storing information - Page 117

MS Excel: Can I link images using a relative path?

- by Port Islander 2009

I am working on an MS Excel document that contains a lot of (around 200) images. They are currently saved within the document, so the file becomes huge and working gets very slow. Linking the pictures without saving them works very well - I now have the Excel document and a folder "pictures" next to it that contains all my image files. However, when I move the document and the folder to a new location, all my pictures disappear. This seems to be because Excel saves the link information as absolute paths. (Update: Actually, according to this thread, Excel stores the link information as relative paths as well. Now I really don't know why my links break down..) Is there a convenient way to save them as relative paths or have Excel automatically update the path information? Update: It's important that the images get displayed on the sheet and can be printed. I am working with Microsoft Excel for Mac 2008 and 2011. I really appreciate your help.

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How can I enable encryption for SQLite3 in PHP5.3?

- by meouw

The php manual for SQLite3::open has this information: public bool SQLite3::open ( string $filename [, int $flags = SQLITE3_OPEN_READWRITE | SQLITE3_OPEN_CREATE [, string $encryption_key ]] ) Opens an SQLite 3 Database. If the build includes encryption, then it will attempt to use the key. I would like to use encrypted SQLite databases for a project I'm working on, but I can't find any information anywhere on how to build the SQLite module including encryption. Does anyone know how to do this? Perhaps it's so obvious no one has published any information or perhaps only commercial modules are available. I've noticed that the developers of SQLite offer a proprietary encryption extension. Is this the only way to go?

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Is it okay to just add a page or two PHP page to add some functionality to a Drupal site?

- by Zaemz

I'm not familiar with Drupal, really. I can dig around the admin interface and navigate the directories and find the files that I need to just fine as well. What I'm really not familiar with is adding modules or extending modules. The site currently takes an order and sets up recurring payments through Ubercart and uses Authorize.net as a gateway. Right now, when a payment fails, a single e-mail gets sent out to the admin. We'd like to extend it to send an e-mail to the user and let them change their payment information through another page on the site. Authorize has a service called Silent Post URL that basically just posts a carbon copy in XML to whatever URL you give it. We'd like to accept that XML, deserialize it, parse the data, send a notice to the user and give them the page for updating their information. So, I guess it'll be two PHP pages. One for the XML API call from Authorize.net, and then one for the page for the users' to update their payment information. Could I just create two simple pages each handling their own tasks, or should I check out properly extending a module? If it's appropriate for me to write up the pages and not have to hook them into the module, what would be the best way to handle setting up what needs to get done? (The most experience I've had with extending a PHP site has been hacking away at someone else' poorly constructed, custom framework, so if anyone has any good resources perhaps on PHP best practices that they could share through a PM or a comment, I'd appreciate It) (Also, I'm still getting the hang of Stack Exchange, so if this isn't appropriate please let me know. I'll delete it.)

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Tool for monitoring windows processes and folders

- by Stoimen

I am looking for a tool that tracks and keeps information for some processes on windows how long they've been running, when they have had started/closed. Also it would be nice to monitor folders if some data have been added/deleted to them. This is basically what I need. I tried Process Monitor but it gave me too much information. Just for creating a new folder it lists tons of useless information. I just need the time of creation... I tried and Process Explorer but it doesn't fit my needs either because it shows only the current state of my PC but I need to run some processes for couple of hours and after that to check what went wrong but unfortunately no records are saved.

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Requiring a specific order of compilaiton

- by Aber Kled

When designing a compiled programming language, is it a bad idea to require a specific order of compilation of separate units, according to their dependencies? To illustrate what I mean, consider C. C is the opposite of what I'm suggesting. There are multiple .c files, that can all depend on each other, but all of these separate units can be compiled on their own, in no particular order - only to be linked together into a final executable later. This is mostly due to header files. They enable separate units to share information with each other, and thus the units are able to be compiled independently. If a language were to dispose of header files, and only keep source and object files, then the only option would be to actually include the unit's meta-information in the unit's object file. However, this would mean that if the unit A depends on the unit B, then the unit B would need to be compiled before unit A, so unit A could "import" the unit B's object file, thus obtaining the information required for its compilation. Am I missing something here? Is this really the only way to go about removing header files in compiled languages?

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Getting a Temporary Table Returned from from Dynamic SQL in SQL Server 05, and parsing

- by gloomy.penguin

So I was requested to make a few things.... (it is Monday morning and for some reason this whole thing is turning out to be really hard for me to explain so I am just going to try and post a lot of my code; sorry) First, I needed a table: CREATE TABLE TICKET_INFORMATION ( TICKET_INFO_ID INT IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, TICKET_TYPE INT, TARGET_ID INT, TARGET_NAME VARCHAR(100), INFORMATION VARCHAR(MAX), TIME_STAMP DATETIME DEFAULT GETUTCDATE() ) -- insert this row for testing... INSERT INTO TICKET_INFORMATION (TICKET_TYPE, TARGET_ID, TARGET_NAME, INFORMATION) VALUES (1,1,'RT_ID','IF_ID,int=1&IF_ID,int=2&OTHER,varchar(10)=val,ue3&OTHER,varchar(10)=val,ue4') The Information column holds data that needs to be parsed into a table. This is where I am having problems. In the resulting table, Target_Name needs to become a column that holds Target_ID as a value for each row in the resulting table. The string that needs to be parsed is in this format: @var_name1,@var_datatype1=@var_value1&@var_name2,@var_datatype2=@var_value2&@var_name3,@var_datatype3=@var_value3 And what I ultimately need as a result (in a table or table variable): RT_ID IF_ID OTHER 1 1 val,ue3 1 2 val,ue3 1 1 val,ue4 1 2 val,ue4 And I need to be able to join on the result. Initially, I was just going to make this a function that returns a table variable but for some reason I can't figure out how to get it into an actual table variable. Whatever parses the string needs to be able to be used directly in queries so I don't think a stored procedure is really the right thing to be using. This is the code that parses the Information string... it returns in a temporary table. -- create/empty temp table for var_name, var_type and var_value fields if OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#temp') is not null drop table #temp create table #temp (row int identity(1,1), var_name varchar(max), var_type varchar(30), var_value varchar(max)) -- just setting stuff up declare @target_name varchar(max), @target_id varchar(max), @info varchar(max) set @target_name = (select target_name from ticket_information where ticket_info_id = 1) set @target_id = (select target_id from ticket_information where ticket_info_id = 1) set @info = (select information from ticket_information where ticket_info_id = 1) --print @info -- some of these variables are re-used later declare @col_type varchar(20), @query varchar(max), @select as varchar(max) set @query = 'select ' + @target_id + ' as ' + @target_name + ' into #target; ' set @select = 'select * into ##global_temp from #target' declare @var_name varchar(100), @var_type varchar(100), @var_value varchar(100) declare @comma_pos int, @equal_pos int, @amp_pos int set @comma_pos = 1 set @equal_pos = 1 set @amp_pos = 0 -- while loop to parse the string into a table while @amp_pos < len(@info) begin -- get new comma position set @comma_pos = charindex(',',@info,@amp_pos+1) -- get new equal position set @equal_pos = charindex('=',@info,@amp_pos+1) -- set stuff that is going into the table set @var_name = substring(@info,@amp_pos+1,@comma_pos-@amp_pos-1) set @var_type = substring(@info,@comma_pos+1,@equal_pos-@comma_pos-1) -- get new ampersand position set @amp_pos = charindex('&',@info,@amp_pos+1) if @amp_pos=0 or @amp_pos<@equal_pos set @amp_pos = len(@info)+1 -- set last variable for insert into table set @var_value = substring(@info,@equal_pos+1,@amp_pos-@equal_pos-1) -- put stuff into the temp table insert into #temp (var_name, var_type, var_value) values (@var_name, @var_type, @var_value) -- is this a new field? if ((select count(*) from #temp where var_name = (@var_name)) = 1) begin set @query = @query + ' create table #' + @var_name + '_temp (' + @var_name + ' ' + @var_type + '); ' set @select = @select + ', #' + @var_name + '_temp ' end set @query = @query + ' insert into #' + @var_name + '_temp values (''' + @var_value + '''); ' end if OBJECT_ID('tempdb..##global_temp') is not null drop table ##global_temp exec (@query + @select) --select @query --select @select select * from ##global_temp Okay. So, the result I want and need is now in ##global_temp. How do I put all of that into something that can be returned from a function (or something)? Or can I get something more useful returned from the exec statement? In the end, the results of the parsed string need to be in a table that can be joined on and used... Ideally this would have been a view but I guess it can't with all the processing that needs to be done on that information string. Ideas? Thanks!

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Retreiving multiple rows from a loop-created form... Stuck.

- by hangston

Hi All, Let me start by saying that I'm new to PHP, but I'm here to learn and would really appreciate your help. I use the following code to pull in data and create a form. This creates up to 40 lines for a user to fill out. Each line consists of the same information: Description, Amount, and Frequency. The remainder of the information needed is generated by the database. (See hidden fields) <?php $row = 0; do { $optid = $row_options['option_id']; echo "<tr>\n\t<td>" . htmlentities($row_options['option']) . "</td>\n"; echo "\t<td>" . "<input name='description' type='text' size='40' maxlength='120'/>" . "</td>\n"; echo "\t<td>" . "<input name='option_id' type='hidden' value='$optid' />$<input name='amount' type='text' size='10' maxlength='7'/>" . "</td>\n"; echo "\t<td>" . "<select name='assisted_frequency'> <option value='Monthly'>Monthly</option> <option value='Weekly'>Weekly</option> <option value='Daily'>Daily</option> <option value='Hourly'>Hourly</option> <option value='One-Time'>One-Time</option> </select>" . "</td>\n</tr>\n"; $array[$row] = array( $arraydesc[$row] = $_POST['description'], $arrayamto[$row] = $_POST['amount'], $arrayoptid[$row] = $optid, $arrayfreq[$row] = $_POST['frequency'], ); $row ++; } while ($row_options = mysql_fetch_assoc($options)); $counter = $row - 1; ?> I'm having troubles retrieving the information that the user inputs. My intent is to loop through each row after the user has input their information, then upload the mix of my database information and the user's information into another database. For example, the user would see, albeit prettier: form1 Option 1: description [input box] amount [input box] frequency [option box] Option 2: description [input box] amount [input box] frequency [option box] Option 3: description [input box] amount [input box] frequency [option box] Option 4: description [input box] amount [input box] frequency [option box] submit Upon submitting the form above, I'm using a query similar to the following to input the data into the database: for($row=0; $row<=$counter; $row++){ $insertSQL2 = sprintf("INSERT INTO table (option_id, amount, description, frequency) VALUES (%s, %s, %s, %s)", GetSQLValueString($arrayoptid[$row], "int"), GetSQLValueString($arrayamto[$row], "int"), GetSQLValueString($arraydesc[$row], "text"), GetSQLValueString($arrayfreq[$row], "text")); // code to submit query } I've tried for, foreach, arrays (what feels like the everything I know) to post each row (row by row) into the database. I either get just the last row of data, or no data at all. I also worry that the [$row] technique is adding characters to my data. What is the best way to retrieve each row of the user's inputs, then upload this data (row by row) into the database? Also, I would really appreciate your suggestions for improving my coding technique and the approach I'm taking. Thank you, Hangston

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Retrieving multiple rows from a loop-created form... Stuck.

- by hangston

Let me start by saying that I'm new to PHP, but I'm here to learn and would really appreciate your help. I use the following code to pull in data and create a form. This creates up to 40 lines for a user to fill out. Each line consists of the same information: Description, Amount, and Frequency. The remainder of the information needed is generated by the database. (See hidden fields) <?php $row = 0; do { $optid = $row_options['option_id']; echo "<tr>\n\t<td>" . htmlentities($row_options['option']) . "</td>\n"; echo "\t<td>" . "<input name='description' type='text' size='40' maxlength='120'/>" . "</td>\n"; echo "\t<td>" . "<input name='option_id' type='hidden' value='$optid' />$<input name='amount' type='text' size='10' maxlength='7'/>" . "</td>\n"; echo "\t<td>" . "<select name='assisted_frequency'> <option value='Monthly'>Monthly</option> <option value='Weekly'>Weekly</option> <option value='Daily'>Daily</option> <option value='Hourly'>Hourly</option> <option value='One-Time'>One-Time</option> </select>" . "</td>\n</tr>\n"; $array[$row] = array( $arraydesc[$row] = $_POST['description'], $arrayamto[$row] = $_POST['amount'], $arrayoptid[$row] = $optid, $arrayfreq[$row] = $_POST['frequency'], ); $row ++; } while ($row_options = mysql_fetch_assoc($options)); $counter = $row - 1; ?> I'm having troubles retrieving the information that the user inputs. My intent is to loop through each row after the user has input their information, then upload the mix of my database information and the user's information into another database. For example, the user would see, albeit prettier: form1 Option 1: description [input box] amount [input box] frequency [option box] Option 2: description [input box] amount [input box] frequency [option box] Option 3: description [input box] amount [input box] frequency [option box] Option 4: description [input box] amount [input box] frequency [option box] submit Upon submitting the form above, I'm using a query similar to the following to input the data into the database: for($row=0; $row<=$counter; $row++){ $insertSQL2 = sprintf("INSERT INTO table (option_id, amount, description, frequency) VALUES (%s, %s, %s, %s)", GetSQLValueString($arrayoptid[$row], "int"), GetSQLValueString($arrayamto[$row], "int"), GetSQLValueString($arraydesc[$row], "text"), GetSQLValueString($arrayfreq[$row], "text")); // code to submit query } I've tried for, foreach, arrays (what feels like the everything I know) to post each row (row by row) into the database. I either get just the last row of data, or no data at all. I also worry that the [$row] technique is adding characters to my data. What is the best way to retrieve each row of the user's inputs, then upload this data (row by row) into the database? Also, I would really appreciate your suggestions for improving my coding technique and the approach I'm taking.

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Scripting with the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 Appliance

- by Geoff Ongley

The Sun ZFS Storage 7000 appliance has a user friendly and easy to understand graphical web based interface we call the "BUI" or "Browser User Interface".This interface is very useful for many tasks, but in some cases a script (or workflow) may be more appropriate, such as:Repetitive tasksTasks which work on (or obtain information about) a large number of shares or usersTasks which are triggered by an alert threshold (workflows)Tasks where you want a only very basic input, but a consistent output (workflows)The appliance scripting language is based on ECMAscript 3 (close to javascript). I'm not going to cover ECMAscript 3 in great depth (I'm far from an expert here), but I would like to show you some neat things you can do with the appliance, to get you started based on what I have found from my own playing around.I'm making the assumption you have some sort of programming background, and understand variables, arrays, functions to some extent - but of course if something is not clear, please let me know so I can fix it up or clarify it.Variable Declarations and ArraysVariablesECMAScript is a dynamically and weakly typed language. If you don't know what that means, google is your friend - but at a high level it means we can just declare variables with no specific type and on the fly.For example, I can declare a variable and use it straight away in the middle of my code, for example:projects=list();Which makes projects an array of values that are returned from the list(); function (which is usable in most contexts). With this kind of variable, I can do things like:projects.length (this property on array tells you how many objects are in it, good for for loops etc). Alternatively, I could say:projects=3;and now projects is just a simple number.Should we declare variables like this so loosely? In my opinion, the answer is no - I feel it is a better practice to declare variables you are going to use, before you use them - and given them an initial value. You can do so as follows:var myVariable=0;To demonstrate the ability to just randomly assign and change the type of variables, you can create a simple script at the cli as follows (bold for input):fishy10:> script("." to run)> run("cd /");("." to run)> run ("shares");("." to run)> var projects;("." to run)> projects=list();("." to run)> printf("Number of projects is: %d\n",projects.length);("." to run)> projects=152;("." to run)> printf("Value of the projects variable as an integer is now: %d\n",projects);("." to run)> .Number of projects is: 7Value of the projects variable as an integer is now: 152You can also confirm this behaviour by checking the typeof variable we are dealing with:fishy10:> script("." to run)> run("cd /");("." to run)> run ("shares");("." to run)> var projects;("." to run)> projects=list();("." to run)> printf("var projects is of type %s\n",typeof(projects));("." to run)> projects=152;("." to run)> printf("var projects is of type %s\n",typeof(projects));("." to run)> .var projects is of type objectvar projects is of type numberArraysSo you likely noticed that we have already touched on arrays, as the list(); (in the shares context) stored an array into the 'projects' variable.But what if you want to declare your own array? Easy! This is very similar to Java and other languages, we just instantiate a brand new "Array" object using the keyword new:var myArray = new Array();will create an array called "myArray".A quick example:fishy10:> script("." to run)> testArray = new Array();("." to run)> testArray[0]="This";("." to run)> testArray[1]="is";("." to run)> testArray[2]="just";("." to run)> testArray[3]="a";("." to run)> testArray[4]="test";("." to run)> for (i=0; i < testArray.length; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)> printf("Array element %d is %s\n",i,testArray[i]);("." to run)> }("." to run)> .Array element 0 is ThisArray element 1 is isArray element 2 is justArray element 3 is aArray element 4 is testWorking With LoopsFor LoopFor loops are very similar to those you will see in C, java and several other languages. One of the key differences here is, as you were made aware earlier, we can be a bit more sloppy with our variable declarations.The general way you would likely use a for loop is as follows:for (variable; test-case; modifier for variable){}For example, you may wish to declare a variable i as 0; and a MAX_ITERATIONS variable to determine how many times this loop should repeat:var i=0;var MAX_ITERATIONS=10;And then, use this variable to be tested against some case existing (has i reached MAX_ITERATIONS? - if not, increment i using i++);for (i=0; i < MAX_ITERATIONS; i++){ // some work to do}So lets run something like this on the appliance:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var i=0;("." to run)> var MAX_ITERATIONS=10;("." to run)> for (i=0; i < MAX_ITERATIONS; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)> printf("The number is %d\n",i);("." to run)> }("." to run)> .The number is 0The number is 1The number is 2The number is 3The number is 4The number is 5The number is 6The number is 7The number is 8The number is 9While LoopWhile loops again are very similar to other languages, we loop "while" a condition is met. For example:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var isTen=false;("." to run)> var counter=0;("." to run)> while(isTen==false)("." to run)> {("." to run)> if (counter==10) ("." to run)> { ("." to run)> isTen=true; ("." to run)> } ("." to run)> printf("Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)> counter++; ("." to run)> }("." to run)> printf("Loop has ended and Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)> .Counter is 0Counter is 1Counter is 2Counter is 3Counter is 4Counter is 5Counter is 6Counter is 7Counter is 8Counter is 9Counter is 10Loop has ended and Counter is 11So what do we notice here? Something has actually gone wrong - counter will technically be 11 once the loop completes... Why is this?Well, if we have a loop like this, where the 'while' condition that will end the loop may be set based on some other condition(s) existing (such as the counter has reached 10) - we must ensure that we terminate this iteration of the loop when the condition is met - otherwise the rest of the code will be followed which may not be desirable. In other words, like in other languages, we will only ever check the loop condition once we are ready to perform the next iteration, so any other code after we set "isTen" to be true, will still be executed as we can see it was above.We can avoid this by adding a break into our loop once we know we have set the condition - this will stop the rest of the logic being processed in this iteration (and as such, counter will not be incremented). So lets try that again:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var isTen=false;("." to run)> var counter=0;("." to run)> while(isTen==false)("." to run)> {("." to run)> if (counter==10) ("." to run)> { ("." to run)> isTen=true; ("." to run)> break;("." to run)> } ("." to run)> printf("Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)> counter++; ("." to run)> }("." to run)> printf("Loop has ended and Counter is %d\n", counter);("." to run)> .Counter is 0Counter is 1Counter is 2Counter is 3Counter is 4Counter is 5Counter is 6Counter is 7Counter is 8Counter is 9Loop has ended and Counter is 10Much better!Methods to Obtain and Manipulate DataGet MethodThe get method allows you to get simple properties from an object, for example a quota from a user. The syntax is fairly simple:var myVariable=get('property');An example of where you may wish to use this, is when you are getting a bunch of information about a user (such as quota information when in a shares context):var users=list();for(k=0; k < users.length; k++){ user=users[k]; run('select ' + user); var username=get('name'); var usage=get('usage'); var quota=get('quota');...Which you can then use to your advantage - to print or manipulate infomation (you could change a user's information with a set method, based on the information returned from the get method). The set method is explained next.Set MethodThe set method can be used in a simple manner, similar to get. The syntax for set is:set('property','value'); // where value is a string, if it was a number, you don't need quotesFor example, we could set the quota on a share as follows (first observing the initial value):fishy10:shares default/test-geoff> script("." to run)> var currentQuota=get('quota');("." to run)> printf("Current Quota is: %s\n",currentQuota);("." to run)> set('quota','30G');("." to run)> run('commit');("." to run)> currentQuota=get('quota');("." to run)> printf("Current Quota is: %s\n",currentQuota);("." to run)> .Current Quota is: 0Current Quota is: 32212254720This shows us using both the get and set methods as can be used in scripts, of course when only setting an individual share, the above is overkill - it would be much easier to set it manually at the cli using 'set quota=3G' and then 'commit'.List MethodThe list method can be very powerful, especially in more complex scripts which iterate over large amounts of data and manipulate it if so desired. The general way you will use list is as follows:var myVar=list();Which will make "myVar" an array, containing all the objects in the relevant context (this could be a list of users, shares, projects, etc). You can then gather or manipulate data very easily.We could list all the shares and mountpoints in a given project for example:fishy10:shares another-project> script("." to run)> var shares=list();("." to run)> for (i=0; i < shares.length; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)> run('select ' + shares[i]);("." to run)> var mountpoint=get('mountpoint');("." to run)> printf("Share %s discovered, has mountpoint %s\n",shares[i],mountpoint);("." to run)> run('done');("." to run)> }("." to run)> .Share and-another discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/and-anotherShare another-share discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/another-shareShare bob discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-projectShare more-shares-for-all discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/more-shares-for-allShare yep discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/yepWriting More Complex and Re-Usable CodeFunctionsThe best way to be able to write more complex code is to use functions to split up repeatable or reusable sections of your code. This also makes your more complex code easier to read and understand for other programmers.We write functions as follows:function functionName(variable1,variable2,...,variableN){}For example, we could have a function that takes a project name as input, and lists shares for that project (assuming we're already in the 'project' context - context is important!):function getShares(proj){ run('select ' + proj); shares=list(); printf("Project: %s\n", proj); for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++) { printf("Discovered share: %s\n",shares[i]); } run('done'); // exit selected project}Commenting your CodeLike any other language, a large part of making it readable and understandable is to comment it. You can use the same comment style as in C and Java amongst other languages.In other words, sngle line comments use://at the beginning of the comment.Multi line comments use:/*at the beginning, and:*/ at the end.For example, here we will use both:fishy10:> script("." to run)> // This is a test comment("." to run)> printf("doing some work...\n");("." to run)> /* This is a multi-line("." to run)> comment which I will span across("." to run)> three lines in total */("." to run)> printf("doing some more work...\n");("." to run)> .doing some work...doing some more work...Your comments do not have to be on their own, they can begin (particularly with single line comments this is handy) at the end of a statement, for examplevar projects=list(); // The variable projects is an array containing all projects on the system.Try and Catch StatementsYou may be used to using try and catch statements in other languages, and they can (and should) be utilised in your code to catch expected or unexpected error conditions, that you do NOT wish to stop your code from executing (if you do not catch these errors, your script will exit!):try{ // do some work}catch(err) // Catch any error that could occur{ // do something here under the error condition}For example, you may wish to only execute some code if a context can be reached. If you can't perform certain actions under certain circumstances, that may be perfectly acceptable.For example if you want to test a condition that only makes sense when looking at a SMB/NFS share, but does not make sense when you hit an iscsi or FC LUN, you don't want to stop all processing of other shares you may not have covered yet.For example we may wish to obtain quota information on all shares for all users on a share (but this makes no sense for a LUN):function getShareQuota(shar) // Get quota for each user of this share{ run('select ' + shar); printf(" SHARE: %s\n", shar); try { run('users'); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)"); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","----"); users=list(); for(k=0; k < users.length; k++) { user=users[k]; getUserQuota(user); } run('done'); // exit user context } catch(err) { printf(" SKIPPING %s - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users\n", shar); } run('done'); // done with this share}Running Scripts Remotely over SSHAs you have likely noticed, writing and running scripts for all but the simplest jobs directly on the appliance is not going to be a lot of fun.There's a couple of choices on what you can do here:Create scripts on a remote system and run them over sshCreate scripts, wrapping them in workflow code, so they are stored on the appliance and can be triggered under certain circumstances (like a threshold being reached)We'll cover the first one here, and then cover workflows later on (as these are for the most part just scripts with some wrapper information around them).Creating a SSH Public/Private SSH Key PairLog on to your handy Solaris box (You wouldn't be using any other OS, right? :P) and use ssh-keygen to create a pair of ssh keys. I'm storing this separate to my normal key:[geoff@lightning ~] ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 1024Generating public/private rsa key pair.Enter file in which to save the key (/export/home/geoff/.ssh/id_rsa): /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsaEnter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): Enter same passphrase again: Your identification has been saved in /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsa.Your public key has been saved in /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsa.pub.The key fingerprint is:7f:3d:53:f0:2a:5e:8b:2d:94:2a:55:77:66:5c:9b:14 geoff@lightningInstalling the Public Key on the ApplianceOn your Solaris host, observe the public key:[geoff@lightning ~] cat .ssh/nas_key_rsa.pub ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc= geoff@lightningNow, copy and paste everything after "ssh-rsa" and before "user@hostname" - in this case, geoff@lightning. That is, this bit:AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc=Logon to your appliance and get into the preferences -> keys area for this user (root):[geoff@lightning ~] ssh [email protected]: Last login: Mon Dec 6 17:13:28 2010 from 192.168.0.2fishy10:> configuration usersfishy10:configuration users> select rootfishy10:configuration users root> preferences fishy10:configuration users root preferences> keysOR do it all in one hit:fishy10:> configuration users select root preferences keysNow, we create a new public key that will be accepted for this user and set the type to RSA:fishy10:configuration users root preferences keys> createfishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set type=RSASet the key itself using the string copied previously (between ssh-rsa and user@host), and set the key ensuring you put double quotes around it (eg. set key="<key>"):fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set key="AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc="Now set the comment for this key (do not use spaces):fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set comment="LightningRSAKey" Commit the new key:fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> commitVerify the key is there:fishy10:configuration users root preferences keys> lsKeys:NAME MODIFIED TYPE COMMENT key-000 2010-10-25 20:56:42 RSA cycloneRSAKey key-001 2010-12-6 17:44:53 RSA LightningRSAKey As you can see, we now have my new key, and a previous key I have created on this appliance.Running your Script over SSH from a Remote SystemHere I have created a basic test script, and saved it as test.ecma3:[geoff@lightning ~] cat test.ecma3 script// This is a test script, By Geoff Ongley 2010.printf("Testing script remotely over ssh\n");.Now, we can run this script remotely with our keyless login:[geoff@lightning ~] ssh -i .ssh/nas_key_rsa root@fishy10 < test.ecma3Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.Testing script remotely over sshPutting it Together - An Example Completed Quota Gathering ScriptSo now we have a lot of the basics to creating a script, let us do something useful, like, find out how much every user is using, on every share on the system (you will recognise some of the code from my previous examples): script/************************************** Quick and Dirty Quota Check script ** Written By Geoff Ongley ** 25 October 2010 **************************************/function getUserQuota(usr){ run('select ' + usr); var username=get('name'); var usage=get('usage'); var quota=get('quota'); var usage_g=usage / 1073741824; // convert bytes to gigabytes var quota_g=quota / 1073741824; // as above var quota_percent=0 if (quota > 0) { quota_percent=(usage / quota)*(100/1); } printf(" %20s %8.2f %8.2f %d%%\n",username,usage_g,quota_g,quota_percent); run('done'); // done with this selected user}function getShareQuota(shar){ //printf("DEBUG: selecting share %s\n", shar); run('select ' + shar); printf(" SHARE: %s\n", shar); try { run('users'); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)"); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","--------"); users=list(); for(k=0; k < users.length; k++) { user=users[k]; getUserQuota(user); } run('done'); // exit user context } catch(err) { printf(" SKIPPING %s - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users\n", shar); } run('done'); // done with this share}function getShares(proj){ //printf("DEBUG: selecting project %s\n",proj); run('select ' + proj); shares=list(); printf("Project: %s\n", proj); for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++) { share=shares[j]; getShareQuota(share); } run('done'); // exit selected project}function getProjects(){ run('cd /'); run('shares'); projects=list(); for (i=0; i < projects.length; i++) { var project=projects[i]; getShares(project); } run('done'); // exit context for all projects}getProjects();.Which can be run as follows, and will print information like this:[geoff@lightning ~/FISHWORKS_SCRIPTS] ssh -i ~/.ssh/nas_key_rsa root@fishy10 < get_quota_utilisation.ecma3Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.Project: another-project SHARE: and-another Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- nobody 0.00 0.00 0% geoffro 0.05 0.00 0% Billy 0.10 0.00 0% root 0.00 0.00 0% testing-user 0.05 0.00 0% SHARE: another-share Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- root 0.00 0.00 0% nobody 0.00 0.00 0% geoffro 0.05 0.49 9% testing-user 0.05 0.02 249% Billy 0.10 0.29 33% SHARE: bob Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- nobody 0.00 0.00 0% root 0.00 0.00 0% SHARE: more-shares-for-all Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- Billy 0.10 0.00 0% testing-user 0.05 0.00 0% nobody 0.00 0.00 0% root 0.00 0.00 0% geoffro 0.05 0.00 0% SHARE: yep Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- root 0.00 0.00 0% nobody 0.00 0.00 0% Billy 0.10 0.01 999% testing-user 0.05 0.49 9% geoffro 0.05 0.00 0%Project: default SHARE: Test-LUN SKIPPING Test-LUN - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users SHARE: test-geoff Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- geoffro 0.05 0.00 0% root 3.18 10.00 31% uucp 0.00 0.00 0% nobody 0.59 0.49 119%^CKilled by signal 2.Creating a WorkflowWorkflows are scripts that we store on the appliance, and can have the script execute either on request (even from the BUI), or on an event such as a threshold being met.Workflow BasicsA workflow allows you to create a simple process that can be executed either via the BUI interface interactively, or by an alert being raised (for some threshold being reached, for example).The basics parameters you will have to set for your "workflow object" (notice you're creating a variable, that embodies ECMAScript) are as follows (parameters is optional):name: A name for this workflowdescription: A Description for the workflowparameters: A set of input parameters (useful when you need user input to execute the workflow)execute: The code, the script itself to execute, which will be function (parameters)With parameters, you can specify things like this (slightly modified sample taken from the System Administration Guide): ...parameters: variableParam1: { label: 'Name of Share', type: 'String' }, variableParam2 { label: 'Share Size', type: 'size' },execute: ....}; Note the commas separating the sections of name, parameters, execute, and so on. This is important!Also - there is plenty of properties you can set on the parameters for your workflow, these are described in the Sun ZFS Storage System Administration Guide.Creating a Basic Workflow from a Basic ScriptTo make a basic script into a basic workflow, you need to wrap the following around your script to create a 'workflow' object:var workflow = {name: 'Get User Quotas',description: 'Displays Quota Utilisation for each user on each share',execute: function() {// (basic script goes here, minus the "script" at the beginning, and "." at the end)}};However, it appears (at least in my experience to date) that the workflow object may only be happy with one function in the execute parameter - either that or I'm doing something wrong. As far as I can tell, after execute: you should only have a basic one function context like so:execute: function(){}To deal with this, and to give an example similar to our script earlier, I have created another simple quota check, to show the same basic functionality, but in a workflow format:var workflow = {name: 'Get User Quotas',description: 'Displays Quota Utilisation for each user on each share',execute: function () { run('cd /'); run('shares'); projects=list(); for (i=0; i < projects.length; i++) { run('select ' + projects[i]); shares=list('filesystem'); printf("Project: %s\n", projects[i]); for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++) { run('select ' +shares[j]); try { run('users'); printf(" SHARE: %s\n", shares[j]); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)"); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","-------"); users=list(); for(k=0; k < users.length; k++) { run('select ' + users[k]); username=get('name'); usage=get('usage'); quota=get('quota'); usage_g=usage / 1073741824; // convert bytes to gigabytes quota_g=quota / 1073741824; // as above quota_percent=0 if (quota > 0) { quota_percent=(usage / quota)*(100/1); } printf(" %20s %8.2f %8.2f %d%%\n",username,usage_g,quota_g,quota_percent); run('done'); } run('done'); // exit user context } catch(err) { // printf(" %s is a LUN, Not looking for users\n", shares[j]); } run('done'); // exit selected share context } run('done'); // exit project context } }};SummaryThe Sun ZFS Storage 7000 Appliance offers lots of different and interesting features to Sun/Oracle customers, including the world renowned Analytics. Hopefully the above will help you to think of new creative things you could be doing by taking advantage of one of the other neat features, the internal scripting engine!Some references are below to help you continue learning more, I'll update this post as I do the same! Enjoy...More information on ECMAScript 3A complete reference to ECMAScript 3 which will help you learn more of the details you may be interested in, can be found here:http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST-ARCH/ECMA-262,%203rd%20edition,%20December%201999.pdfMore Information on Administering the Sun ZFS Storage 7000The Sun ZFS Storage 7000 System Administration guide can be a useful reference point, and can be found here:http://wikis.sun.com/download/attachments/186238602/2010_Q3_2_ADMIN.pdf

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UML assignment question

- by waitinforatrain

Hi guys, Sorry, I know this is a very lame question to ask and not of any use to anyone else. I have an assignment in UML due tomorrow and I don't even know the basics (all-nighter ahead!). I'm not looking for a walkthrough, I simply want your opinion on something. The assignment is as follows (you only need to skim over it!): ============= Gourmet Surprise (GS) is a small catering firm with five employees. During a typical weekend, GS caters fifteen events with twenty to fifty people each. The business has grown rapidly over the past year and the owner wants to install a new computer system for managing the ordering and buying process. GS has a set of ten standard menus. When potential customers call, the receptionist describes the menus to them. If the customer decides to book an event (dinner, lunch, picnic, finger food etc.), the receptionist records the customer information (e.g., name, address, phone number, etc.) and the information about the event (e.g., place, date, time, which one of the standard menus, total price) on a contract. The customer is then faxed a copy of the contract and must sign and return it along with a deposit (often a credit card or by check) before the event is officially booked. The remaining money is collected when the catering is delivered. Sometimes, the customer wants something special (e.g., birthday cake). In this case, the receptionist takes the information and gives it to the owner who determines the cost; the receptionist then calls the customer back with the price information. Sometimes the customer accepts the price, other times, the customer requests some changes that have to go back to the owner for a new cost estimate. Each week, the owner looks through the events scheduled for that weekend and orders the supplies (e.g., plates) and food (e.g., bread, chicken) needed to make them. The owner would like to use the system for marketing as well. It should be able to track how customers learned about GS, and identify repeat customers, so that GS can mail special offers to them. The owner also wants to track the events on which GS sent a contract, but the customer never signed the contract and actually booked a GS. Exercise: Create an activity diagram and a use case model (complete with a set of detail use case descriptions) for the above system. Produce an initial domain model (class diagram) based on these descriptions. Elaborate the use cases into sequence diagrams, and include any state diagrams necessary. Finally use the information from these dynamic models to expand the domain model into a full application model. ============= In your opinion, do you think this question is asking me to come up with a package for an online ordering system to replace the system described above, or to create UML diagrams that facilitate the existing telephone-based system?

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ASP.NET Web Service Throws 401 (unauthorized) Error

- by user268611

Hi Experts, I have this .NET application to be run in an intranet environment. It is configured so that it requires Windows Authentication before you can access the website (Anonymous access is disabled). This website calls a web service (enable anonymous access) and the web service calls the DB. We do have a token-based authentication between the web application and the web service to secure the communication between them. The issue I'm facing is that when I deploy this to production, I'm having an intermittent issue whereby the communication between the web application and the web service failed. The 401 issue was thrown. This is actually working fine in our QA environment. Is this an issue with Active Directory? Or could it be an isssue with FQDN as mentioned here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;896861? The weirdest thing is that this is happening intermittently when tested in both on the server itself and a remote workstation in my client's environment. But, this is working perfectly in my environment. OS: Windows Server SP1 IIS 6 .NET 3.5 Framework Any idea about the 401 (Unauthorized) issue?? Thx for the help... This is from the log... Event code: 3005 Event message: An unhandled exception has occurred. Event time: 4/5/2010 10:44:57 AM Event time (UTC): 4/5/2010 2:44:57 AM Event ID: 6c8ea2607b8d4e29a7f0b1c392b1cb21 Event sequence: 155112 Event occurrence: 2 Event detail code: 0 Application information: Application domain: xxx Trust level: Full Application Virtual Path: xxx Application Path: xxx Machine name: xxx Process information: Process ID: 4424 Process name: w3wp.exe Account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE Exception information: Exception type: WebException Exception message: The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized. Request information: Request URL: http://[ip]/[app_path] Request path: xxx User host address: [ip] User: xxx Is authenticated: True Authentication Type: Negotiate Thread account name: xxx Thread information: Thread ID: 6 Thread account name: xxx Is impersonating: False Stack trace: at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.ReadResponse(SoapClientMessage message, WebResponse response, Stream responseStream, Boolean asyncCall) at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.Invoke(String methodName, Object[] parameters) at wsVulnerabilityAdvisory.Service.test() at test.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Web.Util.CalliHelper.EventArgFunctionCaller(IntPtr fp, Object o, Object t, EventArgs e) at System.Web.Util.CalliEventHandlerDelegateProxy.Callback(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)

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PostgreSQL and PHP forms

- by MrEnder

Ok I have a PostgreSQL server with a Database titled brittains_db that I only have PuTTY access to. I can also upload via FTP to the web server which has access to PostgreSQL and the Database somehow... I have made a SQL file named logins.sql CREATE TABLE logins( userName VARCHAR(25) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, password VARCHAR(25) NOT NULL, firstName NOT NULL, lastName NOT NULL, ageDay INTEGER NOT NULL, ageMonth INTEGER NOT NULL, ageYear INTEGER NOT NULL, email VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL, createDate DATE ) Then I made a form to get all that information. <form action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>" method="post" > <table> <tr> <td class="signupTd"> First Name:  </td> <td> <input type="text" name="firstNameSignupForm" value="<?php echo $firstNameSignup; ?>" size="20"/> </td> <td> <?php echo $firstNameSignupError; ?> </td> </tr> ... code continues I had it save all the information in variables if page run on POST $firstNameSignup=trim($_POST["firstNameSignupForm"]); $lastNameSignup=trim($_POST["lastNameSignupForm"]); $userNameSignup=trim($_POST["userNameSignupForm"]); $passwordSignup=trim($_POST["passwordSignupForm"]); $passwordConfirmSignup=trim($_POST["passwordConfirmSignupForm"]); $monthSignup=trim($_POST["monthSignupForm"]); $daySignup=trim($_POST["daySignupForm"]); $yearSignup=trim($_POST["yearSignupForm"]); $emailSignup=trim($_POST["emailSignupForm"]); $emailConfirmSignup=trim($_POST["emailConfirmSignupForm"]); All information was then validated Now comes the points where I need to upload it to PostgreSQL How do I put my table in Postgre? How do I insert my information into my table? and how would I recall that information to display it?

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How can I troubleshoot an APPCRASH in Internet Explorer?

- by Schnapple

I'm writing an ActiveX control using the firebreath framework (hi taxilian!) and while it technically works, I'm running into a weird issue that appears to be unique to me. I've followed the instructions to create a simple plugin and then I ran it in Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7 x64 (firebreath sets up a test page for the control). But as soon as I try to test it (clicking on a link that fires off JavaScript to interact with the control), IE crashes. Hard. "Internet Explorer has stopped working" style. If I try the control in Firefox (the resulting registered DLL can also be called as a Firefox plugin using a MIME type), it works fine. If I try it on my XP box, it works fine. I emailed the DLL and the testing page to a coworker in the next cube who is like me also running Windows 7 x64 and it works for him just fine as well, so it's not something unique to Windows 7 or x64. When it crashes I get this message: Problem signature: Problem Event Name: APPCRASH Application Name: iexplore.exe Application Version: 8.0.7600.16385 Application Timestamp: 4a5bc69e Fault Module Name: RPCRT4.dll Fault Module Version: 6.1.7600.16385 Fault Module Timestamp: 4a5bdb3b Exception Code: c0000005 Exception Offset: 000220b1 OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1 Locale ID: 1033 Additional Information 1: 0a9e Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789 Additional Information 3: 0a9e Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789 Which tells me nothing extremely useful. I can have it attach to a debugger but it just tells me a long list of DLL's, none of which are the ActiveX control in question. It's almost like it's not even getting there. I did a sfc /scannow yesterday to see if anything on my system is corrupt and nothing came up as wrong. I tried various different security levels in IE, but nothing seems to have any effect. As this is a development machine there has been all matter of crap installed on it, so I figure it's bound to be something I've installed since October (when Win7 was released) but I cannot figure out what it is. I presume the information it's giving me when I attach to Visual Studio is useful somehow but I don't know how to interpret it. Admittedly I'm mainly a C#/.NET developer who's a bit out of his element with C/C++ and troubleshooting native code, but does anyone have any advice on how to proceed on figuring out why this very simple ActiveX control crashes IE on my machine and nowhere else?

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What is the relationship between WebProxy & IWebProxy with respect to WebClient?

- by Streamline

I am creating an app (.NET 2.0) that uses WebClient to connect (downloaddata, etc) to/from a http web service. I am adding a form now to handle allowing proxy information to either be stored or set to use the defaults. I am a little confused about some things. First, some of the methods & properties available in either WebProxy or IWebProxy are not in both. What is the difference here with respect to setting up how WebClient will be have when it is called? Secondly, do I have to tell WebClient to use the proxy information if I set it using either WebProxy or IWebProxy class elsewhere? Or is it automatically inherited? Thirdly, when giving the option for the user to use the default proxy (whatever is set in IE) and using the default credentials (I assume also whatever is set in IE) are these two mutually exclusive? Or you only use default credentials when you have also used default proxy? This gets me to the whole difference between WebProxy and IWebProxy. WebRequest.DefaultProxy is a IWebPRoxy class but UseDefaultCredentials is not a method on the IWebProxy class, rather it is only on WebProxy and in turn, How to set the proxy to the WebRequest.DefautlProxy if they are two different classes? Here is my current method to read the stored form settings by the user - but I am not sure if this is correct, not enough, overkill, or just wrong because of the mix of WebProxy and IWebProxy: private WebProxy _proxyInfo = new WebProxy(); private WebProxy SetProxyInfo() { if (UseProxy) { if (UseIEProxy) { // is doing this enough to set this as default for WebClient? IWebProxy iProxy = WebRequest.DefaultWebProxy; if (UseIEProxyCredentials) { _proxyInfo.UseDefaultCredentials = true; } else { // is doing this enough to set this as default credentials for WebClient? WebRequest.DefaultWebProxy.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(ProxyUsername, ProxyPassword); } } else { // is doing this enough to set this as default for WebClient? WebRequest.DefaultWebProxy = new WebProxy(ProxyAddress, ParseLib.StringToInt(ProxyPort)); if (UseIEProxyCredentials) { _proxyInfo.UseDefaultCredentials = true; } else { WebRequest.DefaultWebProxy.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(ProxyUsername, ProxyPassword); } } } // Do I need to WebClient to absorb this returned proxy info if I didn't set or use defaults? return _proxyInfo; } Is there any reason to not just scrap storing app specific proxy information and only allow the app the ability to use the default proxy information & credentials for the logged in user? Will this ever not be enough if using HTTP? Part 2 Question: How can I test that the WebClient instance is using the proxy information or not?

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php , SimpleXML, while loop

- by Michael

I'm trying to get some information from ebay api and store it in database . I used simple xml to extract the information but I have a small issue as the information is not displayed for some items . if I make a print to the simple_xml I can see very well that the information is provided by ebay api . I have $items = "220617293997,250645537939,230485306218,110537213815,180519294810"; $number_of_items = count(explode(",", $items)); $xml = $baseClass->getContent("http://open.api.ebay.com/shopping?callname=GetMultipleItems&responseencoding=XML&appid=Morcovar-c74b-47c0-954f-463afb69a4b3&siteid=0&version=525&IncludeSelector=ItemSpecifics&ItemID=$items"); writeDoc($xml, "api.xml"); //echo $xml; $getvalues = simplexml_load_file('api.xml'); // print_r($getvalue); $number = "0"; while($number < 6) { $item_number = $getvalues->Item[$number]->ItemID; $location = $getvalues->Item[$number]->Location; $title = $getvalues->Item[$number]->Title; $price = $getvalues->Item[$number]->ConvertedCurrentPrice; $manufacturer = $getvalues->Item[$number]->ItemSpecifics->NameValueList[3]->Value; $model = $getvalues->Item[$number]->ItemSpecifics->NameValueList[4]->Value; $mileage = $getvalues->Item[$number]->ItemSpecifics->NameValueList[5]->Value; echo "item number = $item_number <br>localtion = $location<br>". "title = $title<br>price = $price<br>manufacturer = $manufacturer". "<br>model = $model<br>mileage = $mileage<br>"; $number++; } the above code returns item number = localtion = title = price = manufacturer = model = mileage = item number = 230485306218 localtion = Coventry, Warwickshire title = 2001 LAND ROVER RANGE ROVER VOGUE AUTO GREEN price = 3635.07 manufacturer = Land Rover model = Range Rover mileage = 76000 item number = 220617293997 localtion = Crawley, West Sussex title = 2004 CITROEN C5 HDI LX RED price = 3115.77 manufacturer = Citroen model = C5 mileage = 76000 item number = 180519294810 localtion = London, London title = 2000 VOLKSWAGEN POLO 1.4 SILVER 16V NEED GEAR BOX price = 905.06 manufacturer = Right-hand drive model = mileage = Standard Car item number = localtion = title = price = manufacturer = model = mileage = As you can see the information is not retrieved for a few items ... If I replace the $number manually like " $item_number = $getvalues-Item[4]-ItemID;" works well for any number .

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

- by SeanMcAlinden

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

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Extending NerdDinner: Adding Geolocated Flair

- by Jon Galloway

NerdDinner is a website with the audacious goal of “Organizing the world’s nerds and helping them eat in packs.” Because nerds aren’t likely to socialize with others unless a website tells them to do it. Scott Hanselman showed off a lot of the cool features we’ve added to NerdDinner lately during his popular talk at MIX10, Beyond File | New Company: From Cheesy Sample to Social Platform. Did you miss it? Go ahead and watch it, I’ll wait. One of the features we wanted to add was flair. You know about flair, right? It’s a way to let folks who like your site show it off in their own site. For example, here’s my StackOverflow flair: Great! So how could we add some of this flair stuff to NerdDinner? What do we want to show? If we’re going to encourage our users to give up a bit of their beautiful website to show off a bit of ours, we need to think about what they’ll want to show. For instance, my StackOverflow flair is all about me, not StackOverflow. So how will this apply to NerdDinner? Since NerdDinner is all about organizing local dinners, in order for the flair to be useful it needs to make sense for the person viewing the web page. If someone visits from Egypt visits my blog, they should see information about NerdDinners in Egypt. That’s geolocation – localizing site content based on where the browser’s sitting, and it makes sense for flair as well as entire websites. So we’ll set up a simple little callout that prompts them to host a dinner in their area: Hopefully our flair works and there is a dinner near your viewers, so they’ll see another view which lists upcoming dinners near them: The Geolocation Part Generally website geolocation is done by mapping the requestor’s IP address to a geographic area. It’s not an exact science, but I’ve always found it to be pretty accurate. There are (at least) three ways to handle it: You pay somebody like MaxMind for a database (with regular updates) that sits on your server, and you use their API to do lookups. I used this on a pretty big project a few years ago and it worked well. You use HTML 5 Geolocation API or Google Gears or some other browser based solution. I think those are cool (I use Google Gears a lot), but they’re both in flux right now and I don’t think either has a wide enough of an install base yet to rely on them. You might want to, but I’ve heard you do all kinds of crazy stuff, and sometimes it gets you in trouble. I don’t mean talk out of line, but we all laugh behind your back a bit. But, hey, it’s up to you. It’s your flair or whatever. There are some free webservices out there that will take an IP address and give you location information. Easy, and works for everyone. That’s what we’re doing. I looked at a few different services and settled on IPInfoDB. It’s free, has a great API, and even returns JSON, which is handy for Javascript use. The IP query is pretty simple. We hit a URL like this: http://ipinfodb.com/ip_query.php?ip=74.125.45.100&timezone=false … and we get an XML response back like this… <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <Response> <Ip>74.125.45.100</Ip> <Status>OK</Status> <CountryCode>US</CountryCode> <CountryName>United States</CountryName> <RegionCode>06</RegionCode> <RegionName>California</RegionName> <City>Mountain View</City> <ZipPostalCode>94043</ZipPostalCode> <Latitude>37.4192</Latitude> <Longitude>-122.057</Longitude> </Response> So we’ll build some data transfer classes to hold the location information, like this: public class LocationInfo { public string Country { get; set; } public string RegionName { get; set; } public string City { get; set; } public string ZipPostalCode { get; set; } public LatLong Position { get; set; } } public class LatLong { public float Lat { get; set; } public float Long { get; set; } } And now hitting the service is pretty simple: public static LocationInfo HostIpToPlaceName(string ip) { string url = "http://ipinfodb.com/ip_query.php?ip={0}&timezone=false"; url = String.Format(url, ip); var result = XDocument.Load(url); var location = (from x in result.Descendants("Response") select new LocationInfo { City = (string)x.Element("City"), RegionName = (string)x.Element("RegionName"), Country = (string)x.Element("CountryName"), ZipPostalCode = (string)x.Element("CountryName"), Position = new LatLong { Lat = (float)x.Element("Latitude"), Long = (float)x.Element("Longitude") } }).First(); return location; } Getting The User’s IP Okay, but first we need the end user’s IP, and you’d think it would be as simple as reading the value from HttpContext: HttpContext.Current.Request.UserHostAddress But you’d be wrong. Sorry. UserHostAddress just wraps HttpContext.Current.Request.ServerVariables["REMOTE_ADDR"], but that doesn’t get you the IP for users behind a proxy. That’s in another header, “HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR". So you can either hit a wrapper and then check a header, or just check two headers. I went for uniformity: string SourceIP = string.IsNullOrEmpty(Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]) ? Request.ServerVariables["REMOTE_ADDR"] : Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]; We’re almost set to wrap this up, but first let’s talk about our views. Yes, views, because we’ll have two. Selecting the View We wanted to make it easy for people to include the flair in their sites, so we looked around at how other people were doing this. The StackOverflow folks have a pretty good flair system, which allows you to include the flair in your site as either an IFRAME reference or a Javascript include. We’ll do both. We have a ServicesController to handle use of the site information outside of NerdDinner.com, so this fits in pretty well there. We’ll be displaying the same information for both HTML and Javascript flair, so we can use one Flair controller action which will return a different view depending on the requested format. Here’s our general flow for our controller action: Get the user’s IP Translate it to a location Grab the top three upcoming dinners that are near that location Select the view based on the format (defaulted to “html”) Return a FlairViewModel which contains the list of dinners and the location information public ActionResult Flair(string format = "html") { string SourceIP = string.IsNullOrEmpty( Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]) ? Request.ServerVariables["REMOTE_ADDR"] : Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]; var location = GeolocationService.HostIpToPlaceName(SourceIP); var dinners = dinnerRepository. FindByLocation(location.Position.Lat, location.Position.Long). OrderByDescending(p => p.EventDate).Take(3); // Select the view we'll return. // Using a switch because we'll add in JSON and other formats later. string view; switch (format.ToLower()) { case "javascript": view = "JavascriptFlair"; break; default: view = "Flair"; break; } return View( view, new FlairViewModel { Dinners = dinners.ToList(), LocationName = string.IsNullOrEmpty(location.City) ? "you" : String.Format("{0}, {1}", location.City, location.RegionName) } ); } Note: I’m not in love with the logic here, but it seems like overkill to extract the switch statement away when we’ll probably just have two or three views. What do you think? The HTML View The HTML version of the view is pretty simple – the only thing of any real interest here is the use of an extension method to truncate strings that are would cause the titles to wrap. public static string Truncate(this string s, int maxLength) { if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(s) || maxLength <= 0) return string.Empty; else if (s.Length > maxLength) return s.Substring(0, maxLength) + "..."; else return s; } So here’s how the HTML view ends up looking: <%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<FlairViewModel>" %> <%@ Import Namespace="NerdDinner.Helpers" %> <%@ Import Namespace="NerdDinner.Models" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Nerd Dinner</title> <link href="/Content/Flair.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> </head> <body> <div id="nd-wrapper"> <h2 id="nd-header">NerdDinner.com</h2> <div id="nd-outer"> <% if (Model.Dinners.Count == 0) { %> <div id="nd-bummer"> Looks like there's no Nerd Dinners near <%:Model.LocationName %> in the near future. Why not <a target="_blank" href="http://www.nerddinner.com/Dinners/Create">host one</a>?</div> <% } else { %> <h3> Dinners Near You</h3> <ul> <% foreach (var item in Model.Dinners) { %> <li> <%: Html.ActionLink(String.Format("{0} with {1} on {2}", item.Title.Truncate(20), item.HostedBy, item.EventDate.ToShortDateString()), "Details", "Dinners", new { id = item.DinnerID }, new { target = "_blank" })%></li> <% } %> </ul> <% } %> <div id="nd-footer"> More dinners and fun at <a target="_blank" href="http://nrddnr.com">http://nrddnr.com</a></div> </div> </div> </body> </html> You’d include this in a page using an IFRAME, like this: <IFRAME height=230 marginHeight=0 src="http://nerddinner.com/services/flair" frameBorder=0 width=160 marginWidth=0 scrolling=no></IFRAME> The Javascript view The Javascript flair is written so you can include it in a webpage with a simple script include, like this: <script type="text/javascript" src="http://nerddinner.com/services/flair?format=javascript"></script> The goal of this view is very similar to the HTML embed view, with a few exceptions: We’re creating a script element and adding it to the head of the document, which will then document.write out the content. Note that you have to consider if your users will actually have a <head> element in their documents, but for website flair use cases I think that’s a safe bet. Since the content is being added to the existing page rather than shown in an IFRAME, all links need to be absolute. That means we can’t use Html.ActionLink, since it generates relative routes. We need to escape everything since it’s being written out as strings. We need to set the content type to application/x-javascript. The easiest way to do that is to use the <%@ Page ContentType%> directive. <%@ Page Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<NerdDinner.Models.FlairViewModel>" ContentType="application/x-javascript" %> <%@ Import Namespace="NerdDinner.Helpers" %> <%@ Import Namespace="NerdDinner.Models" %> document.write('<script>var link = document.createElement(\"link\");link.href = \"http://nerddinner.com/content/Flair.css\";link.rel = \"stylesheet\";link.type = \"text/css\";var head = document.getElementsByTagName(\"head\")[0];head.appendChild(link);</script>'); document.write('<div id=\"nd-wrapper\"><h2 id=\"nd-header\">NerdDinner.com</h2><div id=\"nd-outer\">'); <% if (Model.Dinners.Count == 0) { %> document.write('<div id=\"nd-bummer\">Looks like there\'s no Nerd Dinners near <%:Model.LocationName %> in the near future. Why not <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http://www.nerddinner.com/Dinners/Create\">host one</a>?</div>'); <% } else { %> document.write('<h3> Dinners Near You</h3><ul>'); <% foreach (var item in Model.Dinners) { %> document.write('<li><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http://nrddnr.com/<%: item.DinnerID %>\"><%: item.Title.Truncate(20) %> with <%: item.HostedBy %> on <%: item.EventDate.ToShortDateString() %></a></li>'); <% } %> document.write('</ul>'); <% } %> document.write('<div id=\"nd-footer\"> More dinners and fun at <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http://nrddnr.com\">http://nrddnr.com</a></div></div></div>'); Getting IP’s for Testing There are a variety of online services that will translate a location to an IP, which were handy for testing these out. I found http://www.itouchmap.com/latlong.html to be most useful, but I’m open to suggestions if you know of something better. Next steps I think the next step here is to minimize load – you know, in case people start actually using this flair. There are two places to think about – the NerdDinner.com servers, and the services we’re using for Geolocation. I usually think about caching as a first attack on server load, but that’s less helpful here since every user will have a different IP. Instead, I’d look at taking advantage of Asynchronous Controller Actions, a cool new feature in ASP.NET MVC 2. Async Actions let you call a potentially long-running webservice without tying up a thread on the server while waiting for the response. There’s some good info on that in the MSDN documentation, and Dino Esposito wrote a great article on Asynchronous ASP.NET Pages in the April 2010 issue of MSDN Magazine. But let’s think of the children, shall we? What about ipinfodb.com? Well, they don’t have specific daily limits, but they do throttle you if you put a lot of traffic on them. From their FAQ: We do not have a specific daily limit but queries that are at a rate faster than 2 per second will be put in "queue". If you stay below 2 queries/second everything will be normal. If you go over the limit, you will still get an answer for all queries but they will be slowed down to about 1 per second. This should not affect most users but for high volume websites, you can either use our IP database on your server or we can whitelist your IP for 5$/month (simply use the donate form and leave a comment with your server IP). Good programming practices such as not querying our API for all page views (you can store the data in a cookie or a database) will also help not reaching the limit. So the first step there is to save the geolocalization information in a time-limited cookie, which will allow us to look up the local dinners immediately without having to hit the geolocation service.

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ANTS CLR and Memory Profiler In Depth Review (Part 1 of 2 – CLR Profiler)

- by ToStringTheory

One of the things that people might not know about me, is my obsession to make my code as efficient as possible. Many people might not realize how much of a task or undertaking that this might be, but it is surely a task as monumental as climbing Mount Everest, except this time it is a challenge for the mind… In trying to make code efficient, there are many different factors that play a part – size of project or solution, tiers, language used, experience and training of the programmer, technologies used, maintainability of the code – the list can go on for quite some time. I spend quite a bit of time when developing trying to determine what is the best way to implement a feature to accomplish the efficiency that I look to achieve. One program that I have recently come to learn about – Red Gate ANTS Performance (CLR) and Memory profiler gives me tools to accomplish that job more efficiently as well. In this review, I am going to cover some of the features of the ANTS profiler set by compiling some hideous example code to test against. Notice As a member of the Geeks With Blogs Influencers program, one of the perks is the ability to review products, in exchange for a free license to the program. I have not let this affect my opinions of the product in any way, and Red Gate nor Geeks With Blogs has tried to influence my opinion regarding this product in any way. Introduction The ANTS Profiler pack provided by Red Gate was something that I had not heard of before receiving an email regarding an offer to review it for a license. Since I look to make my code efficient, it was a no brainer for me to try it out! One thing that I have to say took me by surprise is that upon downloading the program and installing it you fill out a form for your usual contact information. Sure enough within 2 hours, I received an email from a sales representative at Red Gate asking if she could help me to achieve the most out of my trial time so it wouldn’t go to waste. After replying to her and explaining that I was looking to review its feature set, she put me in contact with someone that setup a demo session to give me a quick rundown of its features via an online meeting. After having dealt with a massive ordeal with one of my utility companies and their complete lack of customer service, Red Gates friendly and helpful representatives were a breath of fresh air, and something I was thankful for. ANTS CLR Profiler The ANTS CLR profiler is the thing I want to focus on the most in this post, so I am going to dive right in now. Install was simple and took no time at all. It installed both the profiler for the CLR and Memory, but also visual studio extensions to facilitate the usage of the profilers (click any images for full size images): The Visual Studio menu options (under ANTS menu) Starting the CLR Performance Profiler from the start menu yields this window If you follow the instructions after launching the program from the start menu (Click File > New Profiling Session to start a new project), you are given a dialog with plenty of options for profiling: The New Session dialog. Lots of options. One thing I noticed is that the buttons in the lower right were half-covered by the panel of the application. If I had to guess, I would imagine that this is caused by my DPI settings being set to 125%. This is a problem I have seen in other applications as well that don’t scale well to different dpi scales. The profiler options give you the ability to profile: .NET Executable ASP.NET web application (hosted in IIS) ASP.NET web application (hosted in IIS express) ASP.NET web application (hosted in Cassini Web Development Server) SharePoint web application (hosted in IIS) Silverlight 4+ application Windows Service COM+ server XBAP (local XAML browser application) Attach to an already running .NET 4 process Choosing each option provides a varying set of other variables/options that one can set including options such as application arguments, operating path, record I/O performance performance counters to record (43 counters in all!), etc… All in all, they give you the ability to profile many different .Net project types, and make it simple to do so. In most cases of my using this application, I would be using the built in Visual Studio extensions, as they automatically start a new profiling project in ANTS with the options setup, and start your program, however RedGate has made it easy enough to profile outside of Visual Studio as well. On the flip side of this, as someone who lives most of their work life in Visual Studio, one thing I do wish is that instead of opening an entirely separate application/gui to perform profiling after launching, that instead they would provide a Visual Studio panel with the information, and integrate more of the profiling project information into Visual Studio. So, now that we have an idea of what options that the profiler gives us, its time to test its abilities and features. Horrendous Example Code – Prime Number Generator One of my interests besides development, is Physics and Math – what I went to college for. I have especially always been interested in prime numbers, as they are something of a mystery… So, I decided that I would go ahead and to test the abilities of the profiler, I would write a small program, website, and library to generate prime numbers in the quantity that you ask for. I am going to start off with some terrible code, and show how I would see the profiler being used as a development tool. First off, the IPrimes interface (all code is downloadable at the end of the post): interface IPrimes { IEnumerable<int> GetPrimes(int retrieve); } Simple enough, right? Anything that implements the interface will (hopefully) provide an IEnumerable of int, with the quantity specified in the parameter argument. Next, I am going to implement this interface in the most basic way: public class DumbPrimes : IPrimes { public IEnumerable<int> GetPrimes(int retrieve) { //store a list of primes already found var _foundPrimes = new List<int>() { 2, 3 }; //if i ask for 1 or two primes, return what asked for if (retrieve <= _foundPrimes.Count()) return _foundPrimes.Take(retrieve); //the next number to look at int _analyzing = 4; //since I already determined I don't have enough //execute at least once, and until quantity is sufficed do { //assume prime until otherwise determined bool isPrime = true; //start dividing at 2 //divide until number is reached, or determined not prime for (int i = 2; i < _analyzing && isPrime; i++) { //if (i) goes into _analyzing without a remainder, //_analyzing is NOT prime if (_analyzing % i == 0) isPrime = false; } //if it is prime, add to found list if (isPrime) _foundPrimes.Add(_analyzing); //increment number to analyze next _analyzing++; } while (_foundPrimes.Count() < retrieve); return _foundPrimes; } } This is the simplest way to get primes in my opinion. Checking each number by the straight definition of a prime – is it divisible by anything besides 1 and itself. I have included this code in a base class library for my solution, as I am going to use it to demonstrate a couple of features of ANTS. This class library is consumed by a simple non-MVVM WPF application, and a simple MVC4 website. I will not post the WPF code here inline, as it is simply an ObservableCollection<int>, a label, two textbox’s, and a button. Starting a new Profiling Session So, in Visual Studio, I have just completed my first stint developing the GUI and DumbPrimes IPrimes class, so now I want to check my codes efficiency by profiling it. All I have to do is build the solution (surprised initiating a profiling session doesn’t do this, but I suppose I can understand it), and then click the ANTS menu, followed by Profile Performance. I am then greeted by the profiler starting up and already monitoring my program live: You are provided with a realtime graph at the top, and a pane at the bottom giving you information on how to proceed. I am going to start by asking my program to show me the first 15000 primes: After the program finally began responding again (I did all the work on the main UI thread – how bad!), I stopped the profiler, which did kill the process of my program too. One important thing to note, is that the profiler by default wants to give you a lot of detail about the operation – line hit counts, time per line, percent time per line, etc… The important thing to remember is that this itself takes a lot of time. When running my program without the profiler attached, it can generate the 15000 primes in 5.18 seconds, compared to 74.5 seconds – almost a 1500 percent increase. While this may seem like a lot, remember that there is a trade off. It may be WAY more inefficient, however, I am able to drill down and make improvements to specific problem areas, and then decrease execution time all around. Analyzing the Profiling Session After clicking ‘Stop Profiling’, the process running my application stopped, and the entire execution time was automatically selected by ANTS, and the results shown below: Now there are a number of interesting things going on here, I am going to cover each in a section of its own: Real Time Performance Counter Bar (top of screen) At the top of the screen, is the real time performance bar. As your application is running, this will constantly update with the currently selected performance counters status. A couple of cool things to note are the fact that you can drag a selection around specific time periods to drill down the detail views in the lower 2 panels to information pertaining to only that period. After selecting a time period, you can bookmark a section and name it, so that it is easy to find later, or after reloaded at a later time. You can also zoom in, out, or fit the graph to the space provided – useful for drilling down. It may be hard to see, but at the top of the processor time graph below the time ticks, but above the red usage graph, there is a green bar. This bar shows at what times a method that is selected in the ‘Call tree’ panel is called. Very cool to be able to click on a method and see at what times it made an impact. As I said before, ANTS provides 43 different performance counters you can hook into. Click the arrow next to the Performance tab at the top will allow you to change between different counters if you have them selected: Method Call Tree, ADO.Net Database Calls, File IO – Detail Panel Red Gate really hit the mark here I think. When you select a section of the run with the graph, the call tree populates to fill a hierarchical tree of method calls, with information regarding each of the methods. By default, methods are hidden where the source is not provided (framework type code), however, Red Gate has integrated Reflector into ANTS, so even if you don’t have source for something, you can select a method and get the source if you want. Methods are also hidden where the impact is seen as insignificant – methods that are only executed for 1% of the time of the overall calling methods time; in other words, working on making them better is not where your efforts should be focused. – Smart! Source Panel – Detail Panel The source panel is where you can see line level information on your code, showing the code for the currently selected method from the Method Call Tree. If the code is not available, Reflector takes care of it and shows the code anyways! As you can notice, there does seem to be a problem with how ANTS determines what line is the actual line that a call is completed on. I have suspicions that this may be due to some of the inline code optimizations that the CLR applies upon compilation of the assembly. In a method with comments, the problem is much more severe: As you can see here, apparently the most offending code in my base library was a comment – *gasp*! Removing the comments does help quite a bit, however I hope that Red Gate works on their counter algorithm soon to improve the logic on positioning for statistics: I did a small test just to demonstrate the lines are correct without comments. For me, it isn’t a deal breaker, as I can usually determine the correct placements by looking at the application code in the region and determining what makes sense, but it is something that would probably build up some irritation with time. Feature – Suggest Method for Optimization A neat feature to really help those in need of a pointer, is the menu option under tools to automatically suggest methods to optimize/improve: Nice feature – clicking it filters the call tree and stars methods that it thinks are good candidates for optimization. I do wish that they would have made it more visible for those of use who aren’t great on sight: Process Integration I do think that this could have a place in my process. After experimenting with the profiler, I do think it would be a great benefit to do some development, testing, and then after all the bugs are worked out, use the profiler to check on things to make sure nothing seems like it is hogging more than its fair share. For example, with this program, I would have developed it, ran it, tested it – it works, but slowly. After looking at the profiler, and seeing the massive amount of time spent in 1 method, I might go ahead and try to re-implement IPrimes (I actually would probably rewrite the offending code, but so that I can distribute both sets of code easily, I’m just going to make another implementation of IPrimes). Using two pieces of knowledge about prime numbers can make this method MUCH more efficient – prime numbers fall into two buckets 6k+/-1 , and a number is prime if it is not divisible by any other primes before it: public class SmartPrimes : IPrimes { public IEnumerable<int> GetPrimes(int retrieve) { //store a list of primes already found var _foundPrimes = new List<int>() { 2, 3 }; //if i ask for 1 or two primes, return what asked for if (retrieve <= _foundPrimes.Count()) return _foundPrimes.Take(retrieve); //the next number to look at int _k = 1; //since I already determined I don't have enough //execute at least once, and until quantity is sufficed do { //assume prime until otherwise determined bool isPrime = true; int potentialPrime; //analyze 6k-1 //assign the value to potential potentialPrime = 6 * _k - 1; //if there are any primes that divise this, it is NOT a prime number //using PLINQ for quick boost isPrime = !_foundPrimes.AsParallel() .Any(prime => potentialPrime % prime == 0); //if it is prime, add to found list if (isPrime) _foundPrimes.Add(potentialPrime); if (_foundPrimes.Count() == retrieve) break; //analyze 6k+1 //assign the value to potential potentialPrime = 6 * _k + 1; //if there are any primes that divise this, it is NOT a prime number //using PLINQ for quick boost isPrime = !_foundPrimes.AsParallel() .Any(prime => potentialPrime % prime == 0); //if it is prime, add to found list if (isPrime) _foundPrimes.Add(potentialPrime); //increment k to analyze next _k++; } while (_foundPrimes.Count() < retrieve); return _foundPrimes; } } Now there are definitely more things I can do to help make this more efficient, but for the scope of this example, I think this is fine (but still hideous)! Profiling this now yields a happy surprise 27 seconds to generate the 15000 primes with the profiler attached, and only 1.43 seconds without. One important thing I wanted to call out though was the performance graph now: Notice anything odd? The %Processor time is above 100%. This is because there is now more than 1 core in the operation. A better label for the chart in my mind would have been %Core time, but to each their own. Another odd thing I noticed was that the profiler seemed to be spot on this time in my DumbPrimes class with line details in source, even with comments.. Odd. Profiling Web Applications The last thing that I wanted to cover, that means a lot to me as a web developer, is the great amount of work that Red Gate put into the profiler when profiling web applications. In my solution, I have a simple MVC4 application setup with 1 page, a single input form, that will output prime values as my WPF app did. Launching the profiler from Visual Studio as before, nothing is really different in the profiler window, however I did receive a UAC prompt for a Red Gate helper app to integrate with the web server without notification. After requesting 500, 1000, 2000, and 5000 primes, and looking at the profiler session, things are slightly different from before: As you can see, there are 4 spikes of activity in the processor time graph, but there is also something new in the call tree: That’s right – ANTS will actually group method calls by get/post operations, so it is easier to find out what action/page is giving the largest problems… Pretty cool in my mind! Overview Overall, I think that Red Gate ANTS CLR Profiler has a lot to offer, however I think it also has a long ways to go. 3 Biggest Pros: Ability to easily drill down from time graph, to method calls, to source code Wide variety of counters to choose from when profiling your application Excellent integration/grouping of methods being called from web applications by request – BRILLIANT! 3 Biggest Cons: Issue regarding line details in source view Nit pick – Processor time vs. Core time Nit pick – Lack of full integration with Visual Studio Ratings Ease of Use (7/10) – I marked down here because of the problems with the line level details and the extra work that that entails, and the lack of better integration with Visual Studio. Effectiveness (10/10) – I believe that the profiler does EXACTLY what it purports to do. Especially with its large variety of performance counters, a definite plus! Features (9/10) – Besides the real time performance monitoring, and the drill downs that I’ve shown here, ANTS also has great integration with ADO.Net, with the ability to show database queries run by your application in the profiler. This, with the line level details, the web request grouping, reflector integration, and various options to customize your profiling session I think create a great set of features! Customer Service (10/10) – My entire experience with Red Gate personnel has been nothing but good. their people are friendly, helpful, and happy! UI / UX (8/10) – The interface is very easy to get around, and all of the options are easy to find. With a little bit of poking around, you’ll be optimizing Hello World in no time flat! Overall (8/10) – Overall, I am happy with the Performance Profiler and its features, as well as with the service I received when working with the Red Gate personnel. I WOULD recommend you trying the application and seeing if it would fit into your process, BUT, remember there are still some kinks in it to hopefully be worked out. My next post will definitely be shorter (hopefully), but thank you for reading up to here, or skipping ahead! Please, if you do try the product, drop me a message and let me know what you think! I would love to hear any opinions you may have on the product. Code Feel free to download the code I used above – download via DropBox

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How to use Bonjour?

- by Roman

First, what exactly Bonjour does (pleas read my guesses written bellow)? Here I found out that Bonjour enables automatic discovery of computers, devices, and services on IP networks. But I thought that it not only "discovers devices on IP network" it also creates an IP network by assigning IP addresses to devices where Bonjour is running. Am I right? And I still miss the essence. Does it work in the following way? First I connect devices (for example laptops) physically so that they potentially can communicate with each other. Then, let say, on some laptops I have Bonjour running and then, as a consequence, these laptops assign IP addresses to them self in automatic way. So, laptops (where Bonjour is running) build an IP network. Does it work in this way? Or may be a computer running Bonjour is not considered as a service and it does not broadcast itself just because Bonjour is running on this computer. I mean that the applications running on the computers need to use Bonjour to broadcast themself. So, it is applications that broadcast themself (not computers) and it is not done automatically (application needs to broadcast themself explicitly). Is it right? How exactly my application can broadcast itself? Can I use command line to register an service (so that all applications using Bonjour knows that a new service appeared)? Further, I would like to have an application which use the IP network created by Bonjour. For that my application needs to know which devices/services are present in the network. In more details, my application needs to have a list of services. Each service in the list should have a name, the IP address where it is running and the port which is used by the application. Can Bonjour provide this information in some way? If it is the case, how exactly it works. How my program can get this information from Bonjour? Can my program read some file created by Bonjour and containing the above mentioned information? Can I use some commands in command line to retrieve this information? I have a special interest in accessing the information about services from files, environment variables or commands in command line. These options seems to me to be the simplest! Since in these case I do not need to use any additional libraries to communicate with Bonjour from a particular programming language. P.S. Pleas ask questions if something is not clear in my question. I will try to formulate my question in a more clear way. P.P.S. I use Windows 7. ADDED: I plan to write my applications in PHP. Every computer should run a Apache web server. And I want to use Bonjour to help computer discover each other (computers are working in a local network).

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Understanding NFS4 (Linux server)

- by drumfire

I've been a bit bothered by NFS4 on Linux. Some information 'out there' seems to conflict with other information, and other information appears hard to find. So here are a couple of things that caught my attention, hopefully someone out there can shed some light on this. This question focuses exclusively on NFS4 without Kerberos etc. 1. Exports There is ambiguous information in the exports manpage on the structure of /etc/exports. To quote from exports(5): Also, each line may have one or more specifications for default options after the path name, in the form of a dash ("-") followed by an option list. The option list is used for all subsequent exports on that line only. What does "subsequent exports on that line only" mean? 1.2 fsid=0 not required anymore? I was searching for fsid when I found a comment on the linux-nfs list stating fsid=0 is not required anymore. Now I'm just confused, do I need it with nfs4 or not?! 2. Non-exported directory still mountable Say I have the following tree: /exp /exp/users /exp/distr /exp/distr/archlinux /exp/distr/debian And I have the following entries in this fstab entry: /dev/disk/by-label/users /mnt/users ext4 defaults 0 0 /dev/disk/by-label/distr /mnt/distr ext4 defaults 0 0 /mnt/users /exp/users none bind 0 0 /mnt/distr /exp/distr none bind 0 0 And my exports is exactly this: /exp 192.168.1.0/24(fsid=0,rw,async,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash) /exp/distr 192.168.1.0/24(rw,async,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash) And exportfs -arv shows: exporting 192.168.1.0/24:/exp/distr exporting 192.168.1.0/24:/exp Then why am I able to do this and get no error on a client: mount -t nfs4 server:/exp/users /tmp/test Even though /exp/users is not exported? I didn't export this directory, and while I don't see the contents of /dev/disk/by-label/users unless I specify crossmnt, I am still able to write to the directory. Everything I write to there goes to the underlying directory of /exp/users which can be seen when I umount /exp/users; ls /exp/users.. 3. The odd case of showmount -d server As stated by rpc.mountd(8), this command should display directories that are either currently mounted by clients, or stale entries in /var/lib/nfs/rmtab, as can be read: The rpc.mountd daemon registers every successful MNT request by adding an entry to the /var/lib/nfs/rmtab file. When receivng a UMNT request from an NFS client, rpc.mountd simply removes the matching entry from /var/lib/nfs/rmtab, as long as the access control list for that export allows that sender to access the export. (...) Note, however, that there is little to guarantee that the contents of /var/lib/nfs/rmtab are accurate. A client may continue accessing an export even after invoking UMNT. If the client reboots without sending a UMNT request, stale entries remain for that client in /var/lib/nfs/rmtab. After reading this I surely wonder: Isn't it terribly insecure to just expose this type of client information; Aren't unaware server admins bound to have an rmtab with a lot of stale clients; Is this the reason that clients that mount nfs4 directories with mount -v get to see output like "nothing was mounted" even though something was mounted? I have a lot of other questions regarding nfs4, but I'll keep it at this for the moment.. :)

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Profile System: User share the same id

- by Malcolm Frexner

I have a strange effect on my site when it is under heavy load. I randomly get the properties of other users settings. I have my own implementation of the profile system so I guess I can not blame the profile system itself. I just need a point to start debugging from. I guess there is a cookie-value that maps to an Profile entry somewhere. Is there any chance to see how this mapping works? Here is my profile provider: using System; using System.Text; using System.Configuration; using System.Web; using System.Web.Profile; using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Specialized; using B2CShop.Model; using log4net; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Diagnostics; using B2CShop.DAL; using B2CShop.Model.RepositoryInterfaces; [assembly: log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator()] namespace B2CShop.Profile { public class B2CShopProfileProvider : ProfileProvider { private static readonly ILog _log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(B2CShopProfileProvider)); // Get an instance of the Profile DAL using the ProfileDALFactory private static readonly B2CShop.DAL.UserRepository dal = new B2CShop.DAL.UserRepository(); // Private members private const string ERR_INVALID_PARAMETER = "Invalid Profile parameter:"; private const string PROFILE_USER = "User"; private static string applicationName = B2CShop.Model.Configuration.ApplicationConfiguration.MembershipApplicationName; /// <summary> /// The name of the application using the custom profile provider. /// </summary> public override string ApplicationName { get { return applicationName; } set { applicationName = value; } } /// <summary> /// Initializes the provider. /// </summary> /// <param name="name">The friendly name of the provider.</param> /// <param name="config">A collection of the name/value pairs representing the provider-specific attributes specified in the configuration for this provider.</param> public override void Initialize(string name, NameValueCollection config) { if (config == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("config"); if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(config["description"])) { config.Remove("description"); config.Add("description", "B2C Shop Custom Provider"); } if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(name)) name = "b2c_shop"; if (config["applicationName"] != null && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(config["applicationName"].Trim())) applicationName = config["applicationName"]; base.Initialize(name, config); } /// <summary> /// Returns the collection of settings property values for the specified application instance and settings property group. /// </summary> /// <param name="context">A System.Configuration.SettingsContext describing the current application use.</param> /// <param name="collection">A System.Configuration.SettingsPropertyCollection containing the settings property group whose values are to be retrieved.</param> /// <returns>A System.Configuration.SettingsPropertyValueCollection containing the values for the specified settings property group.</returns> public override SettingsPropertyValueCollection GetPropertyValues(SettingsContext context, SettingsPropertyCollection collection) { string username = (string)context["UserName"]; bool isAuthenticated = (bool)context["IsAuthenticated"]; //if (!isAuthenticated) return null; int uniqueID = dal.GetUniqueID(username, isAuthenticated, false, ApplicationName); SettingsPropertyValueCollection svc = new SettingsPropertyValueCollection(); foreach (SettingsProperty prop in collection) { SettingsPropertyValue pv = new SettingsPropertyValue(prop); switch (pv.Property.Name) { case PROFILE_USER: if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(username)) { pv.PropertyValue = GetUser(uniqueID); } break; default: throw new ApplicationException(ERR_INVALID_PARAMETER + " name."); } svc.Add(pv); } return svc; } /// <summary> /// Sets the values of the specified group of property settings. /// </summary> /// <param name="context">A System.Configuration.SettingsContext describing the current application usage.</param> /// <param name="collection">A System.Configuration.SettingsPropertyValueCollection representing the group of property settings to set.</param> public override void SetPropertyValues(SettingsContext context, SettingsPropertyValueCollection collection) { string username = (string)context["UserName"]; CheckUserName(username); bool isAuthenticated = (bool)context["IsAuthenticated"]; int uniqueID = dal.GetUniqueID(username, isAuthenticated, false, ApplicationName); if (uniqueID == 0) { uniqueID = dal.CreateProfileForUser(username, isAuthenticated, ApplicationName); } foreach (SettingsPropertyValue pv in collection) { if (pv.PropertyValue != null) { switch (pv.Property.Name) { case PROFILE_USER: SetUser(uniqueID, (UserInfo)pv.PropertyValue); break; default: throw new ApplicationException(ERR_INVALID_PARAMETER + " name."); } } } UpdateActivityDates(username, false); } // Profile gettters // Retrieve UserInfo private static UserInfo GetUser(int userID) { return dal.GetUser(userID); } // Update account info private static void SetUser(int uniqueID, UserInfo user) { user.UserID = uniqueID; dal.SetUser(user); } // UpdateActivityDates // Updates the LastActivityDate and LastUpdatedDate values // when profile properties are accessed by the // GetPropertyValues and SetPropertyValues methods. // Passing true as the activityOnly parameter will update // only the LastActivityDate. private static void UpdateActivityDates(string username, bool activityOnly) { dal.UpdateActivityDates(username, activityOnly, applicationName); } /// <summary> /// Deletes profile properties and information for the supplied list of profiles. /// </summary> /// <param name="profiles">A System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfoCollection of information about profiles that are to be deleted.</param> /// <returns>The number of profiles deleted from the data source.</returns> public override int DeleteProfiles(ProfileInfoCollection profiles) { int deleteCount = 0; foreach (ProfileInfo p in profiles) if (DeleteProfile(p.UserName)) deleteCount++; return deleteCount; } /// <summary> /// Deletes profile properties and information for profiles that match the supplied list of user names. /// </summary> /// <param name="usernames">A string array of user names for profiles to be deleted.</param> /// <returns>The number of profiles deleted from the data source.</returns> public override int DeleteProfiles(string[] usernames) { int deleteCount = 0; foreach (string user in usernames) if (DeleteProfile(user)) deleteCount++; return deleteCount; } // DeleteProfile // Deletes profile data from the database for the specified user name. private static bool DeleteProfile(string username) { CheckUserName(username); return dal.DeleteAnonymousProfile(username, applicationName); } // Verifies user name for sise and comma private static void CheckUserName(string userName) { if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(userName) || userName.Length > 256 || userName.IndexOf(",") > 0) throw new ApplicationException(ERR_INVALID_PARAMETER + " user name."); } /// <summary> /// Deletes all user-profile data for profiles in which the last activity date occurred before the specified date. /// </summary> /// <param name="authenticationOption">One of the System.Web.Profile.ProfileAuthenticationOption values, specifying whether anonymous, authenticated, or both types of profiles are deleted.</param> /// <param name="userInactiveSinceDate">A System.DateTime that identifies which user profiles are considered inactive. If the System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfo.LastActivityDate value of a user profile occurs on or before this date and time, the profile is considered inactive.</param> /// <returns>The number of profiles deleted from the data source.</returns> public override int DeleteInactiveProfiles(ProfileAuthenticationOption authenticationOption, DateTime userInactiveSinceDate) { string[] userArray = new string[0]; dal.GetInactiveProfiles((int)authenticationOption, userInactiveSinceDate, ApplicationName).CopyTo(userArray, 0); return DeleteProfiles(userArray); } /// <summary> /// Retrieves profile information for profiles in which the user name matches the specified user names. /// </summary> /// <param name="authenticationOption">One of the System.Web.Profile.ProfileAuthenticationOption values, specifying whether anonymous, authenticated, or both types of profiles are returned.</param> /// <param name="usernameToMatch">The user name to search for.</param> /// <param name="pageIndex">The index of the page of results to return.</param> /// <param name="pageSize">The size of the page of results to return.</param> /// <param name="totalRecords">When this method returns, contains the total number of profiles.</param> /// <returns>A System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfoCollection containing user-profile information // for profiles where the user name matches the supplied usernameToMatch parameter.</returns> public override ProfileInfoCollection FindProfilesByUserName(ProfileAuthenticationOption authenticationOption, string usernameToMatch, int pageIndex, int pageSize, out int totalRecords) { CheckParameters(pageIndex, pageSize); return GetProfileInfo(authenticationOption, usernameToMatch, null, pageIndex, pageSize, out totalRecords); } /// <summary> /// Retrieves profile information for profiles in which the last activity date occurred on or before the specified date and the user name matches the specified user name. /// </summary> /// <param name="authenticationOption">One of the System.Web.Profile.ProfileAuthenticationOption values, specifying whether anonymous, authenticated, or both types of profiles are returned.</param> /// <param name="usernameToMatch">The user name to search for.</param> /// <param name="userInactiveSinceDate">A System.DateTime that identifies which user profiles are considered inactive. If the System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfo.LastActivityDate value of a user profile occurs on or before this date and time, the profile is considered inactive.</param> /// <param name="pageIndex">The index of the page of results to return.</param> /// <param name="pageSize">The size of the page of results to return.</param> /// <param name="totalRecords">When this method returns, contains the total number of profiles.</param> /// <returns>A System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfoCollection containing user profile information for inactive profiles where the user name matches the supplied usernameToMatch parameter.</returns> public override ProfileInfoCollection FindInactiveProfilesByUserName(ProfileAuthenticationOption authenticationOption, string usernameToMatch, DateTime userInactiveSinceDate, int pageIndex, int pageSize, out int totalRecords) { CheckParameters(pageIndex, pageSize); return GetProfileInfo(authenticationOption, usernameToMatch, userInactiveSinceDate, pageIndex, pageSize, out totalRecords); } /// <summary> /// Retrieves user profile data for all profiles in the data source. /// </summary> /// <param name="authenticationOption">One of the System.Web.Profile.ProfileAuthenticationOption values, specifying whether anonymous, authenticated, or both types of profiles are returned.</param> /// <param name="pageIndex">The index of the page of results to return.</param> /// <param name="pageSize">The size of the page of results to return.</param> /// <param name="totalRecords">When this method returns, contains the total number of profiles.</param> /// <returns>A System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfoCollection containing user-profile information for all profiles in the data source.</returns> public override ProfileInfoCollection GetAllProfiles(ProfileAuthenticationOption authenticationOption, int pageIndex, int pageSize, out int totalRecords) { CheckParameters(pageIndex, pageSize); return GetProfileInfo(authenticationOption, null, null, pageIndex, pageSize, out totalRecords); } /// <summary> /// Retrieves user-profile data from the data source for profiles in which the last activity date occurred on or before the specified date. /// </summary> /// <param name="authenticationOption">One of the System.Web.Profile.ProfileAuthenticationOption values, specifying whether anonymous, authenticated, or both types of profiles are returned.</param> /// <param name="userInactiveSinceDate">A System.DateTime that identifies which user profiles are considered inactive. If the System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfo.LastActivityDate of a user profile occurs on or before this date and time, the profile is considered inactive.</param> /// <param name="pageIndex">The index of the page of results to return.</param> /// <param name="pageSize">The size of the page of results to return.</param> /// <param name="totalRecords">When this method returns, contains the total number of profiles.</param> /// <returns>A System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfoCollection containing user-profile information about the inactive profiles.</returns> public override ProfileInfoCollection GetAllInactiveProfiles(ProfileAuthenticationOption authenticationOption, DateTime userInactiveSinceDate, int pageIndex, int pageSize, out int totalRecords) { CheckParameters(pageIndex, pageSize); return GetProfileInfo(authenticationOption, null, userInactiveSinceDate, pageIndex, pageSize, out totalRecords); } /// <summary> /// Returns the number of profiles in which the last activity date occurred on or before the specified date. /// </summary> /// <param name="authenticationOption">One of the System.Web.Profile.ProfileAuthenticationOption values, specifying whether anonymous, authenticated, or both types of profiles are returned.</param> /// <param name="userInactiveSinceDate">A System.DateTime that identifies which user profiles are considered inactive. If the System.Web.Profile.ProfileInfo.LastActivityDate of a user profile occurs on or before this date and time, the profile is considered inactive.</param> /// <returns>The number of profiles in which the last activity date occurred on or before the specified date.</returns> public override int GetNumberOfInactiveProfiles(ProfileAuthenticationOption authenticationOption, DateTime userInactiveSinceDate) { int inactiveProfiles = 0; ProfileInfoCollection profiles = GetProfileInfo(authenticationOption, null, userInactiveSinceDate, 0, 0, out inactiveProfiles); return inactiveProfiles; } //Verifies input parameters for page size and page index. private static void CheckParameters(int pageIndex, int pageSize) { if (pageIndex < 1 || pageSize < 1) throw new ApplicationException(ERR_INVALID_PARAMETER + " page index."); } //GetProfileInfo //Retrieves a count of profiles and creates a //ProfileInfoCollection from the profile data in the //database. Called by GetAllProfiles, GetAllInactiveProfiles, //FindProfilesByUserName, FindInactiveProfilesByUserName, //and GetNumberOfInactiveProfiles. //Specifying a pageIndex of 0 retrieves a count of the results only. private static ProfileInfoCollection GetProfileInfo(ProfileAuthenticationOption authenticationOption, string usernameToMatch, object userInactiveSinceDate, int pageIndex, int pageSize, out int totalRecords) { ProfileInfoCollection profiles = new ProfileInfoCollection(); totalRecords = 0; // Count profiles only. if (pageSize == 0) return profiles; int counter = 0; int startIndex = pageSize * (pageIndex - 1); int endIndex = startIndex + pageSize - 1; DateTime dt = new DateTime(1900, 1, 1); if (userInactiveSinceDate != null) dt = (DateTime)userInactiveSinceDate; /* foreach(CustomProfileInfo profile in dal.GetProfileInfo((int)authenticationOption, usernameToMatch, dt, applicationName, out totalRecords)) { if(counter >= startIndex) { ProfileInfo p = new ProfileInfo(profile.UserName, profile.IsAnonymous, profile.LastActivityDate, profile.LastUpdatedDate, 0); profiles.Add(p); } if(counter >= endIndex) { break; } counter++; } */ return profiles; } } } This is how I use it in the controller: public ActionResult AddTyreToCart(CartViewModel model) { string profile = Request.IsAuthenticated ? Request.AnonymousID : User.Identity.Name; } I would like to debug: How can 2 users who provide different cookies get the same profileid? EDIT Here is the code for getuniqueid public int GetUniqueID(string userName, bool isAuthenticated, bool ignoreAuthenticationType, string appName) { SqlParameter[] parms = { new SqlParameter("@Username", SqlDbType.VarChar, 256), new SqlParameter("@ApplicationName", SqlDbType.VarChar, 256)}; parms[0].Value = userName; parms[1].Value = appName; if (!ignoreAuthenticationType) { Array.Resize(ref parms, parms.Length + 1); parms[2] = new SqlParameter("@IsAnonymous", SqlDbType.Bit) { Value = !isAuthenticated }; } int userID; object retVal = null; retVal = SqlHelper.ExecuteScalar(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["SQLOrderB2CConnString"].ConnectionString, CommandType.StoredProcedure, "getProfileUniqueID", parms); if (retVal == null) userID = CreateProfileForUser(userName, isAuthenticated, appName); else userID = Convert.ToInt32(retVal); return userID; } And this is the SP: CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[getProfileUniqueID] @Username VarChar( 256), @ApplicationName VarChar( 256), @IsAnonymous bit = null AS BEGIN SET NOCOUNT ON; /* [getProfileUniqueID] created 08.07.2009 mf Retrive unique id for current user */ SELECT UniqueID FROM dbo.Profiles WHERE Username = @Username AND ApplicationName = @ApplicationName AND IsAnonymous = @IsAnonymous or @IsAnonymous = null END

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Our Oracle Recruitment Team is Growing - Multiple Job Opportunities in Bangalore, India

- by david.talamelli

DON"T GET STUCK IN THE MATRIXSEE YOUR FUTUREVISIT THE ORACLE The position(s): CORPORATE RECRUITING RESEARCH ANALYST(S) ABOUT ORACLE Oracle's business is information--how to manage it, use it, share it, protect it. For three decades, Oracle, the world's largest enterprise software company, has provided the software and services that allow organizations to get the most up-to-date and accurate information from their business systems. Only Oracle powers the information-driven enterprise by offering a complete, integrated solution for every segment of the process industry. When you run Oracle applications on Oracle technology, you speed implementation, optimize performance, and maximize ROI. Great hiring doesn't happen by accident; it's the culmination of a series of thoughtfully planned and well executed events. At the core of any hiring process is a sourcing strategy. This is where you come in... Do you want to be a part of a world-class recruiting organization that's on the cutting edge of technology? Would you like to experience a rewarding work environment that allows you to further develop your skills, while giving you the opportunity to develop new skills? If you answered yes, you've taken your first step towards a future with Oracle. We are building a Research Team to support our North America Recruitment Team, and we need creative, smart, and ambitious individuals to help us drive our research department forward. Oracle has a track record for employing and developing the very best in the industry. We invest generously in employee development, training and resources. Be a part of the most progressive internal recruiting team in the industry. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com Escape the hum drum job world matrix, visit the Oracle and be a part of a winning team, apply today. POSITION: Corporate Recruiting Research Analyst LOCATION: Bangalore, India RESPONSIBILITIES: •Develop candidate pipeline using Web 2.0 sourcing strategies and advanced Boolean Search techniques to support U.S. Recruiting Team for various job functions and levels. •Engage with assigned recruiters to understand the supported business as well as the recruiting requirements; partner with recruiters to meet expectations and deliver a qualified pipeline of candidates. •Source candidates to include both active and passive job seekers to provide a strong pipeline of qualified candidates for each recruiter; exercise creativity to find candidates using Oracle's advanced sourcing tools/techniques. •Fully evaluate candidate's background against the requirements provided by recruiter, and process leads using ATS (Applicant Tracking System). •Manage your efforts efficiently; maintain the highest levels of client satisfaction as well as strong operations and reporting of research activities. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS: •Fluent in English, with excellent written and oral communication skills. •Undergraduate degree required, MBA or Masters preferred. •Proficiency with Boolean Search techniques desired. •Ability to learn new software applications quickly. •Must be able to accommodate some U.S. evening hours. •Strong organization and attention to detail skills. •Prior HR or corporate in-house recruiting experiences a plus. •The fire in the belly to learn new ideas and succeed. •Ability to work in team and individual environments. This is an excellent opportunity to join Oracle in our Bangalore Offices. Interested applicants can send their resume to [email protected] or contact David on +61 3 8616 3364

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Subterranean IL: Pseudo custom attributes

- by Simon Cooper

Custom attributes were designed to make the .NET framework extensible; if a .NET language needs to store additional metadata on an item that isn't expressible in IL, then an attribute could be applied to the IL item to represent this metadata. For instance, the C# compiler uses DecimalConstantAttribute and DateTimeConstantAttribute to represent compile-time decimal or datetime constants, which aren't allowed in pure IL, and FixedBufferAttribute to represent fixed struct fields. How attributes are compiled Within a .NET assembly are a series of tables containing all the metadata for items within the assembly; for instance, the TypeDef table stores metadata on all the types in the assembly, and MethodDef does the same for all the methods and constructors. Custom attribute information is stored in the CustomAttribute table, which has references to the IL item the attribute is applied to, the constructor used (which implies the type of attribute applied), and a binary blob representing the arguments and name/value pairs used in the attribute application. For example, the following C# class: [Obsolete("Please use MyClass2", true)] public class MyClass { // ... } corresponds to the following IL class definition: .class public MyClass { .custom instance void [mscorlib]System.ObsoleteAttribute::.ctor(string, bool) = { string('Please use MyClass2' bool(true) } // ... } and results in the following entry in the CustomAttribute table: TypeDef(MyClass) MemberRef(ObsoleteAttribute::.ctor(string, bool)) blob -> {string('Please use MyClass2' bool(true)} However, there are some attributes that don't compile in this way. Pseudo custom attributes Just like there are some concepts in a language that can't be represented in IL, there are some concepts in IL that can't be represented in a language. This is where pseudo custom attributes come into play. The most obvious of these is SerializableAttribute. Although it looks like an attribute, it doesn't compile to a CustomAttribute table entry; it instead sets the serializable bit directly within the TypeDef entry for the type. This flag is fully expressible within IL; this C#: [Serializable] public class MySerializableClass {} compiles to this IL: .class public serializable MySerializableClass {} For those interested, a full list of pseudo custom attributes is available here. For the rest of this post, I'll be concentrating on the ones that deal with P/Invoke. P/Invoke attributes P/Invoke is built right into the CLR at quite a deep level; there are 2 metadata tables within an assembly dedicated solely to p/invoke interop, and many more that affect it. Furthermore, all the attributes used to specify p/invoke methods in C# or VB have their own keywords and syntax within IL. For example, the following C# method declaration: [DllImport("mscorsn.dll", SetLastError = true)] [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U1)] private static extern bool StrongNameSignatureVerificationEx( [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] string wszFilePath, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U1)] bool fForceVerification, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U1)] ref bool pfWasVerified); compiles to the following IL definition: .method private static pinvokeimpl("mscorsn.dll" lasterr winapi) bool marshal(unsigned int8) StrongNameSignatureVerificationEx( string marshal(lpwstr) wszFilePath, bool marshal(unsigned int8) fForceVerification, bool& marshal(unsigned int8) pfWasVerified) cil managed preservesig {} As you can see, all the p/invoke and marshal properties are specified directly in IL, rather than using attributes. And, rather than creating entries in CustomAttribute, a whole bunch of metadata is emitted to represent this information. This single method declaration results in the following metadata being output to the assembly: A MethodDef entry containing basic information on the method Four ParamDef entries for the 3 method parameters and return type An entry in ModuleRef to mscorsn.dll An entry in ImplMap linking ModuleRef and MethodDef, along with the name of the function to import and the pinvoke options (lasterr winapi) Four FieldMarshal entries containing the marshal information for each parameter. Phew! Applying attributes Most of the time, when you apply an attribute to an element, an entry in the CustomAttribute table will be created to represent that application. However, some attributes represent concepts in IL that aren't expressible in the language you're coding in, and can instead result in a single bit change (SerializableAttribute and NonSerializedAttribute), or many extra metadata table entries (the p/invoke attributes) being emitted to the output assembly.

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SQL SERVER – What is SSRS and Why SSRS is asked for in many Job Opening?

- by Pinal Dave

This example is from the Beginning SSRS by Kathi Kellenberger. Supporting files are available with a free download from the www.Joes2Pros.com web site. This will be a 5 day blog post in getting started with SSRS. Today will show the importance of SSRS in the business. Why is SSRS asked for in so many job openings? If you talk to an SSRS expert it’s very clear to them exactly why companies really need this invention and how it saves time and adds business value. You don’t have to be an SSRS expert to know its value or to start using it. For example you don’t have to be an airline pilot to know the usefulness of modern transportation. Even the people who don’t know how to run SSRS but need the reports can tell you why that is needed. This blog post will go into why SSRS is an important invention by showing how it improves the usage of information in your company. Before SSRS there has always been a need for a company to benefit from the use of its own information. Excel spreadsheets have been a popular way to do this for a long time. With SSRS you can still use this solution and gain many other options too. A friend of mine told me a story about doing database work in the 90s for a major company and how he wished SSRS was available back then. The Vice President of the marketing channel would often come to him just before an important meeting with the board of directors. He often needed to show how certain product sales were performing over time. All this information was in the database so it was my friend’s job to get the information out and organized into a medium the VP could use. This medium was usually Excel. The VP often had meetings all over the world where he showcased this Excel report. The solution to get the VP to him anywhere he was in the world was an Excel file attached to an e-mail. This worked pretty well but with some drawbacks. One time my friend sent the wrong file in the e-mail. A few minutes later my friend realized his mistake and sent another frantic e-mail to VP. This one was saying to ignore the last e-mail and use this newer one. Would the VP see the correct e-mail in time? If SSRS had been available, my friend could have created a solution that let the VP run the report any time he wished. The report could have been published to the company intranet where the VP could run it from any of the offices he happened to be traveling to that month. There is a fair amount of work up front to develop and publish the report, but once that work is completed, the report can be reused as many times as needed. My friend could even be on vacation for the first day of the monthly and the VP can get his real-time report. Not only could the report show the most recent data, the VP could choose to view reports of previous months with just a few clicks. The deployed SSRS is user friendly, and can also be configured to protect reports from being run by the wrong people. Tomorrow’s Post Tomorrow’s blog post will show how to know if you already have SSRS installed. If you want to learn SSRS in easy to simple words – I strongly recommend you to get Beginning SSRS book from Joes 2 Pros. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Reporting Services, SSRS

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Today's Links (6/29/2011)

- by Bob Rhubart

Event-Driven SOA: Events meet Services | Guido Schmutz Oracle ACE Director Guido Schmutz shows you how to achieve extreme loose coupling within a Service-Oriented Architecture by using event-driven interactions. Misconceptions About Software Architecture | Sanjeev Kumar A concise, to-the-point, and informative article by Sanjeev Kumar. Good Leaders Acknowledge What Can't Be Done - Jeffrey Pfeffer - Harvard Business Review "None of us likes to admit to bad decisions," says Jeffrey Pfeffer. "But imagine how much harder that is for someone who has been chosen to lead a large organization precisely because he or she is thought to have the power to see the future more clearly and chart a wise course." Suboptimal Thinking within Enterprise Architecture | James McGovern McGovern says: "We need to remember that enterprises live and thrive beyond just the current person at the helm." Boundaryless Information Flow | Richard Veryard "If all the boundaries are removed or porous, then the (extended) enterprise or ecosystem becomes like a giant sponge, in which all information permeates the whole," Veryard says. "Some people may think that's a good idea, but it's not what I'd call loose coupling." Coming to a City Near You: Oracle Business Analytics Summits | Rob Reynolds This series of events includes a Technology and Architecture track. New Date for Implementation of Sun Hands-On Course Requirement (Oracle Certification) As announced on the Oracle Certification website, Java Architect, Java Developer, Solaris System Administrator and Solaris Security Administrator certification tracks will include a new mandatory course attendance requirement. VirtualBox 4.0.10 is now available for download | Bob Netherton Netherton shares information on the new release. Updated Technical Best Practices whitepaper | Anthony Shorten The Technical Best Practices whitepaper has been updated with the latest advice. "New advice includes new installation advice, advanced settings, new security settings and advice for both Oracle WebLogic and IBM WebSphere installations," says Shorten. Kscope 11 ADF, AIA and Business Rules | Peter Paul van de Beek Whitehorses Solution Architect Peter Paul van de Beek shares his impressions of KScope11 presentations by Markus Eisele, Sten Vesterli, and Edwin Biemond. Amazon AWS for the learning experience | Andrej Koelewijn "Using AWS changes your expectations how your internal data center should operate," says Koelewijn. BPMN is dead, long live BPEL! (SOA Partner Community Blog) Jürgen Kress shares information -- including a long list of speakers -- for the SOA & BPM Integration Days 2011 conference, October 12th & 13th 2011 in Düsseldorf. InfoQ: HTML5 and the Dawn of Rich Mobile Web Applications James Pearce introduces cross-platform web apps development using HTML5 and web frameworks, such as jQTouch, jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, PhoneGap, outlining what makes a good framework. InfoQ: Interview and Book Excerpt: CMMI for Development "Frameworks like TOGAF are used to define an architecture that aligns IT assets and resources to support key business needs and processes of key stakeholders," says SEI's Mike Konrad. "But the individual application systems, capabilities, services, networks, and other IT assets and infrastructure still need to be acquired, developed, or sustained." InfoQ: Architecting a Cloud-Scale Identity Fabric | Eric Olden "The most cited reason for not moving to the cloud is concern about security," says Olden. "In particular, managing user identity and access in the cloud is a tough problem to solve and a big security concern for organizations."

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