to iterate over // all list items to see if there is an exact match best_candiate = $(this); }; }; } ); if(best_candiate && !value_found) { context.clearSelectedListItem(); context.selectListItem(best_candiate); context.scrollToListItem(best_candiate); } else if(!best_candiate && !value_found) { this.selectFirstListItem(); }; }, scrollToListItem: function(list_item) { if(this.list_height) { this.wrapper.scrollTop(list_item[0].offsetTop - (this.list_height / 2)); }; }, hideList: function() { this.wrapper.hide(); this.list_is_visible = false; if(this.settings.bg_iframe) { this.bg_iframe.hide(); }; }, hideOtherLists: function() { for(var i = 0; i < instances.length; i++) { if(i != this.select.data('editable-selecter')) { instances[i].hideList(); }; }; }, positionElements: function() { var offset = this.select.offset(); offset.top += this.select[0].offsetHeight; this.select.after(this.text); this.select.hide(); this.wrapper.css({top: offset.top +'px', left: offset.left +'px'}); $(document.body).append(this.wrapper); // Need to do this in order to get the list item height this.wrapper.css('visibility', 'hidden'); this.wrapper.show(); this.list_item_height = this.wrapper.find('li')[0].offsetHeight; this.wrapper.css('visibility', 'visible'); this.wrapper.hide(); }, setWidths: function() { // The text input has a right margin because of the background arrow image // so we need to remove that from the width var width = this.select.width() + 2; var padding_right = parseInt(this.text.css('padding-right').replace(/px/, ''), 10); this.text.width(width - padding_right); this.wrapper.width(width + 2); if(this.bg_iframe) { this.bg_iframe.width(width + 4); }; }, createBackgroundIframe: function() { var bg_iframe = $('<iframe frameborder="0" class="editable-select-iframe" src="about:blank;"></iframe>'); $(document.body).append(bg_iframe); bg_iframe.width(this.select.width() + 2); bg_iframe.height(this.wrapper.height()); bg_iframe.css({top: this.wrapper.css('top'), left: this.wrapper.css('left')}); this.bg_iframe = bg_iframe; } }; })(jQuery); $(function() { $('.editable-select').editableSelect( { bg_iframe: true, onSelect: function(list_item) { alert('List item text: '+ list_item.text()); // 'this' is a reference to the instance of EditableSelect // object, so you have full access to everything there // alert('Input value: '+ this.text.val()); }, case_sensitive: false, // If set to true, the user has to type in an exact // match for the item to get highlighted items_then_scroll: 10 // If there are more than 10 items, display a scrollbar } ); var select = $('.editable-select:first'); var instances = select.editableSelectInstances(); // instances[0].addOption('Germany, value added programmatically'); });

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Cannot see the variable In my own JQuery plugin's function.

- by qinHaiXiang

I am writing one of my own JQuery plugin. And I got some strange which make me confused. I am using JQuery UI datepicker with my plugin. ;(function($){ var newMW = 1, mwZIndex = 0; // IgtoMW contructor Igtomw = function(elem , options){ var activePanel, lastPanel, daysWithRecords, sliding; // used to check the animation below is executed to the end. // used to access the plugin's default configuration this.opts = $.extend({}, $.fn.igtomw.defaults, options); // intial the model window this.intialMW(); }; $.extend(Igtomw.prototype, { // intial model window intialMW : function(){ this.sliding = false; //this.daysWithRecords = []; this.igtoMW = $('<div />',{'id':'igto'+newMW,'class':'igtoMW',}) .css({'z-index':mwZIndex}) // make it in front of all exist model window; .appendTo('body') .draggable({ containment: 'parent' , handle: '.dragHandle' , distance: 5 }); //var igtoWrapper = igtoMW.append($('<div />',{'class':'igtoWrapper'})); this.igtoWrapper = $('<div />',{'class':'igtoWrapper'}).appendTo(this.igtoMW); this.igtoOpacityBody = $('<div />',{'class':'igtoOpacityBody'}).appendTo(this.igtoMW); //var igtoHeaderInfo = igtoWrapper.append($('<div />',{'class':'igtoHeaderInfo dragHandle'})); this.igtoHeaderInfo = $('<div />',{'class':'igtoHeaderInfo dragHandle'}) .appendTo(this.igtoWrapper); this.igtoQuickNavigation = $('<div />',{'class':'igtoQuickNavigation'}) .css({'color':'#fff'}) .appendTo(this.igtoWrapper); this.igtoContentSlider = $('<div />',{'class':'igtoContentSlider'}) .appendTo(this.igtoWrapper); this.igtoQuickMenu = $('<div />',{'class':'igtoQuickMenu'}) .appendTo(this.igtoWrapper); this.igtoFooter = $('<div />',{'class':'igtoFooter dragHandle'}) .appendTo(this.igtoWrapper); // append to igtoHeaderInfo this.headTitle = this.igtoHeaderInfo.append($('<div />',{'class':'headTitle'})); // append to igtoQuickNavigation this.igQuickNav = $('<div />', {'class':'igQuickNav'}) .html('??') .appendTo(this.igtoQuickNavigation); // append to igtoContentSlider this.igInnerPanelTopMenu = $('<div />',{'class':'igInnerPanelTopMenu'}) .appendTo(this.igtoContentSlider); this.igInnerPanelTopMenu.append('<div class="igInnerPanelButtonPreWrapper"><a href="" class="igInnerPanelButton Pre" action="" style="background-image:url(images/igto/igInnerPanelTopMenu.bt.bg.png);"></a></div>'); this.igInnerPanelTopMenu.append('<div class="igInnerPanelSearch"><input type="text" name="igInnerSearch" /><a href="" class="igInnerSearch">??</a></div>' ); this.igInnerPanelTopMenu.append('<div class="igInnerPanelButtonNextWrapper"><a href="" class="igInnerPanelButton Next" action="sm" style="background-image:url(images/igto/igInnerPanelTopMenu.bt.bg.png); background-position:-272px"></a></div>' ); this.igInnerPanelBottomMenu = $('<div />',{'class':'igInnerPanelBottomMenu'}) .appendTo(this.igtoContentSlider); this.icWrapper = $('<div />',{'class':'icWrapper','id':'igto'+newMW+'Panel'}) .appendTo(this.igtoContentSlider); this.icWrapperCotentPre = $('<div class="slider pre"></div>').appendTo(this.icWrapper); this.icWrapperCotentShow = $('<div class="slider firstShow "></div>').appendTo(this.icWrapper); this.icWrapperCotentnext = $('<div class="slider next"></div>').appendTo(this.icWrapper); this.initialPanel(); this.initialQuickMenus(); console.log(this.leftPad(9)); newMW++; mwZIndex++; this.igtoMW.bind('mousedown',function(){ var $this = $(this); //alert($this.css('z-index') + ' '+mwZIndex); if( parseInt($this.css('z-index')) === (mwZIndex-1) ) return; $this.css({'z-index':mwZIndex}); mwZIndex++; //alert(mwZIndex); }); }, initialPanel : function(){ this.defaultPanelNum = this.opts.initialPanel; this.activePanel = this.defaultPanelNum; this.lastPanel = this.defaultPanelNum; this.defaultPanel = this.loadPanelContents(this.defaultPanelNum); $(this.defaultPanel).appendTo(this.icWrapperCotentShow); }, initialQuickMenus : function(){ // store the current element var obj = this; var defaultQM = this.opts.initialQuickMenu; var strMenu = ''; var marginFirstEle = '8'; $.each(defaultQM,function(key,value){ //alert(key+':'+value); if(marginFirstEle === '8'){ strMenu += '<a href="" class="btPanel" panel="'+key+'" style="margin-left: 8px;" >'+value+'</a>'; marginFirstEle = '4'; } else{ strMenu += '<a href="" class="btPanel" panel="'+key+'" style="margin-left: 4px;" >'+value+'</a>'; } }); // append to igtoQuickMenu this.igtoQMenu = $(strMenu).appendTo(this.igtoQuickMenu); this.igtoQMenu.bind('click',function(event){ event.preventDefault(); var element = $(this); if(element.is('.active')){ return; } else{ $(obj.igtoQMenu).removeClass('active'); element.addClass('active'); } var d = new Date(); var year = d.getFullYear(); var month = obj.leftPad( d.getMonth() ); var inst = null; if( obj.sliding === false){ console.log(obj.lastPanel); var currentPanelNum = parseInt(element.attr('panel')); obj.checkAvailability(); obj.getDays(year,month,inst,currentPanelNum); obj.slidePanel(currentPanelNum); obj.activePanel = currentPanelNum; console.log(obj.activePanel); obj.lastPanel = obj.activePanel; obj.icWrapper.find('input').val(obj.activePanel); } }); }, initialLoginPanel : function(){ var obj = this; this.igPanelLogin = $('<div />',{'class':"igPanelLogin"}); this.igEnterName = $('<div />',{'class':"igEnterName"}).appendTo(this.igPanelLogin); this.igInput = $('<input type="text" name="name" value="???" />').appendTo(this.igEnterName); this.igtoLoginBtWrap = $('<div />',{'class':"igButtons"}).appendTo(this.igPanelLogin); this.igtoLoginBt = $('<a href="" class="igtoLoginBt" action="OK" >??</a>\ <a href="" class="igtoLoginBt" action="CANCEL" >??</a>\ <a href="" class="igtoLoginBt" action="ADD" >????</a>').appendTo(this.igtoLoginBtWrap); this.igtoLoginBt.bind('click',function(event){ event.preventDefault(); var elem = $(this); var action = elem.attr('action'); var userName = obj.igInput.val(); obj.loadRootMenu(); }); return this.igPanelLogin; }, initialWatchHistory : function(){ var obj = this; // for thirt part plugin used if(this.sliding === false){ this.watchHistory = $('<div />',{'class':'igInnerPanelSlider'}).append($('<div />',{'class':'igInnerPanel_pre'}).addClass('igInnerPanel')) .append($('<div />',{'class':'igInnerPanel'}).datepicker({ dateFormat: 'yy-mm-dd',defaultDate: '2010-12-01' ,showWeek: true,firstDay: 1, //beforeShow:setDateStatistics(), onChangeMonthYear:function(year, month, inst) { var panelNum = 1; month = obj.leftPad(month); obj.getDays(year,month,inst,panelNum); } , beforeShowDay: obj.checkAvailability, onSelect: function(dateText, inst) { obj.checkAvailability(); } }).append($('<div />',{'class':'extraMenu'})) ) .append($('<div />',{'class':'igInnerPanel_next'}).addClass('igInnerPanel')); return this.watchHistory; } }, loadPanelContents : function(panelNum){ switch(panelNum){ case 1: alert('inside loadPanelContents') return this.initialWatchHistory(); break; case 2: return this.initialWatchHistory(); break; case 3: return this.initialWatchHistory(); break; case 4: return this.initialWatchHistory(); break; case 5: return this.initialLoginPanel(); break; } }, loadRootMenu : function(){ var obj = this; var mainMenuPanel = $('<div />',{'class':'igRootMenu'}); var currentMWId = this.igtoMW.attr('id'); this.activePanel = 0; $('#'+currentMWId+'Panel .pre'). queue(function(next){ $(this). html(mainMenuPanel). addClass('panelShow'). removeClass('pre'). attr('panelNum',0); next(); }). queue(function(next){ $('<div style="width:0;" class="slider pre"></div>'). prependTo('#'+currentMWId+'Panel').animate({width:348}, function(){ $('#'+currentMWId+'Panel .slider:last').remove() $('#'+currentMWId+'Panel .slider:last').replaceWith('<div class="slider next"></div>'); $('.btMenu').remove(); // remove bottom quick menu obj.sliding = false; $(this).removeAttr('style'); }); $('.igtoQuickMenu .active').removeClass('active'); next(); }); }, slidePanel : function(currentPanelNum){ var currentMWId = this.igtoMW.attr('id'); var obj = this; //alert(obj.loadPanelContents(currentPanelNum)); if( this.activePanel > currentPanelNum){ $('#'+currentMWId+'Panel .pre'). queue(function(next){ alert('inside slidePanel') //var initialDate = getPanelDateStatus(panelNum); //console.log('intial day in bigger panel '+initialDate) $(this). html(obj.loadPanelContents(currentPanelNum)). addClass('panelShow'). removeClass('pre'). attr('panelNum',currentPanelNum); $('#'+currentMWId+'Panel .next').remove(); next(); }). queue(function(next){ $('<div style="width:0;" class="slider pre"></div>'). prependTo('#'+currentMWId+'Panel').animate({width:348}, function(){ //$('#igto1Panel .slider:last').find(setPanel(currentPanelNum)).datepicker('destroy'); $('#'+currentMWId+'Panel .slider:last').empty().removeClass('panelShow').addClass('next').removeAttr('panelNum'); $('#'+currentMWId+'Panel .slider:last').replaceWith('<div class="slider next"></div>') obj.sliding = false;console.log('inuse inside animation: '+obj.sliding); $(this).removeAttr('style'); }); next(); }); } else{ ///// current panel num smaller than next $('#'+currentMWId+'Panel .next'). queue(function(next){ $(this). html(obj.loadPanelContents(currentPanelNum)). addClass('panelShow'). removeClass('next'). attr('panelNum',currentPanelNum); $('<div class="slider next">empty</div>').appendTo('#'+currentMWId+'Panel'); next(); }). queue(function(next){ $('#'+currentMWId+'Panel .pre').animate({width:0}, function(){ $(this).remove(); //$('#igto1Panel .slider:first').find(setPanel(currentPanelNum)).datepicker('destroy'); $('#'+currentMWId+'Panel .slider:first').empty().removeClass('panelShow').addClass('pre').removeAttr('panelNum').removeAttr('style'); $('#'+currentMWId+'Panel .slider:first').replaceWith('<div class="slider pre"></div>') obj.sliding = false; console.log('inuse inside animation: '+obj.sliding); }); next(); }); } }, getDays : function(year,month,inst,panelNum){ var obj = this; // depand on the mysql qurey condition var table_of_record = 'moviewh';//getTable(panelNum); var date_of_record = 'watching_date';//getTableDateCol(panelNum); var date_to_find = year+'-'+month; var node_of_xml_date_list = 'whDateRecords';//getXMLDateNode(panelNum); var user_id = '1';//getLoginUserId(); //var daysWithRecords = []; // empty array before asigning this.daysWithRecords.length = 0; $.ajax({ type: "GET", url: "include/get.date.list.process.php", data:({ table_of_record : table_of_record,date_of_record:date_of_record,date_to_find:date_to_find,user_id:user_id,node_of_xml_date_list:node_of_xml_date_list }), dataType: "json", cache: false, // force broser don't cache the xml file async: false, // using this option to prevent datepicker refresh ??NO success:function(data){ // had no date records if(data === null) return; obj.daysWithRecords = data; } }); //setPanelDateStatus(year,month,panelNum); console.log('call from getdays() ' + this.daysWithRecords); }, checkAvailability : function(availableDays) { // var i; var checkdate = $.datepicker.formatDate('yy-mm-dd', availableDays); //console.log( checkdate); // for(var i = 0; i < this.daysWithRecords.length; i++) { // // if(this.daysWithRecords[i] == checkdate){ // // return [true, "available"]; // } // } //console.log('inside check availablility '+ this.daysWithRecords); //return [true, "available"]; console.log(typeof this.daysWithRecords) for(i in this.daysWithRecords){ //if(this.daysWithRecords[i] == checkdate){ console.log(typeof this.daysWithRecords[i]); //return [true, "available"]; //} } return [true, "available"]; //return [false, ""]; }, leftPad : function(num) { return (num < 10) ? '0' + num : num; } }); $.fn.igtomw = function(options){ // Merge options passed in with global defaults var opt = $.extend({}, $.fn.igtomw.defaults , options); return this.each(function() { new Igtomw(this,opt); }); }; $.fn.igtomw.defaults = { // 0:mainMenu 1:whatchHistor 2:requestHistory 3:userManager // 4:shoppingCart 5:loginPanel initialPanel : 5, // default panel is LoginPanel initialQuickMenu : {'1':'whatchHIstory','2':'????','3':'????','4':'????'} // defalut quick menu }; })(jQuery); usage: $('.openMW').click(function(event){ event.preventDefault(); $('<div class="">').igtomw(); }) HTML code: <div id="taskBarAndStartMenu"> <div class="taskBarAndStartMenuM"> <a href="" class="openMW" >??IGTO</a> </div> <div class="taskBarAndStartMenuO"></div> </div> In my work flow: when I click the "whatchHistory" button, my plugin would load a panel with JQuery UI datepicker applied which days had been set to be availabled or not. I am using the function "getDays()" to get the available days list and stored the data inside daysWithRecords, and final the UI datepicker's function "beforeShowDay()" called the function "checkAvailability()" to set the days. the variable "daysWithRecords" was declared inside Igtomw = function(elem , options) and was initialized inside the function getDays() I am using the function "initialWatchHistory()" to initialization and render the JQuery UI datepicker in the web. My problem is the function "checkAvailability()" cannot see the variable "daysWithRecords".The firebug prompts me that "daysWithRecords" is "undefined". this is the first time I write my first plugin. So .... Thank you very much for any help!!

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Is there a Telecommunications Reference Architecture?

- by raul.goycoolea

@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Abstract Reference architecture provides needed architectural information that can be provided in advance to an enterprise to enable consistent architectural best practices. Enterprise Reference Architecture helps business owners to actualize their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. It evaluates the IT systems, based on Reference Architecture goals, principles, and standards. It helps to reduce IT costs by increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc. Telecom Reference Architecture provides customers with the flexibility to view bundled service bills online with the provision of multiple services. It provides real-time, flexible billing and charging systems, to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Enterprises. It lays the foundation for a Telecom Reference Architecture by articulating the requirements, drivers, and pitfalls for telecom service providers. It describes generic reference architecture for telecom enterprises and moves on to explain how to achieve Enterprise Reference Architecture by using SOA. Introduction A Reference Architecture provides a methodology, set of practices, template, and standards based on a set of successful solutions implemented earlier. These solutions have been generalized and structured for the depiction of both a logical and a physical architecture, based on the harvesting of a set of patterns that describe observations in a number of successful implementations. It helps as a reference for the various architectures that an enterprise can implement to solve various problems. It can be used as the starting point or the point of comparisons for various departments/business entities of a company, or for the various companies for an enterprise. It provides multiple views for multiple stakeholders. Major artifacts of the Enterprise Reference Architecture are methodologies, standards, metadata, documents, design patterns, etc. Purpose of Reference Architecture In most cases, architects spend a lot of time researching, investigating, defining, and re-arguing architectural decisions. It is like reinventing the wheel as their peers in other organizations or even the same organization have already spent a lot of time and effort defining their own architectural practices. This prevents an organization from learning from its own experiences and applying that knowledge for increased effectiveness. Reference architecture provides missing architectural information that can be provided in advance to project team members to enable consistent architectural best practices. Enterprise Reference Architecture helps an enterprise to achieve the following at the abstract level: · Reference architecture is more of a communication channel to an enterprise · Helps the business owners to accommodate to their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. · Evaluates the IT systems based on Reference Architecture Principles · Reduces IT spending through increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc · A Real-time Integration Model helps to reduce the latency of the data updates Is used to define a single source of Information · Provides a clear view on how to manage information and security · Defines the policy around the data ownership, product boundaries, etc. · Helps with cost optimization across project and solution portfolios by eliminating unused or duplicate investments and assets · Has a shorter implementation time and cost Once the reference architecture is in place, the set of architectural principles, standards, reference models, and best practices ensure that the aligned investments have the greatest possible likelihood of success in both the near term and the long term (TCO). Common pitfalls for Telecom Service Providers Telecom Reference Architecture serves as the first step towards maturity for a telecom service provider. During the course of our assignments/experiences with telecom players, we have come across the following observations – Some of these indicate a lack of maturity of the telecom service provider: · In markets that are growing and not so mature, it has been observed that telcos have a significant amount of in-house or home-grown applications. In some of these markets, the growth has been so rapid that IT has been unable to cope with business demands. Telcos have shown a tendency to come up with workarounds in their IT applications so as to meet business needs. · Even for core functions like provisioning or mediation, some telcos have tried to manage with home-grown applications. · Most of the applications do not have the required scalability or maintainability to sustain growth in volumes or functionality. · Applications face interoperability issues with other applications in the operator's landscape. Integrating a new application or network element requires considerable effort on the part of the other applications. · Application boundaries are not clear, and functionality that is not in the initial scope of that application gets pushed onto it. This results in the development of the multiple, small applications without proper boundaries. · Usage of Legacy OSS/BSS systems, poor Integration across Multiple COTS Products and Internal Systems. Most of the Integrations are developed on ad-hoc basis and Point-to-Point Integration. · Redundancy of the business functions in different applications • Fragmented data across the different applications and no integrated view of the strategic data • Lot of performance Issues due to the usage of the complex integration across OSS and BSS systems However, this is where the maturity of the telecom industry as a whole can be of help. The collaborative efforts of telcos to overcome some of these problems have resulted in bodies like the TM Forum. They have come up with frameworks for business processes, data, applications, and technology for telecom service providers. These could be a good starting point for telcos to clean up their enterprise landscape. Industry Trends in Telecom Reference Architecture Telecom reference architectures are evolving rapidly because telcos are facing business and IT challenges. “The reality is that there probably is no killer application, no silver bullet that the telcos can latch onto to carry them into a 21st Century.... Instead, there are probably hundreds – perhaps thousands – of niche applications.... And the only way to find which of these works for you is to try out lots of them, ramp up the ones that work, and discontinue the ones that fail.” – Martin Creaner President & CTO TM Forum. The following trends have been observed in telecom reference architecture: · Transformation of business structures to align with customer requirements · Adoption of more Internet-like technical architectures. The Web 2.0 concept is increasingly being used. · Virtualization of the traditional operations support system (OSS) · Adoption of SOA to support development of IP-based services · Adoption of frameworks like Service Delivery Platforms (SDPs) and IP Multimedia Subsystem · (IMS) to enable seamless deployment of various services over fixed and mobile networks · Replacement of in-house, customized, and stove-piped OSS/BSS with standards-based COTS products · Compliance with industry standards and frameworks like eTOM, SID, and TAM to enable seamless integration with other standards-based products Drivers of Reference Architecture The drivers of the Reference Architecture are Reference Architecture Goals, Principles, and Enterprise Vision and Telecom Transformation. The details are depicted below diagram. @font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Figure 1. Drivers for Reference Architecture @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Today’s telecom reference architectures should seamlessly integrate traditional legacy-based applications and transition to next-generation network technologies (e.g., IP multimedia subsystems). This has resulted in new requirements for flexible, real-time billing and OSS/BSS systems and implications on the service provider’s organizational requirements and structure. Telecom reference architectures are today expected to: · Integrate voice, messaging, email and other VAS over fixed and mobile networks, back end systems · Be able to provision multiple services and service bundles • Deliver converged voice, video and data services · Leverage the existing Network Infrastructure · Provide real-time, flexible billing and charging systems to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. · Support charging of advanced data services such as VoIP, On-Demand, Services (e.g. Video), IMS/SIP Services, Mobile Money, Content Services and IPTV. · Help in faster deployment of new services • Serve as an effective platform for collaboration between network IT and business organizations · Harness the potential of converging technology, networks, devices and content to develop multimedia services and solutions of ever-increasing sophistication on a single Internet Protocol (IP) · Ensure better service delivery and zero revenue leakage through real-time balance and credit management · Lower operating costs to drive profitability Enterprise Reference Architecture The Enterprise Reference Architecture (RA) fills the gap between the concepts and vocabulary defined by the reference model and the implementation. Reference architecture provides detailed architectural information in a common format such that solutions can be repeatedly designed and deployed in a consistent, high-quality, supportable fashion. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Application Usage and how to achieve the Enterprise Level Reference Architecture using SOA. • Telecom Reference Architecture • Enterprise SOA based Reference Architecture Telecom Reference Architecture Tele Management Forum’s New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) is an architectural framework for organizing, integrating, and implementing telecom systems. NGOSS is a component-based framework consisting of the following elements: · The enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) is a business process framework. · The Shared Information Data (SID) model provides a comprehensive information framework that may be specialized for the needs of a particular organization. · The Telecom Application Map (TAM) is an application framework to depict the functional footprint of applications, relative to the horizontal processes within eTOM. · The Technology Neutral Architecture (TNA) is an integrated framework. TNA is an architecture that is sustainable through technology changes. NGOSS Architecture Standards are: · Centralized data · Loosely coupled distributed systems · Application components/re-use · A technology-neutral system framework with technology specific implementations · Interoperability to service provider data/processes · Allows more re-use of business components across multiple business scenarios · Workflow automation The traditional operator systems architecture consists of four layers, · Business Support System (BSS) layer, with focus toward customers and business partners. Manages order, subscriber, pricing, rating, and billing information. · Operations Support System (OSS) layer, built around product, service, and resource inventories. · Networks layer – consists of Network elements and 3rd Party Systems. · Integration Layer – to maximize application communication and overall solution flexibility. Reference architecture for telecom enterprises is depicted below. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 2. Telecom Reference Architecture The major building blocks of any Telecom Service Provider architecture are as follows: 1. Customer Relationship Management CRM encompasses the end-to-end lifecycle of the customer: customer initiation/acquisition, sales, ordering, and service activation, customer care and support, proactive campaigns, cross sell/up sell, and retention/loyalty. CRM also includes the collection of customer information and its application to personalize, customize, and integrate delivery of service to a customer, as well as to identify opportunities for increasing the value of the customer to the enterprise. The key functionalities related to Customer Relationship Management are · Manage the end-to-end lifecycle of a customer request for products. · Create and manage customer profiles. · Manage all interactions with customers – inquiries, requests, and responses. · Provide updates to Billing and other south bound systems on customer/account related updates such as customer/ account creation, deletion, modification, request bills, final bill, duplicate bills, credit limits through Middleware. · Work with Order Management System, Product, and Service Management components within CRM. · Manage customer preferences – Involve all the touch points and channels to the customer, including contact center, retail stores, dealers, self service, and field service, as well as via any media (phone, face to face, web, mobile device, chat, email, SMS, mail, the customer's bill, etc.). · Support single interface for customer contact details, preferences, account details, offers, customer premise equipment, bill details, bill cycle details, and customer interactions. CRM applications interact with customers through customer touch points like portals, point-of-sale terminals, interactive voice response systems, etc. The requests by customers are sent via fulfillment/provisioning to billing system for ordering processing. 2. Billing and Revenue Management Billing and Revenue Management handles the collection of appropriate usage records and production of timely and accurate bills – for providing pre-bill usage information and billing to customers; for processing their payments; and for performing payment collections. In addition, it handles customer inquiries about bills, provides billing inquiry status, and is responsible for resolving billing problems to the customer's satisfaction in a timely manner. This process grouping also supports prepayment for services. The key functionalities provided by these applications are · To ensure that enterprise revenue is billed and invoices delivered appropriately to customers. · To manage customers’ billing accounts, process their payments, perform payment collections, and monitor the status of the account balance. · To ensure the timely and effective fulfillment of all customer bill inquiries and complaints. · Collect the usage records from mediation and ensure appropriate rating and discounting of all usage and pricing. · Support revenue sharing; split charging where usage is guided to an account different from the service consumer. · Support prepaid and post-paid rating. · Send notification on approach / exceeding the usage thresholds as enforced by the subscribed offer, and / or as setup by the customer. · Support prepaid, post paid, and hybrid (where some services are prepaid and the rest of the services post paid) customers and conversion from post paid to prepaid, and vice versa. · Support different billing function requirements like charge prorating, promotion, discount, adjustment, waiver, write-off, account receivable, GL Interface, late payment fee, credit control, dunning, account or service suspension, re-activation, expiry, termination, contract violation penalty, etc. · Initiate direct debit to collect payment against an invoice outstanding. · Send notification to Middleware on different events; for example, payment receipt, pre-suspension, threshold exceed, etc. Billing systems typically get usage data from mediation systems for rating and billing. They get provisioning requests from order management systems and inquiries from CRM systems. Convergent and real-time billing systems can directly get usage details from network elements. 3. Mediation Mediation systems transform/translate the Raw or Native Usage Data Records into a general format that is acceptable to billing for their rating purposes. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Mediation system in the end-to-end solution. · Collect Usage Data Records from different data sources – like network elements, routers, servers – via different protocol and interfaces. · Process Usage Data Records – Mediation will process Usage Data Records as per the source format. · Validate Usage Data Records from each source. · Segregates Usage Data Records coming from each source to multiple, based on the segregation requirement of end Application. · Aggregates Usage Data Records based on the aggregation rule if any from different sources. · Consolidates multiple Usage Data Records from each source. · Delivers formatted Usage Data Records to different end application like Billing, Interconnect, Fraud Management, etc. · Generates audit trail for incoming Usage Data Records and keeps track of all the Usage Data Records at various stages of mediation process. · Checks duplicate Usage Data Records across files for a given time window. 4. Fulfillment This area is responsible for providing customers with their requested products in a timely and correct manner. It translates the customer's business or personal need into a solution that can be delivered using the specific products in the enterprise's portfolio. This process informs the customers of the status of their purchase order, and ensures completion on time, as well as ensuring a delighted customer. These processes are responsible for accepting and issuing orders. They deal with pre-order feasibility determination, credit authorization, order issuance, order status and tracking, customer update on customer order activities, and customer notification on order completion. Order management and provisioning applications fall into this category. The key functionalities provided by these applications are · Issuing new customer orders, modifying open customer orders, or canceling open customer orders; · Verifying whether specific non-standard offerings sought by customers are feasible and supportable; · Checking the credit worthiness of customers as part of the customer order process; · Testing the completed offering to ensure it is working correctly; · Updating of the Customer Inventory Database to reflect that the specific product offering has been allocated, modified, or cancelled; · Assigning and tracking customer provisioning activities; · Managing customer provisioning jeopardy conditions; and · Reporting progress on customer orders and other processes to customer. These applications typically get orders from CRM systems. They interact with network elements and billing systems for fulfillment of orders. 5. Enterprise Management This process area includes those processes that manage enterprise-wide activities and needs, or have application within the enterprise as a whole. They encompass all business management processes that · Are necessary to support the whole of the enterprise, including processes for financial management, legal management, regulatory management, process, cost, and quality management, etc.; · Are responsible for setting corporate policies, strategies, and directions, and for providing guidelines and targets for the whole of the business, including strategy development and planning for areas, such as Enterprise Architecture, that are integral to the direction and development of the business; · Occur throughout the enterprise, including processes for project management, performance assessments, cost assessments, etc. (i) Enterprise Risk Management: Enterprise Risk Management focuses on assuring that risks and threats to the enterprise value and/or reputation are identified, and appropriate controls are in place to minimize or eliminate the identified risks. The identified risks may be physical or logical/virtual. Successful risk management ensures that the enterprise can support its mission critical operations, processes, applications, and communications in the face of serious incidents such as security threats/violations and fraud attempts. Two key areas covered in Risk Management by telecom operators are: · Revenue Assurance: Revenue assurance system will be responsible for identifying revenue loss scenarios across components/systems, and will help in rectifying the problems. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Revenue Assurance system in the end-to-end solution. o Identify all usage information dropped when networks are being upgraded. o Interconnect bill verification. o Identify where services are routinely provisioned but never billed. o Identify poor sales policies that are intensifying collections problems. o Find leakage where usage is sent to error bucket and never billed for. o Find leakage where field service, CRM, and network build-out are not optimized. · Fraud Management: Involves collecting data from different systems to identify abnormalities in traffic patterns, usage patterns, and subscription patterns to report suspicious activity that might suggest fraudulent usage of resources, resulting in revenue losses to the operator. The key roles and responsibilities of the system component are as follows: o Fraud management system will capture and monitor high usage (over a certain threshold) in terms of duration, value, and number of calls for each subscriber. The threshold for each subscriber is decided by the system and fixed automatically. o Fraud management will be able to detect the unauthorized access to services for certain subscribers. These subscribers may have been provided unauthorized services by employees. The component will raise the alert to the operator the very first time of such illegal calls or calls which are not billed. o The solution will be to have an alarm management system that will deliver alarms to the operator/provider whenever it detects a fraud, thus minimizing fraud by catching it the first time it occurs. o The Fraud Management system will be capable of interfacing with switches, mediation systems, and billing systems (ii) Knowledge Management This process focuses on knowledge management, technology research within the enterprise, and the evaluation of potential technology acquisitions. Key responsibilities of knowledge base management are to · Maintain knowledge base – Creation and updating of knowledge base on ongoing basis. · Search knowledge base – Search of knowledge base on keywords or category browse · Maintain metadata – Management of metadata on knowledge base to ensure effective management and search. · Run report generator. · Provide content – Add content to the knowledge base, e.g., user guides, operational manual, etc. (iii) Document Management It focuses on maintaining a repository of all electronic documents or images of paper documents relevant to the enterprise using a system. (iv) Data Management It manages data as a valuable resource for any enterprise. For telecom enterprises, the typical areas covered are Master Data Management, Data Warehousing, and Business Intelligence. It is also responsible for data governance, security, quality, and database management. Key responsibilities of Data Management are · Using ETL, extract the data from CRM, Billing, web content, ERP, campaign management, financial, network operations, asset management info, customer contact data, customer measures, benchmarks, process data, e.g., process inputs, outputs, and measures, into Enterprise Data Warehouse. · Management of data traceability with source, data related business rules/decisions, data quality, data cleansing data reconciliation, competitors data – storage for all the enterprise data (customer profiles, products, offers, revenues, etc.) · Get online update through night time replication or physical backup process at regular frequency. · Provide the data access to business intelligence and other systems for their analysis, report generation, and use. (v) Business Intelligence It uses the Enterprise Data to provide the various analysis and reports that contain prospects and analytics for customer retention, acquisition of new customers due to the offers, and SLAs. It will generate right and optimized plans – bolt-ons for the customers. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Business Intelligence system at the Enterprise Level: · It will do Pattern analysis and reports problem. · It will do Data Analysis – Statistical analysis, data profiling, affinity analysis of data, customer segment wise usage patterns on offers, products, service and revenue generation against services and customer segments. · It will do Performance (business, system, and forecast) analysis, churn propensity, response time, and SLAs analysis. · It will support for online and offline analysis, and report drill down capability. · It will collect, store, and report various SLA data. · It will provide the necessary intelligence for marketing and working on campaigns, etc., with cost benefit analysis and predictions. It will advise on customer promotions with additional services based on loyalty and credit history of customer · It will Interface with Enterprise Data Management system for data to run reports and analysis tasks. It will interface with the campaign schedules, based on historical success evidence. (vi) Stakeholder and External Relations Management It manages the enterprise's relationship with stakeholders and outside entities. Stakeholders include shareholders, employee organizations, etc. Outside entities include regulators, local community, and unions. Some of the processes within this grouping are Shareholder Relations, External Affairs, Labor Relations, and Public Relations. (vii) Enterprise Resource Planning It is used to manage internal and external resources, including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resources. Its purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the enterprise and manage the connections to outside stakeholders. ERP systems consolidate all business operations into a uniform and enterprise wide system environment. The key roles and responsibilities for Enterprise System are given below: · It will handle responsibilities such as core accounting, financial, and management reporting. · It will interface with CRM for capturing customer account and details. · It will interface with billing to capture the billing revenue and other financial data. · It will be responsible for executing the dunning process. Billing will send the required feed to ERP for execution of dunning. · It will interface with the CRM and Billing through batch interfaces. Enterprise management systems are like horizontals in the enterprise and typically interact with all major telecom systems. E.g., an ERP system interacts with CRM, Fulfillment, and Billing systems for different kinds of data exchanges. 6. External Interfaces/Touch Points The typical external parties are customers, suppliers/partners, employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders. External interactions from/to a Service Provider to other parties can be achieved by a variety of mechanisms, including: · Exchange of emails or faxes · Call Centers · Web Portals · Business-to-Business (B2B) automated transactions These applications provide an Internet technology driven interface to external parties to undertake a variety of business functions directly for themselves. These can provide fully or partially automated service to external parties through various touch points. Typical characteristics of these touch points are · Pre-integrated self-service system, including stand-alone web framework or integration front end with a portal engine · Self services layer exposing atomic web services/APIs for reuse by multiple systems across the architectural environment · Portlets driven connectivity exposing data and services interoperability through a portal engine or web application These touch points mostly interact with the CRM systems for requests, inquiries, and responses. 7. Middleware The component will be primarily responsible for integrating the different systems components under a common platform. It should provide a Standards-Based Platform for building Service Oriented Architecture and Composite Applications. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Middleware component in the end-to-end solution. · As an integration framework, covering to and fro interfaces · Provide a web service framework with service registry. · Support SOA framework with SOA service registry. · Each of the interfaces from / to Middleware to other components would handle data transformation, translation, and mapping of data points. · Receive data from the caller / activate and/or forward the data to the recipient system in XML format. · Use standard XML for data exchange. · Provide the response back to the service/call initiator. · Provide a tracking until the response completion. · Keep a store transitional data against each call/transaction. · Interface through Middleware to get any information that is possible and allowed from the existing systems to enterprise systems; e.g., customer profile and customer history, etc. · Provide the data in a common unified format to the SOA calls across systems, and follow the Enterprise Architecture directive. · Provide an audit trail for all transactions being handled by the component. 8. Network Elements The term Network Element means a facility or equipment used in the provision of a telecommunications service. Such terms also includes features, functions, and capabilities that are provided by means of such facility or equipment, including subscriber numbers, databases, signaling systems, and information sufficient for billing and collection or used in the transmission, routing, or other provision of a telecommunications service. Typical network elements in a GSM network are Home Location Register (HLR), Intelligent Network (IN), Mobile Switching Center (MSC), SMS Center (SMSC), and network elements for other value added services like Push-to-talk (PTT), Ring Back Tone (RBT), etc. Network elements are invoked when subscribers use their telecom devices for any kind of usage. These elements generate usage data and pass it on to downstream systems like mediation and billing system for rating and billing. They also integrate with provisioning systems for order/service fulfillment. 9. 3rd Party Applications 3rd Party systems are applications like content providers, payment gateways, point of sale terminals, and databases/applications maintained by the Government. Depending on applicability and the type of functionality provided by 3rd party applications, the integration with different telecom systems like CRM, provisioning, and billing will be done. 10. Service Delivery Platform A service delivery platform (SDP) provides the architecture for the rapid deployment, provisioning, execution, management, and billing of value added telecom services. SDPs are based on the concept of SOA and layered architecture. They support the delivery of voice, data services, and content in network and device-independent fashion. They allow application developers to aggregate network capabilities, services, and sources of content. SDPs typically contain layers for web services exposure, service application development, and network abstraction. SOA Reference Architecture SOA concept is based on the principle of developing reusable business service and building applications by composing those services, instead of building monolithic applications in silos. It’s about bridging the gap between business and IT through a set of business-aligned IT services, using a set of design principles, patterns, and techniques. In an SOA, resources are made available to participants in a value net, enterprise, line of business (typically spanning multiple applications within an enterprise or across multiple enterprises). It consists of a set of business-aligned IT services that collectively fulfill an organization’s business processes and goals. We can choreograph these services into composite applications and invoke them through standard protocols. SOA, apart from agility and reusability, enables: · The business to specify processes as orchestrations of reusable services · Technology agnostic business design, with technology hidden behind service interface · A contractual-like interaction between business and IT, based on service SLAs · Accountability and governance, better aligned to business services · Applications interconnections untangling by allowing access only through service interfaces, reducing the daunting side effects of change · Reduced pressure to replace legacy and extended lifetime for legacy applications, through encapsulation in services · A Cloud Computing paradigm, using web services technologies, that makes possible service outsourcing on an on-demand, utility-like, pay-per-usage basis The following section represents the Reference Architecture of logical view for the Telecom Solution. The new custom built application needs to align with this logical architecture in the long run to achieve EA benefits. Packaged implementation applications, such as ERP billing applications, need to expose their functions as service providers (as other applications consume) and interact with other applications as service consumers. COT applications need to expose services through wrappers such as adapters to utilize existing resources and at the same time achieve Enterprise Architecture goal and objectives. The following are the various layers for Enterprise level deployment of SOA. This diagram captures the abstract view of Enterprise SOA layers and important components of each layer. Layered architecture means decomposition of services such that most interactions occur between adjacent layers. However, there is no strict rule that top layers should not directly communicate with bottom layers. The diagram below represents the important logical pieces that would result from overall SOA transformation. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 3. Enterprise SOA Reference Architecture 1. Operational System Layer: This layer consists of all packaged applications like CRM, ERP, custom built applications, COTS based applications like Billing, Revenue Management, Fulfilment, and the Enterprise databases that are essential and contribute directly or indirectly to the Enterprise OSS/BSS Transformation. ERP holds the data of Asset Lifecycle Management, Supply Chain, and Advanced Procurement and Human Capital Management, etc. CRM holds the data related to Order, Sales, and Marketing, Customer Care, Partner Relationship Management, Loyalty, etc. Content Management handles Enterprise Search and Query. Billing application consists of the following components: · Collections Management, Customer Billing Management, Invoices, Real-Time Rating, Discounting, and Applying of Charges · Enterprise databases will hold both the application and service data, whether structured or unstructured. MDM - Master data majorly consists of Customer, Order, Product, and Service Data. 2. Enterprise Component Layer: This layer consists of the Application Services and Common Services that are responsible for realizing the functionality and maintaining the QoS of the exposed services. This layer uses container-based technologies such as application servers to implement the components, workload management, high availability, and load balancing. Application Services: This Service Layer enables application, technology, and database abstraction so that the complex accessing logic is hidden from the other service layers. This is a basic service layer, which exposes application functionalities and data as reusable services. The three types of the Application access services are: · Application Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application level functionalities as a reusable service between BSS to BSS and BSS to OSS integration. This layer is enabled using disparate technology such as Web Service, Integration Servers, and Adaptors, etc. · Data Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application data services as a reusable reference data service. This is done via direct interaction with application data. and provides the federated query. · Network Access Service: This Service Layer exposes provisioning layer as a reusable service from OSS to OSS integration. This integration service emphasizes the need for high performance, stateless process flows, and distributed design. Common Services encompasses management of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data such as information services, portal services, interaction services, infrastructure services, and security services, etc. 3. Integration Layer: This consists of service infrastructure components like service bus, service gateway for partner integration, service registry, service repository, and BPEL processor. Service bus will carry the service invocation payloads/messages between consumers and providers. The other important functions expected from it are itinerary based routing, distributed caching of routing information, transformations, and all qualities of service for messaging-like reliability, scalability, and availability, etc. Service registry will hold all contracts (wsdl) of services, and it helps developers to locate or discover service during design time or runtime. • BPEL processor would be useful in orchestrating the services to compose a complex business scenario or process. • Workflow and business rules management are also required to support manual triggering of certain activities within business process. based on the rules setup and also the state machine information. Application, data, and service mediation layer typically forms the overall composite application development framework or SOA Framework. 4. Business Process Layer: These are typically the intermediate services layer and represent Shared Business Process Services. At Enterprise Level, these services are from Customer Management, Order Management, Billing, Finance, and Asset Management application domains. 5. Access Layer: This layer consists of portals for Enterprise and provides a single view of Enterprise information management and dashboard services. 6. Channel Layer: This consists of various devices; applications that form part of extended enterprise; browsers through which users access the applications. 7. Client Layer: This designates the different types of users accessing the enterprise applications. The type of user typically would be an important factor in determining the level of access to applications. 8. Vertical pieces like management, monitoring, security, and development cut across all horizontal layers Management and monitoring involves all aspects of SOA-like services, SLAs, and other QoS lifecycle processes for both applications and services surrounding SOA governance. 9. EA Governance, Reference Architecture, Roadmap, Principles, and Best Practices: EA Governance is important in terms of providing the overall direction to SOA implementation within the enterprise. This involves board-level involvement, in addition to business and IT executives. At a high level, this involves managing the SOA projects implementation, managing SOA infrastructure, and controlling the entire effort through all fine-tuned IT processes in accordance with COBIT (Control Objectives for Information Technology). Devising tools and techniques to promote reuse culture, and the SOA way of doing things needs competency centers to be established in addition to training the workforce to take up new roles that are suited to SOA journey. Conclusions Reference Architectures can serve as the basis for disparate architecture efforts throughout the organization, even if they use different tools and technologies. Reference architectures provide best practices and approaches in the independent way a vendor deals with technology and standards. Reference Architectures model the abstract architectural elements for an enterprise independent of the technologies, protocols, and products that are used to implement an SOA. Telecom enterprises today are facing significant business and technology challenges due to growing competition, a multitude of services, and convergence. Adopting architectural best practices could go a long way in meeting these challenges. The use of SOA-based architecture for communication to each of the external systems like Billing, CRM, etc., in OSS/BSS system has made the architecture very loosely coupled, with greater flexibility. Any change in the external systems would be absorbed at the Integration Layer without affecting the rest of the ecosystem. The use of a Business Process Management (BPM) tool makes the management and maintenance of the business processes easy, with better performance in terms of lead time, quality, and cost. Since the Architecture is based on standards, it will lower the cost of deploying and managing OSS/BSS applications over their lifecycles.

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Agile Development

- by James Oloo Onyango

Alot of literature has and is being written about agile developement and its surrounding philosophies. In my quest to find the best way to express the importance of agile methodologies, i have found Robert C. Martin's "A Satire Of Two Companies" to be both the most concise and thorough! Enjoy the read! Rufus Inc Project Kick Off Your name is Bob. The date is January 3, 2001, and your head still aches from the recent millennial revelry. You are sitting in a conference room with several managers and a group of your peers. You are a project team leader. Your boss is there, and he has brought along all of his team leaders. His boss called the meeting. "We have a new project to develop," says your boss's boss. Call him BB. The points in his hair are so long that they scrape the ceiling. Your boss's points are just starting to grow, but he eagerly awaits the day when he can leave Brylcream stains on the acoustic tiles. BB describes the essence of the new market they have identified and the product they want to develop to exploit this market. "We must have this new project up and working by fourth quarter October 1," BB demands. "Nothing is of higher priority, so we are cancelling your current project." The reaction in the room is stunned silence. Months of work are simply going to be thrown away. Slowly, a murmur of objection begins to circulate around the conference table. His points give off an evil green glow as BB meets the eyes of everyone in the room. One by one, that insidious stare reduces each attendee to quivering lumps of protoplasm. It is clear that he will brook no discussion on this matter. Once silence has been restored, BB says, "We need to begin immediately. How long will it take you to do the analysis?" You raise your hand. Your boss tries to stop you, but his spitwad misses you and you are unaware of his efforts. "Sir, we can't tell you how long the analysis will take until we have some requirements." "The requirements document won't be ready for 3 or 4 weeks," BB says, his points vibrating with frustration. "So, pretend that you have the requirements in front of you now. How long will you require for analysis?" No one breathes. Everyone looks around to see whether anyone has some idea. "If analysis goes beyond April 1, we have a problem. Can you finish the analysis by then?" Your boss visibly gathers his courage: "We'll find a way, sir!" His points grow 3 mm, and your headache increases by two Tylenol. "Good." BB smiles. "Now, how long will it take to do the design?" "Sir," you say. Your boss visibly pales. He is clearly worried that his 3 mms are at risk. "Without an analysis, it will not be possible to tell you how long design will take." BB's expression shifts beyond austere. "PRETEND you have the analysis already!" he says, while fixing you with his vacant, beady little eyes. "How long will it take you to do the design?" Two Tylenol are not going to cut it. Your boss, in a desperate attempt to save his new growth, babbles: "Well, sir, with only six months left to complete the project, design had better take no longer than 3 months." "I'm glad you agree, Smithers!" BB says, beaming. Your boss relaxes. He knows his points are secure. After a while, he starts lightly humming the Brylcream jingle. BB continues, "So, analysis will be complete by April 1, design will be complete by July 1, and that gives you 3 months to implement the project. This meeting is an example of how well our new consensus and empowerment policies are working. Now, get out there and start working. I'll expect to see TQM plans and QIT assignments on my desk by next week. Oh, and don't forget that your crossfunctional team meetings and reports will be needed for next month's quality audit." "Forget the Tylenol," you think to yourself as you return to your cubicle. "I need bourbon." Visibly excited, your boss comes over to you and says, "Gosh, what a great meeting. I think we're really going to do some world shaking with this project." You nod in agreement, too disgusted to do anything else. "Oh," your boss continues, "I almost forgot." He hands you a 30-page document. "Remember that the SEI is coming to do an evaluation next week. This is the evaluation guide. You need to read through it, memorize it, and then shred it. It tells you how to answer any questions that the SEI auditors ask you. It also tells you what parts of the building you are allowed to take them to and what parts to avoid. We are determined to be a CMM level 3 organization by June!" You and your peers start working on the analysis of the new project. This is difficult because you have no requirements. But from the 10-minute introduction given by BB on that fateful morning, you have some idea of what the product is supposed to do. Corporate process demands that you begin by creating a use case document. You and your team begin enumerating use cases and drawing oval and stick diagrams. Philosophical debates break out among the team members. There is disagreement as to whether certain use cases should be connected with <<extends>> or <<includes>> relationships. Competing models are created, but nobody knows how to evaluate them. The debate continues, effectively paralyzing progress. After a week, somebody finds the iceberg.com Web site, which recommends disposing entirely of <<extends>> and <<includes>> and replacing them with <<precedes>> and <<uses>>. The documents on this Web site, authored by Don Sengroiux, describes a method known as stalwart-analysis, which claims to be a step-by-step method for translating use cases into design diagrams. More competing use case models are created using this new scheme, but again, people can't agree on how to evaluate them. The thrashing continues. More and more, the use case meetings are driven by emotion rather than by reason. If it weren't for the fact that you don't have requirements, you'd be pretty upset by the lack of progress you are making. The requirements document arrives on February 15. And then again on February 20, 25, and every week thereafter. Each new version contradicts the previous one. Clearly, the marketing folks who are writing the requirements, empowered though they might be, are not finding consensus. At the same time, several new competing use case templates have been proposed by the various team members. Each template presents its own particularly creative way of delaying progress. The debates rage on. On March 1, Prudence Putrigence, the process proctor, succeeds in integrating all the competing use case forms and templates into a single, all-encompassing form. Just the blank form is 15 pages long. She has managed to include every field that appeared on all the competing templates. She also presents a 159- page document describing how to fill out the use case form. All current use cases must be rewritten according to the new standard. You marvel to yourself that it now requires 15 pages of fill-in-the-blank and essay questions to answer the question: What should the system do when the user presses Return? The corporate process (authored by L. E. Ott, famed author of "Holistic Analysis: A Progressive Dialectic for Software Engineers") insists that you discover all primary use cases, 87 percent of all secondary use cases, and 36.274 percent of all tertiary use cases before you can complete analysis and enter the design phase. You have no idea what a tertiary use case is. So in an attempt to meet this requirement, you try to get your use case document reviewed by the marketing department, which you hope will know what a tertiary use case is. Unfortunately, the marketing folks are too busy with sales support to talk to you. Indeed, since the project started, you have not been able to get a single meeting with marketing, which has provided a never-ending stream of changing and contradictory requirements documents. While one team has been spinning endlessly on the use case document, another team has been working out the domain model. Endless variations of UML documents are pouring out of this team. Every week, the model is reworked. The team members can't decide whether to use <<interfaces>> or <<types>> in the model. A huge disagreement has been raging on the proper syntax and application of OCL. Others on the team just got back from a 5-day class on catabolism, and have been producing incredibly detailed and arcane diagrams that nobody else can fathom. On March 27, with one week to go before analysis is to be complete, you have produced a sea of documents and diagrams but are no closer to a cogent analysis of the problem than you were on January 3. **** And then, a miracle happens. **** On Saturday, April 1, you check your e-mail from home. You see a memo from your boss to BB. It states unequivocally that you are done with the analysis! You phone your boss and complain. "How could you have told BB that we were done with the analysis?" "Have you looked at a calendar lately?" he responds. "It's April 1!" The irony of that date does not escape you. "But we have so much more to think about. So much more to analyze! We haven't even decided whether to use <<extends>> or <<precedes>>!" "Where is your evidence that you are not done?" inquires your boss, impatiently. "Whaaa . . . ." But he cuts you off. "Analysis can go on forever; it has to be stopped at some point. And since this is the date it was scheduled to stop, it has been stopped. Now, on Monday, I want you to gather up all existing analysis materials and put them into a public folder. Release that folder to Prudence so that she can log it in the CM system by Monday afternoon. Then get busy and start designing." As you hang up the phone, you begin to consider the benefits of keeping a bottle of bourbon in your bottom desk drawer. They threw a party to celebrate the on-time completion of the analysis phase. BB gave a colon-stirring speech on empowerment. And your boss, another 3 mm taller, congratulated his team on the incredible show of unity and teamwork. Finally, the CIO takes the stage to tell everyone that the SEI audit went very well and to thank everyone for studying and shredding the evaluation guides that were passed out. Level 3 now seems assured and will be awarded by June. (Scuttlebutt has it that managers at the level of BB and above are to receive significant bonuses once the SEI awards level 3.) As the weeks flow by, you and your team work on the design of the system. Of course, you find that the analysis that the design is supposedly based on is flawedno, useless; no, worse than useless. But when you tell your boss that you need to go back and work some more on the analysis to shore up its weaker sections, he simply states, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it." So, you and your team hack the design as best you can, unsure of whether the requirements have been properly analyzed. Of course, it really doesn't matter much, since the requirements document is still thrashing with weekly revisions, and the marketing department still refuses to meet with you. The design is a nightmare. Your boss recently misread a book named The Finish Line in which the author, Mark DeThomaso, blithely suggested that design documents should be taken down to code-level detail. "If we are going to be working at that level of detail," you ask, "why don't we simply write the code instead?" "Because then you wouldn't be designing, of course. And the only allowable activity in the design phase is design!" "Besides," he continues, "we have just purchased a companywide license for Dandelion! This tool enables 'Round the Horn Engineering!' You are to transfer all design diagrams into this tool. It will automatically generate our code for us! It will also keep the design diagrams in sync with the code!" Your boss hands you a brightly colored shrinkwrapped box containing the Dandelion distribution. You accept it numbly and shuffle off to your cubicle. Twelve hours, eight crashes, one disk reformatting, and eight shots of 151 later, you finally have the tool installed on your server. You consider the week your team will lose while attending Dandelion training. Then you smile and think, "Any week I'm not here is a good week." Design diagram after design diagram is created by your team. Dandelion makes it very difficult to draw these diagrams. There are dozens and dozens of deeply nested dialog boxes with funny text fields and check boxes that must all be filled in correctly. And then there's the problem of moving classes between packages. At first, these diagram are driven from the use cases. But the requirements are changing so often that the use cases rapidly become meaningless. Debates rage about whether VISITOR or DECORATOR design patterns should be used. One developer refuses to use VISITOR in any form, claiming that it's not a properly object-oriented construct. Someone refuses to use multiple inheritance, since it is the spawn of the devil. Review meetings rapidly degenerate into debates about the meaning of object orientation, the definition of analysis versus design, or when to use aggregation versus association. Midway through the design cycle, the marketing folks announce that they have rethought the focus of the system. Their new requirements document is completely restructured. They have eliminated several major feature areas and replaced them with feature areas that they anticipate customer surveys will show to be more appropriate. You tell your boss that these changes mean that you need to reanalyze and redesign much of the system. But he says, "The analysis phase is system. But he says, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it." You suggest that it might be better to create a simple prototype to show to the marketing folks and even some potential customers. But your boss says, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it." Hack, hack, hack, hack. You try to create some kind of a design document that might reflect the new requirements documents. However, the revolution of the requirements has not caused them to stop thrashing. Indeed, if anything, the wild oscillations of the requirements document have only increased in frequency and amplitude. You slog your way through them. On June 15, the Dandelion database gets corrupted. Apparently, the corruption has been progressive. Small errors in the DB accumulated over the months into bigger and bigger errors. Eventually, the CASE tool just stopped working. Of course, the slowly encroaching corruption is present on all the backups. Calls to the Dandelion technical support line go unanswered for several days. Finally, you receive a brief e-mail from Dandelion, informing you that this is a known problem and that the solution is to purchase the new version, which they promise will be ready some time next quarter, and then reenter all the diagrams by hand. **** Then, on July 1 another miracle happens! You are done with the design! Rather than go to your boss and complain, you stock your middle desk drawer with some vodka. **** They threw a party to celebrate the on-time completion of the design phase and their graduation to CMM level 3. This time, you find BB's speech so stirring that you have to use the restroom before it begins. New banners and plaques are all over your workplace. They show pictures of eagles and mountain climbers, and they talk about teamwork and empowerment. They read better after a few scotches. That reminds you that you need to clear out your file cabinet to make room for the brandy. You and your team begin to code. But you rapidly discover that the design is lacking in some significant areas. Actually, it's lacking any significance at all. You convene a design session in one of the conference rooms to try to work through some of the nastier problems. But your boss catches you at it and disbands the meeting, saying, "The design phase is over. The only allowable activity is coding. Now get back to it." **** The code generated by Dandelion is really hideous. It turns out that you and your team were using association and aggregation the wrong way, after all. All the generated code has to be edited to correct these flaws. Editing this code is extremely difficult because it has been instrumented with ugly comment blocks that have special syntax that Dandelion needs in order to keep the diagrams in sync with the code. If you accidentally alter one of these comments, the diagrams will be regenerated incorrectly. It turns out that "Round the Horn Engineering" requires an awful lot of effort. The more you try to keep the code compatible with Dandelion, the more errors Dandelion generates. In the end, you give up and decide to keep the diagrams up to date manually. A second later, you decide that there's no point in keeping the diagrams up to date at all. Besides, who has time? Your boss hires a consultant to build tools to count the number of lines of code that are being produced. He puts a big thermometer graph on the wall with the number 1,000,000 on the top. Every day, he extends the red line to show how many lines have been added. Three days after the thermometer appears on the wall, your boss stops you in the hall. "That graph isn't growing quickly enough. We need to have a million lines done by October 1." "We aren't even sh-sh-sure that the proshect will require a m-million linezh," you blather. "We have to have a million lines done by October 1," your boss reiterates. His points have grown again, and the Grecian formula he uses on them creates an aura of authority and competence. "Are you sure your comment blocks are big enough?" Then, in a flash of managerial insight, he says, "I have it! I want you to institute a new policy among the engineers. No line of code is to be longer than 20 characters. Any such line must be split into two or more preferably more. All existing code needs to be reworked to this standard. That'll get our line count up!" You decide not to tell him that this will require two unscheduled work months. You decide not to tell him anything at all. You decide that intravenous injections of pure ethanol are the only solution. You make the appropriate arrangements. Hack, hack, hack, and hack. You and your team madly code away. By August 1, your boss, frowning at the thermometer on the wall, institutes a mandatory 50-hour workweek. Hack, hack, hack, and hack. By September 1st, the thermometer is at 1.2 million lines and your boss asks you to write a report describing why you exceeded the coding budget by 20 percent. He institutes mandatory Saturdays and demands that the project be brought back down to a million lines. You start a campaign of remerging lines. Hack, hack, hack, and hack. Tempers are flaring; people are quitting; QA is raining trouble reports down on you. Customers are demanding installation and user manuals; salespeople are demanding advance demonstrations for special customers; the requirements document is still thrashing, the marketing folks are complaining that the product isn't anything like they specified, and the liquor store won't accept your credit card anymore. Something has to give. On September 15, BB calls a meeting. As he enters the room, his points are emitting clouds of steam. When he speaks, the bass overtones of his carefully manicured voice cause the pit of your stomach to roll over. "The QA manager has told me that this project has less than 50 percent of the required features implemented. He has also informed me that the system crashes all the time, yields wrong results, and is hideously slow. He has also complained that he cannot keep up with the continuous train of daily releases, each more buggy than the last!" He stops for a few seconds, visibly trying to compose himself. "The QA manager estimates that, at this rate of development, we won't be able to ship the product until December!" Actually, you think it's more like March, but you don't say anything. "December!" BB roars with such derision that people duck their heads as though he were pointing an assault rifle at them. "December is absolutely out of the question. Team leaders, I want new estimates on my desk in the morning. I am hereby mandating 65-hour work weeks until this project is complete. And it better be complete by November 1." As he leaves the conference room, he is heard to mutter: "Empowermentbah!" * * * Your boss is bald; his points are mounted on BB's wall. The fluorescent lights reflecting off his pate momentarily dazzle you. "Do you have anything to drink?" he asks. Having just finished your last bottle of Boone's Farm, you pull a bottle of Thunderbird from your bookshelf and pour it into his coffee mug. "What's it going to take to get this project done? " he asks. "We need to freeze the requirements, analyze them, design them, and then implement them," you say callously. "By November 1?" your boss exclaims incredulously. "No way! Just get back to coding the damned thing." He storms out, scratching his vacant head. A few days later, you find that your boss has been transferred to the corporate research division. Turnover has skyrocketed. Customers, informed at the last minute that their orders cannot be fulfilled on time, have begun to cancel their orders. Marketing is re-evaluating whether this product aligns with the overall goals of the company. Memos fly, heads roll, policies change, and things are, overall, pretty grim. Finally, by March, after far too many sixty-five hour weeks, a very shaky version of the software is ready. In the field, bug-discovery rates are high, and the technical support staff are at their wits' end, trying to cope with the complaints and demands of the irate customers. Nobody is happy. In April, BB decides to buy his way out of the problem by licensing a product produced by Rupert Industries and redistributing it. The customers are mollified, the marketing folks are smug, and you are laid off. Rupert Industries: Project Alpha Your name is Robert. The date is January 3, 2001. The quiet hours spent with your family this holiday have left you refreshed and ready for work. You are sitting in a conference room with your team of professionals. The manager of the division called the meeting. "We have some ideas for a new project," says the division manager. Call him Russ. He is a high-strung British chap with more energy than a fusion reactor. He is ambitious and driven but understands the value of a team. Russ describes the essence of the new market opportunity the company has identified and introduces you to Jane, the marketing manager, who is responsible for defining the products that will address it. Addressing you, Jane says, "We'd like to start defining our first product offering as soon as possible. When can you and your team meet with me?" You reply, "We'll be done with the current iteration of our project this Friday. We can spare a few hours for you between now and then. After that, we'll take a few people from the team and dedicate them to you. We'll begin hiring their replacements and the new people for your team immediately." "Great," says Russ, "but I want you to understand that it is critical that we have something to exhibit at the trade show coming up this July. If we can't be there with something significant, we'll lose the opportunity." "I understand," you reply. "I don't yet know what it is that you have in mind, but I'm sure we can have something by July. I just can't tell you what that something will be right now. In any case, you and Jane are going to have complete control over what we developers do, so you can rest assured that by July, you'll have the most important things that can be accomplished in that time ready to exhibit." Russ nods in satisfaction. He knows how this works. Your team has always kept him advised and allowed him to steer their development. He has the utmost confidence that your team will work on the most important things first and will produce a high-quality product. * * * "So, Robert," says Jane at their first meeting, "How does your team feel about being split up?" "We'll miss working with each other," you answer, "but some of us were getting pretty tired of that last project and are looking forward to a change. So, what are you people cooking up?" Jane beams. "You know how much trouble our customers currently have . . ." And she spends a half hour or so describing the problem and possible solution. "OK, wait a second" you respond. "I need to be clear about this." And so you and Jane talk about how this system might work. Some of her ideas aren't fully formed. You suggest possible solutions. She likes some of them. You continue discussing. During the discussion, as each new topic is addressed, Jane writes user story cards. Each card represents something that the new system has to do. The cards accumulate on the table and are spread out in front of you. Both you and Jane point at them, pick them up, and make notes on them as you discuss the stories. The cards are powerful mnemonic devices that you can use to represent complex ideas that are barely formed. At the end of the meeting, you say, "OK, I've got a general idea of what you want. I'm going to talk to the team about it. I imagine they'll want to run some experiments with various database structures and presentation formats. Next time we meet, it'll be as a group, and we'll start identifying the most important features of the system." A week later, your nascent team meets with Jane. They spread the existing user story cards out on the table and begin to get into some of the details of the system. The meeting is very dynamic. Jane presents the stories in the order of their importance. There is much discussion about each one. The developers are concerned about keeping the stories small enough to estimate and test. So they continually ask Jane to split one story into several smaller stories. Jane is concerned that each story have a clear business value and priority, so as she splits them, she makes sure that this stays true. The stories accumulate on the table. Jane writes them, but the developers make notes on them as needed. Nobody tries to capture everything that is said; the cards are not meant to capture everything but are simply reminders of the conversation. As the developers become more comfortable with the stories, they begin writing estimates on them. These estimates are crude and budgetary, but they give Jane an idea of what the story will cost. At the end of the meeting, it is clear that many more stories could be discussed. It is also clear that the most important stories have been addressed and that they represent several months worth of work. Jane closes the meeting by taking the cards with her and promising to have a proposal for the first release in the morning. * * * The next morning, you reconvene the meeting. Jane chooses five cards and places them on the table. "According to your estimates, these cards represent about one perfect team-week's worth of work. The last iteration of the previous project managed to get one perfect team-week done in 3 real weeks. If we can get these five stories done in 3 weeks, we'll be able to demonstrate them to Russ. That will make him feel very comfortable about our progress." Jane is pushing it. The sheepish look on her face lets you know that she knows it too. You reply, "Jane, this is a new team, working on a new project. It's a bit presumptuous to expect that our velocity will be the same as the previous team's. However, I met with the team yesterday afternoon, and we all agreed that our initial velocity should, in fact, be set to one perfectweek for every 3 real-weeks. So you've lucked out on this one." "Just remember," you continue, "that the story estimates and the story velocity are very tentative at this point. We'll learn more when we plan the iteration and even more when we implement it." Jane looks over her glasses at you as if to say "Who's the boss around here, anyway?" and then smiles and says, "Yeah, don't worry. I know the drill by now."Jane then puts 15 more cards on the table. She says, "If we can get all these cards done by the end of March, we can turn the system over to our beta test customers. And we'll get good feedback from them." You reply, "OK, so we've got our first iteration defined, and we have the stories for the next three iterations after that. These four iterations will make our first release." "So," says Jane, can you really do these five stories in the next 3 weeks?" "I don't know for sure, Jane," you reply. "Let's break them down into tasks and see what we get." So Jane, you, and your team spend the next several hours taking each of the five stories that Jane chose for the first iteration and breaking them down into small tasks. The developers quickly realize that some of the tasks can be shared between stories and that other tasks have commonalities that can probably be taken advantage of. It is clear that potential designs are popping into the developers' heads. From time to time, they form little discussion knots and scribble UML diagrams on some cards. Soon, the whiteboard is filled with the tasks that, once completed, will implement the five stories for this iteration. You start the sign-up process by saying, "OK, let's sign up for these tasks." "I'll take the initial database generation." Says Pete. "That's what I did on the last project, and this doesn't look very different. I estimate it at two of my perfect workdays." "OK, well, then, I'll take the login screen," says Joe. "Aw, darn," says Elaine, the junior member of the team, "I've never done a GUI, and kinda wanted to try that one." "Ah, the impatience of youth," Joe says sagely, with a wink in your direction. "You can assist me with it, young Jedi." To Jane: "I think it'll take me about three of my perfect workdays." One by one, the developers sign up for tasks and estimate them in terms of their own perfect workdays. Both you and Jane know that it is best to let the developers volunteer for tasks than to assign the tasks to them. You also know full well that you daren't challenge any of the developers' estimates. You know these people, and you trust them. You know that they are going to do the very best they can. The developers know that they can't sign up for more perfect workdays than they finished in the last iteration they worked on. Once each developer has filled his or her schedule for the iteration, they stop signing up for tasks. Eventually, all the developers have stopped signing up for tasks. But, of course, tasks are still left on the board. "I was worried that that might happen," you say, "OK, there's only one thing to do, Jane. We've got too much to do in this iteration. What stories or tasks can we remove?" Jane sighs. She knows that this is the only option. Working overtime at the beginning of a project is insane, and projects where she's tried it have not fared well. So Jane starts to remove the least-important functionality. "Well, we really don't need the login screen just yet. We can simply start the system in the logged-in state." "Rats!" cries Elaine. "I really wanted to do that." "Patience, grasshopper." says Joe. "Those who wait for the bees to leave the hive will not have lips too swollen to relish the honey." Elaine looks confused. Everyone looks confused. "So . . .," Jane continues, "I think we can also do away with . . ." And so, bit by bit, the list of tasks shrinks. Developers who lose a task sign up for one of the remaining ones. The negotiation is not painless. Several times, Jane exhibits obvious frustration and impatience. Once, when tensions are especially high, Elaine volunteers, "I'll work extra hard to make up some of the missing time." You are about to correct her when, fortunately, Joe looks her in the eye and says, "When once you proceed down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny." In the end, an iteration acceptable to Jane is reached. It's not what Jane wanted. Indeed, it is significantly less. But it's something the team feels that can be achieved in the next 3 weeks. And, after all, it still addresses the most important things that Jane wanted in the iteration. "So, Jane," you say when things had quieted down a bit, "when can we expect acceptance tests from you?" Jane sighs. This is the other side of the coin. For every story the development team implements, Jane must supply a suite of acceptance tests that prove that it works. And the team needs these long before the end of the iteration, since they will certainly point out differences in the way Jane and the developers imagine the system's behaviour. "I'll get you some example test scripts today," Jane promises. "I'll add to them every day after that. You'll have the entire suite by the middle of the iteration." * * * The iteration begins on Monday morning with a flurry of Class, Responsibilities, Collaborators sessions. By midmorning, all the developers have assembled into pairs and are rapidly coding away. "And now, my young apprentice," Joe says to Elaine, "you shall learn the mysteries of test-first design!" "Wow, that sounds pretty rad," Elaine replies. "How do you do it?" Joe beams. It's clear that he has been anticipating this moment. "OK, what does the code do right now?" "Huh?" replied Elaine, "It doesn't do anything at all; there is no code." "So, consider our task; can you think of something the code should do?" "Sure," Elaine said with youthful assurance, "First, it should connect to the database." "And thereupon, what must needs be required to connecteth the database?" "You sure talk weird," laughed Elaine. "I think we'd have to get the database object from some registry and call the Connect() method. "Ah, astute young wizard. Thou perceives correctly that we requireth an object within which we can cacheth the database object." "Is 'cacheth' really a word?" "It is when I say it! So, what test can we write that we know the database registry should pass?" Elaine sighs. She knows she'll just have to play along. "We should be able to create a database object and pass it to the registry in a Store() method. And then we should be able to pull it out of the registry with a Get() method and make sure it's the same object." "Oh, well said, my prepubescent sprite!" "Hay!" "So, now, let's write a test function that proves your case." "But shouldn't we write the database object and registry object first?" "Ah, you've much to learn, my young impatient one. Just write the test first." "But it won't even compile!" "Are you sure? What if it did?" "Uh . . ." "Just write the test, Elaine. Trust me." And so Joe, Elaine, and all the other developers began to code their tasks, one test case at a time. The room in which they worked was abuzz with the conversations between the pairs. The murmur was punctuated by an occasional high five when a pair managed to finish a task or a difficult test case. As development proceeded, the developers changed partners once or twice a day. Each developer got to see what all the others were doing, and so knowledge of the code spread generally throughout the team. Whenever a pair finished something significant whether a whole task or simply an important part of a task they integrated what they had with the rest of the system. Thus, the code base grew daily, and integration difficulties were minimized. The developers communicated with Jane on a daily basis. They'd go to her whenever they had a question about the functionality of the system or the interpretation of an acceptance test case. Jane, good as her word, supplied the team with a steady stream of acceptance test scripts. The team read these carefully and thereby gained a much better understanding of what Jane expected the system to do. By the beginning of the second week, there was enough functionality to demonstrate to Jane. She watched eagerly as the demonstration passed test case after test case. "This is really cool," Jane said as the demonstration finally ended. "But this doesn't seem like one-third of the tasks. Is your velocity slower than anticipated?" You grimace. You'd been waiting for a good time to mention this to Jane but now she was forcing the issue. "Yes, unfortunately, we are going more slowly than we had expected. The new application server we are using is turning out to be a pain to configure. Also, it takes forever to reboot, and we have to reboot it whenever we make even the slightest change to its configuration." Jane eyes you with suspicion. The stress of last Monday's negotiations had still not entirely dissipated. She says, "And what does this mean to our schedule? We can't slip it again, we just can't. Russ will have a fit! He'll haul us all into the woodshed and ream us some new ones." You look Jane right in the eyes. There's no pleasant way to give someone news like this. So you just blurt out, "Look, if things keep going like they're going, we're not going to be done with everything by next Friday. Now it's possible that we'll figure out a way to go faster. But, frankly, I wouldn't depend on that. You should start thinking about one or two tasks that could be removed from the iteration without ruining the demonstration for Russ. Come hell or high water, we are going to give that demonstration on Friday, and I don't think you want us to choose which tasks to omit." "Aw forchrisakes!" Jane barely manages to stifle yelling that last word as she stalks away, shaking her head. Not for the first time, you say to yourself, "Nobody ever promised me project management would be easy." You are pretty sure it won't be the last time, either. Actually, things went a bit better than you had hoped. The team did, in fact, have to drop one task from the iteration, but Jane had chosen wisely, and the demonstration for Russ went without a hitch. Russ was not impressed with the progress, but neither was he dismayed. He simply said, "This is pretty good. But remember, we have to be able to demonstrate this system at the trade show in July, and at this rate, it doesn't look like you'll have all that much to show." Jane, whose attitude had improved dramatically with the completion of the iteration, responded to Russ by saying, "Russ, this team is working hard, and well. When July comes around, I am confident that we'll have something significant to demonstrate. It won't be everything, and some of it may be smoke and mirrors, but we'll have something." Painful though the last iteration was, it had calibrated your velocity numbers. The next iteration went much better. Not because your team got more done than in the last iteration but simply because the team didn't have to remove any tasks or stories in the middle of the iteration. By the start of the fourth iteration, a natural rhythm has been established. Jane, you, and the team know exactly what to expect from one another. The team is running hard, but the pace is sustainable. You are confident that the team can keep up this pace for a year or more. The number of surprises in the schedule diminishes to near zero; however, the number of surprises in the requirements does not. Jane and Russ frequently look over the growing system and make recommendations or changes to the existing functionality. But all parties realize that these changes take time and must be scheduled. So the changes do not cause anyone's expectations to be violated. In March, there is a major demonstration of the system to the board of directors. The system is very limited and is not yet in a form good enough to take to the trade show, but progress is steady, and the board is reasonably impressed. The second release goes even more smoothly than the first. By now, the team has figured out a way to automate Jane's acceptance test scripts. The team has also refactored the design of the system to the point that it is really easy to add new features and change old ones. The second release was done by the end of June and was taken to the trade show. It had less in it than Jane and Russ would have liked, but it did demonstrate the most important features of the system. Although customers at the trade show noticed that certain features were missing, they were very impressed overall. You, Russ, and Jane all returned from the trade show with smiles on your faces. You all felt as though this project was a winner. Indeed, many months later, you are contacted by Rufus Inc. That company had been working on a system like this for its internal operations. Rufus has canceled the development of that system after a death-march project and is negotiating to license your technology for its environment. Indeed, things are looking up!

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