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• My Feelings About Microsoft Surface

  - by Valter Minute

  Advice: read the title carefully, I’m talking about “feelings” and not about advanced technical points proved in a scientific and objective way I still haven’t had a chance to play with a MS Surface tablet (I would love to, of course) and so my ideas just came from reading different articles on the net and MS official statements. Remember also that the MVP motto begins with “Independent” (“Independent Experts. Real World Answers.”) and this is just my humble opinion about a product and a technology. I know that, being an MS MVP you can be called an “MS-fanboy”, I don’t care, I hope that people can appreciate my opinion, even if it doesn’t match theirs. The “Surface” brand can be confusing for techies that knew the “original” surface concept but I think that will be a fresh new brand name for most of the people out there. But marketing department are here to confuse people… so I can understand this “recycle” of an existing name. So Microsoft is entering the hardware arena… for me this is good news. Microsoft developed some nice hardware in the past: the xbox, zune (even if the commercial success was quite limited) and, last but not least, the two arc mices (old and new model) that I use and appreciate. In the past Microsoft worked with OEMs and that model lead to good and bad things. Good thing (for microsoft, at least) is market domination by windows-based PCs that only in the last years has been reduced by the return of the Mac and tablets. Google is also moving in the hardware business with its acquisition of Motorola, and Apple leveraged his control of both the hardware and software sides to develop innovative products. Microsoft can scare OEMs and make them fly away from windows (but where?) or just lead the pack, showing how devices should be designed to compete in the market and bring back some of the innovation that disappeared from recent PC products (look at the shelves of your favorite electronics store and try to distinguish a laptop between the huge mass of anonymous PCs on displays… only Macs shine out there…). Having to compete with MS “official” hardware will force OEMs to develop better product and bring back some real competition in a market that was ruled only by prices (the lower the better even when that means low quality) and no innovative features at all (when it was the last time that a new PC surprised you?). Moving into a new market is a big and risky move, but with Windows 8 Microsoft is playing a crucial move for its future, trying to be back in the innovation run against apple and google. MS can’t afford to fail this time. I saw the new devices (the WinRT and Pro) and the specifications are scarce, misleading and confusing. The first impression is that the device looks like an iPad with a nice keyboard cover… Using “HD” and “full HD” to define display resolution instead of using the real figures and reviving the “ClearType” brand (now dead on Win8 as reported here and missed by people who hate to read text on displays, like myself) without providing clear figures (couldn’t you count those damned pixels?) seems to imply that MS was caught by surprise by apple recent “retina” displays that brought very high definition screens on tablets.Also there are no specifications about the processors used (even if some sources report NVidia Tegra for the ARM tablet and i5 for the x86 one) and expected battery life (a critical point for tablets and the point that killed Windows7 x86 based tablets). Also nothing about the price, and this will be another critical point because other platform out there already provide lots of applications and have a good user base, if MS want to enter this market tablets pricing must be competitive. There are some expansion ports (SD and USB), so no fixed storage model (even if the specs talks about 32-64GB for RT and 128-256GB for pro). I like this and don’t like the apple model where flash memory (that it’s dirt cheap used in thumdrives or SD cards) is as expensive as gold (or cocaine to have a more accurate per gram measurement) when mounted inside a tablet/phone. For big files you’ll be able to use external media and an SD card could be used to store files that don’t require super-fast SSD-like access times, I hope. To be honest I really don’t like the marketplace model and the limitation of Windows RT APIs (no local database? from a company that based a good share of its success on VB6+Access!) and lack of desktop support on the ARM (even if the support is here and has been used to port office). It’s a step toward the consumer market (where competitors are making big money), but may impact enterprise (and embedded) users that may not appreciate Windows 8 new UI or the limitations of the new app model (if you aren’t connected you are dead ). Not having compatibility with the desktop will require brand new applications and honestly made all the CPU cycles spent to convert .NET IL into real machine code in the past like a huge waste of time… as soon as a new processor architecture is supported by Windows you still have to rewrite part of your application (and MS is pushing HTML5+JS and native code more than .NET in my perception). On the other side I believe that the development experience provided by Visual Studio is still miles (or kilometres) ahead of the competition and even the all-uppercase menu of VS2012 hasn’t changed this situation. The new metro UI got mixed reviews. On my side I should say that is very pleasant to use on a touch screen, I like the minimalist design (even if sometimes is too minimal and hides stuff that, in my opinion, should be visible) but I should also say that using it with mouse and keyboard is like trying to pick your nose with boxing gloves… Metro is also very interesting for embedded devices where touch screen usage is quite common and where having an application taking all the screen is the norm. For devices like kiosks, vending machines etc. this kind of UI can be a great selling point. I don’t need a new tablet (to be honest I’m pretty happy with my wife’s iPad and with my PC), but I may change my opinion after having a chance to play a little bit with those new devices and understand what’s hidden under all this mysterious and generic announcements and specifications!

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• Developing Schema Compare for Oracle (Part 4): Script Configuration

  - by Simon Cooper

  If you've had a chance to play around with the Schema Compare for Oracle beta, you may have come across this screen in the synchronization wizard: This screen is one of the few screens that, along with the project configuration form, doesn't come from SQL Compare. This screen was designed to solve a couple of issues that, although aren't specific to Oracle, are much more of a problem than on SQL Server: Datatype conversions and NOT NULL columns. 1. Datatype conversions SQL Server is generally quite forgiving when it comes to datatype conversions using ALTER TABLE. For example, you can convert from a VARCHAR to INT using ALTER TABLE as long as all the character values are parsable as integers. Oracle, on the other hand, only allows ALTER TABLE conversions that don't change the internal data format. Essentially, every change that requires an actual datatype conversion has to be done using a rebuild with a conversion function. That's OK, as we can simply hard-code the various conversion functions for the valid datatype conversions and insert those into the rebuild SELECT list. However, as there always is with Oracle, there's a catch. Have a look at the NUMTODSINTERVAL function. As well as specifying the value (or column) to convert, you have to specify an interval_unit, which tells oracle how to interpret the input number. We can't hardcode a default for this parameter, as it is entirely dependent on the user's data context! So, in order to convert NUMBER to INTERVAL DAY TO SECOND/INTERVAL YEAR TO MONTH, we need to have feedback from the user as to what to put in this parameter while we're generating the sync script - this requires a new step in the engine action/script generation to insert these values into the script, as well as new UI to allow the user to specify these values in a sensible fashion. In implementing the engine and UI infrastructure to allow this it made much more sense to implement it for any rebuild datatype conversion, not just NUMBER to INTERVALs. For conversions which we can do, we pre-fill the 'value' box with the appropriate function from the documentation. The user can also type in arbitary SQL expressions, which allows the user to specify optional format parameters for the relevant conversion functions, or indeed call their own functions to convert between values that don't have a built-in conversion defined. As the value gets inserted as-is into the rebuild SELECT list, any expression that is valid in that context can be specified as the conversion value. 2. NOT NULL columns Another problem that is solved by the new step in the sync wizard is adding a NOT NULL column to a table. If the table contains data (as most database tables do), you can't just add a NOT NULL column, as Oracle doesn't know what value to put in the new column for existing rows - the DDL statement will fail. There are actually 3 separate scenarios for this problem that have separate solutions within the engine: Adding a NOT NULL column to a table without a rebuild Here, the workaround is to add a column default with an appropriate value to the column you're adding: ALTER TABLE tbl1 ADD newcol NUMBER DEFAULT <value> NOT NULL; Note, however, there is something to bear in mind about this solution; once specified on a column, a default cannot be removed. To 'remove' a default from a column you change it to have a default of NULL, hence there's code in the engine to treat a NULL default the same as no default at all. Adding a NOT NULL column to a table, where a separate change forced a table rebuild Fortunately, in this case, a column default is not required - we can simply insert the default value into the rebuild SELECT clause. Changing an existing NULL to a NOT NULL column To implement this, we run an UPDATE command before the ALTER TABLE to change all the NULLs in the column to the required default value. For all three, we need some way of allowing the user to specify a default value to use instead of NULL; as this is essentially the same problem as datatype conversion (inserting values into the sync script), we can re-use the UI and engine implementation of datatype conversion values. We also provide the option to alter the new column to allow NULLs, or to ignore the problem completely. Note that there is the same (long-running) problem in SQL Compare, but it is much more of an issue in Oracle as you cannot easily roll back executed DDL statements if the script fails at some point during execution. Furthermore, the engine of SQL Compare is far less conducive to inserting user-supplied values into the generated script. As we're writing the Schema Compare engine from scratch, we used what we learnt from the SQL Compare engine and designed it to be far more modular, which makes inserting procedures like this much easier.

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• Joining on NULLs

  - by Dave Ballantyne

  A problem I see on a fairly regular basis is that of dealing with NULL values.  Specifically here, where we are joining two tables on two columns, one of which is ‘optional’ ie is nullable.  So something like this: i.e. Lookup where all the columns are equal, even when NULL.   NULL’s are a tricky thing to initially wrap your mind around.  Statements like “NULL is not equal to NULL and neither is it not not equal to NULL, it’s NULL” can cause a serious brain freeze and leave you a gibbering wreck and needing your mummy. Before we plod on, time to setup some data to demo against. Create table #SourceTable ( Id integer not null, SubId integer null, AnotherCol char(255) not null ) go create unique clustered index idxSourceTable on #SourceTable(id,subID) go with cteNums as ( select top(1000) number from master..spt_values where type ='P' ) insert into #SourceTable select Num1.number,nullif(Num2.number,0),'SomeJunk' from cteNums num1 cross join cteNums num2 go Create table #LookupTable ( Id integer not null, SubID integer null ) go insert into #LookupTable Select top(100) id,subid from #SourceTable where subid is not null order by newid() go insert into #LookupTable Select top(3) id,subid from #SourceTable where subid is null order by newid() If that has run correctly, you will have 1 million rows in #SourceTable and 103 rows in #LookupTable.  We now want to join one to the other. First attempt – Lets just join select * from #SourceTable join #LookupTable on #LookupTable.id = #SourceTable.id and #LookupTable.SubID = #SourceTable.SubID OK, that’s a fail.  We had 100 rows back,  we didn’t correctly account for the 3 rows that have null values.  Remember NULL <> NULL and the join clause specifies SUBID=SUBID, which for those rows is not true. Second attempt – Lets deal with those pesky NULLS select * from #SourceTable join #LookupTable on #LookupTable.id = #SourceTable.id and isnull(#LookupTable.SubID,0) = isnull(#SourceTable.SubID,0) OK, that’s the right result, well done and 99.9% of the time that is where its left. It is a relatively trivial CPU overhead to wrap ISNULL around both columns and compare that result, so no problems.  But, although that’s true, this a relational database we are using here, not a procedural language.  SQL is a declarative language, we are making a request to the engine to get the results we want.  How we ask for them can make a ton of difference. Lets look at the plan for our second attempt, specifically the clustered index seek on the #SourceTable   There are 2 predicates. The ‘seek predicate’ and ‘predicate’.  The ‘seek predicate’ describes how SQLServer has been able to use an Index.  Here, it has been able to navigate the index to resolve where ID=ID.  So far so good, but what about the ‘predicate’ (aka residual probe) ? This is a row-by-row operation.  For each row found in the index matching the Seek Predicate, the leaf level nodes have been scanned and tested using this logical condition.  In this example [Expr1007] is the result of the IsNull operation on #LookupTable and that is tested for equality with the IsNull operation on #SourceTable.  This residual probe is quite a high overhead, if we can express our statement slightly differently to take full advantage of the index and make the test part of the ‘Seek Predicate’. Third attempt – X is null and Y is null So, lets state the query in a slightly manner: select * from #SourceTable join #LookupTable on #LookupTable.id = #SourceTable.id and ( #LookupTable.SubID = #SourceTable.SubID or (#LookupTable.SubID is null and #SourceTable.SubId is null) ) So its slightly wordier and may not be as clear in its intent to the human reader, that is what comments are for, but the key point is that it is now clearer to the query optimizer what our intention is. Let look at the plan for that query, again specifically the index seek operation on #SourceTable No ‘predicate’, just a ‘Seek Predicate’ against the index to resolve both ID and SubID.  A subtle difference that can be easily overlooked.  But has it made a difference to the performance ? Well, yes , a perhaps surprisingly high one. Clever query optimizer well done. If you are using a scalar function on a column, you a pretty much guaranteeing that a residual probe will be used.  By re-wording the query you may well be able to avoid this and use the index completely to resolve lookups. In-terms of performance and scalability your system will be in a much better position if you can.

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• Data Source Security Part 1

  - by Steve Felts

  I’ve written a couple of articles on how to store data source security credentials using the Oracle wallet.  I plan to write a few articles on the various types of security available to WebLogic Server (WLS) data sources.  There are more options than you might think! There have been several enhancements in this area in WLS 10.3.6.  There are a couple of more enhancements planned for release WLS 12.1.2 that I will include here for completeness.  This isn’t intended as a teaser.  If you call your Oracle support person, you can get them now as minor patches to WLS 10.3.6.   The current security documentation is scattered in a few places, has a few incorrect statements, and is missing a few topics.  It also seems that the knowledge of how to apply some of these features isn’t written down.  The goal of these articles is to talk about WLS data source security in a unified way and to introduce some approaches to using the available features.  Introduction to WebLogic Data Source Security Options By default, you define a single database user and password for a data source.  You can store it in the data source descriptor or make use of the Oracle wallet.  This is a very simple and efficient approach to security.  All of the connections in the connection pool are owned by this user and there is no special processing when a connection is given out.  That is, it’s a homogeneous connection pool and any request can get any connection from a security perspective (there are other aspects like affinity).  Regardless of the end user of the application, all connections in the pool use the same security credentials to access the DBMS.   No additional information is needed when you get a connection because it’s all available from the data source descriptor (or wallet). java.sql.Connection conn =  mydatasource.getConnection(); Note: You can enter the password as a name-value pair in the Properties field (this not permitted for production environments) or you can enter it in the Password field of the data source descriptor. The value in the Password field overrides any password value defined in the Properties passed to the JDBC Driver when creating physical database connections. It is recommended that you use the Password attribute in place of the password property in the properties string because the Password value is encrypted in the configuration file (stored as the password-encrypted attribute in the jdbc-driver-params tag in the module file) and is hidden in the administration console.  The Properties and Password fields are located on the administration console Data Source creation wizard or Data Source Configuration tab. The JDBC API can also be used to programmatically specify a database user name and password as in the following.  java.sql.Connection conn = mydatasource.getConnection(“user”, “password”); According to the JDBC specification, it’s supposed to take a database user and associated password but different vendors implement this differently.  WLS, by default, treats this as an application server user and password.  The pair is authenticated to see if it’s a valid user and that user is used for WLS security permission checks.  By default, the user is then mapped to a database user and password using the data source credential mapper, so this API sort of follows the specification but database credentials are one-step removed from the application code.  More details and the rationale are described later. While the default approach is simple, it does mean that only one database user is doing all of the work.  You can’t figure out who actually did the update and you can’t restrict SQL operations by who is running the operation, at least at the database level.   Any type of per-user logic will need to be in the application code instead of having the database do it.  There are various WLS data source features that can be configured to provide some per-user information about the operations to the database. WebLogic Data Source Security Options This table describes the features available for WebLogic data sources to configure database security credentials and a brief description.  It also captures information about the compatibility of these features with one another. Feature Description Can be used with Can’t be used with User authentication (default) Default getConnection(user, password) behavior – validate the input and use the user/password in the descriptor. Set client identifier Proxy Session, Identity pooling, Use database credentials Use database credentials Instead of using the credential mapper, use the supplied user and password directly. Set client identifier, Proxy session, Identity pooling User authentication, Multi Data Source Set Client Identifier Set a client identifier property associated with the connection (Oracle and DB2 only). Everything Proxy Session Set a light-weight proxy user associated with the connection (Oracle-only). Set client identifier, Use database credentials Identity pooling, User authentication Identity pooling Heterogeneous pool of connections owned by specified users. Set client identifier, Use database credentials Proxy session, User authentication, Labeling, Multi-datasource, Active GridLink Note that all of these features are available with both XA and non-XA drivers. Currently, the Proxy Session and Use Database Credentials options are on the Oracle tab of the Data Source Configuration tab of the administration console (even though the Use Database Credentials feature is not just for Oracle databases – oops).  The rest of the features are on the Identity tab of the Data Source Configuration tab in the administration console (plan on seeing them all in one place in the future). The subsequent articles will describe these features in more detail.  Keep referring back to this table to see the big picture.

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• Solaris 11.1 changes building of code past the point of __NORETURN

  - by alanc

  While Solaris 11.1 was under development, we started seeing some errors in the builds of the upstream X.Org git master sources, such as: "Display.c", line 65: Function has no return statement : x_io_error_handler "hostx.c", line 341: Function has no return statement : x_io_error_handler from functions that were defined to match a specific callback definition that declared them as returning an int if they did return, but these were calling exit() instead of returning so hadn't listed a return value. These had been generating warnings for years which we'd been ignoring, but X.Org has made enough progress in cleaning up code for compiler warnings and static analysis issues lately, that the community turned up the default error levels, including the gcc flag -Werror=return-type and the equivalent Solaris Studio cc flags -v -errwarn=E_FUNC_HAS_NO_RETURN_STMT, so now these became errors that stopped the build. Yet on Solaris, gcc built this code fine, while Studio errored out. Investigation showed this was due to the Solaris headers, which during Solaris 10 development added a number of annotations to the headers when gcc was being used for the amd64 kernel bringup before the Studio amd64 port was ready. Since Studio did not support the inline form of these annotations at the time, but instead used #pragma for them, the definitions were only present for gcc. To resolve this, I fixed both sides of the problem, so that it would work for building new X.Org sources on older Solaris releases or with older Studio compilers, as well as fixing the general problem before it broke more software building on Solaris. To the X.Org sources, I added the traditional Studio #pragma does_not_return to recognize that functions like exit() don't ever return, in patches such as this Xserver patch. Adding a dummy return statement was ruled out as that introduced unreachable code errors from compilers and analyzers that correctly realized you couldn't reach that code after a return statement. And on the Solaris 11.1 side, I updated the annotation definitions in <sys/ccompile.h> to enable for Studio 12.0 and later compilers the annotations already existing in a number of system headers for functions like exit() and abort(). If you look in that file you'll see the annotations we currently use, though the forms there haven't gone through review to become a Committed interface, so may change in the future. Actually getting this integrated into Solaris though took a bit more work than just editing one header file. Our ELF binary build comparison tool, wsdiff, actually showed a large number of differences in the resulting binaries due to the compiler using this information for branch prediction, code path analysis, and other possible optimizations, so after comparing enough of the disassembly output to be comfortable with the changes, we also made sure to get this in early enough in the release cycle so that it would get plenty of test exposure before the release. It also required updating quite a bit of code to avoid introducing new lint or compiler warnings or errors, and people building applications on top of Solaris 11.1 and later may need to make similar changes if they want to keep their build logs similarly clean. Previously, if you had a function that was declared with a non-void return type, lint and cc would warn if you didn't return a value, even if you called a function like exit() or panic() that ended execution. For instance: #include <stdlib.h> int callback(int status) { if (status == 0) return status; exit(status); } would previously require a never executed return 0; after the exit() to avoid lint warning "function falls off bottom without returning value". Now the compiler & lint will both issue "statement not reached" warnings for a return 0; after the final exit(), allowing (or in some cases, requiring) it to be removed. However, if there is no return statement anywhere in the function, lint will warn that you've declared a function returning a value that never does so, suggesting you can declare it as void. Unfortunately, if your function signature is required to match a certain form, such as in a callback, you not be able to do so, and will need to add a /* LINTED */ to the end of the function. If you need your code to build on both a newer and an older release, then you will either need to #ifdef these unreachable statements, or, to keep your sources common across releases, add to your sources the corresponding #pragma recognized by both current and older compiler versions, such as: #pragma does_not_return(exit) #pragma does_not_return(panic) Hopefully this little extra work is paid for by the compilers & code analyzers being able to better understand your code paths, giving you better optimizations and more accurate errors & warning messages.

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• What are some concise and comprehensive introductory guide to unit testing for a self-taught programmer [closed]

  - by Superbest

  I don't have much formal training in programming and I have learned most things by looking up solutions on the internet to practical problems I have. There are some areas which I think would be valuable to learn, but which ended up both being difficult to learn and easy to avoid learning for a self-taught programmer. Unit testing is one of them. Specifically, I am interested in tests in and for C#/.NET applications using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools in Visual Studio 2010 and/or 2012, but I really want a good introduction to the principles so language and IDE shouldn't matter much. At this time I'm interested in relatively trivial tests for small or medium sized programs (development time of weeks or months and mostly just myself developing). I don't necessarily intend to do test-driven development (I am aware that some say unit testing alone is supposed to be for developing features in TDD, and not an assurance that there are no bugs in the software, but unit testing is often the only kind of testing for which I have resources). I have found this tutorial which I feel gave me a decent idea of what unit tests and TDD looks like, but in trying to apply these ideas to my own projects, I often get confused by questions I can't answer and don't know how to answer, such as: What parts of my application and what sorts of things aren't necessarily worth testing? How fine grained should my tests be? Should they test every method and property separately, or work with a larger scope? What is a good naming convention for test methods? (since apparently the name of the method is the only way I will be able to tell from a glance at the test results table what works in my program and what doesn't) Is it bad to have many asserts in one test method? Since apparently VS2012 reports only that "an Assert.IsTrue failed within method MyTestMethod", and if MyTestMethod has 10 Assert.IsTrue statements, it will be irritating to figure out why a test is failing. If a lot of the functionality deals with writing and reading data to/from the disk in a not-exactly trivial fashion, how do I test that? If I provide a bunch of files as input by placing them in the program's directory, do I have to copy those files to the test project's bin/Debug folder now? If my program works with a large body of data and execution takes minutes or more, should my tests have it do the whole use all of the real data, a subset of it, or simulated data? If latter, how do I decide on the subset or how to simulate? Closely related to the previous point, if a class is such that its main operation happens in a state that is arrived to by the program after some involved operations (say, a class makes calculations on data derived from a few thousands of lines of code analyzing some raw data) how do I test just that class without inevitably ending up testing that class and all the other code that brings it to that state along with it? In general, what kind of approach should I use for test initialization? (hopefully that is the correct term, I mean preparing classes for testing by filling them in with appropriate data) How do I deal with private members? Do I just suck it up and assume that "not public = shouldn't be tested"? I have seen people suggest using private accessors and reflection, but these feel like clumsy and unsuited for regular use. Are these even good ideas? Is there anything like design patterns concerning testing specifically? I guess the main themes in what I'd like to learn more about are, (1) what are the overarching principles that should be followed (or at least considered) in every testing effort and (2) what are popular rules of thumb for writing tests. For example, at one point I recall hearing from someone that if a method is longer than 200 lines, it should be refactored - not a universally correct rule, but it has been quite helpful since I'd otherwise happily put hundreds of lines in single methods and then wonder why my code is so hard to read. Similarly I've found ReSharpers suggestions on member naming style and other things to be quite helpful in keeping my codebases sane. I see many resources both online and in print that talk about testing in the context of large applications (years of work, 10s of people or more). However, because I've never worked on such large projects, this context is very unfamiliar to me and makes the material difficult to follow and relate to my real world problems. Speaking of software development in general, advice given with the assumptions of large projects isn't always straightforward to apply to my own, smaller endeavors. Summary So my question is: What are some resources to learn about unit testing, for a hobbyist, self-taught programmer without much formal training? Ideally, I'm looking for a short and simple "bible of unit testing" which I can commit to memory, and then apply systematically by repeatedly asking myself "is this test following the bible of testing closely enough?" and then amending discrepancies if it doesn't.

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• BIP 11g Dynamic SQL

  - by Tim Dexter

  Back in the 10g release, if you wanted something beyond the standard query for your report extract; you needed to break out your favorite text editor. You gotta love 'vi' and hate emacs, am I right? And get to building a data template, they were/are lovely to write, such fun ... not! Its not fun writing them by hand but, you do get to do some cool stuff around the data extract including dynamic SQL. By that I mean the ability to add content dynamically to your your query at runtime. With 11g, we spoiled you with a visual builder, no more vi or notepad sessions, a friendly drag and drop interface allowing you to build hierarchical data sets, calculated columns, summary columns, etc. You can still create the dynamic SQL statements, its not so well documented right now, in lieu of doc updates here's the skinny. If you check out the 10g process to create dynamic sql in the docs. You need to create a data trigger function where you assign the dynamic sql to a global variable that's matched in your report SQL. In 11g, the process is really the same, BI Publisher just provides a bit more help to define what trigger code needs to be called. You still need to create the function and place it inside a package in the db. Here's a simple plsql package with the 'beforedata' function trigger. Spec create or replace PACKAGE BIREPORTS AS whereCols varchar2(2000); FUNCTION beforeReportTrig return boolean; end BIREPORTS; Body create or replace PACKAGE BODY BIREPORTS AS   FUNCTION beforeReportTrig return boolean AS   BEGIN       whereCols := ' and d.department_id = 100';     RETURN true;   END beforeReportTrig; END BIREPORTS; you'll notice the additional where clause (whereCols - declared as a public variable) is hard coded. I'll cover parameterizing that in my next post. If you can not wait, check the 10g docs for an example. I have my package compiling successfully in the db. Now, onto the BIP data model definition. 1. Create a new data model and go ahead and create your query(s) as you would normally. 2. In the query dialog box, add in the variables you want replaced at runtime using an ampersand rather than a colon e.g. &whereCols.   select     d.DEPARTMENT_NAME, ...  from    "OE"."EMPLOYEES" e,     "OE"."DEPARTMENTS" d  where   d."DEPARTMENT_ID"= e."DEPARTMENT_ID" &whereCols   Note that 'whereCols' matches the global variable name in our package. When you click OK to clear the dialog, you'll be asked for a default value for the variable, just use ' and 1=1' That leading space is important to keep the SQL valid ie required whitespace. This value will be used for the where clause if case its not set by the function code. 3. Now click on the Event Triggers tree node and create a new trigger of the type Before Data. Type in the default package name, in my example, 'BIREPORTS'. Then hit the update button to get BIP to fetch the valid functions.In my case I get to see the following: Select the BEFOREREPORTTRIG function (or your name) and shuttle it across. 4. Save your data model and now test it. For now, you can update the where clause via the plsql package. Next time ... parametrizing the dynamic clause.

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• how to run this qt script? (newbie question)

  - by GB_J

  I have a qt script(barchart.qs) that creates a graph for me. I don't know how i can incorporate(ie show the graph) in my qt mainwindow. Can some one please help me look at the code and what its outputs are? I tried engine.evaluate, but i do not know what is the QScriptValue i'm getting in return. Thanks sooo much. This is the script: BarChart.prototype = new QWidget; BarChart.prototype.suffix = ""; function BarChart(parent) { QWidget.call(this, parent); } // find the maximum value and widest (pixel-wise) label and suffix BarChart.prototype.showEvent = function(event) { var fm = new QFontMetrics(this); this.margin = 20; this.titleHeight = fm.height(); this.barHeight = 1.5 * fm.height(); this.barSpacing = 0.6 * fm.height(); this.maxValue = this.suffixWidth = this.labelWidth = 0; var count = 0; for (d in this.data) { this.labelWidth = Math.max(this.labelWidth, fm.width(d)); this.maxValue = Math.max(this.maxValue, this.data[d]); this.suffixWidth = Math.max(this.suffixWidth, fm.width(String(this.data[d]) + " " + this.suffix)); count++; } this.startHue = 15; this.hueDelta = 360 / count; this.size = new QSize(640, this.titleHeight + 2 * this.margin + (this.barHeight + this.barSpacing) * count); } BarChart.prototype.paintEvent = function(event) { var p = new QPainter; p.begin(this); // background and title p.fillRect(this.rect, new QBrush(new QColor(255, 255, 255))); p.drawText(0, 0, this.width, this.margin + this.titleHeight, Qt.AlignCenter, this.windowTitle, 0); var ofs = this.labelWidth + this.margin; var ww = this.width - this.suffixWidth - ofs - 2 * this.margin; var hue = this.startHue; var y = 0; p.translate(this.margin, this.titleHeight + 1.5 * this.margin); for (d in this.data) { // label on the left side p.setPen(new QColor(Qt.black)); p.drawText(0, y, this.labelWidth, this.barHeight, Qt.AlignVCenter + Qt.AlignRight, d, 0); // the colored bar var gradient = new QLinearGradient(new QPoint(ofs, y), new QPoint(ofs, y + this.barHeight)); gradient.setColorAt(0, QColor.fromHsv(hue, 255, 240)); gradient.setColorAt(1, QColor.fromHsv(hue, 255, 92)); p.setBrush(new QBrush(gradient)); p.setPen(new QColor(96, 96, 96)); var bw = this.data[d] * ww / this.maxValue; p.drawRect(ofs, y, bw, this.barHeight); // extra text at the end of the bar var text = new String(this.data[d] + " " + this.suffix); p.setPen(new QColor(Qt.black)); p.drawText(ofs + bw + this.margin/2, y, this.suffixWidth, this.barHeight, Qt.AlignVCenter + Qt.AlignLeft, text, 0); // for the next bar y += (this.barHeight + this.barSpacing); hue += this.hueDelta; if (hue >= 360) hue -= 360; } p.end(); } BarChart.prototype.wheelEvent = function(event) { this.startHue += event.delta() / 8 / 5; if (this.startHue = 360) this.startHue -= 360; if (this.startHue < 0) this.startHue += 360; this.update(); event.ignore(); } BarChart.prototype.mousePressEvent = function(event) { var fname = QFileDialog.getSaveFileName(this, "Save", ".", "*.png", 0, 0); if (fname.length > 0) { var img = new QImage(this.size, QImage.Format_ARGB32_Premultiplied); this.render(img); img.save(new QFile(fname)); } } var chart = new BarChart; chart.windowTitle = "Monthly"; chart.suffix = "reports"; chart.data = { "September" : 45, "October" : 60, "November" : 56, "December" : 0 }; chart.show(); QCoreApplication.exec();

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• Custom Online Backup Solution Advice

  - by Martín Marconcini

  I have to implement a way so our customers can backup their SQL 2000/5/8 databasase online. The application they use is a C#/.NET35 Winforms application that connects to a SQL Server (can be 2000/2005/2008, sometimes express editions). The SQL Server is on the same LAN. Our application has a very specific UI and we must code each form following those guidelines. There’s lots of GDI+ to give it the look and feel we want. For that reason, using a 3rd party application is not a very good idea. We need to charge the customer on a monthly/annual basis for the service. Preferably, the customer doesn’t need to care about bandwidth and storage space. It must be transparent. Given the above reqs., my first thoughts are: Solution 1: Code some sort of FTP basic functionality with behind the scenes SQL Backup mechanism, then hire a Hosting service and compress-transfer the .BAK to the Hosting. Maintain a series of Folders (for each customer). They won’t see what’s happening. They will just see a list of their files and a big “Backup now” button that will perform the SQL backup, compress it and upload it (and update the file list) ;) Pros: Not very complicated to implement, simple to use, fairly simple to configure (could have a dedicated ftp user/pass) Cons: Finding a “ftp” only hosting plan is not probably going to be easy, they usually come with a bunch of stuff. FTP is not always the best protocol. more? Solution 2: Similar to 1, but instead of FTP, find a cloud computing service like Amazon S3, Mosso or similar. Pros: Cloud Storage is fast, reliable, etc. It’s kind of easy to implement (specially if there are APIs like AWS or Mosso). Cons: I have been unable to come up with a service optimized for resellers where I can give multiple sub-accounts (one for each customer). Billing is going to be a nightmare cuz these services bill per/GB and with One account it’s impossible to differentiate each customer. Solution 3: Similar to 2, but letting the user create their own account on Amazon S3 (for example). Pros: You forget about billing and such. Cons: A mess for the customer who has to open the Amazon (or whatever) account, will be charged for that and not from you. You can’t really charge the customer (since you’re just not doing anything). Solution 4: Use one of the many backup online solutions that use the tech in cloud storage. Pros: many of these include SQL Server backup, and a lot of features that we’d have to implement. Plus web access and stuff like that will come included. Cons: Still have the billing problem described in number 2. Little of these companies (if any) offers “reseller” accounts. You have to eventually use their software (some offer certain branding). Any better approach? Summary: You have a software (.NET Winapp). You want your users to be able to backup their SQL Server databases online (and be able to retrieve the backups if needed). You ideally would like to charge the customer for this service (i.e. XX € a year).

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• NHibernate mapping with optimistic-lock="version" and dynamic-update="true" is generating invalid up

  - by SteveBering

  I have an entity "Group" with an assigned ID which is added to an aggregate in order to persist it. This causes an issue because NHibernate can't tell if it is new or existing. To remedy this issue, I changed the mapping to make the Group entity use optimistic locking on a sql timestamp version column. This caused a new issue. Group has a bag of sub objects. So when NHibernate flushes a new group to the database, it first creates the Group record in the Groups table, then inserts each of the sub objects, then does an update of the Group records to update the timestamp value. However, the sql that is generated to complete the update is invalid when the mapping is both dynamic-update="true" and optimistic-lock="version". Here is the mapping: <class xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2" dynamic-update="true" mutable="true" optimistic-lock="version" name="Group" table="Groups"> <id name="GroupNumber" type="System.String, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"> <column name="GroupNumber" length="5" /> <generator class="assigned" /> </id> <version generated="always" name="Timestamp" type="BinaryBlob" unsaved-value="null"> <column name="TS" not-null="false" sql-type="timestamp" /> </version> <property name="UID" update="false" type="System.Guid, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"> <column name="GroupUID" unique="true" /> </property> <property name="Description" type="AnsiString"> <column name="GroupDescription" length="25" not-null="true" /> </property> <bag access="field.camelcase-underscore" cascade="all" inverse="true" lazy="true" name="Assignments" mutable="true" order-by="GroupAssignAssignment"> <key foreign-key="fk_Group_Assignments"> <column name="GroupNumber" /> </key> <one-to-many class="Assignment" /> </bag> <many-to-one class="Aggregate" name="Aggregate"> <column name="GroupParentID" not-null="true" /> </many-to-one> </class> </hibernate-mapping> When the mapping includes both the dynamic update and the optimistic lock, the sql generated is: UPDATE groups SET WHERE GroupNumber = 11111 AND TS=0x00000007877 This is obviously invalid as there are no SET statements. If I remove the dynamic update part, everything gets updated during this update statement instead. This makes the statement valid, but rather unnecessary. Has anyone seen this issue before? Am I missing something? Thanks, Steve

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• Dissertation about website and database security - in need of some pointers

  - by ClarkeyBoy

  Hi, I am on my dissertation in my final year at university at the moment. One of the areas I need to research is security - for both websites and for databases. I currently have sections on the following: Website Form security - such as data validation. This section is more about preventing errors made by legitimate users as much as possible rather than stopping hackers, for example comparing a field to a regular expression and giving them meaningful feedback on any errors which did occur so as to stop it happening again. Constraints. For example if a value must be true or false then use a checkbox. If it is likely to be one of several values then use a dropdown or a set of radio boxes, and so on. If the value is unpredictable then use regular expressions to limit what characters they are allowed to enter, and to restrict the length of the string, and sometimes to limit the format (such as for dates / times, post codes and so on). Sometimes you can limit permissions to the form. This is on the occasion that you know exactly who (whether it be peoples names or a group of people - such as administrators or employees) is going to need access to the form. Restricting permissions will stop members of the public from being able to access the form. Symbols or strings which could be used maliciously or cause the website to act incorrectly (such as the script tag) should be filtered out or html encoded. Captcha images can be used to prevent automated systems from filling in and submitting the form. There are some hacks for file uploads - such as using double extensions - which can allow hackers to upload malicious files. Databases (this is nowhere near done yet but the sections I have planned are listed below) SQL statements vs stored procedures Throwing an error when one of the variables contains particular characters or groups of characters (I cant remember what characters they are, but I have seen a message thrown back at me before where I have tried to enter html or something into a text area). SQL Injection - and ways around it, with some examples. Does anyone have any hints and tips on where I could go for some decent, reliable information either about these areas or about other areas of security that I could cover? Thanks in advance. Regards, Richard PS I am a complete newbie when it comes to security, so please be patient with me. If any of the information I have put down is wrong or could be sub-sectioned then please feel free to say so.

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• ASP.NET MVC 2 JQuery POST not displaying the model state errors

  - by Oshan

  Hello, I have been using asp.net mvc for a bit (but I'm still a beginer). I want to have the ability to update two views as a result of a jquery postback. Basically I have a list and a details view. The details view is presented using a jquery popup (using jquery-UI popup). I only want to update the list if the details save is successful (i.e. there are no validation errors on the details view). However, if there are any validation errros in the details view, I want to update the details view so that the user sees the validation errors. so I thought in my controller, I return a JsonResult instead of a View. [HttpPost] public ActionResult SavePersonInfo(Person p) { if(ModelState.Valid) { return View("PersonList"); } return Json({Error = true, View = PartialView("PersonDetails", p)}); } As you can see if there are no errors I return the person list view, but if there are any validation errors, I have return the details view. The reason that I'm returning a JsonResult is I need to tell my view there is an error so that the view (jquery) knows which section to update (as in whether to update the person list 'div' or the popup dialog 'div'). So, in my view, the jquery is as follows (please assume that there is a form for entering in the person details and "SubmitPersonForm();" function is called upon clicking on the "Save" button): <script type="text/javascript> $('#btnSave').click(function (event) { onBegin(); $.ajax( { type: "POST", url: "/Person/Save", data: $('form').serialize(), success: function (result) { if(result.Error) { $('#dvDetails').html($(result).View)); } else { $('#dvPersonList').html($result); } } }); }); </script> So the problem that I have now, is that when there is a validation error, I do see the correct, 'div' being updated, but I lose the asp.net mvc validation messages. I do not see any validation errors in red, as if ASP.NET MVC is completely ignored them. However, my ModelState does have those errros, just not displayed in the details view. I do have valication summary and Html.ValidationFor(m = ...) statements put in my details view. Could someone tell me why I'm not seeing the validation errors? although I'm using a JSonResult, I do use the right property which is a valid view when I render the 'dvDetails'. Am I doing something that I'm not suppose to in asp.net mvc? Btw I'm using asp.net mvc2 RC with Visual Studio 2010 RC. Thank you.

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• iPhone MapKit problems: viewForAnnotation inconsistently setting pinColor?

  - by blackkettle

  Hi, I'm trying setup a map that displays different pin colors depending on the type/class of the location in question. I know this is a pretty common thing to do, but I'm having trouble getting the viewForAnnotation delegate to consistently update/set the pin color. I have a showThisLocation function that basically cycles through a list of AddressAnnotations and then based on the annotation class (bus stop, hospital, etc.) I set an if( myClass == 1){ [defaults setObject:@"1" forKey:@"currPinColor"]; [defaults synchronize]; NSLog(@"Should be %@!", [defaults objectForKey:@"currPinColor"]); } else if( myClass ==2 ){ [defaults setObject:@"2" forKey:@"currPinColor"]; [defaults synchronize]; NSLog(@"Should be %@!", [defaults objectForKey:@"currPinColor"]); } [_mapView addAnnotation:myCurrentAnnotation]; then my viewForAnnotation delegate looks like this, - (MKAnnotationView *) mapView:(MKMapView *)mapView viewForAnnotation:(id )annotation { if( annotation == mapView.userLocation ){ return nil; } NSUserDefaults *defaults = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults]; MKPinAnnotationView *annView = nil; annView = (MKPinAnnotationView*)[mapView dequeueReusableAnnotationViewWithIdentifier:@"currentloc"]; if( annView == nil ){ annView = [[MKPinAnnotationView alloc] initWithAnnotation:annotation reuseIdentifier:@"currentloc"]; } annView.pinColor = [defaults integerForKey:@"currPinColor"]; NSLog(@"Pin color: %d", [defaults integerForKey:@"currPinColor"]); annView.animatesDrop=TRUE; annView.canShowCallout = YES; annView.calloutOffset = CGPointMake(-5, 5); return annView; } The problem is that, although the NSLog statements in the "if" block always confirm that the color has been set, the delegate sometimes but not always ends up with the correct color. I've also noticed that what generally happens is that the first search for a new location will set all pins to the last color in the "if" block, but search for the same location again will set the pins to the correct color. I suspect I am not supposed to usen NSUserDefaults in this way, but I also tried to create my own subclass for MKAnnotation which included an additional property "currentPinColor", and while this allowed me to set the "currentPinColor", when I tried to access the "currentPinColor from the delegate method, the compiler complained that it didn't know anything about "currentPinColor in connection with MKAnnotation. Fair enough I guess, but then I tried to revise the delegate method, - (MKAnnotationView *) mapView:(MKMapView *)mapView viewForAnnotation:(id )annotation instead of the default - (MKAnnotationView *) mapView:(MKMapView *)mapView viewForAnnotation:(id )annotation at which point the compiler complained that it didn't know anything about the protocol for MyCustomMKAnnotation in this delegate context. What is the proper way to set the delegate method and/or MyCustomMKAnnotation, or what is the appropriate way to achieve consistent pinColor settings. I'm just about out of ideas for things to try here.

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• SQLite file locking and DropBox

  - by Alex Jenter

  I'm developing an app in Visual C++ that uses an SQLite3 DB for storing data. Usually it sits in the tray most of the time. I also would like to enable putting my app in a DropBox folder to share it across several PCs. It worked really well up until DropBox has recently updated itself. And now it says that it "can't sync the file in use". The SQLite file is open in my app, but the lock is shared. There are some prepared statements, but all are reset immediately after using step. Is there any way to enable synchronizing of an open SQLite database file? Thanks! Here is the simple wrapper that I use just for testing (no error handling), in case this helps: class Statement { private: Statement(sqlite3* db, const std::wstring& sql) : db(db) { sqlite3_prepare16_v2(db, sql.c_str(), sql.length() * sizeof(wchar_t), &stmt, NULL); } public: ~Statement() { sqlite3_finalize(stmt); } public: void reset() { sqlite3_reset(stmt); } int step() { return sqlite3_step(stmt); } int getInt(int i) const { return sqlite3_column_int(stmt, i); } tstring getText(int i) const { const wchar_t* v = (const wchar_t*)sqlite3_column_text16(stmt, i); int sz = sqlite3_column_bytes16(stmt, i) / sizeof(wchar_t); return std::wstring(v, v + sz); } private: friend class Database; sqlite3* db; sqlite3_stmt* stmt; }; class Database { public: Database(const std::wstring& filename = L"")) : db(NULL) { sqlite3_open16(filename.c_str(), &db); } ~Database() { sqlite3_close(db); } void exec(const std::wstring& sql) { auto_ptr<Statement> st(prepare(sql)); st->step(); } auto_ptr<Statement> prepare(const tstring& sql) const { return auto_ptr<Statement>(new Statement(db, sql)); } private: sqlite3* db; };

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• Pointer arithmetic and arrays: what's really legal?

  - by bitcruncher

  Consider the following statements: int *pFarr, *pVarr; int farr[3] = {11,22,33}; int varr[3] = {7,8,9}; pFarr = &(farr[0]); pVarr = varr; At this stage, both pointers are pointing at the start of each respective array address. For *pFarr, we are presently looking at 11 and for *pVarr, 7. Equally, if I request the contents of each array through *farr and *varr, i also get 11 and 7. So far so good. Now, let's try pFarr++ and pVarr++. Great. We're now looking at 22 and 8, as expected. But now... Trying to move up farr++ and varr++ ... and we get "wrong type of argument to increment". Now, I recognize the difference between an array pointer and a regular pointer, but since their behaviour is similar, why this limitation? This is further confusing to me when I also consider that in the same program I can call the following function in an ostensibly correct way and in another incorrect way, and I get the same behaviour, though in contrast to what happened in the code posted above!? working_on_pointers ( pFarr, farr ); // calling with expected parameters working_on_pointers ( farr, pFarr ); // calling with inverted parameters . void working_on_pointers ( int *pExpect, int aExpect[] ) { printf("%i", *pExpect); // displays the contents of pExpect ok printf("%i", *aExpect); // displays the contents of aExpect ok pExpect++; // no warnings or errors aExpect++; // no warnings or errors printf("%i", *pExpect); // displays the next element or an overflow element (with no errors) printf("%i", *aExpect); // displays the next element or an overflow element (with no errors) } Could someone help me to understand why array pointers and pointers behave in similar ways in some contexts, but different in others? So many thanks. EDIT: Noobs like myself could further benefit from this resource: http://www.panix.com/~elflord/cpp/gotchas/index.shtml

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• C++ visibility of privately inherited typedefs to nested classes

  - by beldaz

  First time on StackOverflow, so please be tolerant. In the following example (apologies for the length) I have tried to isolate some unexpected behaviour I've encountered when using nested classes within a class that privately inherits from another. I've often seen statements to the effect that there is nothing special about a nested class compared to an unnested class, but in this example one can see that a nested class (at least according to GCC 4.4) can see the public typedefs of a class that is privately inherited by the closing class. I appreciate that typdefs are not the same as member data, but I found this behaviour surprising, and I imagine many others would, too. So my question is threefold: Is this standard behaviour? (a decent explanation of why would be very helpful) Can one expect it to work on most modern compilers (i.e., how portable is it)? #include <iostream> class Base { typedef int priv_t; priv_t priv; public: typedef int pub_t; pub_t pub; Base() : priv(0), pub(1) {} }; class PubDerived : public Base { public: // Not allowed since Base::priv is private // void foo() {std::cout << priv << "\n";} class Nested { // Not allowed since Nested has no access to PubDerived member data // void foo() {std::cout << pub << "\n";} // Not allowed since typedef Base::priv_t is private // void bar() {priv_t x=0; std::cout << x << "\n";} }; }; class PrivDerived : private Base { public: // Allowed since Base::pub is public void foo() {std::cout << pub << "\n";} class Nested { public: // Works (gcc 4.4 - see below) void fred() {pub_t x=0; std::cout << x << "\n";} }; }; int main() { // Not allowed since typedef Base::priv_t private // std::cout << PubDerived::priv_t(0) << "\n"; // Allowed since typedef Base::pub_t is inaccessible std::cout << PubDerived::pub_t(0) << "\n"; // Prints 0 // Not allowed since typedef Base::pub_t is inaccessible //std::cout << PrivDerived::pub_t(0) << "\n"; // Works (gcc 4.4) PrivDerived::Nested o; o.fred(); // Prints 0 return 0; }

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• ASP.NET site move to IIS7 results in gibberish characters in page output

  - by frankadelic

  I have an ASP.NET site that was working fine running on Windows Server 2003 / IIS6. I moved it to Windows Server 2008 / IIS7 and the aspx page output now includes gibberish text. For example: p???? ????? The majority of the page renders properly, but there is gibberish here and there. I have checked the event logs and there is nothing. Any idea what's going on here? How can I fix this? I have noticed that this issue shows up when I include multiple Server.Execute statements in the aspx code: <% Server.Execute("/inc/top.inc"); %> <% Server.Execute("/inc/footer.inc"); %> The .inc files above contain just html. It appears that the files have to be of a significant length to cause the error. Here is the sample html I've been testing with: <div class="logo"> <a href="/"> <img src="/logo.png" alt="logo" width="31" height="29" class="logoimg" /> </a> </div> <div class="logo"> <a href="/"> <img src="/logo.png" alt="logo" width="31" height="29" class="logoimg" /> </a> </div> <div class="logo"> <a href="/"> <img src="/logo.png" alt="logo" width="31" height="29" class="logoimg" /> </a> </div> <div class="logo"> <a href="/"> <img src="/logo.png" alt="logo" width="31" height="29" class="logoimg" /> </a> </div> <div class="logo"> <a href="/"> <img src="/logo.png" alt="logo" width="31" height="29" class="logoimg" /> </a> </div> <div class="logo"> <a href="/"> <img src="/logo.png" alt="logo" width="31" height="29" class="logoimg" /> </a> </div> Also, the gibberish characters appear inconsistently. If I ctrl+F5 the pages, the gibberish characters change and occasionally don't appear at all.

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• How to best design a date/geographic proximity query on GAE?

  - by Dane

  Hi all, I'm building a directory for finding athletic tournaments on GAE with web2py and a Flex front end. The user selects a location, a radius, and a maximum date from a set of choices. I have a basic version of this query implemented, but it's inefficient and slow. One way I know I can improve it is by condensing the many individual queries I'm using to assemble the objects into bulk queries. I just learned that was possible. But I'm also thinking about a more extensive redesign that utilizes memcache. The main problem is that I can't query the datastore by location because GAE won't allow multiple numerical comparison statements (<,<=,=,) in one query. I'm already using one for date, and I'd need TWO to check both latitude and longitude, so it's a no go. Currently, my algorithm looks like this: 1.) Query by date and select 2.) Use destination function from geopy's distance module to find the max and min latitude and longitudes for supplied distance 3.) Loop through results and remove all with lat/lng outside max/min 4.) Loop through again and use distance function to check exact distance, because step 2 will include some areas outside the radius. Remove results outside supplied distance (is this 2/3/4 combination inefficent?) 5.) Assemble many-to-many lists and attach to objects (this is where I need to switch to bulk operations) 6.) Return to client Here's my plan for using memcache.. let me know if I'm way out in left field on this as I have no prior experience with memcache or server caching in general. -Keep a list in the cache filled with "geo objects" that represent all my data. These have five properties: latitude, longitude, event_id, event_type (in anticipation of expanding beyond tournaments), and start_date. This list will be sorted by date. -Also keep a dict of pointers in the cache which represent the start and end indices in the cache for all the date ranges my app uses (next week, 2 weeks, month, 3 months, 6 months, year, 2 years). -Have a scheduled task that updates the pointers daily at 12am. -Add new inserts to the cache as well as the datastore; update pointers. Using this design, the algorithm would now look like: 1.) Use pointers to slice off appropriate chunk of list based on supplied date. 2-4.) Same as above algorithm, except with geo objects 5.) Use bulk operation to select full tournaments using remaining geo objects' event_ids 6.) Assemble many-to-manys 7.) Return to client Thoughts on this approach? Many thanks for reading and any advice you can give. -Dane

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• DataTable identity column not set after DataAdapter.Update/Refresh on table with "instead of"-trigge

  - by Arno

  Within our unit tests we use plain ADO.NET (DataTable, DataAdapter) for preparing the database resp. checking the results, while the tested components themselves run under NHibernate 2.1. .NET version is 3.5, SqlServer version is 2005. The database tables have identity columns as primary keys. Some tables apply instead-of-insert/update triggers (this is due to backward compatibility, nothing I can change). The triggers generally work like this: create trigger dbo.emp_insert on dbo.emp instead of insert as begin set nocount on insert into emp ... select @@identity end The insert statement issued by the ADO.NET DataAdapter (generated on-the-fly by a thin ADO.NET wrapper) tries to retrieve the identity value back into the DataRow: exec sp_executesql N' insert into emp (...) values (...); select id, ... from emp where id = @@identity ' But the DataRow's id-Column is still 0. When I remove the trigger temporarily, it works fine - the id-Column then holds the identity value set by the database. NHibernate on the other hand uses this kind of insert statement: exec sp_executesql N' insert into emp (...) values (...); select scope_identity() ' This works, the NHibernate POCO has its id property correctly set right after flushing. Which seems a little bit counter-intuitive to me, as I expected the trigger to run in a different scope, hence @@identity should be a better fit than scope_identity(). So I thought no problem, I will apply scope_identity() instead of @@identity under ADO.NET as well. But this has no effect, the DataRow value is still not updated accordingly. And now for the best part: When I copy and paste those two statements from SqlServer profiler into a Management Studio query (that is including "exec sp_executesql"), and run them there, the results seem to be inverse! There the ADO.NET version works, and the NHibernate version doesn't (select scope_identity() returns null). I tried several times to verify, but to no avail. Of course this just shows the resultset coming from the database, whatever happens inside NHibernate and ADO.NET is another topic. Also, several session properties defined by T-SQL SET are different in the two scenarios (Management Studio query vs. application at runtime) This is a real puzzle to me. I would be happy about any insights on that. Thank you!

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• JavaScript/Dojo Module Pattern - how to debug?

  - by djna

  I'm working with Dojo and using the "Module Pattern" as described in Mastering Dojo. So far as I can see this pattern is a general, and widely used, JavaScript pattern. My question is: How do we debug our modules? So far I've not been able to persuade Firebug to show me the source of my module. Firebug seems to show only the dojo eval statement used to execute the factory method. Hence I'm not able to step through my module source. I've tried putting "debugger" statements in my module code, and Firebug seems to halt correctly, but does not show the source. Contrived example code below. This is just an example of sufficient complexity to make the need for debugging plausible, it's not intended to be useful code. The page <!-- Experiments with Debugging --> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>console me</title> <style type="text/css"> @import "../dojoroot/dojo/resources/dojo.css"; @import "../dojoroot/dijit/themes/tundra/tundra.css"; @import "edf.css"; </style> <script type="text/javascript" src="../dojoroot/dojo/dojo.js"> </script> <script type="text/javascript" > dojo.registerModulePath("mytest", "../../mytest"); dojo.require("mytest.example"); dojo.addOnLoad(function(){ mytest.example.greet(); }); </script> </head> <body class="tundra"> <div id="bulletin"> <p>Just Testing</p> </div> </body> </html> <!-- END: snip1 --> The java script I'd like to debug dojo.provide("mytest.example"); dojo.require("dijit.layout.ContentPane"); /** * define module */ (function(){ //define the main program functions... var example= mytest.example; example.greet= function(args) { var bulletin = dojo.byId("bulletin"); console.log("bulletin:" + bulletin); if ( bulletin) { var content = new dijit.layout.ContentPane({ id: "dummy", region: "center" }); content.setContent('Greetings!'); dojo._destroyElement(bulletin); dojo.place(content.domNode, dojo.body(), "first"); console.log("greeting done"); } else { console.error("no bulletin board"); } } })();

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• MySql multiple selects batching in .net

  - by Amith George

  I have a situation in my application. For each x-axis point in my chart, I am plotting 5 y-axis values. To calculate each of these 5 values, I need to make 4 different queries. Ie, for each x-axis point I need to fire 20 sql queries. Now, I need to plot 40 such points in the my chart. Its resulting in a pathetic performance where it takes close to a minute to get all the data back from the database. Each of 4 different queries consists of a join between 2 tables. One has only 6 rows. The other close to 10,000. Each of the 4 queries has different WHERE clauses, so they are different queries. For each point in the x-axis, only the values for the where clauses change. I have tried combining each of the 4 queries into one big string. Basically batch the four selects. These are again batched for each y-axis value. So, for each x-axis point, I am now firing one big command that consists of 20 different select statements. Technically, I should be experiencing a big performance boost, right? Instead of hitting the db 40x5x4 = 800 times, I am now hitting it just 40 times. But instead of taking 60 seconds, it taking 50-55 seconds... not much of a help. I am using MySql 5.1, and the 6.1 version of its .Net connector. What can I do to improve the performance? Edit: One of the 4 queries is as follows: SELECT SUM(TIME_TO_SEC(TIMEDIFF(T1.col2, T1.col1))* T2.col1 / (3600 *1000)) AS TotalTime FROM Table T1 JOIN Table T2 ON T1.col3 = T2.col3 WHERE T1.col4 = 'i' AND T1.col1 >= '2009-12-25 00:00:00' AND T1.col2 <= '2009-12-26 00:00:00'; The other 3 queries are similar, only the where clause changes slightly. This set of 4 queries is fired 5 times. The first 3 times against the join of table T1 and T2, passing in different values for col4. And the next two times against the join of table T3 and T2 passing in different values for col4. These 5 values are the y-axis values for a particular x-axis point. The data returned by all these queries is the same format. so, we tried doing a UNION ALL on all these queries. No substantial difference. One strange thing, however, after indexing the foreign key on the table T1 [while it contained over a lakh records], the queries were using the index, but they had become slower. At times, the queries would take double the time to return the data.

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• Piping input to a Java app with Perl

  - by user319479

  I need to write a Perl script that pipes input into a Java program. This is related to this, but that didn't help me. My issue is that the Java app doesn't get the print statements until I close the handle. What I found online was that $| needs to be set to something greater than 0, in which case newline characters will flush the buffer. This still doesn't work. This is the script: #! /usr/bin/perl -w use strict; use File::Basename; $|=1; open(TP, "| java -jar test.jar") or die "fail"; sleep(2); print TP "this is test 1\n"; print TP "this is test 2\n"; print "tests printed, waiting 5s\n"; sleep(5); print "wait over. closing handle...\n"; close TP; print "closed.\n"; print "sleeping for 5s...\n"; sleep(5); print "script finished!\n"; exit And here is a sample Java app: import java.util.Scanner; public class test{ public static void main( String[] args ){ Scanner sc = new Scanner( System.in ); int crashcount = 0; while( true ){ try{ String input = sc.nextLine(); System.out.println( ":: INPUT: " + input ); if( "bananas".equals(input) ){ break; } } catch( Exception e ){ System.out.println( ":: EXCEPTION: " + e.toString() ); crashcount++; if( crashcount == 5 ){ System.out.println( ":: Looks like stdin is broke" ); break; } } } System.out.println( ":: IT'S OVER!" ); return; } } The Java app should respond to receiving the test prints immediately, but it doesn't until the close statement in the Perl script. What am I doing wrong? Note: the fix can only be in the Perl script. The Java app can't be changed. Also, File::Basename is there because I'm using it in the real script.

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• Managing a difficult manager

  - by griegs

  I have a situation here at work. We are redeveloping our basic architecture across the entire company. Currently we have the following hierarchy; SQL Database <= Stored Procs not allowed. nHibernate Classes to convert nHibernate into our own objects Web Service <= for all external and [internal] calls. Class to take objects from Web Service and back into our own objects and then… Normal nTier application architecture such as Data Transformation Layer, Business layer etc. Within the database, when we are writing a hierarchy of objects to the database, say for example; Order Person Details Address Product Other We need to serialise the object and save it, in its entirety, to an image field in a table. No attempt has been made to store the objects in their own tables so that we can do useful stuff like report on it. This is an architecture that was implemented [way] before I started and as you can probably appreciate, is a complete nightmare not to mention slow as a wet weekend. We’re not even allowed to have stored procs within SQL server because in my boss’s last job they had a hundred or so and he had a problem identifying them all so therefore all stored procs are the devil. Now the same person that developed the above architecture has developed the new one. It came as no surprise that he’s essentially used the same framework only now it’s using DotNet 3.5 with interfaces and generics. We still have to go through web services, still need to serialise (everything), still not allowed to use stored procs etc. In fact, we’re only barely able to bang two rocks together here. He says to us that the framework is open for discussion but when you discuss it, unless you approve of his design, you are told flatly “No”. He simply won’t listen to any other suggestions. Even when you show him demo applications of his proposed architecture v’s yours and he can see the speed difference, he still won’t take that on board. So I guess my question is, and I know others have experienced the same things out there, how do I get through to someone like this? How do you convince someone to ditch Web Services for internal calls and applications? How do you demonstrate, and make it stick, that stored procs are a better way to go than ad-hoc sql statements? This is killing me. I don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past and I certainly don’t want to write code that I know is going to be slow and cumbersome. Help!

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• C# or C++ game: many 16 color images loaded into RAM. Efficient solution?

  - by user560639

  I am in the planning stages of creating a fighting game and am unsure how to handle one issue relating to memory. Background info: - Still debating whether to use C# (XNA) or C++. We do not want to commit to either until we have explored how to solve this problem in both languages. - Using a max of 256MB RAM would be great if possible. - Two characters will be present at a time, and these characters can only change between battles. There is time to load/free memory between battles, but the game needs to run at a constant 60 drawn frames per second during combat. Each frame is 16.67ms - The total number of images per character is in the low hundreds. Each image is roughly 200x400 pixels. Only one image from each character will be displayed at any given moment. Uncompressed, each image takes roughly 300kb from my calculations; upwards of 100MB for a whole character. This is pushing too close to the 256MB limit given that memory will be needed for some other resources as well. Since each image can be made with a total of 16 colors. Theoretically I should be able to use 1/8th the space if I can take advantage of this. I've looked around but haven't found any word of native support for paletted images. (Storing each pixel using fewer bits that each map to a 32-bit RGBa color) I was considering making my own file format with 4 bits per pixel (and some extra palette info), loading all the images of this new format into RAM before battle, and then when drawing any specific image, decompress only that image into a raw image so it can be rendered properly. I don't know if it's realistic to perform so many assignment operations (appx 200x400 for each character = 160k) each frame. It sounds very hacky to me. Does anyone have advice on whether my solution sounds reasonable, and if there is perhaps a better one available? Thanks so much! (I also attempted to use an image with only 1 channel, then use a shader to perform a series of if statements to translate various values into other colors. Unfortunately, there were too many lines of code for the shader. It is also rather hacky and does not scale well.)

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• Cascade Saves with Fluent NHibernate AutoMapping - Old Anwser Still Valid?

  - by Glenn

  I want to do exactly what this question asks: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/586888/cascade-saves-with-fluent-nhibernate-automapping Using Fluent Nhibernate Mappings to turn on "cascade" globally once for all classes and relation types using one call rather than setting it for each mapping individually. The answer to the earlier question looks great, but I'm afraid that the Fluent Nhibernate API altered its .WithConvention syntax last year and broke the answer... either that or I'm missing something. I keep getting a bunch of name space not found errors relating to the IOneToOnePart, IManyToOnePart and all their variations: "The type or namespace name 'IOneToOnePart' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)" I've tried the official example dll's, the RTM dll's and the latest build and none of them seem to make VS 2008 see the required namespace. The second problem is that I want to use the class with my AutoPersistenceModel but I'm not sure where to this line: .ConventionDiscovery.AddFromAssemblyOf() in my factory creation method. private static ISessionFactory CreateSessionFactory() { return Fluently.Configure() .Database(SQLiteConfiguration.Standard.UsingFile(DbFile)) .Mappings(m => m.AutoMappings .Add(AutoMap.AssemblyOf<Shelf>(type => type.Namespace.EndsWith("Entities")) .Override<Shelf>(map => { map.HasManyToMany(x => x.Products).Cascade.All(); }) ) )//emd mappings .ExposeConfiguration(BuildSchema) .BuildSessionFactory();//finalizes the whole thing to send back. } Below is the class and using statements I'm trying using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.IO; using FluentNHibernate.Conventions; using FluentNHibernate.Cfg; using FluentNHibernate.Cfg.Db; using NHibernate; using NHibernate.Cfg; using NHibernate.Tool.hbm2ddl; using FluentNHibernate.Mapping; namespace TestCode { public class CascadeAll : IHasOneConvention, IHasManyConvention, IReferenceConvention { public bool Accept(IOneToOnePart target) { return true; } public void Apply(IOneToOnePart target) { target.Cascade.All(); } public bool Accept(IOneToManyPart target) { return true; } public void Apply(IOneToManyPart target) { target.Cascade.All(); } public bool Accept(IManyToOnePart target) { return true; } public void Apply(IManyToOnePart target) { target.Cascade.All(); } } }

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